The Prime Meridian

"The eye draws on the white ceiling
a little line.
The ceiling takes up the eye's illusion
and turns black.
Then the line erases itself
and the eye closes.

Thus solitude is born."

-- Fifth Vertical Poetry by Roberto Juarroz



What are the limits to friendship? Apparently I've reached mine with my long time friend of 15 years. That's pretty much more than half of my life. Sometime last night from that nightmare, to eating breakfast this morning, to typing this entry at this moment, I've been sorting out what went wrong.

We've always talked about problems, issues, hopes & dreams, but we never once attempted at doing an objective character analysis. THat would be too painful to accept. We are aware of certain realities, but our friendship settled on it's being surrealy connected. Let's just say we both regard each other's pride as if it were soaring the heights of the metropolis. You never go there. There will always be a prime meridian dividing the globe from wherever you come from. We never dared cross the boundaries of closeness because we were never the touchy-feely type of people. When we fought, it would last for days or weeks, and when the issue eventually dies down, we would simply talk as if the whole thing never happened. That's just the way we've been and it's worked for 15 years.

We've had fights before, that's for sure, but none those ever resulted in really heated arguments. Most of those fights were characterized by silence. By avoidance. Even back in high school, I've always thought communication was a problem between us. Literally. Their phone line would be cut, he would lose his mobile phone, destroy it intentionally even. He would move to another province, have internet connection that charges a fortune, lose the phone line again. It had been difficult, but somehow we've manage to keep in touch.

Now, it's a different kind of communication problem. The result of something we both avoided for so long, I guess. We probably knew exactly what was going to happen. And it has. Not that I haven't noticed how much we've changed as individuals, but as a friend, I always tried to overlook that. He may be unpleasant sometimes, but when he's not so stressed out, we'd have the most brilliant conversations on assorted topics. 15 years of information in a mental database, all accessible on a whim. The hours spent burning the lines would probably equal years.

And so what happened to us? Was I just too stubborn for my own good? Did he hit a chord I'm not willing to tweak? Is the situation really, truly, irreconcilable? I just find it strange that after all this time, the connection would just disappear just like that. No nostalgia on my part, no remorse even. We're not even angry at each other. Truly strange.

If I knew what the enemy was exactly, I would've lunged my kitchen knife at it. Maybe I'd wake myself up again.

But what if I end up stabbing myself? What if we both end up dead?