#46 - The Winter Sun
Greetings from summer,
As I think I’ve previous mentioned, I’m in New Zealand for the wedding of my friends Cecily and Robbie. I’ve been here for just over a week now and while I've not done half the work I've intended to, I've made the most of visiting a country I probably won't get a chance to return to for a while. At the moment we're all in a grand house in the middle of nowhere and I'm finding much joy and peace. It's almost like being in a commune but not prone to the whims of megalomania or systemic abuse. The ceremony was yesterday and I went swimming in the sea - properly swimming - for the first time in what feels like years.
While I’ve been here, I’ve been finishing off my book of selected Anton Chekhov letters. I admit I dreaded starting it (Old Russian writer? Nah), but he’s a lively and incisive writer whose concerns and curiosities have sucked me in. By reading just a little segment from it each day it feels like I’ve had a durational performance of the man’s life. As I reached the end of the book - which is, of course, the end of his life - I felt a deep sense of sadness, as if I’d lost a newly made friend. It did though at least bolster my love for the honesty of private correspondence and made me feel like I’m making the right decision to stop publishing these letters unless I feel I can be honest. My next letter will be written from my dark flat in a dark country, so please enjoy this one-off missive from paradise.
I'm writing this just as people are starting to leave and it feels very much in keeping with the end of The Cherry Orchard. The drip-drip of lives and feelings away from an estate. Truthfully, I feel just as sad as I did about Chekhov's disappearance from the scene. New friends made, hopefully good ones, that I'll see again some day.
CECILY
Since I'm here for the sake of the wedding, I should probably say a little about the person who brought me out here. I met Cecily just over twelve years ago. We were both about to start the same short film course and she messaged me on Facebook to say HELLO! WE COULD BE FRIENDS! If memory serves, we ended up seeing Paranoid Park on our first mate date. We'd go on to be good friends during the course and she even worked on both of my films there, gamely taking up a cameo as bit of a bitch in both (sorry, Cecily).
Fast forwarding to yesterday where, during her wedding speech she called me her oldest friend and that gave me pause. Could that be true? It might be. Probably one of them. Likewise, she's one of *my* oldest friends, a realisation that has made me understand that I am myself quite bloody old. Cecily has been a fine old friend to have, and watching her go from an uncertain youth who I desperately wanted to make the most of her talents to a woman who is entirely more herself and excels at everything she touches has been delightful and humbling. Without question, Robbie's presence in her life has been a big part of that flourishing and I'm glad that he's someone I would also call a friend. Well done, Duckett. Well done, Cairns. Thank you both.
CHOICES
Aside from realising that I'm old, I also realised that I would not have been here for this wedding if I hadn’t have made the effort. I've not traditionally been good with the effort. It's only the last couple of years that I've accepted, quite belatedly, that after a certain point in life friendships require maintenance and can no longer survive on a diet of in-jokes and Simpsons quotes. With Cecily I told myself: "This is someone I really like who I never see, even though I easily could every week (she works a market near to me every weekend). As part of wanting to change my life, I made sure I started to do just that. It's rapidly coming to the point where I won't be able to see her every week and - having made the effort now - I've hopefully banked some friendship points and we are firm friends for life even if we won't see each as much.
Work and leisure I think operate under a similar principle, but replacing Simpsons quotes with "talent" as the initial driver that no longer suffices. I used to hate the idea that you can't just have friends and skills that stick for life once you've established them without much need for though. Yet, while it can be exhausting maintaining everything while also leaving yourself open to more, the upshot is that you live a more deliberate life than you do than when you were younger and, in doing so, the truth of you comes out. For example, in the last few years I have rediscovered the introversion that I was forced to push away and I like it and me better because of it. I used to be brilliant at Spanish. I'm not anymore. But I'm getting back to it because it's something I want to be a part of me. It's ok to let people and skills and dreams even slip away and, as I've mentioned before, there is no failure in it. But - as your writing teacher will tell you forever and ever - character is action. To be a certain type of person is forever an active proposition.
No Kitty Korner this week because I am far from my boys but, like James Bond, they will return. That said, I have encountered several excellent cats in my time here, including one extremely dignified old gal who had the run of a beautiful café. Even the cats live better here.
Vinay x
P.S. I got asked to do a reading at the wedding and blurted out a suggestion for something I could write for it which sounded fun and connected the interests of the couple. Of course, as with every writing project, it turns out to have been a lot more effort than I originally thought...effort willingly and joyfully expended of course. Here it is.
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