Not My Last Mea Culpa

At my age, it is not a good thing to lose a friend.

One must really work at it, you know?

The way you do it is to deliberately invade and pick at a scab, and release the hidden corruption, which usually spurts forth vigorously. And sometimes it hits one right in the eyes.

This requires either the recklessness of youth and anger, but can be achieved with the languid and officious boredom of stolid and incurious firmness that suffers ignorance poorly.

When one knows a great deal about something–or believes he does–and another intrudes to make a mocking statement about a relevant person or occurrence of which he has no knowledge, the trigger is pulled... and the primer ignites the powder and the scattershot burst from the barrel of the weapon in pelll-mell, but shocking force.

I don’t know whether this can be unlearned or not. Obviously, it is too late for me.

Walking down a street near the University of Padua once, Betts and I wondered, giggling, what it would be like to be soooooo old that we could walk aimlessly around and poke people with a stick with impunity...if not with fervor...when they displeased us.

I guess that time is come for me, and though I can not afford to lose a friend at my age, I no longer find it as exhilarating to be "right" as I find it blissful to be "kind".

But, sometimes, one must be superhuman to remember.

And, Angelic, I am not. Yet.