i've been sensing some - signals.

it's strange how one year you, with much guilt, listen to def leppard, then you start to like madonna, then radiohead, then celine dion, then mariah, then boys II men, then 50 cent, then brahms, and then....pet shop boys...i've been thinking about things again (oh crap! she's at it again) because i can't find anything i want to listen to these days, except pet shop boys and new order. and they are not exactly new. and when my brother used to listen to them a few years ago, and when my friend gary used to rave (a few years ago) about how great the pet shop boys were, i bought their discography and decided he was crazy, cause they sucked. but i started listening to them again this week, and i can't get their music out of my mind. during work i even went down to the LRC to listen to the real thing - i'd been singing it all day in my head. there was signal number one. another signal. friends and i have been trying to plan something for this friday. it's rolo's and reese witherspoon's birthday. saw peunice on msn and we were trying to decide what to get them, but rolo e-mailed me a little later, saying it had been decided that this would be a no presents occasion, because we were past all that. that was signal number two. friendships truly evolved into - i don't know - just something where there is no expectancy. no thought of and no desire of "i wonder what they're going to get me". i mean, at our age and stage, it represents a deep understanding of so many things, practical and ideological. and that brings me back to something someone once wrote to me, after we had "broken up" after a very very brief time together - that what we all want most, at the end of the day, is a loyal friend.

i think that is very true. my dad once told me, when i was in high school and constantly roaming the mall with kat, or probably in danger of going out with many different groups of friends all the time - that you really only need very few friends. but very good ones. at first i balked. i thought that was pretty stupid, because at first thought, it is much more fun to have ten millions friends and stick with them all the time. but my dad ends up being right in the end, for most things we stand apart on. and so while i know a lot of people, acquaintances, i'm a "few friend" kind of girl, and i think, more subconsciously, have let very few people, or only people that i've developed or felt affinity with, know a lot about me - my faults, embarrassing things, my thoughts, my opinions, my fears. and what is a friend but someone with whom you can be totally honest about all things? or have them know all of your faults and deficits and weaknesses and how your face flakes up on dry days and still be absolutely certain that they won't turn away from you or be fickle or flaky. while there are many people with those intentions, i would say that very few stick with it in general, tend to the friendship - or realize the importance of such a friendship. if you don't realize it, it dies, i think.

anyway, my friends are changing, and experiencing change. bash will be married very soon and decorating, to her tastes and likes, their new condo. witherspoon will be in france the entire year, and somehow she came out of her glass bubble to suggest trapeze at the school of circus arts as our friday fun-thing-to-do! rolo has a grown up job at ellis don and katharine tends to famous people's finances at the bank. peunice will be peunice mcbeal meeting perfect larry pauls in a mere two years. the last time we were all out, witherspoon said to me that every time we are all out together, she remembers this time as the best time of our lives. i think that way too, and forget sometimes, that we're always changing, always growing. our trin years seem like yesterday. if it were yesterday, i could just as easily be back at st. hilda's, serenading up and st. george in impossibly high heels, serenading boys by my window, serenading by the piano with Y-Wong in the rigby room...

well, i'm sorry to have to take this from the movie unfaithful, which was a good movie. mr. sexy guy with french accent tells our suburban playmate to open up a poetry book to page whatever, and tells her to read aloud the following passage (apparently this is from the rubaiyat of omar khayyam):

"Drink wine. This is life eternal.
This, all that youth will give to you.
It is the season for wine, roses and
drunken friends.
Be happy for this moment.
This moment... is your life."