credit to gabe

i have a friend named gabe who may be my most interesting friend. i don't know that he is in fact the most interesting man in the world, but the guy on the beer commercials could be an impostor.

like most friends he has an array of talents and good qualities. the sum total however, is an interesting person who is good to spend time with. gabe is an artist. he is mexican-american and he could not more thoroughly represent that term. he enjoys all things in life. he appreciates the beauty of a lovely lady. he believes there are times for beer and ganja. gabe gets along well with children and conjures that facet of himself with ease.

i am reading 'notes from the underground,' right now, by dostoyevsky, and i cannot help but think of gabe when i am reading it. dostoyevsky's narrator, though living in a time and place so far from where i live, possesses all the sensibilities of both a modern day bohemian and an avant-garde elitist of some sort. or, gabe, (if you will.)

my life sensibility is one in which i am optimistic. i believe life has meaning and that mankind is always evolving for the best. in fact, when i discarded the religious beliefs that were passed to me by my parents, i adopted a world view that centered on the idea that man is always evolving towards the light, towards goodness, and therefore, all action on the part of man that contributes to that evolution is noble.

like gabe, dostoyevsky's underground man scoffs at such notions. he seems to believe life is meaningless and that the only sensibility it embodies is that of the absurd. for me it might be just as easy to face an absurdist life every day but i choose a path altogether more positive.

in days gone by gabe and i used to spend a great deal of our free time together, (and even some of our not free time as we worked together for a season.) over beers we often debated one another's world view and gabe was especially adept at defending his position. he is an intellectual in the truest sense of the word. not like some guy who went to the best schools and knows all the philosophies or the entire western canon, gabe is a natural who may drop a pearl of wisdom or insight into a conversation but it will not necessarily be easy to detect nor will it in any way be purposeful or self-serving. or, if it is self-serving the end will be for gabe's personal amusement.

i don't speak to gabe often because life is like that. we move and things change and as much as i enjoy gabe's company, i recognize the value in simply cherishing the gabe i know and knew and who i still get together with on occasion. moreover, i am always hopeful of knowing more people like gabe in my future.

the thing i admire though is the fact that gabe is different. he is his own man. he's an original. few dare to truly blaze their own path in life. of all the people i know or have known, way too many are constrained by convention and obligation. while gabe is flawed and it is not to me to identify these flaws, his primary sensibilities are to be true to his nature.

i have said before that gabe has great taste. some might say that i stole any number of my own tastes from gabe but i would not subscribe to that idea. rather it is likely that our tastes are in fact quite similar but he came upon some tastes before i did and so, introduced me to those flavors.

gabe is that character one most remembers from a group of friends. recently i hung out with gabe at his college graduation party and another old friend remarked about how colorful this group of friends had been, highlighting the number of nicknames we had and used.

bear. kool, or kool-kat. pep or pop-star. jizz-bloke. weasel. alfonsine. juice. chunk. magic. almost all of those ridiculous names were handed out by gabe. i suppose he had the gravitas to assign these names and actually have them stick and get used by others.

maybe gabe is just a regular guy or maybe he is a modern superhero, (in a world of short attention spans and bland tastes.) maybe he is out of touch or maybe he is just touched. in any case, it's good to know people like gabe.