Water by Philip Larkin

If I were called in

To construct a religion

I should make use of water.

Going to church

Would entail a fording

To dry, different clothes;

My litany would employ

Images of sousing,

A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east

A glass of water

Where any-angled light

Would congregate endlessly.

I was at Waterstone’s Piccadilly Circus to meet a friend for tea and scones when I stumbled upon Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings. Water, among other poems, left me mulling over it while I wandered off in my thoughts to muse about the fluidity and purity of religion and how it sharpens one’s perspective to bring the importance into focus.

I went to bed feeling very grateful yesterday. I think the best gift I got this year is that of friendship. The three of us chowed down to simple fare as fit for all of us who were feeling under the weather. There we were sprawled out in Steph’s living room, legs splayed comfortably on the floor or propped against the cushions, and conversation flowed. I was with the same two people who had pulled off a series of surprise birthday stunts in the history of my well, not so short existence. They had showed up at my door at with a gift box that was massive enough to bury me, made an entire room of strangers sing to me, bought me my first box of macaroons – sidetrack: it was love at first bite with the rose macaroon.

This year, we chose to keep it simple and to pull a counter-surprise on Steph. The introvert in me never quite liked the big parties or a large crowd. I’d inadvertently shiver when a roomful of people sing happy birthday, the attention is slightly unnerving. Staying indoors to lounge in my slouchy tee last night was the instinctive option. I have also begun to appreciate the biblical saying that wisdom comes to a person in moments of quietude.

Steph laid down the gamut yesterday when she shared a realisation that while we may be quick to judge, sometimes we forget to look inwards into ourselves. It immediately resonated with me for I felt pangs of guilt for holding people I love to a high standard while I cut myself a great deal of slack. I am determined that Steph’s musings on looking inwards shall set the tone for my relationships.

Funny how as I grow older, the grandeur of birthday celebrations replete with balloons and presents seem to have lost its appeal. Growing up, I remember how my mother repeatedly spurned my requests for outrageous birthday gifts by informing me that that the best gifts in life are in the intangibles. My mother’s words never rang more true. I am reminded that the greatest fulfillment I receive are from my relationship with God and with people.

And yesterday evening was supremely rich, in thought, in tradition, in inspiration and in love.

Julie (Juliet’s sis) shared this recently and I love it so much that I listen to it in the car, at work, at home, read: all the time. Frank Maroney also does a really good cover of ‘Someone like you’. I’d buy his CD in a heartbeat.

When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass – may pass in the first half hour – into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later. And conversely, erotic love may lead to Friendship between the lovers. But this, so far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first, in the deep and full sense, your Friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as also your lover you will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the Friendship. Nothing so enriches an erotic love as the discovery that the Beloved can deeply, truly and spontaneously enter into Friendship with the Friends you already had; to feel that not only are we two united by erotic love but we three or four or five are all travelers on the same quest, have all a common vision.

- C.S. Lewis, the Four Loves

I actually prefer this to Roxette’s original.

“I must learn to love the fool in me–the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.” — Theodore I. Rubin, MD

There’s something very comforting about being in the presence of old friends who knew you since you were 7. We chow down good hawker grub at a humid and poorly ventilated food court then we proceed to hunt down a cafe for desserts – chocolate flavoured, specifically. We finally settle on Laurent Bernard @ Portsdown Road. It’s the same cafe we’d visited in February. This time, we ordered something different. The souffle was slightly disappointing but the company certainly wasn’t.

I give thanks.

Illustration by Nicole Martinez