General Admission
Friends, poets, comrades
By Al S. Mendoza
THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS are for.
I cite that line from a song by Dionne Warwick a while back for its timelessness.
You know you have a friend when he remembers you in times of need, if not grief?
Yes.
If one you consider a friend doesn’t remember you in either of those times, will you stop considering him a friend?
No.
There’s a reason for everything.
Must be that maybe that friend of yours is down himself.
Never think ill of anyone. That includes your friend, or someone you consider your friend – even if he doesn’t consider you a friend.
God gives us friends and let’s always treasure them, no matter what, the same way that we should be thankful for the good health He gives us most of the time – if not always.
When he retired from politics, Bill Clinton had this line in his book, “I now seek the company of friends because it is hard to find friends.”
There is no such thing as a true friend. One is either a friend or not, period.
Treasure a friend because, like every breath we take, he is God’s gift.
Some friends tell me some people criticize me behind my back.
I say, “I forgive them even before they could utter the first evil word against me.”
I consider everybody a friend – even those whom people say hate me.
I always answer hatred with love.
You harbor rancor in your heart, the hurt is doubled within you.
You remove hatred from your mind, that’d be like pulling out a fishbone from your throat, or an imaginary nail driven through your palm.
To paraphrase the great Carlos P. Romulo: “I do not have enemies, I only have detractors.”
My detractors, both known and unknown, I pray for them more than my non-detractors.
The thing’s I know I’ve never done anybody wrong. That’s enough reason to make me face that guy in the mirror every morning.
You wake up to a world minus a baggage bugging your mind, you are fit to co-exist with your fellowmen.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Wealth without work destroys us.”
I say, work without wealth won’t destroy us. It even strengthens us.
Dante Velasco, just back from the US, brought me as pasalubong the book “A Writer’s Life” by the eccentric genius, Gay Talese.
Fresh from the press, it’s quite an expensive book. I’d wait for “sale” season to be able to buy it.
“I didn’t look at the price,” Dante said. “Just the author.”
Dante, the poet masquerading as a full-fledged businessman (with a conscience, of course), wrote on the first page of the book: “You have a friend here under any season.”
I’m blessed because a brother of Dante’s – Jun, my second-floor neighbor here, who else, and yes, also a poet par excellence – is also a friend of mine. In fact, Jun and I go back to the 70’s, long before Dante came along.
Dante and Jun have become more than brothers to me, mainly maybe because of their being poets both.
Among poets, there’s this inexplicable glue that molds them together till the end of time, till the end of the earth.
Poets – they’re your friends for life.
So, who said only communists are comrades for life?
Poets, too.
Listen once more to Dante Velasco: “I salute a comrade-in-art.”
That was his closing remark in the note he had written on the book he brought me home.
You just don’t say that to anyone not having a website in your heart.
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