Will You Be My Friend?

Li'l Dink is my friend.

NewFriend.Com

If there were a friend matching service, I would become its first member.  It’s not that I don’t have friends. I have some very loyal friends with whom I give and take as much as possible. My  partner of 25 years and I do not cohabitate. (I crave more companionship and want to introduce new friends to him.) 

Sounds like a sociological experiment, doesn’t it?  It has been. When we have tried to change things up and share the same space, many of our basic differences rear their wormy little heads. I have nothing against worms, by the way. I have known many a worm in my day. They cannot help being who they, the worms, are.

Differences

1.       Time Matters.  He is a born night owl while I feel more positive in the daylight hours.

2.       Flamboyance Quotient.  While I am a borderline Introvert-Extrovert according to the Myers Briggs Personality Test (ENFP), he is an introvert with flamboyant tendencies by anyone’s measure.

3.       Acceptance Factor. He loves all the people of the world. Me too. The only thing is that I may be accepting to a fault, while he will call out people on their foibles. He wants to help them improve themselves. I believe many a psychological pain gets soothed through acceptance. Also I am more afraid of igniting searing arguments.

4.       Conflict Avoidance. See number 3.

5.       Art. He is an intense visual artist. I am a creative writer. I love art and artists although my fear factor comes into play again. He has a huge number of credits in his resume because he pushed hard and steadily for many years. I, on the other hand, have made the big effort to write novels, short stories, screenplays and poetry. I make the big push, I come in second, I retreat. I write a lot of little articles about spiral staircases and insurance in Syracuse.

6.       Sarcasm and Outspokenness.  He has those. See numbers 2, 3 and 4 above.

7.       Patience. I have plenty of it. See number 4.  He, not so much. That’s why he gets so much done.

8.       Self-Knowledge. I certainly try. Ask my former therapists. OK, I didn’t create a college course for myself called Me, Myself and I the way he did. It was the early 70s so you could do that sort of thing if you had an open-minded professor like the sociologist/painter who was the brother of the well known artist who did the illustrations for a book I admire called A Young Man in Search of Love (Avron Soyer - Raphael Soyer - Isaac Bashevis Singer). My partner studied himself and his family and got a pretty good handle on why he turned out to be the way he is.

9.       Friends. He gets along very well with younger people as I do with older folks. His friends must show an interest in his art. They must accept me. I have not required that of my friends although I love freethinkers, the artistic, and supporting my partner whenever possible. At least two dear friends of mine are Republicans. Another is a Librarian. Three are Lesbians. You see how it goes.

10.   Astrological Line-up. He and I reside directly across the horoscope from each other, he as a Leonean, I as an Aquarian. Fire needs Air. Air feeds Fire. Fire uses up Air. A Santa Ana can blow up a wildfire. Onward.

Samenesses

1.       Liberal Mindedness.  Color, nationality, religious background, sexual orientation, income level – who cares? Not me.  Not him. We don’t like war but understand why it has always been a part of human history.

2.       Excellent Senses of Humor. If I do say so myself.

3.       Abusive Family Backgrounds. We share in the search for appropriate serotonin levels to replace what we lost through emotional and physical beatings.

4.       Sensitivity. Not the same as liberalness – see number 1 in this category – or acceptance – see number 3 in the preceding one.

5.       Hope. Mostly we both have a bunch of this.

Hope accounts for my newly opened search for friends. I would like to find someone who matches me in the following areas of compatibility: Open-mindedness, Kindness, Willingness to explore modern art even if they don’t already enjoy it, Intelligence, and Humor. Since NewFriend.Com is a brand new concept, I have not yet worked this into a computer program for easy data entry and scientific friend-matching results. I am trusting to you, kind reader, to direct the attention of others seeking likeminded companionship to address their informal notes of application to P.O. Box 293, Beloit WI 53512-0293.

Sincerely yours,

Sherry Blakeley

CLOSE PROXIMITY©, a novel

Prologue

Rosemary Remarks

“What Leads You To It”

by Rosemary MacDowell 

            Today is my birthday and I want you for my guest.  Welcome. I have in my hand a cup of coffee, whatever kind you like, made from beans grown in a country where the growers and pickers work in harmony; it is dark and rich and it is for you. You may have cookies also. See the heat rising from them they are so fresh. From my own recipe I stirred the batter and they are healthy ones.  I have transformed two percent of my body fat into muscle eating these cookies. Also I get fewer colds. Some of the ingredients came from nearby wheat fields and chicken coops, others from lands of tropical effulgence.

            I don’t have all the answers. Just a few recipes for you to try.  See how I cut out each cookies in the shape of a heart and lay it to brown near another on the baking tin. Some keep their romantic outlines while others transshape in the baking. Here, here’s a double heart for you to nibble. Take some cream for your coffee. (This is from Abyssinians and does not raise cholesterol.) I’m here to help.

