Friends That Add Not Subtract

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Coffee chains closed coffee shops in shopping malls for obvious reasons and opened some in major intersections. However, they are selling takeaway cappuccino, espresso or latte because tables and chairs are upside down.

No sitting, social distancing is mandatory. To think that human interaction used to be the magnet: office coffee breaks, job interviews, first dates, break-ups and cutting deals, legal or otherwise.

When I saw the upturned chairs in mid-March, beginning of the COVID-19 restrictions, I thought of friends that added, gave me something that made me a better person. Mama was my first friend but I was too dumb to realize it. Call me young and dumb.

Later on in life, I was lucky to find friends that added rather than subtracted. Faz for example, she introduced me to the book The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir the French writer. I went on to read her other books.

Faz used to talk about how Simone was part of the Paris cafe culture, with her friend, Jean-Paul Sartre the writer. That is why I thought of Faz when I saw the upturned tables and chairs in coffee shops.

Vusi is another friend that added rather than subtracted because he introduced me to the blues. I thought saxophones and trumpets cried, jumped and caressed, until Vusi taught me the blues.

So much love, longing, lynching of black men, Jim Crow suffering and homelessness in these songs! I also love the validation, when the singer pauses for a moment and let the brass section and piano say amen, to the lyrics.

At the end of the movie, Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls has a song that starts with ‘I was born by the river.’ I don’t know if it is classified blues or not, but it is to me.

Electronics. Surge also added something. He had an office next to mine at work and said computers can be, like spoiled brats and act up for no reason at all. He taught me how to fix the problem. Re-boot the system. I found it a strange term, but it has served me well over the years. I even re-boot temperamental cellphones.

Friends that add rather than subtract, may be current friends or friends that are now long distance, but what they added is always, a live stream.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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