friends make my life

My friend Amber really loves this format with two photos lined like this. Here is a poem by Walt Whitman that I memorized for a class in college. I always remember it when I am missing my friends the most and I need some sort of way of expressing it.

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there
without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it
and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana
solitary in a wide in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.

. . . . . . . .

It's strange how the same things that can give you so much joy can also give so much pain. Also the same things that keep humans so well populated and lively are the things that can bring our downfall (i.e. our passions). I am often shocked by both the apparent complexity and simple duality of life. It's absurd, breath-taking, frustrating, difficult, and yet so simple and easy at times. Haha. I need to make more jokes on this blog. I'll do that soon. But when I think about humor I realize that it involves sadness and despair. But instead of making us express that sadness and despair it is an acknowledging bypass of those feelings (most of the time, but sometimes the very funniest things can also make me sad). Laughing seems to be the acknowledgement of our often complete powerlessness in life's workings.