<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
March Exercise —day twelve—<\/span> Thematically, the best motion pictures often can be summed up in one word: Determination. Togetherness. Manipulation. Fortitude. Delusion. And, with the film that took the Oscar\u2014 Friendship. At least, that\u2019s what I took away from The King\u2019s Speech<\/em> last night. Both men, in entirely different ways, put everything on the line in loyalty to their deepening friendship. Is it the highest form of love? I don\u2019t know. Perhaps. There can be true love without friendship, but never true friendship without love. For some reason, it calls to mind the story of the split that took place between my Dad and a man that was his neighbor when I was a child. When we moved away and my Dad\u2019s life became even more complicated, this man gave him an ultimatum. He\u2019d had enough of making the trip to visit my Dad if the effort was not reciprocated. An impasse. My Dad was raising seven kids that he expected to be college bound. He was married. He was fighting the Cold War at work. His friend was retired, divorced, with a grown daughter. Nobody knows the actual words exchanged, but it resulted in my Dad’s decision. Something like, \u201cIf that\u2019s the way you feel, then don\u2019t come back.\u201d He never did. I\u2019ve always seen it as a clash of incompatible viewpoints. \u201cIf you were a true friend, you would make time for me. You would want to be fair, and to preserve the bond we have.\u201d \u201cIf you were a true friend, you would appreciate my life and not make demands. You would not keep score.\u201d Naturally, I saw it Dadbo\u2019s way. He had other friends who went the extra mile. In turn, he was generous and loyal to them until each went to his grave. For me, the two most fascinating questions in the human condition: What is unconditional love? What is true friendship? <\/p>\n Today’s sight bite—<\/span> The huge crow, sitting on the street lamp bulb —c-l-i-c-k—<\/span> and scolding me with his imperious \u201cHaw! Haw!\u201d<\/p>\n Tomorrow—<\/span> Rifle match preparation, topped off with pure escapism . . . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March Exercise —day twelve— Thematically, the best motion pictures often can be summed up in one word: Determination. Togetherness. Manipulation. Fortitude. Delusion. And, with the film that took the Oscar\u2014 Friendship. At least, that\u2019s what I took away from The King\u2019s Speech last night. Both men, in entirely different ways, put everything on the line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,18,8,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}