There was a popular song around ten years ago going like: 'One day we'll meet by the well, maybe in the better world, our wives will be pretty and vodka won't harm us anymore'. The more the time goes by, the more beautiful the well, gathering your memories and dreams that never came true. And the more the time goes by, the more blurry is the image of the well: the more puzzling is the question what to say.
Some other day I was walking around the streets I used to pass every day, the same streets and the same noise of random talks, the same smell of Russian gasoline. I passed an old shop on the main street (if you can call it any) which used to be our shop in the distant jokes, mine and Silvia's. Couple of days ago it was Silvia's Birthday. And under a thrill or a hint, I dropped her a message. She's happy she said, wishing she could, just like me, come over for Christmas. All of the memories have come alive, like when we walked to a party outside the town, and we found a cigarette lying on the snow, or like... The streets became a bit depressive, were they always like this? so I decided to come back home, and refused to leave again to meet my (somehow long-time-no-seen) cousin. He reached my home around an hour later. A bottle of wine, long time no drunk- red one, I don't really drink the red one anymore, hang on I practically don't drink wine at all. This one bring memories, like then when... You remember or when...
After a while he asked me if I had any news from a friend. Used to be our friend, but no, sadly. I was about to, write/call/step by/ whatever else but then there is this threat following it, the threat of unbreakable silence. After a while, you don't want to share things which went wrong. You stick it at the back of your head with a label 'personal', not destined to a friend marked as 'long-time-no-seen'. Ideally, such meeting should be joyful, and you should dig and dig until you find again all those qualities you used to appreciate in the person and, which is worse, inside yourself. Otherwise you can sentence the two of you to silence, not only a silence for one evening, but the eternal silence of your memories and past events, a silence which will be causing a hick-up everytime you ever recall the face of the person. It's that kind of silence no one could bear.
My cousing is a counsellor. There is probably many things being a counsellor can teach you, but there is surely one of special significance: avoiding problematic relationships. And these are random relationships formed between two people meeting once again after a time of dispersal: as they are never what they ought to be. The bond of friendship is a magnificent creation of experience. Experience which, without continuity, breaks through and dies forever. Maybe if some people were counsellors, just like my cousin, they would know it. Unfortunately, they are not and they fall over and over into a spiral of sympathy and politeness which is right there to destroy their memories forever.
Coming back to my cousin, recently he received an offer from a friend to join a meeting with their mutual old friend. Surprisingly for the other side, he refused.
-Are you crazy, what am I going to tell him?
-Exactly, what are you going to tell him at first place?
By the chance of this dialogue, the eyes of my cousin and Frank are meeting. I can see them both, two counsellors communicating by the code we will never understand, nodding in agreement.
-The answer is always the same- explained Frank with his right hand raised in the act of clarification. -We met and it was brilliant. Because they always meet for a beer- both sides count on a possibility of getting drunk and let it 'somehow' go!
I couldn't really join this discussion since I, for one of my rules, try to avoid people from the past. But in that matter my life surely divides into two periods: before, and after I met Kati.
Before I met Kati
To make things
straight, it was actually my mom who first met Kati. From my part, to be
frank, I personally forgot who on Earth is Kati.
But
indeed, there she was, standing behind the counter in the local
butchery shop, massaging with her fingers the marks hidden behind her
glasses. Kati was my friend from childhood. We used to meet every summer
when she was visiting her grandmother in the town. We used to play in
the pool and Kati loved to play the shop. She was always nagging me for
not being polite enough to our invisible customers.
-Hi, Kati- said I, previously ensured by my mom that is really her.
-You didn't changed at all- I lied. The only thing that didn't change
was that she was my age. Which now meant, she was 28. Her hairstyle was
telling me she's recently been to hairdresser: which meant, she new
already everything about me- there was no need to ask. But sadly for me,
she did. Luckily Kati always was a smart kid and now she had grown to
be a smart woman- she added: -Your mom said you're studying.
That act gave us a subject to conversation for two minutes. Another two were on me. -I heard you've had a baby, congratulations. A good move it was. We should have played chess.
-Yes, that is why I don't really have much time for anything else recently- she had smartly foreseen a possible next question. It crossed my mind that Kati, due to her current workplace, must be used to meeting long-time-no-seen and no-missed faced from the past. -But you know- she joyfully added- it gets better with time. She's two years old now so now when I am doing my make up she already wants to do it with me.
Then she laughed and I thought that indeed she knows how to entertain people with conversation or at least has truly excellent interpersonal skills. But there was another thought, firmly embarrassing to me, that maybe afterall, Kati's simply happy to see me. I forced a big smile on my face with no make up at all. As I knew from my mom, she was driving everyday to the town to work and by this chance, often visited her grandparents. Got married three years ago and lost her job- a department store manager position- due to childbirth. Now she's been working in a butchery shop for over a year and as she says, it's a job below her qualifications but at least there is one. Kati's life has come together as a story in my head. Afterall, I was glad to see her too, even if it was just for a friendly chat around a butchery counter.
- She was dying to ask you if you're seeing someone- said my mom after we left.
- Yes, I know- said I, thinking about one of the underestimated powers of this world: the power of information. Because while I left the shop with Kati's lifestory in my head, she ended up knowing nothing at all. And that was not something I felt proud of. It was just the information and that we tend to keep for ourselves. In the world of information you're save as long as you don't share- all this valuable information which is to be used for or against- to fall into the danger of vulnerability. That is why a face from the past scares us so much. This face carries information and is here to swallow more, to make us imagine our lives from a distance and maybe, God save us!, make us look silly and lost.
So we turn our faces and run away. Intimacy is not trendy. That is so sad.
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