If I Go Anywhere That You Want Me To Go, How Will I Know You'll Still Follow? I'm Waiting And Fading And Floating Away

--"Panic Switch", Silversun Pickups

three three nine

an empty park bench
sits next to the quiet pond
where all the ducks wait.
~dw

----

I used to tie index cards with my name and address on them to helium balloons. I would release the balloons into the welcoming sky, hopeful that I would soon be receiving letters and postcards by the truckful to my doorstep. The balloons would do this half-lazy flutter in the willful wind. That would get me believing that they were trying to decide where to push forward to, as if they had the mind and the sentiment to seek out those individuals of a rare presence for me to communicate with. I didn't believe in chance. I believed that each balloon was a vessel, carrying away a piece of my soul and hopefully carrying back with it a piece of someone else's. I wanted people out there in earthen wild to know I was here, I was present, and that I was ready to receive them in whatever capacity they wanted to be received.

I was filled up with hope each time. Three days from release I would get a response, of this I was sure. The way I figured it, my experiment could only end with two outcomes. One, I could trace the balloon's trajectory on the jet stream of fate to the twenty-something couple living a few states over, maybe in Ohio or maybe in Arkansas. They would have a son my age, or maybe slightly older, who didn't believe that people still put their name and addresses on balloons. And when he saw mine he would be scarce to acknowledge it. At first he would scoff at his own sensibilities, he would blame it on his vision forsaking him to the long orange afternoons. But when the vessel of hope finally alighted on his roof, maybe getting tangled in the tangents of some oak tree above his bedroom, he would have no option but to believe the message, my message was meant for him. He would climb up to the roof, using a careful combination of tree climbing on that selfsame oak tree and a bit of precise leaping from tree branch to rooftop without waking his stockstill parents, and that's where he would find it. That's where he would find me, tied to the lengthy cord now wrapped around the straining tree branch. He would read my name. He would discover my address. And he would announce to himself that he was just whimsical enough to partake of my experiment.

Then he would write me.

The other fantasy I had regarding my simple contraptions of movement and message revolved around my balloon escaping all human contact altogether. There, the misshapen orb, the fully closed eye of my dreams, would linger in a kind of purgatory. It would loop around the clouds, its tail of string dangling and dancing with every passing gust, but it would never again find its way home. My name, my piece of soul, would be exiled away from the trappings of acknowledgment. In a sense, it would be like a miniscule piece of me had escaped. And that was almost better to know. There I would be, dreading the weeks of school ahead of me, wishing I could undress down to my bare bones and skin. There I would be, wishing I could splash around in the colored waters of the lake upon which smiles are washed, and a small part of me I could imagine would be flying overhead, unbound by the heady weight of responsibility or purpose or emotional attachment. The balloon would be a speckle on the back of an invisible horse that never tired, never grew hungry, and never stopped running. Those were the fantasies that I hoped would never end; I imagined my balloon staying aloft a thousand, even a million years, and, by extension, a small part of me living into the infinite as well.

I used to dream of the opportunity inherent in a balloon tied to an index card with my name on it. I used to dream of the options available to me should it return or not return. As soon as I let go I could feel my life changing in the balance of where my poor, simple balloon ended up. I felt like I had changed completely. I had been transformed by the virtue of doing something important and vital and purposeful. My eyes might as well have gone from blue to green; my skin, from white and freckled to violet and striped. I had stood there. I had done something so momentous by the simple act of letting go. In the process I had opened every window. I had let in the air finally. I had allowed myself to breathe yet again.

dw

There Was A Time You Let Me Know, What's Really Going On Below, But Now You Never Show It To Me, Do You?

--"Hallelujah (cover)", Ari Hest

When you're lost and alone things feel hopeless. You get that sense of helplessness that accompanies any unfamiliar situation. You start to believe that, as bad as the situation has turned out, it can go from bad to worse. Without somebody nearby to allay your fears you slip into that spiral of despair and continue slipping.

That's the thought that was going through my head as Toby and I pushed our way through the back country roads of Kentucky, looking for the Maker's Mark Distillery. I was thinking, thank the gods I had someone in the Charger with me, because as much as the crap had hit the fan (and they had really had hit the fan), my predicament would have been doubly daunting had I been all alone out there, wherever we were.

“You sure you don't recognize anything, Marion?” I asked for the fourth time that day, attempting to soften the annoyance by addressing her by her long-standing nickname. “Something's has got to look familiar.”

“Not at all.”

“Nothing?”

She drew in her breath.

“Gosh. I wish I could help. I'm not liking where this day is going, I can tell you that much.”

It wasn't her fault. She'd only been driving herself for the last six months. Besides that, she really hadn't had much inkling to go seek out where my favorite brand of bourbon was born herself. I could blame her as much for her unfamiliarity with the area as she could blame me were I to take her around the web of roads comprising the Hollywood Hills. Just because you live near an area doesn't mean you instantly are born with an innate knowledge of the area. Plus, I couldn't blame her for the weather either.

The lightning crashing twenty yards to either side of us every minute or so wasn't her doing.

Neither the great walls of water seemingly cascading from the sky nor the myriad of strewn tree branches across the highway were not summoned by her either.

