Hello!
Since reaching the shores of the Baltic in my last long trip, I have been content with hanging out fifteen minutes of my apartment. Through it, I’ve discovered a Lebanese “sandwich” shop that heats its wraps with a consistent economy. The playground cul-de-sac outside my door is visited by both toddlers and adults who sit down with a pizza box each. The church just behind that hides a ring of unused benches hidden by the trees. Most days, I end up under an awning at a cafe down the road, where every barista now shouts “flat white” to me through the window, even at 37 degrees centigrade. If I arrive early, I take the furthest table between two trees. As the sun climbs, I shift the table every fifteen minutes. By the time I leave, another barista takes my payment. One time they nodded when I told them to take 3€ for my coffee and still handed me the exact change. Most recently, they stumbled over the total when I mentioned an additional lemonade.
Life Updates: After tinkering with static sites for a few months, I’ve finally settled on this version of my new blog. I have collected my maps, parked some LGBTQ posts on the Planet Ally website that I now help out with, and discovered the wonders of Apple Pages (iBooks had been discontinued a week prior) to quickly create PDF guides. After 13 years of continuous moving, and repeatedly hating it, I have arrived at the shores of mechanical detachment. In more recent moves, with less attachment but deeper connections, the bittersweetness of leave-taking has ripened to the flavour of summer bursting berries. I’ve been savouring the time I have with people in Berlin and cycling the Berlin-Usedom route.
Notes: These are my personal photos and copyrights are reserved.
Olympic Penninsula, USA. 2014.
I’ve been thinking a lot about long arcs recently — beginning with friendships. Friendship usually becomes noticeable in its absence, disturbance, or (occasionally) its striking magnificence. The past month has had all three.
“Friend” is both an inadequate word and a convenient gloss over a continent of experiences. An acquaintance becomes a friend when you are introducing them at a dinner party. Someone you’ve known for thirty years, held you through breakups, and shows up to help you move after a nuclear fight is also a friend. You might confer it to an Instagram follower you’ve messaged for half a year and never met (IRL) as a hopeful placeholder.
Calling someone a friend is like an invitation. You’ve allocated a spot for them. Into it you might put nights out, nerdy tips, the certainty that their presence is enough for laughter. Perhaps a trait catches your attention, or a gesture at the right time makes you eternally grateful. Liking their face is occasionally reason enough. The collection that grows into their life story compels me to see someone again, sometimes in a month but just as likely in a decade.
In the brief decade drifting through the fluidity of friendships, I’ve become better at riding favourable currents. Two of my closest friends I have seen fewer than ten times in real life and are on different continents. We ride on the momentum of our online exchanges, a lightweight frame storing countless meaningful conversations. It has also become painfully obvious when certain relationships have rocky shores and boundaries that should not be crossed, lest one is prepared to work hard. But seeing them doesn’t mean I know how to steer clear.
Wave watching before the storm, Taiwan. 2014.
How a friendship moves into the inner circle is like charting a course through the Bermuda Triangle. Some friendships disappear while others sink in dramatic storms. But the years have shown me that some friends can survive me. It’s in my exhale of gratitude at being forgiven, their exasperated eye rolls before pitching in to help, a knowing laugh. The best of friends have taken my greatest fears about myself, handled and held them.
Every friendship struggle has informed how I approach new friendships. After writing an angry e-mail to two friends in undergraduate and never hearing from them again, I’ve since taken the advice of another friend, “Write down everything you want to say. Sit with it. Then delete it when you’re ready.” Except — I am still prone to sending instead of deleting.
Still, people left in my past are present in conversations still. High school friends are channeled into new encounters where Super Smash Brothers or Starcraft are brought up. Staying with a Tamilian friend who taught me to take the train from Powai has fuelled stories to tell Bombay natives who shudder and stick to their cars.
Many friendships do not belong only to me. I have inherited decades of family friendships and been passed on to friends of friends. My uncles’ photographer friend in Taipei was first introduced as the man with a talented photographic eye, artist’s temperament, and tragic love affair with a genius late fiance. But the friend my uncles knew stands separate from the friend I’ve made who samples French butter and reminisces about Parisian baguettes. I would make half-day stopovers in Taipei to catch up on his bakery patio. He would light a cigarette after stuffing a bag with their fresh bread for me carry-on to my grandmother. They probably haven’t seen each other since I was born and “friend” in Chinese would be improper, but their mutual status is secure.
