The weather, lack of exercise, imprisoned in the cave of memory, not writing, no inspiration, or abundant inspiration, merely lacking in the ability to prune it, giving shape, it's never the writing that's the work it's the editing, and history was written with scissors and glue...
A friend over, raiding, builds a small pile, then, finding a pair of candlesticks, the wrong pair, I have so many but she's picked the wrong ones, I'd given her the provenance, bought in London, 300+ years old, now she's taken a fancy and of course I'm giving them away...No. No. Put them back. They are not for you. This is the summary of our friendship, in - what? 5? 7? years, a dozen "lets go out for drinks...", she's paid maybe once. Maybe. Sure, I'll say once. And now this rifling the bones, she'll buy me a drink, no, 2, a quick summary of her pile suggests a fine dinner but let it go, let her go, this "friendship" - well, it was ----
This recalls another friendship. Another one, with a more intimate foundation that over time became - ? - more platonic. Intimacy - in the physical sense, required more imagination than I'm generally capable of, than I care to invest in a lover, than in her as a lover certainly, and so we were friends. And, tokens, we give friends things, I'd given her some candlesticks, no harm can come to them, old, 150 years, but candlesticks, they just sit there and so they were safe. And I'd given her a cigarette case, antique tobacco tin, which she promptly lost. Small thing, of no value really, and so you let it go.
I'd replaced it, with a sterling silver cigarette cigarette case, mint condition, 100 years old if a day, filled with hallmarks, beautifully engraved, the inside an antique gilt over the silver, a fine thing, a rare thing, a beautiful thing.
And one day, sitting in her car, piece of shit *&^%*&^#*&^@ - barely running - a metaphor for her life, and I find - under my feet, the cigarette case. Trodden with salt and snow, crushed, distorted, I picked it up, pocketed it again.
I asked her about it, it was around she said, "show me" I suggested, but she changed the conversation and I let it slide, kept the cigarette case, polished it up, restored it to it's former glory.
The daughter, she's over, somehow that cigarette case comes up, and I give it to her to examine...she's looking at it, and then asks about the marks inside...
I hadn't opened it. The gilt lining, it's been scored with a hundred little razor burns, cuts, white powder flattened into the embossed case, the friend, she's been grinding her cocaine in it, it's been her party case...
Fuck. I explain it to the daughter but I'm livid inside, furious, this "ownership" of fine things, there's never ownership, we - you - me - we own nothing, we are - at best - custodians of the past, and she has set fire to the past much the same way she's incinerated her future, her children, and inside, you know it, knew it all along, but a too generous nature credits people with a modicum of common sense, a baseline of decency, propriety, that upon any real investigation very few people have.
People, the shit you give them, it's nothing, it's better to burn it. Unless they've paid - what you've paid or more - it's worthless. And I think about it.
I don't know that I need friends. But if I do, if I do, I need better friends.