It was random chance that we got caught out in the storm when we did. Well, not completely random. I'd made a remark when I had picked her up that the clouds were not looking fortuitous for our planned excursion. However, with a minimum of debate, we had decided that the previous three days had heralded somewhat reliable conditions. We chanced that the conditions would indeed hold out for another few days. So when we had set out and it started to mildly sprinkle, we thought we could handle it if that was as bad as it was going to get. Then, when matters hadn't escalated in the next hour, we thought we were in the clear. We thought we were going to get an overcast, depressing day and not the wrath of the gods raining down upon us like it ended up.

“Maybe make a right here,” she suggested.

“Do you recognize the route number?”

“Not particularly, but I figure if we keep heading west we'll run into something I do recognize.”

“Sounds like as much of a plan as I've got.”

I took her suggestion and took a right onto yet another diabolical set of three digits. That's what was hindering my finding our way out the most, the fact that every route just seemed to be a confusing set of numbers after another set of confusing set of numbers. Each of them said west or east or north or south. Yet without a reliable sense of how far away we were from everything we couldn't even begin to decipher which way we were supposed to be headed. I had never been a fan of GPS systems in cars. I prefer to think of myself as being someone with a good bump of direction, but at that very moment I was lamenting the fact that I didn't have at least the opportunity to “cheat” and look up the answer as to how to extricate us from possibly the worst case of being lost I had ever been in, including getting lost at Epcot.

“At least at Epcot I had the knowledge that my aunts would be looking for me,” I offered up to Toby. “At least there I knew that eventually somebody would find me. Here, it's like you're the only person I know that could look for me and you're sitting in the car with me.”

“There's always Faye...”

Faye is Toby's older sister and the one that suggested that Toby and I would have fun on the tour.

“Who's in Indiana—yeah, that's doable.”

“There's always my parents...”

“Who would love the fact that I was planning to take you on a tour of Maker's Mark. We're going to call that our 'break glass' plan, only to be used in the strictest of emergencies.”

“So what do you want to do? Keep driving around in this mess and hope we get lucky?”

“Oh, I would love to do just that, Toby,” I said, sarcastically.

“Look at it out there. I think I just saw an ark floating by, Patrick.”

“Well, then the trip was well worth it, wasn't it?” I tried to joke.

The truth was I was scared as to how we were going to get out. We'd already been driving around for forty minutes without the faintest clue about where we were—this, after we had already driven close to an hour just to get as close as we did to finding Maker's Mark HQ. I checked the gas gauge. We weren't any danger of running out of fuel any time soon, but if this kept up I had the skulking suspicion we were going to be putting ourselves in real danger. If a lightning bold didn't hit us, I knew it was entirely likely that we could have a traffic accident—running into a tree branch or another car coming up over the hill on these slippery roads. I also knew it was very likely that something else could go wrong that had nothing to do with the car. I hadn't had much experience dealing with her when the chips were down. I was a little bit apprehensive that at any moment she could start freaking out on me and I wouldn't know what to do with her. I'm not the best person in a crisis face-to-face. Give me a phone, give me some distance, and I can usually suss out a solution. Place in the midst of hysterics, however, and I lose a ton of focus.

Part of the problem was I felt responsible for my young charge. Of the two of us, I was older than her by a good decade-and-a-half. I'd been driving longer. I had the experience of mucking it through bad weather. I knew that her only experience with being caught in inclement weather had only been with her parents. I also knew she was the type to worry when things weren't just so. I just didn't know if I was up to the challenge of being the one to calm her down, if the need arose.

I just didn't know if I wanted to be the leader on this little excursion.

I'd never been all that good at assuming command. I've always been better at being the power behind the throne—advising when necessary, pushing things one way or another if called upon. Being thrust into the whatever I say goes role has always ended one of two ways for me. Either I get blamed for becoming too unyielding or I eventually relinquish all control to somebody I feel can bear the mantle of leadership more eloquently than I could.

Yet there I was feeling like I was being called upon to make the right decisions. I didn't know what to do and I didn't feel right asking her to choose for me. I was behind the wheel, after all. It was only right that I should have been the one to put my foot down for the both of us and come up with clear-cut plan for making our way back to familiar ground. The trouble was that was the first time I had ever been in a situation where I was with somebody so willing to relinquish control. I was used to the notion that most people will fight you for dominance. I was used to being around stronger personalities. Breanne, DeAnn, Carly—they all share the common trait of being able to voice a definitive opinion when the circumstances warrant it. But Toby, Toby has always been of a similar mindset as myself. We're both Libras—born two days apart in the year—and we both have a firmer grasp of what we dislike than what we like. We're both more comfortable criticizing people's failures and coming up with a solution than creating those selfsame solutions for ourselves. We both like to think we're capable of making the right choices, but when it comes time to choose we're both easily swayed by what others have done in a similar situation.

When it came down to it. I wanted her to tell me how to make things right and she was thinking the same exact thing of me.

“I'm thinking this wasn't such a good idea,” she said, after we'd driven a little further up the twisty road.

“Coming out with me or coming out on this wild goose chase?” I asked.

“Both,” she started. “I wanted you to show me around after Faye and I showed you around on Monday, but I thought you'd have a better grasp of how to do all this.”

“How to do all what?”

“Plan this out and what to do in an emergency.”

