Friendships

"When the night has come,
and the land is dark
And the moon is the only
light we'll see.
No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me." -John Lennon (and others)

Question:
How do you make friends?

I think there's a myth that once a young person finishes high school and college that personal relationships all become easy and natural because you're in the real world where people are less easily influenced by shallow things.

But that theory leaves out a number of things, a number of secrets that I am trying to figure out.
In high school, you can just follow a trend and you can attract friends, at least for a short while. And most still have their supportive home base regardless. There are clubs and sports to join to learn how to be social, to learn how to be part of something.

In the real world, one has to figure out how to make friends. How to keep it organic but still put work in. How to not put so much in that you're easy to take advantage of but to still put yourself out there so that you're available for genuine relationships.

Especially if you're at the stage where you don't want to meet people at a bar, a party, or a club, where you don't want to have to audition with your body and your clothes and your ass up in the air, as the saying goes, you can wear the dress or you can let the dress wear you-- (you being your personality/ your aura, the dress being the audition, the make-up) where do you find genuine relationships, where do they evolve from? Do people pick up on the simplicity, the words not said, the unique imperfections, and the values or do they go for the shiny attention seekers first?

It's interesting to me that these are things I don't know and a lot of people my age don't know either. I guess I thought that magic light bulb would go off after Colby but in some regard if a child was shy and private when he or she was 3 years old, they'd still be a little like that as a grown up. I see a lot of myself in my students: holding hands, trying to make friends in the playground.

Learning how to trust. Say sorry. BE sorry. Move on. Learning how to listen. Learning how to express. It starts at preschool but it's a lifetime process.

People I don't know always say I have a shell.
Or that I don't have the energy to pretend to give a shit about people I don't give a shit about.
Or that I have an expectation that everything will become genuine and organic and in sync in a cinch.
I think it's the combination of all three and learning how to not crave the popularity/validation or sell out, but to not be so closed off either.

Because any city is a big big place where there is work and there are bills and it's not healthy to do it all as one disconnected unit.

So I moved near the heart of city to Columbia Heights, rooming with Howard Medical students, surrounded by out of state professionals, people living in poverty, locals, HU and charter school students.The slowly but noticeably gentrifying area is within a 2 mile radius of nearly every Northwest metro-- I can get my Sunday morning hot chocolate and walk everywhere, including work and many of the sights, hospitals and community organizations I've come to know well through my time at the International Honors Program and Public Allies...just to be there and be vulnerable and maybe as an olive branch. (The convenient, high priced residential neighborhoods where out-of-District peeps flock to is actually just that quadrant, I don't know the rest of D.C. as well). So I am familiar with it. I've given in and physically brought myself from its outskirts to its front door. Now I just have to figure out how to bring myself to it spiritually and craft a relationship with it and the people who call it home: that's the hard part-- where the magic comes in, or at least my genuineness and kindness does... I hope.

"I'm just sayin you can do better. Tell me have you heard that lately." -JoJo

Maybe I need to take myself out of the situation to write good poetry
poetry devoid of corny metaphors using ceilings and sighs and pants and tears and knuckles and walls
and cycles and God
that makes me feel like no idea is original
and no love is special and no
one is big
like the perpetual "fire" that burns and simmers
and burns and simmers
perpetually warm but never turns into a wild fire...
like my love.... it's getting there
Like my poetry
I'm frustrated
"Addicted" to the cliche balancing
hope (for great) love
with a present of haze

"I stayed up waiting, anticipating, and pacing
but he was, chasin'
paper
caught up in the game
It was the last I heard." -Lana Del Rey