Whenever I sit down and try to write about one of my friendships, I feel immediately speechless. A quiet kind of awe falls over me as I try to wrestle the unspeakable into words.
Because a rich friendship is a world--an invisible world complete with seasons and weather and history, and perhaps even a language all its own. It's like a secret garden tucked inside the concrete urban jungle--the entrance is the kind passerby could walk past a hundred times and never notice.
It's a sacred space you can only enter together. A place where you make memories and cradle the seeds of dreams--the only mementoes you get to take with you.
Who you get to be in that world is something different than who you get to be in any other one. Light and shadow fall in just a certain way here, highlighting some parts and leaving others out of view. There are things that are said only here--and some things that never need to be.
How does one put a world into words? Or the way one is altered forever by the time/moments/years spent there? Sometimes I wonder if I exist at all outside these sacred borders--so much vitality is held inside.
I wish I could take you inside each one, that you could feel time and texture inside them and know--these are the invisible worlds that have formed me. Their suns and sustenance lift my head up and keep me going. Their dark nights are my cover, their hidden corners my refuge.
These worlds aren't where I go, they are where I come to life and go forth from--to the sidewalk, through the neighborhood. To the stage, and home again.
Always they bring me home.
Photo by Bella Cirovic
Jen Lee is the director and producer of Indie Kindred, a new documentary that offers an intimate look at creative collaboration among independent artists. Find more of her writing and resources for off-map makers and thinkers at: jenleeproductions.com.