“It's not my fault I'm not used to the weather out here.”

“It's not my fault either, but...”

“But what?”

“But I would have turned around the minute I saw it started to rain a little harder.”

“Hey, you wanted to go on just as much as I did.”

“But you should have known better. I let you talk me into continuing on when I knew better. I just knew better.”

A half-hour before that point she'd been just as keen on continuing as I had. In fact, she was the one that told me that she'd driven in much worse with her family and friends. She was the one who told me that she could tell when it was unsafe to continue. And she was the one that had hinted she'd be a little disappointed if we didn't, indeed, make it to our intended destination.

“That's not what you were saying a few minutes ago, Marion.”

“That's what I was thinking, I can tell you that much. I was just too polite to say so,” she replied. “And stop calling me that. It's a ridiculous nickname.”

I looked into her laser blue eyes and her befreckled face. There was genuine concern on it. She wasn't so much frightened as confused. She's normally never been someone given into putting herself out on a limb, out in harm's way. To be trapped out in the middle of nowhere with no assurances that she was to ever get out must have been terrifying to her. I mean—I felt scared, only because I had never driven in weather so loud and dark and abundantly chaotic—but I still had that singeing notion that there was going to be a happy resolution to all this confusion. She didn't have such a luxury, I could see.

“As you wish.”

We drove for another four miles in silence before she piped up again.

“My parents once drove us out to Illinois once,” she began. “When we had left it had been late afternoon. My parents wanted to get into the hotel we would all be staying at as late as possible. They figured that if we got into the city late us girls would be so beat that all we would want to do is get to our hotel beds and knock out. For the most part they were right. I started to fall asleep well into the second hour on the road.

“When I woke up we were still an hour from our destination. Everything was dark. No one was talking. Faye and Nora were still up, but they were staring out the windows in their respective seats. My parents were probably listening to the music quietly in the front of the minivan. There I was, way in the back, by myself and I couldn't see anything.

“I wasn't scared, per se. But I was startled at how dark everything was. Maybe it was not being accustomed to the road we were on or maybe because I was too young to have remembered too many late night driving trips, but I started to tear up at the whole affair. I wasn't scared, I can tell you that much. But, gosh, was I uncomfortable. It was the weirdest feeling ever, to be that put off by what was going around you. To feel like everything is off-kilter somehow.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nora heard me crying and offered to sit next to me for the rest of the trip.”

“Is that how you feel now? Uncomfortable?”

She didn't answer me. I didn't much feel the need to repeat the question so I went to let it go.

I flipped through the stations on the radio, hoping to find something that would be soothing to both of us. I wanted to get our minds off of the length of time we had been driving without any idea if we were getting close to anything familiar. All I could find were stations playing seemingly Miley Cyrus' “The Climb” and All-American Rejects' “Gives You Hell”. If one station wasn't playing one, then there were playing the other. Finally, I gave up and just let the damn chorus of “Gives You Hell” reverberate within the Charger's confines.

I wished to myself that I had had some of my CD's from my car at home. At least then I could surround myself with music I actually liked. If anything, that was area I could control. The music I listened to was something that always seemed to help me feel more confidant about heading into unfamiliar territories. As it stood, I couldn't control the person in the car with me. I couldn't predict what she was going to say next or what she was going to expect of me. I couldn't guess where I should be headed next with her. In a sense, it was like being lost twice. At least with people I had years and years with I had familiar patterns. After knowing and talking to Breanne for the last fifteen years, for instance, I knew exactly the rapport necessary to get us out of uncomfortable silences. Or, after sharing even three rides with Carly, I had a sense of what to say and what was going to be said. But this, this was my first ride alone with the girl known as Toby Frisson. And it turned out to be the most stressful first car ride I've ever shared with someone. If maybe a volcano had suddenly opened up while I had been driving around with Breanne that day in December of 1994 or if on the way to the grocery store Jina and I had been attacked by a pack of wolves I might have had some preparation in dealing with lousy twists of fate on one's first journey with somebody else. But all I had was the notion that up until then dealing with Marion had been a truly painless affair.

What I was dealing with at that very moment was our first real glimpse of what the other was like in a crisis.

Being friends with someone is like dancing to music. It's instinctive, it has rhythm, and it's something that feels like you need to do. But it also has its complications. You can almost fall into too familiar of a pattern with someone. You can almost memorize how everything is supposed to happen. Those are the times when you have to ask yourself if you're dancing to the music because you want to or because that's what you've always done. Sometimes you have to see what it's like to dance without that particular song playing in the background.

“We'll look for the next gas station or store and ask for directions, okay?” I finally said after another five or six miles had come and gone. By then we had been on the road for close to two hours and we were not any closer to finding our way back.

“Fine by me,” she said quickly.

Toby has a way of holding her lips like they're clasped together that I've noticed she tends to do when she gets irritated. It's about the only clear-cut signs she's even bothered when she's trying hard to remain stoic. I've seen her upset. I've seen her sad. However, if she isn't prepared to let on how she's feeling, she's very quick to hide everything behind that bright smile of hers. She isn't like some people I know who can tell you everything they're feeling at a moment's notice; she's more of the keep it to myself and don't let anyone know type of person. She's like the Mona Lisa in that regard; they're can be a whole palette of emotions going on behind that smile.

