Having time, that most precious of resources, I sometimes brood, that most useless of uses for time.  I don’t brood at random, mind you.  I brood about specific vexing details of this life here, the life we try to celebrate, and wring every bit of joy, gratefulness and amazement from.   We try to appreciate the good things in our lives to the cadence of a constantly banging drum, and not only one drum, a million drums.  

The beat is constant, purposeful, and often drowns out everything else.  It is amplified and throbs over the wall to wall speakers of mass media.  Recently it was Paris, the murderous motherfuckers who slaughtered some innocent people there.  That was the only story.  Everywhere.  Oh, yes, and the accompanying footnote story of a similar slaughter in Beirut where less people were killed that same day in a part of the world where many are killed daily.  Then the only story was about some insane American motherfucker with a gun killing people he believed were killers because they worked in a clinic that sometimes performed abortions.  Trump.  The idiocy or atrocity of the day.  The kid who was killed by an enraged policeman in Chicago, the city paid the family $5,000,000 for the kid’s “wrongful death”.  The eventual release of the videotape, after a year of government stone-walling, showing there was probable cause to believe the policeman murdered the kid in the first degree.  Friday was Black Friday, run to stand on line for amazing deals.  Today is Cyber Monday, big savings on line, go go go!

But I am not thinking of any of these things today.  I am thinking about the death of friendship, how it happens, why.  As a kid I watched my father toss old friends over the side, not even look back as they disappeared without a trace in the wake of his mighty ship.  I thought this was horrible.  Over time I’d learn it is even more horrible to have vengeful people scowling and skulking on deck, spewing hatred, jealousy, anger, poison, insisting they are your best friends and that you don’t deserve any fucking better, asshole.  If you ask them nicely and they don’t play nice, don’t play with them.  If they won’t leave, it is kind of a moral duty to throw them over the side.

It is a matter of luck and sensitivity, and valuing the rare thing that true friendship is, to find and keep good friends.  A certain amount of work is involved in keeping a friendship alive and healthy.  I believe there are many people who do not have the luck and sensitivity to others to find and keep good friends.  It is much more important to them to be right, and feel superior, and justified in their anger, and not take any shit from anyone, ever.   I have been there, prepared to take no shit from anyone, ever.  But taking a little shit once in a rare while, from someone who sometimes needs to give it, as all of us do, well, OK, the price to be a good a friend, to have a good friend.  A little shit can be overlooked, within reason.

But then there is the line drawn in the sand:  all shit all the time!  I didn’t sign on for this, you will think to yourself, protest to the friend who declares this drastic new policy.  Doesn’t matter, your friend will say, you’re the only one I can throw this on, need to get it out of my large intestine, can’t leave it on the floor.  The color goes nicely with your eyes.  Makes kind of a warm hat and scarf for you, my friend.  At first, anyway.

This is really disgusting.  Is this really the best I can do at the moment?

I like to think not.  I like to think I can do better.  It is not always possible.  Time is money.  Tick tick tick.  

If you want your friend to listen to you, not cut you off, consider the things you say: listen to your friend, do not cut them off, consider the things they say.  The Golden Rule, from the mouth of Jesus, was Love your neighbor as yourself.  This may be possible for the son of God, or a saint, but does not seem possible for the average human.  The Golden Rule, from the mouth of Hillel:  What is hateful to you do not unto another.  This gives us a handle on a better way to act, seems more practical.  Everyone knows what they hate.  If you hate it, don’t do it to someone else. What are you, a sadist?    

Many are sadists, sad to say, and sadism, it seems to me, comes from being victimized by another sadist.  What is hateful to you do to anyone who is weaker than you– the credo of the sadist.    Some victims are made more sensitive by what they have been forced to undergo, become protectors of others.  Many, sadly, become fucking sadists.  Is it possible to be friends with a sadist?  If you are a masochist, I suppose.   The old one:  the masochist says ‘hurt me, hurt me!’ and the sadist says ‘no…’

This is most muddled, my friend.  Is there some lesson to be drawn from this?  I do not see it.  Are you saying your friends will treat you no better than you treat them?   Are you once more taking a bold stand for the obvious, that it is better to be a mensch than an asshole?  Those things are kind of subjective, no?  Don’t most of us consider ourselves justified in our actions, on the high road, compromisers taken advantage of when things go south?

I think of the line between mensch and asshole like that Supreme Court justice wrote of obscenity: we know it when we see it.  In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man, as it is written in the Book of Proverbs.   Or maybe it was in Pirkey Avot.  I’m sure every religion and culture has some variation on this.  Our’s in the west is: go someplace where there is something of material value, claim it, stand tall and use your quick drawn gun to kill anyone who contests your claim to it.

Madness creeps down like a curtain, like the darkening sky at dusk, like a thumb on to an ant.   I don’t know what to make of this.  Hopefully the next page will be a little more edifying and entertaining.