I know I wrote that I wouldn't write publicly until I had my old blog migrated to Astro and hosted on Hetzner. What I do and what I intend to do is often at odds. At this time, this commitment seems to lack substance. I shall write as I please, opening this mini-chapter of my life
Finally I find some time to write, six days after leaving Madrid. The wedding was more or less what I expected: a small reception in a large events room of their residential building. They served some of their favorite food to the guests: superb sushi and hamburgers, along with copious amounts of Glenlivet whiskey and beers. Their invitation stated "everyday attire" and the couple themselves were dressed like that. I wore something I have worn to the office, except it was immaculately ironed because I found a place that could do it for me in the morning.
The event was very much like them: unpretentious yet with markers of high quality. The food was excellent as well as the drinks, with details well thought out yet planned and executed by them. They didn't even have waiters and largely attended the guests themselves. In hindsight I should have been on waiter mode helping them, but I do not ask too much of myself after 30 hours awake and three hours of bad quality sleep. My journey there was grueling.
During the wedding a niece of my friend came to converse with me. When I lived in Mexico City, my best friend (I shall call him by name, David) would invite her and her sister over for dinner, drinks and sleepovers. She was only 17 at the time, and I could tell she liked me. David has always been a fatherly and protective figure towards them.
I think, emboldened by the fact that she was 26 now, she was unambiguously coquettish towards me. I kept my distance in deference to David's energetic fatherhood with her. Where she dismissed her boyfriend I asked about his qualities. Where she complimented me I brushed it off making it nothing. Yet she wouldn't let go. At some point her father sat between us and told her they were leaving. She said no I'm staying longer. I understood the physicality of the act and took a chance to move away from the situation.
Later in the night our group of friends were conversing. We have a good friend in Torreón, Pepe, and when I was living in Mexico City I wrote to him that I wanted to visit, without David. I was at the height of my existential malaise at the time, and I was not only uncomprehended by David but in a certain way mocked. I needed a friend with whom to speak about these things which is why I didn't tell him. But he would find out I was going and I didn't have the heart to tell him I didn't want him to go.
At the wedding David brought up that trip: oh it was great we had a lot of fun, the best trips from our post-twenties, we ate like madmen and this and that. I said: that's funny, I remember it as one of the worst trips of my life, I was feeling like shit and I was coming alone to visit Pepe so that I could speak things over with him but you added yourself to the trip which would have been ok if I had not gotten sick and you mocked me endlessly about it. I was feeling like shit and you saw me go to the bathroom every five minutes and not a drop of compassion was given. Not even when I was so sick that I shit the bed at night and I had to collect my sheets and put them in a plastic bag excusing myself with Pepe the next day. I was feeling not only physically but spiritually drained, I remember this as one of the worst moments of my life.
David's eyes grew wide at first and started muttering apologies, and then started sobbing. I wanted to backtrack, I expected some playful pushback with a casual apology. We went outside with Pepe and we made amends. I told them I loved them very much and that I had forgiven this event a long time ago, it was inappropriate to bring it up now. We made amends and went back inside.
The next day I walked with Pepe around the city and he brought up this topic. He said he remembered this period: I was experiencing a kind of spiritual transformation and I felt unaccepted by my best friend. Yes, friends pin us down to certain values, I answered, one of our values was our disregard for religion (in highschool we made a school assignment together on Atheism) and this transition into becoming a believer was made especially difficult because he was my only friend in Mexico City. Yet, I explained, I think I passed this test of sorts successfully, because I'm a "believer" now, we're still best friends, and I'm strangely comfortable with him now mocking my beliefs (but it doesn't come up often because it's not something I need to talk about).
The next day we met up with David and his wife at night. He had stomach issues himself and was feeling well. I felt bad for him and when we left his house I realized I was glad I felt no revenge-positive feelings, a clear sign that I had forgiven the event. Another friend later recounted the sequence of events as if I had simply stated how I felt at the time as a matter of fact, and that David had burst out sobbing unprompted. With this I do not want to justify myself, but to assure to myself I had stated facts and not incited an emotional event.