“I'm sorry I got us lost. It's not what I wanted, by any stretch,” I offered.

“I know.”

I patted her hand, fingernails painted the lightest shade of blue I had ever seen fingernails painted. I was trying to be as reassuring as I could be. She slowly moved it away from me and placed it on the side of her face, propping up her head with her elbow on the arm rest in the center of the Charger.

“We're going to get out of this and we're still going to salvage this day, I swear.”

Another veiled smile.

I leaned back in the driver's seat and sighed. It was going to take a lot to break through that thick veneer she had around herself. I couldn't even begin to imagine what was going on in that head of hers. The insecurities, the doubts were probably doing the back stroke through an already fragile state of mind. When it comes to mental fortitude, Toby was never blessed with a sizable chunk of it. Her blessings have always laid elsewhere. It was difficult trying to put myself in a position of working around that. I've always dealt with individuals who had more fight in their spirit, some chutzpah in their character. Miss Frisson was a different beast altogether. She's always been more soft on the outside and soft on the inside kind of gal. In many respects it was kind of nice being around someone that doesn't always put you on your guard, but times like that one made me realize how difficult it sometimes is when you have hold someone's hand more than you would like.

“Did I ever tell you of the time Bree and I almost crashed her daddy's truck down the mountain, Toby?” I asked after a beat.

“No, I don't believe so.”

“We had parked it at the top of this hill or mountain or whatever. We were just watching the landscape below us, all the trees and birds and stuff. It was really peaceful. It was really nice being there with her.

“Then, for whatever reason, the truck starts sliding forward on the loose dirt. It's a good thing I was paying attention because if I hadn't been able to start the truck when I did there's a good shot that we could have slid pretty far down. Or, worse yet, we could have slid right into a tree or something.

“It wasn't something I had planned to do. It wasn't something I could have foreseen. It just happened, you know?”

I looked over to my young companion to see if she was still paying attention. She continued staring straight ahead of her. Yet out of the corner of her eye I caught a glimmer of recognition.

“And there Breanne was, probably the bravest person I know when it comes to getting in or out of scrapes, and she was clutching the sleeve of my shirt as if we'd slid a hundred yards or so. We'd maybe moved a foot or two in reality, but she was digging her nails into my arm as if we were about to fall off a cliff.

“If I hadn't caught it myself I might have been scared like her, but the danger passed so quickly that I really didn't have time to think about how awful the consequences could have been.

“But that's just me. When something bad happens I try not to think about it right afterwards. It's only after a few minutes or sometimes a few years that I can fully appreciate the gravity of what happened to me.

“B. still teases me that I was teasing God that day by playing it off like nothing happened.”

I looked over again. She still hadn't adjusted the way her face had been positioned. She did finally speak, though.

“I think if we ever get through this—when--we finally get through this I might want some Chinese food. Gosh, I'm tired of eating at BBQ joints with you. We've hit them all.”

“Do you have any Mongolian BBQ places? We could do one of those. It would kind of be like a compromise since it's the next best thing to Chinese and BBQ mixed together.”

“There's one over in Lexington, in the mall over there.”

“Can we make it there today?”

“If we get out and if we hurry.”

I nodded my head in agreement.

Sometimes we pick friends based on them possessing the qualities we lack. If we're introverted, then we like to surround ourselves with people that can bring us out of our shells. If we're into physical types of activities, then we like to surround ourselves with a few people that are into more academic pursuits. This isn't to say we pick people who are the complete opposites of us; we do like to make sure that there are a few interests that are held in common. But we also like having people in our lives that have something new to bring to the table; that can provide us with pathways to places we never thought of going ourselves.

In other cases, with people like Toby, we like to surround ourselves with people who we think we can better, that we can mentor in a way. I wouldn't go so far as saying that I think of our friendship as a mentor/student, but I kind of look upon Toby as the person I could have been if I hadn't been pushed into so many groups by my parents. Boy scouts, soccer, piano, and academic clubs—none of them were my idea (except maybe for Boy Scouts). But my parents had wanted me to get at least some exposure to being around people of my own age outside of my friends. Maybe if I'd been left alone like I wanted to be, I could have ended up much like her. Or maybe if I'd grown up with an older sister or brother who always seemed to get the hog's share of the attention, I could have turned out like her.

Ever since I've known her, I've taken it as my unspoken duty to get her acclimated to volunteering to go out with people she might not know everything about. I've tried to get her to take a chance on spontaneity.

It's just when things turn out like that day, when Faye and I finally convinced her to head off for a few hours without the benefit of somebody she completely trusts there, and all hell breaks loose, she loses all confidence in taking a calculated risk again.

“Yeah, I don't think you'll ever catch me coming out here on Ilsa,” referring to her midnight black Vespa.

“It's far too dangerous on these roads on a scooter anyway,” I agreed.

“It's not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don't have any interest in being out here is all.”

I couldn't argue with her. She really had no business being out here at all. For me it was just going to see where they made my favorite brand of bourbon. I went totally on a lark. For her, it was just doing me a favor. Once that obligation ended, she would go back to going to only those places she had to be—Jack's house, Francoise's house, school, home. But that was the trouble. She needed to go to more places she didn't really fit in or belong. She really needed to go to places just for the hell of it.

