flâneur

new friend project - by roro <3 - communion

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Two lives intersect in a chance social encounter. Points of impetus, geneses, all heaving with the weight of possibility. Like Plath’s great fig tree, each intersection hangs like a newborn fig off the branches of one’s life, unripe and fledgling. That they might blossom into something more substantive, the fruit of acquaintanceship or familiarity or even friendship, relies upon their nourishment; the strange, arcane rituals through which we prune a stranger into a loved one. That cultivation of intimacy is a daunting process. It teems with vulnerability and rejection like so many weeds, and our instinct bends away from things so arduously earnest. We sustain ourselves instead on the relationships hand-delivered to us by proximity and time, the pre-packaged convenience of decade-long childhood friends or a flatmate. All the while, so many figs wither away at our feet. I heard an anecdote once about the Belgian cultural practice of refusing food—when a host offers refreshments, it is po

Two lives intersect in a chance social encounter. Points of impetus, geneses, all heaving with the weight of possibility. Like Plath’s great fig tree, each intersection hangs like a newborn fig off the branches of one’s life, unripe and fledgling. That they might blossom into something more substantive, the fruit of acquaintanceship or familiarity or even friendship, relies upon their nourishment; the strange, arcane rituals through which we prune a stranger into a loved one. That cultivation of intimacy is a daunting process. It teems with vulnerability and rejection like so many weeds, and…

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