            You may be wishing for love. You may be thinking about marriage. You may be gay or wanting to be (how refreshing it sometimes seems to find your opposite in the same). And always, too often for your own sense of power (the kind that means nice, deep breaths without strain and sleeping all through the night no matter whether you share your bed), you yearn for happiness in your love life. And yet you wonder, is it possible for me? Can I have a lasting relationship without compromising my individuality?  Where can I find someone who will let me be myself and still love me? Who will be my twin heart on the cookie sheet of life?

            Please enjoy the cookie and sip your coffee. Do. There is plenty.

            In my recipe for love, there is no ingredient called Just the Right Somebody. The Who in these heart cookies is you.

            Go ahead.  Use the hassock in front of you. My cat, who is strong as well as hypoallergenic, has brought you her pillow for your back. Don’t worry about her furless little body. On cold nights I make her wear her sweater. It is lamb’s wool and she purrs like a kitten.

            Now that you’re comfortable, please consider this notion: The perfect partner for a long-term relationship may not exist.  You are more perfect than anyone you know.

            Believe me.

            Now, now. Your self-deprecating laughter endangers your lap with hot coffee. You say, “Ah, if this is perfection, then we are all in trouble.”

            Yes, you are so wise. Humble too. Perfection and imperfection are the two hearts of your being and they have baked into one. You are the love of the world and we are in trouble because love is trouble.  Love and trouble are baking now side by side as we speak.

            By Sharon Blakeley _©2010

Visual Art Meets the Written

Art by David Lundahl ©2010

See more at www.NewLightStudios.BlogSpot.com.

Bleu Blew Azul

Solid as fish shimmer

leaping from the sky

to regain its ground,

its Rock River,

its Seine.

This blue

this morning is mere garments

de mes mèmoires faibles.

It is glass cracking inward

indifferent to the downwashing yellow.

It doesn’t think

I am weaker,

I am being overtaken.

I am elemental.

I am the shard of New Mexico

sky above the chimney rock.

Es un casco del cielo de New Mexico sobre un butte.

The blue that Is.

Here is a plate of foreign sky

Caught, honored, and released.

The blue belongs. The blue must fly.

Bleu, blew, azul.

--Sherry Blakeley ©2010

How Do You Do, World?

Life used to be so hard - back when I was an innocent motherless child awash in the universe.  Well, I got education – a B.A. in English literature and composition from Beloit College – plus a whole bunch of writing courses like the Squaw Valley Community of Writers program in Lake Tahoe, CA and summer classes at the University of Iowa.  Found romance – my wildly creative husband David Lundahl. Got more love – my Burmese cat Pandora, Tippy Thomson the Maine Coon Cat I adopted when my elderly friend couldn’t care for her anymore, and Davey’s tuxedo boy Li’l Dink. We don’t have children. We have the three cats and, as David used to say, a great deal of art.

Yes, I am an artist’s wife.  Partner.  Mate.  Help-Meet as Chaucer would have put it.  Before I met David my interest in art went to the 19^th Century Impressionists and the Pre-Raphaelites. While living in London with the super fantastic Tate Gallery available for free visits, I would not even walk into the Modern Art exhibits. For shame. 

But what an avid student David met in me.  “Can you name 10 sculptors of the 20^th Century?” he would quiz.  Now I can!  He and I first set eyes on each other at a farm auction in the Midwestern countryside near the small city where we had each gone to college, unbeknownst to one another. 

At the auction, both of us had our eyes on the antique toys that were being offered in the estate of the man alternately known during his lifetime as Fats or Tiny. I won the bid on a tin pedal car from the 1920s. And Davey won my heart.

Later I became an Auctioneer myself.  Yes, I can still chant with the best of them.  I have auctioneered in front of thousands.  I even participated in the International Bid Calling Championship the year it took place in Madison, Wisconsin.  I didn’t win but the experience proved enchanting. 

I have penned many articles for the print media.  Stories on antiques and auctioneering predominate. There have also been a fair amount of features on visiting celebs and places of local interest.  One of my short stories won nominations for Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize. And my novel manuscript made it to the final round of the Hemingway First Novel Contest. I am a former copy editor and reporter for a daily newspaper.

Art, artists, antiques, astrology, auctions, cats, creative cooking, disabilities, inventions, living creatively, living well in this economy - these topics are all of special interest to me. 

Did I happen to mention that my twin sister who lives in Colorado with her husband Dave is a psychic medium?  Twins, ghost hunting and psychic mediumship are also right up my alley – figuratively speaking. No longer awash with misery, I am spilling over with creative energy.

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