It's good for the soul.

I looked at her again or, more precisely, I caught her looking at me just then. She wasn't really staring at me, but more through me. It was like she was trying to see what was on the other side of me without averting her gaze. I doubted if she ever saw me at all. There I was, lamenting my poor friend who never took any chances in this world and now the world was on the brink of literally scaring her to death. I thought I had the reasons why she was so upset all figured out. I thought I had the bulk of her all figured out.

That's the danger in dealing with people younger than you. You think there's nothing they've been through that you haven't. You think that there isn't anything new under the sun that they can tell you that will surprise you. You sit there, behind the wheel, smug in your understanding of the universe and contempt of anything the child next to you might have to say. And it isn't because you have no respect for them and it isn't because you fault their intelligence or understanding, you just think that they haven't been alive long enough to know what's what. You fault them for their lack of years, if anything.

But that's when you miss out on what going down whatever road they've gone done has allowed them to see.

“There was another time,” she suddenly burst the silence with, “another time where I didn't feel scared, but I did feel something wasn't right. There was another time I was driving with someone and it ended up being not what I thought it was going to be.

“Can we pull over for a second, Patrick?”

“Why?”

“Give me a few seconds.”

She indicated with her hands a spot where it would be safe to pull over next to the wet lawns of a house. I can still hear the syncopated rhythm of the wiper blades on the windshield, the steady fall of raindrops, punctuated only be the sharp peals of thunder and lightning.

This time I felt her grab my hand for support.

“We'd been fighting, as usual. I didn't know where he was taking me, but I knew it wasn't to anywhere I recognized. That's when he started yelling that if I didn't agree with him on whatever the fight was about—spending my time after school with him, sneaking out of the house, whatever—he was going to just keep on driving and not let me out. Gosh. It was strange. He wasn't threatening to hurt me. He wasn't even laying a finger—because he'd done that before. No, all he was saying was that he was going to keep on driving and never let me go.

“I should have been more scared, I guess. That would have been the appropriate response. That's what I should have been feeling.

“All I could think was that I wasn't supposed to be there that day. I hadn't even wanted to go with him anyway. I'd wanted to stay home and catch up on some communications project that I had fallen behind on. But he had insisted and we were dating at the time, so I relented. There I was, sitting in his car, with my seatbelt around me protecting me from a car accident. But I kept thinking that it's going to take an accident for anyone to find me. If nothing big like that ever happened, he could have driven me straight to Canada without anyone finding out.

“And there were all these roads that I didn't know.

“And the whole world seemed dark outside.

“I just felt uncomfortable the whole time. I felt wrong—not scared, wrong. I had one of those moments where I felt I was outside of my body and I couldn't do anything to take my body away with me. My mind was a million miles away, but I couldn't get my body to come with.

“He kept driving. We drove for hours. I didn't recognize any of it. I didn't recognize one road, not one stretch of forest or grass or exit. He kept driving us farther away from anything I might have recognized. And I couldn't do anything to change it. I had to wait for him to change his mind.”

She let go of my hand and motioned for me to start the car again.

“That's what this feels like. That's what I feel like right now. It isn't your fault and I know there's nothing you can do about it, but all of this is eerily familiar.”

----

I was wrong.

You can feel hopeless and alone even when you're with someone. I was also wrong regarding Toby. She already knew what it was like to find yourself trying something just for the fuck of it and having it turn out all wrong. She had already tried dancing without the music and found it not to her liking. My quest was never about getting her to open up. My quest, as it stands now, is going to be about getting to her open up again.

I Never Meant To Cause You Any Sorrow, I Never Meant To Cause You Any Pain, I Only Wanted To See You Laughing

--"Purple Rain (Cover)", Kate Nash

It was Toby that pointed it out. The second season of Everwood should be out in stores this week, she had told me while I was visiting. I couldn't not have been more surprised if you'd have slipped ice down the back of my shirt.

I had absolutely no idea they were even releasing the second season. I mean--the first season came out in DVD in 2004 and here they are releasing the second season in 2009? It doesn't make any sense to me. Ask anyone. I was bitching and complaining that one of my all-time favorite shows, the only show next to Avonlea that I would gladly purchase the entire box set for all five seasons if only they would get off their asses and actually release it as such. But eventually my fervor died down. I came to accept that I would never get to see the episodes I had missed in its original release, having only caught on to the show about halfway through the second season. I just thought I'd have to content myself with season one for the rest of my life (even though I thought the show hit its stride in season two and three). Yet once more the studio gods would have conspired to cause another tragedy in my viewing patterns.

It's a weird feeling I possess now that I can purchase it again. I'm starting to remember all the old reasons why I loved it. I'm starting to remember more and more of the secondary characters that made it such a joy to watch. I'm starting to remember more of the compelling plot lines that had me going "Oh lordy, what is it this week." I think that's one of the main reasons why I relished the show so much. It was just so much drama. I mean--yeah, it was kind of unrealistic just how screwed up everyones' lives became over the course over four short seasons, but somehow they managed to keep up the suspension of disbelief just enough for me to come back to it week after week. Silly or not, the writers knew how to string out an overarching storyline for the entire season. Soap opera writers didn't have anything on them in terms of wringing every last bit of tension from a scenario over ten, even fifteen episodes. From Colin's accident and subsequent brain surgery to the whole subplot about Nina and Andy eventually ending up together--Everwood had the hook of deeply moving plots that weren't solved in the course of a single episode or even a single season. Of almost any show I know, it had the greatest sense of continuity regarding itself.

