Let's celebrate friendship

 
Why then do we not celebrate friendship with the same frantic energy with which our culture has celebrated love? The global consensus against friendship has to do with the fact that friendship does not have the histrionics of jealousy, the anxious waiting of desire, the burning disappointment of longing. Friendship does not make us suffer and thus is not the stuff of tragedies, comedies and dramas. If it is not the stuff of stories, it cannot feed the voracious economic engines of the culture industries.

Friendship does not make us suffer or look ridiculous, and thus cannot be “translated” into cinema, television, advertising, soap operas, talk shows, romance novels. Love, on the other hand, is a source of never-ending opportunities for consumption – not only of stories, experiences, advice, objects, but also endless activites of consumption: lavish weddings; dates in restaurants, movies, discotheques or operas; vacations in far-away or close touristic sites; gifts and surprises on any day of the year; the need to remain attractive and sexy by means of fashionable clothes, make-up, perfume and jewelry; the use of the multi-billion-dollar industries of pornography or Internet dating.
All of these components of sexual-romantic encounters are a central, essential axis of consumer culture. Take love and sex out of our culture, and the economy collapses, wiping out in a second the fashion-cosmetics industry, the leisure industry, the tourist industry, the cosmetic-surgery industry, the entertainment industry, the pornography and sex industry, the sex-marriage-intimacy advice-therapy industry – and last but not least, the multi-million-dollar Valentine’s Day industry, which has become an international consumer day. Love is the invisible oil that endlessly fuels the engines of the consumer market.
On Valentine’s Day, and on all other days of the year, let us celebrate, without fancy restaurants or extravagant gifts, the sublime bond of friendship.

Eva Illouz - Why we don't celebrate friendship with the same fervor as love
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/.premium-1.702731 

el nu poate sa stie

Meran, anii 20


Că, deja foarte curând, camera sa liniștită de la grădină va deveni locul unei beții necunoscute până atunci, depășește forța imaginației sale. El nu poate, de asemenea, să știe că respiră pentru ultima dată aerul blând al sudului, că palmierii, pinii și chiparoșii care cresc aici din belșug sunt ultimii pe care-i va vedea în viața sa. Este bucuros că a plecat din Praga, că nu este în Muenchen, se dedică observației așa cum face în orice călătorie, citește ziare și bea limonadele de fructe cărora le-a dus atât dorul. 

 din Kafka, biografia lui R. Stach


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Mi amor a los libres

Creo que parte de mi amor a la vida se lo debo a mi amor a los libros.

(A. B. Casares)