definitely.â
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There are two categories of friendship: those in which people enliven one another and those in which people must be enlivened to be with one another. In the first category one clears the decks to be together; in the second one looks for an empty space in the schedule.
I used to think this distinction more a matter of one-on-one relationships than I now do. These days I look upon it more as a matter of temperament. That is, there are people who are temperamentally inclined to be enlivened, and others for whom it is work. Those who are inclined are eager to feel expressive; those for whom itâs work are more receptive to melancholia.
New York friendships are an education in the struggle between devotion to the melancholy and attraction to the expressive. The pavements are filled with those longing to escape the prison sentence of the one into the promise of the other. There are times when the city seems to reel beneath its impact.
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A few weeks ago a woman who lives on my floor invited me to a Sunday brunch. This woman has taught grade school for years, but she looks upon teaching as a day job. In real life, she says, she is an actor. None of the people at the brunchâall in their forties and fiftiesâknew one another well, and some didnât know the others at all, but it soon became clear that everyone at the table also thought of the work they did as day jobs; every one of them saw him- or herself as having a vocation in the arts, albeit one without material achievement. The chatter on that Sunday morning was animated by one account after another of this or that failed audition or publication or gallery showing, each one ending with âI didnât prepare hard enough,â or âI knew I should have rewritten the beginning,â or âI donât send out enough slides.â What was striking was the sympathy that each self-reproach called to life in the others. âOh, youâre too hard on yourself!â was heard more than once. Then, abruptly, looking directly at the last person to say âYouâre too hard on yourself,â a woman whoâd been silent started to speak.
âWhen I got divorced,â she said, âI had to sell the house in Westchester. A couple in the business of importing Chinese furniture and art objects bought the house and began moving things in a week before I was to leave. One night I went down into the basement and began looking through some of their crates. I found a pair of beautiful porcelain vases. On impulse, I took one. I thought, Theyâve got everything, Iâve got nothing, why shouldnât I? When I moved, I took the vase with me. A week later the husband called and said this funny thing had happened, one of this pair of vases had disappeared, did I know anything about it. No, I said, sounding as bemused as he, I didnât know anything about it, Iâd never even seen the vases. I felt awful then. But I didnât know what to do. I put the vase in a closet and never looked at it again. Ten years passed. Then I began thinking about the vase. Soon the thought of the vase began to obsess me. Finally, this past year I couldnât stand it anymore. I packed up the vase as carefully as I could, and sent it back to them. And I wrote a separate letter, saying I didnât know what had possessed me, why I had taken this thing that belonged to them, and I wasnât asking for forgiveness, but here it was back. A few weeks later the wife called me. She said sheâd gotten this strange letter from me, she didnât know what I was talking about, and then this package came, and inside the package was about a thousand shards of something or other. What on earth was it that I had taken and was now sending back?â
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Leonard and I are sitting in his living room, me in the tall gray velvet chair, he on the brown canvas