Yet even that's not the reason I kept on watching. More than any other show, even Avonlea, Everwood was the greatest exploration of romantic love in all its triumphs and tragedies, its mundane details and eccentric nuances, and its almost disheartening complexity. Avonlea had the concepts of community and family down, but for matters of the heart between a man and a woman--young and old, white and black and all the other colors of the rainbow, healthy and sick, and every other way two people can meet and fall in love--you had to turn to this show. I had to turn to this show. Perhaps it's merely because I started watching this show after I had just ended things with DeAnn for good (as friends as well as more) or that my watching it coincided with Lucy getting married and no longer having as much time for her old friend, but the show filled a vacancy in my life that it's hard to put into words. Basically, without a girlfriend and without someone readily available to bounce off my ideas, the show became my primary source of rumination on the great mystery of human connection. It was in one my fallow periods regarding making new friends or acquaintances so I was having a hard time ingesting new thoughts about the matter. Pretty much any new take I had on the matter came from this show. It's a strange thing to say, but it's true.

I still remember the one scene where Madison, college-age love of Ephram, is telling him how to get through the next few minutes of their break-up. She tells him to give her one good kiss, turn around, and walk to his car without looking back. Of course, he follows her every instruction, turning around and walking to his car. Then, just after he's gotten in and started the car he breaks his promise and looks to the door. There, standing more radiant than ever to him, is Madison, breaking her own promise to not be in the doorway when he leaves.

It wasn't just because it reminded me of my own situation of two people being in love who can't be together for outside reasons. It was because I honestly believed those two characters had it rougher than me that I teared up. Never mind how it reflected my own life. That's only the bait on the hook. The real selling point of how much they got characters and how much they got what it's like to have and lose love is that I actually found myself saying, "I'm glad I never went through something like that," when most of the time everything I see is something I can point to a corollary in my own life for.


I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain

That's why I liked the show--because it showed me the laughter and the tears of what it's like to be in love and out of love in ways I had never seen before in other shows. It had characters that I couldn't say "oh, he's like so-and-so" or "she reminds me of what's-her-face."

That's why I've already ordered the second season tonight.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Such Is The Way Of The World, You Can Never Know, Just Where To Put All Your Faith, And How It Will Grow

--"Rise", Eddie Vedder

a typical day's thoughts: lines written 07/08/09 to 07/09/09...

three two three

the wind blows halfway
and fades, still over the sea,
still far from a home.

----

three two four

watching the fan blades
unturning, unyielding, and
powerful at rest.

----

three two five

scrapes her head against
the wall for no apparent
reason or motive.

----

three two six

on: the orange road,
a black scooter/tidal wave,
a grey afternoon.

----

three two seven

covers her hand with
her hand covers her tears with
her tears covers her

----

three two eight

watches two t.v.'s--
one, a show seen many times;
the other, all new.

----

three two nine

inside the park two
lovers walk like they're the first
couple to find it.

----

three three zero

bored, she sits in the
stands of the basketball game
while he ignores her.

----

three three one

keeps him talking if
she can so he won't ever leave
her with her silence.

----

three three two

the mirage won't last she
knows because she's seen a few
mirages before.

----

three three three

sometimes it looks odd
to her blue eyes and her mind
when she signs her name.

----

three three four

sometimes it comes as
easy as sitting on the porch
drinking ice water.

----

three three five

with eyes that never
close he sees her and speaks to
her with a closed mouth.

----

three three six

the waves never looked
so full of life as when she
was a younger child.

----

three three seven

the face of the clock
holds green numbers that never
change lines slow enough.

dw

Well, You Can Tell By The Way I Use My Walk, I'm A Woman's Man, No Time To Talk

--"Staying Alive", Bee Gees

A leopard doesn't change his spots.

My daddy always tried to instill that belief in me while I was growing up. "Don't get into the habit of being a daisy because fairly soon you find yourself the daisy all your life, Tiger." He'd always much rather be fierce and competitive, like the tiger, than meek and humble, much to my mother's chagrin. When I was a little 'ole girl he was always fretting that I wouldn't want to voice my opinion, that I wouldn't want to speak up, that he took a special interest in pushing me to forever be more rambunctious and more outspoken. I reckon that's why he didn't mind me being as wicked as I was as a child because I think the alternative, that of being a meek little mouse on the side of the road was far worse. He didn't want me falling into bad habits because bad habits define you for a long time. Sometimes they define you for your whole life.

It's true. Every bad habit I've picked up--the vanity, the nosiness, the stubbornness--can all be attributed to attitudes I picked up as a young woman. And while I've picked up a few more along the way, the core ones have always been a part of my repertoire from day one. The same can be also said of my good habits (of which I have a precious few); I managed to retain some of my more shining personality quirks into adulthood as well. The point is there isn't much to me that I haven't known before or at least known I was capable of up to this point; I'm fairly confident of who I am as a person up till this point in my life. I'm fairly certain of every decision I shall be making in any instance. And while I may surprise my friends or kin every now and then, there's few decisions I could make that would surprise myself. A leopard doesn't change his spots... and this tiger isn't one for changing her stripes very often either. As I like to say, I can only be Breanne--no more, no less. And I'm fairly confident of both what Breanne and Breanne isn't.

