WHEN do we need a friend?

I HAVE a very primitive reflex or instinctive response when it comes to friendships and relationships. Friendship... We need a friend when we are ailing and sick, we need a heart to cook a hot kale soup or wash/change the beddings; or when the oven doesn't work or the DVD player needs cleaning, we need a handy dude to get things fixed. Or when words don't fall or the canvas remains blank, we need a sweet distraction to ruffle our clouds and entice the muse to come back in; or when the blue, blue sky simply gets too dark for the full moon to watch over us, we need that silly, little joke that immediately casts sunshine onto our gloomy imaginings...

     Unfortunately, we close our doors exactly, precisely during those moments: when colds seep through the veins, we fear passing the virus; when the stove conks out, we don't bother a hand that doesn't ask for dollars paid for hours served; when a poem doesn't shape, we shut the door and even shut the earth's biological clock for 100 percent privacy; when the blue sky turns pitch black, we just succumb deep in the catacomb of our isolated darkness.

     But then, a friend is one who risks infection for an ailing soul, one who finds joy in smearing his hands to heal another human being, one who inspires a beautiful song to blossom out of a puddle of mud, one who pulls up the blinds and allows a streak of wonderful sun to pass through the cracks of our triple-locked windows.

     Friendship is easy... like how a heart beats to guide a reasonable mind, or how a spirit hovers through the snow-caped agony of the woods to survive a speck of warmth between trees. That is all we need, that is all that matters. But a friend is hard to find because we seem to enjoy the detached confusion of lostness.  

--PPASCUA, from “My Life as a Greyhound”