Like Marble

On the topic of intimate friendship, I have more wonderings than insights. I question for instance, if it is possible to have more than one such relationship, at a time, I mean.

Rotating this in my mind, like a swirling marble, I have strong doubts. We don't reveal ourselves to everyone in the same light. Neither in presentation, nor interpretation. Friendship requires considerable focus and attention. And intimacy, all the more so.

I chose a marble, as our metaphor, for its perceptible qualities; the sound of dull drop or rolling, the impenetrable translucent visual, the coolness to the touch, that warms in the hand if held tight. But then, in a closed fist, or even half open palm, you don't see it all that much. Suggesting, intimacy requires a certain proximity, close enough to peer through, and far enough to view in the round. The marble cannot be in a pile of stuff, or in a collective bag. Intimacy requires it to be singled out. Tactile. Treated like a diamond, or suspect stuff. Like somebody grasping the sphere delicately between index and thumb.

Every marble, for the aficionado, has a whole unexplored world trapped inside. A planet with air pockets, tones, traces of shadow and sunshine. A whole other life. We can say causally, "oh, a marble," but the intimate will take his or her time, in degrees of criticism and appreciation to see the way the swirl tips to one side, or how the color fades from bright to nuance, darkness to light, in different times of day or night. Like the moon. The intimate will play with that found marble. Compulsively.

The intimate knows the marble has a story to tell and it cannot be fathomed by the condition of the exterior or even the components of the interior. Experience is somewhere beyond that, and it can only be tapped on a level that transcends. In interaction. That is perhaps the very thing that we are referring to as Intimacy.

The marble is an oddity in itself. We think of Jacks and Marbles, but there are hundreds of ways to play, and more often than not the lone marble is picked up, completely out of context. Sometimes we put that marble, inexplicably, in our pocket. We instinctively roll it in-between our fingers, unseen, except in our imagination-- a thing in motion, with us, in multidimensional thought.

Is intimate friendship like that? We are suddenly not alone but carrying someone else around, in thought.

I know we can't very well hold more than two marbles at a time, to the left and right, appreciating them individually. And in my thinking, I note, only one or the other will surface at a time. Just like the focal point of the eye physically is very, very specific, no matter how good our peripheral vision.

Speaking of the physical, I wonder also about the yin yang, for completion of thought. I observe that for myself, intimate friendship must be with an opposite. It's like I need the reflections of the male perspective, that I myself am lacking, to better understand life. Which begs the question, just how physical is the relationship? Again, I think of the marble. We seem to have (however flawed) a fuller picture, of it, when held in thought. As soon as you touch it, especially if sloppy, much of it is covered up, and it is hard to see through, beyond the surface, exposed, which is already distorted by surrounding reflected light. Worse, we see our own skin first--the holding of--rather than the marble and what it presents as subject rather than object.

On a tangent, what was it that Michaelangelo said--about marble--?

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

In intimate friendship we carve, very, very gently, mentally, ephemerally, adding and subtracting nothing, in sum, despite the necessary give and take. Like molecular cells are replaced every single second, though visually we remain perceptibly the same, in the moment.

In another remark by the sculptor:

The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.

I chose to distort the interpretation of the latter, creatively. I believe that it means the more we chip away the more intricate the sculpture, perhaps the better the Art? But in friendship, a statue is the antithesis of deeper understanding. I return to the perfect sphere of our original small found marble. Formed as such, it stays, intact, regardless of contact. We do not, and there is no waste. Intimacy is in the living.