But I've always wondered, is it possible for a leopard to change her spots, say, after twenty-five years? More importantly, does how other people treat the change affect whether or not it "sticks"?

----

I've been mulling this over ever since I read a newspaper article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (yes, I do read more than the business section) regarding one Christy Marshall of Kennesaw. Christy, 19, was this All-American gal. By all accounts bright, funny, and warm by all her childhood friends and her family's accounts. She had gone to the right schools, even making it into Emory on academic scholarship. By my reading she and I could have had written the same biography up until the junior year of high school--same accomplishments, same goals, same everything.

Junior year is where it changed for Christy, though. Christy, of the short blonde hair and pretty green eyes, by several sources that were close to her, went through this radical transformation. She became uncommunicative with her parents and her brother. She started staying out late, dabbling in drugs, and, naturally, her grades started slipping. Some people blamed it on the death of her best friend at the time. Other people attributed it to overly strict parents. And a few people even said it was due to allegations that her parents might have at the time considering getting a divorce. Whatever the cause, the result was to totally metamorphose Miss Marshall into a shadow of herself.

She started seeing several beaus in succession. There were even rumors that she had started to experiment into multiple partners, S & M, and other fetishized behavior. The story even mentioned several videotapes that she would give her parents, defying them to say something, to stop her. Yet she could not be counseled. She could not be turned. She was, as her parents are quoted as saying, "was sliding beneath the waves and we couldn't bring her back up. We couldn't save her." For two years she had been lost to the world that she once knew. She had decided to venture forth into a world that was far more dangerous and far more likely to lead her to a life of real tragedy. By the end of the two years, she was almost failing what little classes she was still taking, had had multiple hospital scares, three aborted pregnancies, and a growing reputation with the local law enforcement as somebody of interest when it came to known associates of the criminal element in and around the city.

She was hanging by a thread, as they say, and that thread was halfway to snapping.

Then, towards the second year at Emory, she met someone. She met a young man named Carl Casshern--tall, pre-law, and three years her senior. He was also quite possibly the only man she ever truly loved. She stopped it all. She made a complete hundred-eighty degree turn. Within a month of meeting him she was on her way off the drugs, he had talked her into coming back to class, and (unbeknownst to him) she had stopped partying with other men and women completely. It was like as quick of a transformation as ice melting on a hot July afternoon; it was like watching a leopard changes its spots.

But then the worst thing in the world happened. It had come out to Carl that Christy hadn't exactly been virtuous in the years leading up until their meeting. He knew she wasn't an unpicked rose in the garden, he knew that. What he hadn't known and what she hadn't told him was how far and how deep down the rabbit hole she had really gone. He didn't know that they would be running into a few of the other men she had been with. He didn't know that there were stories about her all over campus. He didn't know how different she really once was. He certainly didn't know that there was video evidence of her indiscretions, the ones that her folks had been fortunate enough to have never been mailed, yet Christy still kept. He had no idea what to expect when he found them and played them when she wasn't there.

He didn't know how long ago they had really been made or that she had been planning to tell him the entire story. He didn't know that, according to her friends, she was ready to be the Christy of old for him. If only he would give her a chance. He didn't know any of that before he confronted her about the tapes.

He didn't know any of that before they found her stabbed twice in her off-campus apartment. To him, as he told the police later, he had felt like she had been lying to him the entire time. No matter what she said or how much she protested, he had said, he felt like he couldn't believe anything else she had said. He had the tape. He had the proof. She would always be that woman on the screen in his mind. Always.

To some she was changed or, at the very least, she was in the process of changing before she died. The only problem was the change hadn't come quick enough. To others, unfortunately, she got what she deserved. There was overlying sense that doing what she did she had what was coming to her.

----

Fanny has started dating one of our old college buddies, Jon. He too had a reputation of sleeping up and down both Reed and Oglethorpe during the time we were there. Jon had been incorrigible. While he never fully ventured into full-blown addiction, there was more than one instance I can still point to where he indulged a little too much, where not only had a hoot-and-a-half but turned the dial all the way to eleven hoots, you know? Maybe I can still attribute it to college life and being away from home--I, myself, did one or ten things I'm not exactly proud of at Georgia--I always had the sense, right or wrong, that Jon was never going to change. In fact, that's one of the attributes I most liked about him, that he was never going to be beau material, but he was one hell of friend to hang out with. Whether it was trying to convince us to doff our clothes in lieu of full body painting for the next Dawgs game or road tripping down to Florida in the middle of the week because "that's where the brain cells went to retire after the alcohol," Hell's bells, was Jon a force of nature.

In fact, it was only through Greg's arrival that my brief time within Jon's inner circle was cut short. Some even say that it was a timely intervention at that, and that I might have ended up still slogging away margaritas with him on some beach like we did during the summers to this day were it not for my husband.