The next day I travelled with the newly weds and their daughter to Avándaro, a beautiful town two hours away from Mexico City. It was just the four of us. People joked I was going with them to their honey moon, but I am so close to them this seemed natural to us yet weird to other people. I excused myself for bringing this up on the night of their wedding, it shouldn't have happened this way. David waved away my concerns and explained that just a week before he had shit his pants at night and went into the shower to wash his underwear, and the anecdote especially moved him because he knew exactly how I felt and to top it off with him mocking me made it especially relatable and he had understood what it meant. This second conversation was devoid of emotional upset, we hugged and I felt now it was completely over. If it is ever mentioned again, we will laugh about it.
During our nights drinking in the terrace the topic of God came up again, prompted by him. Religion sucks yadda yadda. Yeah David but you are criticizing a religion from centuries ago, it's like I say the proof that science is wrong is because eugenics. Did you read Pope Leo's Magnifica Humanitas? Now you would be grappling with modern religious thought.
"Yes, but on practical terms God does not care about us, about what happens to us, about what we do or what we don't do". And I said "yes, I agree with that... and yet there's a mystery, a way in which our lives play out in really elegant sequences, us coming to have this conversation is part of that". I insisted that us believers insist that we know God, but it is beyond comprehension. The God I can imagine is the god my mind can project from my experience, and in the past we've imagined an old dude sitting in the sky overlooking and judging your sinful activities. If our ideas of Him have grown more sophisticated, it is only because our own intellectual sophistication has grown. It is and it will remain a profound mystery to us, of which we only experience brushes through these seemingly connected events.
"When I told you I kept your niece at bay you said you didn't really care all that much, but that I would be making a grave mistake because of [something I can't reveal] and you know how what your niece went through is connected to my own history. I had the free will to make that mistake, but the way I experience this is an attunement to a source that tells me this would be wrong. And I feel as if you are also attuned this source despite denying it, you are one of the most intuitively moral people I know and you do it effortlessly".
We know the moralistic religious people who are constantly judging wreaking havoc in the world, those are very disconnected from God. And atheists have an equivalent expression of the moralistic religious fanatic, they are both disconnected from the source. I think it doesn't matter if you are a believer or not, simple and good atheists have a lot in common with simple and good believers, just as religious fundamentalists have a lot in common with staunch and cynic atheists. I'm a friend of good people, and that's why we are friends despite our differences. We should not judge people on their belief in God but on their goodness.
We were kinda drunk. It was not my intention to persuade (and I don't think I did). It is only when the manure of an existential crisis brings the necessary nutrients for these ideas to grow, but I felt accepted and confident in what I was saying, whereas in the past I was seeking validation from a friend who would never give it, I felt my ideas on the topic had materialized and thus the tension in our arguments was not experimented as mocking but and actual interesting conversation.
When we came back to Mexico City David proposed watching a movie. He asked what I wanted to watch. I proposed something they hadn't seen, when I watch movies they've already seen they will converse a lot during the movie, though I didn't say this. We chose "Nirvanna the Band", which takes place in Toronto. I felt it greatly connected to our friendship though in a segue way. The movie is about two friends, one who is constantly coming up with outlandish plans to become famous, the other a talented musician without a spine who follows his outlandish friend. Though they've been at it 17 years they have not become famous. They travel in time and end up rewriting history in which the extroverted friend has a new group of friends with whom he expresses the same pattern, while the talented musician becomes a successful artist. Despite this, the talented musician decides to go back in time to revert the faustian deal when he realizes that friendship is more important than fame.
This turning back of the clock, meeting with my atheist friend and recreating our drunken arguments, more or less in the same form as we had them before, but without them upsetting me and also giving my friend credit for his impeccable behavior throughout his life is what I saw in the movie. Choosing love over belief while still standing up to my principles was the challenge of this event, and I give myself a passing grade.