Thursday, July 07, 2005

The Yoga of Friendship

(Ted's in the air so Ben-chan's got the conch.)
Listening to Bowie and eating chips and salsa, I slowly come down from the buzz of two pints of post-yoga Guinness that I just finished with Ted at Dubliners. It's good to have my friend around again after a long absence. Or perhaps brother is the more appropriate term -- though born in different places, to different parents, at different times, we are somehow connected by a bond that pushes the limits of friendship.

It's a wonder--as I push 30--that I have any friends left at all. My community since college has slowly succumbed to personal apathy and the fragmenting influences of post-industrial post-modern existence. The bleakness and loneliness in the American soul that Coltrane and others saw (thanks, Ted) find their greatest exemplar in me. Why, otherwise, would I have taken off for far-flung shores?

What a gift, then, what a fine blessing to have a friend who I can be both obliviously stupid and stop-drop-and-roll serious with. We talk So-Cal-like, saying "dude" and knowing the precise meaning of each of ten different intonations. We guffaw when one of us farts (OK, at least I do). We discuss things that matter: sex, politics, vagabonding, and the meaning of existence (yes, in that order). We talk about love and loss and the quantum trajectories of our lives--If I try to pin myself down, I'll surely miss--and it is the talking and the simple walking through the fog-washed hills overlooking San Francisco that bring a kind of transcendence, a sort of samadhi-through-camaraderie.

I have a new term for this practice: the yoga of friendship.

Much love, my friend, and come back soon.
-- Ben


On the turntable: David Bowie, "Ziggy Stardust"
On the nighttable: Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"

2 comments:

-c said...

I loved reading this! Ben's Ode to the Yoga of Farts... er... Friendship was right on! Cheers, dude!

Edward J. Taylor said...

Thanks for the kind words, my brother from another mother.