Friendship history is made of people who are with us in spirit and the ghosts who haunt us. Vancouver is my biggest social graveyard. Even the ones that survived the university fights and social fumbling have withered away in recent years. Our accents remain the same, but the language we speak has totally changed. Meeting up once a year, it feels petty to police comments against low-income neighbourhoods, generalisations about types of people, unfounded fears of backpacking in certain countries. It feels disingenuous to laugh at their jokes at the expense of other friends elsewhere.
Okinawa. 2017.
Good company satisfies a hunger — deep and constant. Some people have a tight circle to satisfy everything. I have an extensive rotation to meet my unreasonable needs. One of my friendship staples is laughter — an hours-worth to carry me a whole day. Less readily available ingredients are difficult and intellectual conversations, so I have resorted to New Books Network and a host of podcasts to have conversations with people I’ve never met. Trust is an intoxicating, but essential ingredient — a little to loosen the tongue with giddiness, but too much can get you wasted and hung over. I am greedy in my friendships — forever sampling even if I return to the same favourites. Perhaps because feeling that connection is not to satisfy the hunger, but to know that it is there — to explore, to work on, to examine, to feel.
If there was a class on how to be a good friend, I missed it growing up. Every day feels like catch up, to even be a friend. While I think I have learned how to approach a stranger, have a conversation, and listen deeply, there are so many other things I only find out I need to learn after the mistake (sometimes fatal) is made. Things I have learned include: detachment can fuel anger because it seems unempathetic; when people rant they usually want someone to listen instead of problem-solving; valid truths are invalidated by poor timing. Every new skill requires practice until it is delivered naturally, reflexively, as one of several correct responses in a given situation — valid return shots in a badminton match. Only, most people don’t enter into friendships as a competitive exchange for mutual growth. The most valuable lesson my friends, both casual and close, have taught me is not a piece of knowledge, but the humbling feeling that I don’t know. Not knowing is the point from which I want to get to know people, no matter how well I think I know them.
Singapore. 2018.
There is no conclusion to this. None of my friendships are conclusive. They are filled with inspired first conversations, rescheduled appointments, unanswered messages, surprise mail, unvoiced expectations, travel discoveries, petty bickering, gentle prods, tight hugs. I never considered how my early friendships from undergraduate would end. I never imagined how time zones close the distance with some people. I didn’t know how attached or jealous I could become when connections crossed a threshold. I still don’t know how to address the cocktail mix of dismay and gratitude with the right amount of grace and honesty.
The long arc of friendships is not made up of solid lines so much as obscure drifts following the ebb and flow tides, blown by the winds of circumstance. I know who I want to try to keep at this moment. Wanting and trying are deceptively close coasts. Succeeding might even be a mirage on the horizon. But if I were to chart a course to reach someone worth keeping, I’ve learned that certainty should be replaced with the questions I don’t ask my friends enough: “Where do you want to go with this?” and “How do we get there together?”
Letters & Listens:
Article: “Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman Saved Their Friendship With Couples Therapy” by Christina M. Tapper
Podcast: Call Your Girlfriend hosted by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman
Article: “Good Conflict: The world is consumed by violent fights and hostile disagreements. Sarah Schulman sees a way out of them.” By Molly Fischer
Essay: “Small Bodies of Water” by Nina Mingya Powles (and actually, all her essays)
Podcast: April Zhu on reporting from Nairobi (Part 1) and nation of diaspora (Part 2) in the NüVoices Podcast
Video: Uncle Roger DISGUSTED by this Egg Fried Rice Video (BBC Food) in case are not one of the 8.7 / 7,800 million people on Earth who have seen this yet (and Hersha Patel’s video with him in response).
Tip: Use Social Book Post Manager Chrome Extension to mass delete Facebook posts (by year etc.) and check out some things you can do for digital privacy.
Article: “Will Stanich’s Ever Reopen? Why America’s Best Burger Spot Closed Down - Thrillist”