ON THE VALUE OF LIFE’S FRICTIONS

Recently I came across an article in the New York Times, titled “Boy Kibble,” about a dish that young men are apparently making that is “a mess of veg, rice and maybe ground meat that is eaten all week.” The writer suggests that this “represents another hack in a culture obsessed with smoothing away life’s frictions.”

First of all, it sounds disgusting. But I’m willing to be corrected if there are “boy kibble” defenders out there. And second, eating it all week?? Those issues pale in comparison to the idea that the goal is to smooth “away life’s frictions.” Why would I want to do that?

If you read my column last month, you will surely understand that I do not say this lightly. Things with my mother’s situation have been challenging and that won’t change any time soon. In fact, the fracture in her neck has spread rather than started to heal, which is worrying. It’s the end of the semester and I have 85 nervous students. The dog needs to be walked. Every day more meals need creating and the dishwasher needs to be emptied and it’s almost gardening season. The deer ate my (deer resistant) rhododendrons down to nubs. I’ve come down with a cold. But that’s life, right?

This month we flew to LA to see my sister-in-law and her husband, and spent part of the week winetasting in Paso Robles. The weather was unseasonably hot (glorious!) and I sat outside all week dangling my feet in their (very cold) pool, sipping the wine we’d bought, reading a book, and watching my sister-in-law care for the Monarch butterflies she’s raising to release into the wild, to help keep them from disappearing.

Thursday, we went to LAX for our flight home, got on the plane, fastened our seatbelts and then sat. Then got off the plane. Then sat. Then got lunch. Then sat. Then moved to a different gate. Sat. Then another gate. Sat. Fifteen hours later, we got on a flight home. This was before the TSA chaos. Our plane had a problem with its brakes. We’d gotten through the TSA line in, I kid you not, five minutes. Fastest time ever.

No, a flight delay is not an experience I would have invited. But in the middle of it, a little community emerged. The South Asian family next to us was traveling to see their son in New York for the weekend. The four college guys were headed to Barcelona and Portugal for spring break. The Hispanic army vet was taking his wife and two sons to Spain. He talked a lot about the benefits of education and being a role model for his sons. A woman from Scotland had been in Melbourne visiting family and had to reroute her flight through LA (at great additional expense because airspace in the Middle East is closed due to the war). She wasn’t going to make her connection in London. Oh, and she’d been a pilot for a small airline herself. What a richness of experiences and people.

We traded information, helped each other when the gates changed, pointed out the nearest bathrooms, offered commiseration. Without the friction of the flight delay, there wouldn’t be the joy of the community. I’m reminded of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Gate A-4,” in which she talks about a similar kind of community created by a flight delay. The poem ends:

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Yes, there are frictions, big ones and little ones. But a frictionless existence is a place of nothingness and impossibility. Maybe instead of striving to get rid of friction, we learn how to work with it, to ride the rapids instead of fighting them. Not that I really know how to do this, mind you, but it seems like a good thing to head toward.

Thanks for reading!

EVENTS:

Wednesdays in 2026 - Norwalk Poets & Writers Nights continue on 4/8! Join Norwalk Poet Laureate Katie Schneider for Norwalk Poets & Writers Nights, with a very special lineup including yours truly for a Poetry Month Celebration!

Sunday, April 12, 2 – 4 PM, Norwalk Public Library: Poet Laureate Emeriti book celebration for Bill Hayden’s anthology, and my new book The Sky Weeps With Us. Come join us for cookies, camaraderie and great poems from Norwalk!

Wednesday, April 15, 2025, 6:30 PM, Norwalk Public Library: Jerry Johnson and Katie Schneider read from their work and talk about what it means to be a writer, how they got started, self-publishing and more! (I host! Join me.)

Wednesday, July 15: Stay tuned for more about this. Spoken word poet and Manhattanville alum Steven Willis is making a special trip to Norwalk to feature at our summer event at Factory Underground. See some of his work here: https://www.stevenwillispoetry.com/poetryvideo