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avreliaЯ пью за здоровье немногих,
Немногих, но верных друзей...
Prince Petr Vyazemsky
Немногих, но верных друзей...
Prince Petr Vyazemsky
I apologize, but I will leave this poem as it is, not spoiling it with my translation. It is celebration of friends – rather sad and melancholic celebration at it. I do feel quite the same quite often now.
I am not sure whether I am good at making and keeping friends or not.
Or, to be exact, I am pretty sure I suck at making friends, so I try to keep those I have more or less successfully.
I’ve always hold friendship as something close to sacred, and never could understand why the opinion persists that the friendship between girls – and women - is less real. I didn’t see any difference as a child, I don’t see it now.
All my friends just happen in my life – they lived in the same building, they went to the same class at school, and in the same study group at the university, or they were my parents’ friends’ children.
I am pretty sure my attitude about friendship comes from my parents’ – they keep their friends for years, with some losses and some gains along the way. And they are good friends, to my, biased, opinion.
Back to me.
I, of course, met regularly much more people at school, etc. than I have friends – they are not even necessarily friends between each other, even though by now they know each other.
I don’t know why I have this people as friends and not the other ones. I never could choose a friend, never could come to a person and ask: Let’s be friends. That’s accounts for much painful and lonely time at resorts and school, and many other occasions.
No, it doesn’t mean that I would just talk to ten people in the whole life - I had people to play with and go to birthday parties, and walk, and talk, and write letters. Those just were not Friends. We parted ways and we never miss each other. In some cases I slightly regret that non-friendships, but not to the degree of losing my cool over it. Some of it had potential, some didn’t.
So I have two school friends. Our friendship is almost twelve years by now, and we have very different interests, personalities, lives, but we are still always happy to see each other. We were never a group of three, but more me and Anastasia, and me and Julia and other people. We have never been “exclusive” – no best friends forever, no telling all the secrets to each other. Okay, I can never tell all my secrets to anyone – but that’s another story. I wrote here once already that Russian school system means 35 random children stuck together for eight years - for better and for worse. And this part of our mutual history is a big part in our friendship, as well as growing up together and having that incredibly interconnected social network where everyone knows everyone and their families.
In a way, they provided me with a golden standard, from which I consider what being friends mean to me in general – and the how to cope with the passage of time and diverging interests without losing each other.
I know that for me is equally important to have something to talk about – topics we care about and may argue and discuss them until forever – and not to have to look for something to talk about, but just find comfort in being with each other – talking or not talking at all. I have it with both of my school friends.
I am not going to list all my friends here, but jump instead to the university setting. At university we were a group – a very tightly-knit group of friends, first of three, then of five, then of five with Tanya’s husband joining us from time to time.
We had a lot in common – classes, studies at the libraries, law, sense of humour, feeling slightly surprised that we got into the best law school in Russia. It was not a friendship from the first sight, it grew during the first two years, but by the end of our fourth year we were pretty close. We were never bored with each other – we were always creating something or other. In fact, that crazy creative side was the core feature of our friendship. We started with the script for the soap opera about ourselves, where we would literally go through every possible cliché we could think of, and every crime in the Criminal Code of RF to write about. Of course, it never got finished, and I suspect I wouldn’t be able to read it without cringing now, but, boy, what a wonderful time we had with it!
Then it was many, many other things - I would always say “let’s create some story!” And we would.. I remember a long poem we wrote with N in the manner of round robin – about a suicidal lovesick prosecutor traveling in his dreams; I remember our staged birthday parties; I remember the short poems and plays and everything else…
We would write, and we would laugh, and we would study together, and go somewhere for vacation…
Then we created the Fintulsky Sisters. The name was mine, of course – fintulskaya in Russian doesn’t mean anything, but looks and sounds silly: Финтюльская. That became our family name. To further absurdity we added pretentious names: Klementia, Avrelia, and Celestina. (there could be only three sisters, so everyone else became friends and relatives.) As the Fintulsky Sisters we did the movie scripts - the Fintulsky Sisters in the Revolutionary Underground, the Fintulsky Sisters and Count Dracula, the Fintulsky Sisters in the Amazingly Wild West, and so on…
We did it all for our amusement and to spend boring lectures without falling asleep, and never showed this nonsense to anyone, but it was good – good times and good nonsense.
Those were the days of our glory.
The Fifth year gone, the graduation behind us, we were still hanging out together a lot. But…
Suddenly we had diverging lives – professional, social, private, and it was painful to see that we are going our own roads, roads that we cannot share with each other. It was the time full with little storms and big silences. We grew and changed, we didn’t have much time to meet – or opportunities. I went to Canada…
So, here we are now – we still love being with other, we write, we call, we meet occasionally (when I am in Moscow), but that closeness belong to our nostalgic memories now. And I don’t see anything wrong about it.
The new friendships are difficult to form - I strongly believe that they should grow naturally – I cannot be friends from the first sight, even when I like a person a lot.
I knew a lot of new people in Vancouver – but only keep communicating regularly with several now. I met some great people here with whom we becoming friends, and I enjoy the process a lot.
Now, that brings my to a new and strange, but wonderful thingy – live journal and people I met through it. I do believe that I managed to make friends here, and yet sometimes I feel that the post-comment interaction is so very limited, but not sure if I can move somewhere beyond it? It is a strange feeling, and I am not sure if I explain it here properly at all. With all I don’t mean to say that I find “on-line friendships” lacking - not at all! But they develop in an unfamiliar way that leaves me slightly confused and holding back in a fear to make a wrong move.
Anyway, the contemplations on friendship often leads me to the example of Buffyverse. I believe that relationships between Scoobies reflect rather accurately the highs and lows a group of friends can go through without destroying the friendship completely. At least I can recognize myself and my friends there. There is a period when spending all spare time together seems natural, there is a period of growing apart without realizing it, and coming back together, and alienating, and being so wrapped up in one’s own problems thinking that everyone else is doing great, and neediness (okay, Scoobies are an extreme case!), and sudden empathy and understanding on a new level, and then leading each own life - without sharing secrets and opening hearts, and the short moments of grace that remind us why what have is so precious and worth every bit we put in it.
I believe that good friendship is a miracle, and hard work, and one of the best gifts we can give and receive in our lives. I am proud to have great friends, and I can hope I am a good friend to them as well.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 10:15 pm (UTC)I'm glad we chose each other. You're an amazing LJ friend. I am *so* lucky.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-19 04:16 pm (UTC)P.S. The next commentor agrees with you in that friends are important. ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-06-19 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-19 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-20 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-20 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-20 06:42 pm (UTC)**
Date: 2005-08-15 06:52 am (UTC)Re: **
Date: 2005-08-21 08:53 pm (UTC)Re: **
Date: 2005-08-22 12:24 pm (UTC)Frankly speaking I'm just trying to improve my English. It seems not to be as good as I wish.
And missing you. I got used to our level of contact (Am I right? I meant level of culture and all this stuff) and am now a little lonely. We do not meet with our friends very frequently.
Re: **
Date: 2005-08-28 05:33 pm (UTC)But try to write more - on various silly topics, as I do.
And I am missing you, too! it seemed so normal having you around all the time!
I cannot believe it was a month ago.