Nietzsche on friendship

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche remarked on the nature of friendship in aphorism number 279, Stellar Friendship:

"We were friends, and have become strangers to each other.  But perhaps this is as it ought to be - and we do not want either to conceal or obscure the fact as if we had to be ashamed.  We are two ships each of which has its own goal and course.  Our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did – and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbor and in one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had but one goal.  But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different seas and sunny zones.  Perhaps we shall never see one another again, or perhaps we may meet again but fail to recognize one another: our exposure to different seas and suns has altered us!  That we had to become strangers to one another is the law above us – by the same token we should also become more sacred to each other and the memory of our former friendship more sacred.  There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our very different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path – let us rise up to this thought.  But our life is too short and the power of our vision too limited for us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.  Let us then believe in our stellar friendship, though we should have to be terrestrial enemies to one another. "

Although this presents a rather dismal and deterministically pessimistic view of friendship, which is doomed to end, it is already quite a bright side of Nietzsche's view on humanity and behavior that friendship, no matter how transient, exists at all; that friendship not based on absurd customs/morality, personal benefit or personal incredulity exists. Matthew Arnold, behind his wonderfully crafted yet painfully disturbing verses of Dover Beach, wishes that there indeed is capacity for "true" "love". Yet that can only "lie behind us like a land of dreams", while "ignorant armies clash by night". This is the truth, that I shall never find a true friend. Poignant, yet unequivocally and always true.

On this day of parting I would remember the words of Nietzsche. Perhaps it may soothe the constant pain from the scar she made (or I made for myself).

Feather

Light as a feather
Swift as a stream
Tender is the midsummer night
Brushing its wings of blessing
Unto the city of Tokyo

The grey tiles, grey pillars
Are they wailing in melancholy
Or bathing in bliss

Or cowering from their past
In the ever so soft
Ever so peaceful breeze?

Perhaps in the dawn of Armageddon
This is the piece
Of light
Free from consumers, routine and numbers
But all will have to wait for the sun
To command another march
Unto the city of Tokyo.

Japan, 2014

Normality

Smile
Without meaning

Mirror
Without reflection

Tags
Without purposes

Expensive outfit
Without uniqueness

Advanced "smart"phones
Without intelligence

"Philosophizing"
Without being alone

"Remembering"
Without remembering

Emoticon
Without emotions

Hating
Without judgment

Arguing
Without arguments

Living
But already buried