Memento

I am not a girl for messes. Not in my life. Not in others' lives. The picture below is only six square inches or so of a certain person's desk. The rest of the square inches contain more of the same, possibly worse. And they are dear to me. All the dearer since this coming Monday the refuse will be gone. A whiff of cleaner and touch of Endust may be noted, but that will be all the evidence of a previous occupation.

An approximation of these empty cans and week-old coffees will rise up on another desk in another office at another company, along with stacks of papers, bags of chips. For once in my life I am distressed over the end of clutter. Friendship will do strange things to you.

Here is Truman Capote in an interview comparing infatuated love to real friendship, but I think it can apply to people interacting with one another at any level of 'knowing':

"....friendship is the perfect sort of trust and belief and not lying to one another. [With infatuation] you have to make a love object of this person which means that you editorialize about them, you know. You cut out what you don't want to see, you add this that isn't there and so, therefore, you are building a lie. But in a friendship you don't do that , you do exactly the reverse. You try more and more to be as completely pure and straight as you can be."

Interview clip here.