People

People I know and like, and like me generally can be considered my family.

These people are not necessarily blood relatives, although some of my relations are very close to me. Friends, if they stick around, eventually become related. Few stick.

Acquaintances can be more annoying than strangers. Sometimes strangers will interact with me more honestly than acquaintances. Those people that think I am their friend because I think and do things they admire or wish they could do are deceiving themselves because if I acknowledge their persistent attention with cordiality; they mistake this for friendship.

I choose friends with great discretion. I will hold back a relationship for years, waiting for the hole from which the blood will flow. You have to be tough on yourself to be my friend. You have to have undivided concern and care, enough to share. You have to be willing to take risks, defy conventionality, and be interested in the unknown, a kind of explorer.

And you have to be able to laugh; cosmic laughter, belly laughs at themselves, their inanity, at the beauty of existence, at the misdirection of life's well planned impossibilities. They must love well. They must believe in dreams and live their own, integral to a creative, intelligent life and precious newness - this especially warms my heart .

Some people I like fit this criteria, but think that being with me is too much work. They don't know how happy I am that their perception is revealed. Their resistance is the beginning of the blood flow.

I see it spilling like spilt water from an overturned glass. And I am relieved. I am not that thirsty.