And I guess that's the rub. Even though Fanny says he's cleaned up his act, even though she says he's gone respectable, I still see him as the hipster doofus (like Kramer) he was in college. Like Carl, it doesn't matter how clean you might have become in the mean time. There's always going to be a part of your personality that wants to be how you were like in high school or all throughout college. The past is prologue to everything that comes afterwards. You don't just forget who you are all of a sudden. It's there, lurking beneath the covers, no matter how pretty of a sheet you want to throw over it. Whatever you were meant to be, whatever you are, that's the way God intended you to be. You can't, you can't, you can't, fight against your fate.

While I haven't taken the added step of counseling her against dating Jon in the short run, there's nothing she can ever say to me to convince me that he'll ever be anything different. He's still going to be fun to be around, but not dating material.

My thinking is that a leopard doesn't change its spots. I haven't. The most any one person can do is grow some new spots or maybe lose a spot or two. But I don't believe in anything so prosaic as a complete turn-around. While I might not agree with how the whole Christy Marshall case turned out, I'm right there with the rationale behind the murder. A person is a person from early on. She forms her personality day-by-day, both through events of her choosing and the events chosen for her. This isn't to say she's going to land one way or another--all abuse victims don't become weak as egg shells just as all girls named Bambi don't end up being exotic dancers. Like my daddy says, "you either drive or you're driven" in any given situation. However, once you make that choice to fight back, to give up, or something in-between--that's the choice you'll be making for the rest of your life for argument's sake. Once you repeat an action enough times it defines you. Once something defines you, it'll define you for the rest of your life. It's sad to say, but the opportunity to make life-altering decisions in one's life is fairly short. Once that window closes, it closes for good.

I know who I am.

Just like I know who Jon is.

I'm a tiger who can't change her stripes and Jon's still that same old cat still on the prowl. Fanny's just the latest prey.

Breanne

Time's Running Faster, Please Let Us Through, Going In Any Direction Will Do, And You Said To Me, You Said What It Was All About, And I Said No

--"Kate", Sambassadeur

Currently my brother Francis is engaged in a cross-country bicycle ride he and his friend have dubbed Donuts Across America. It's one of the most ambitious endeavors I've ever heard my brother take on just for fun. I mean--yeah, he's done some amazing things as part of his job or as part of some greater effort. However, as far as something that serves no other purpose, but to do it, Donuts Across America is right up there as so crazy it's fucking cool.

In that respect Francis and I are very much alike. We both do stuff on a whim and are kind of both impulsive when it comes to certain decisions. Where we differ is that he's much more inclined to make these decisions from a personal growth perspective and I'm more keen on making decisions on a short-term joy perspective. I don't need everything I do to benefit me in the long run. I'm not looking to make myself over into the best possible me every time I make a conscious effort to do something. Sometimes--actually, very often--I'll do things just for the fuck of it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the less it benefits me in the long run, the more I'm apt to do it. Yeah, his bike ride is a lot of fun, but the way I think he looks at it, it's one of those undertakings that he can look back upon and say provided him with an experience that was indelible. He's always been one of those rare souls that can balance physical challenges, mental challenges, and social challenges without a sense of hesitation. If it makes him a better person--smarter, stronger, more intelligent, &c...--then he wants to do it.

Another area we differ is that he's more social conscious than I am. The whole reason he can bike across the country is that he bikes everywhere. He believes in preserving in the environment and leaving as little of a ecological footprint as possible. He recycles, he reads up on the latest environmental efforts being made, and he's just a much more well-rounded person when it comes to global and social issues.

Me? I'm kind of xenophobic and I'm very anti-ecological. I haven't left the country since I was one and I'm terribly wasteful on purpose. As anyone who has ever ate with me before at a fast food place, I can go through a dozen to two dozen napkins easily. I also tend to hoard utensils and napkins. And I never recycle. Scratch that--I purposefully avoid recycling by throwing recyclables away even if the two containers for trash and recyclables are side by side. I have it in my head--that we're the yin yang of the environment. I make the mess that my brother is trying to clean up or, as I see it, I'm the chaos to his order.

In a lot of ways, Francis and I have always been radically different to one another. I know that gets said by a lot of siblings, but I don't know any two people who have more diametrically opposed approaches to life than the two of us. One of the things that Toby and I talk about is what it's like to be the so-called disappointment of the family. She's always felt the pressure to measure up and I kind of relate to her in that fashion. At least she has the excuse of being the youngest. In a lot of ways I've always been the lesser of my parents' two sons. I might be the eldest and I might not be this huge failure, but Francis has just done everything right compared to me.

He never went bankrupt.

He never got arrested for hit and run or almost arrested for assault.

He never totaled his car.

Like I said, I don't think I've failed at life but I do think that he's never screwed up big-time like I have at certain things.

And yet, as siblings go, I think we get along great when we see each other. Yes, we fight, but it's never the big, huge blow-ups we used to have as kids. I think we got all our disagreeing out of the way when we were young. Also, I never make a huge deal about how he's so health conscious and self-controlled (he's lived most of his adult life without owning a tv for chrissakes) and he, for the most part, lets me be as wasteful and kooky as I want to be. The more I think about it, especially now that he's embarking on this huge trip, we've always been going in separate directions as far as leading our lives. He's always had this goal in mind that has never quite measure up to my own. And, yeah, it takes us far away from one another since his circles could never be mistaken for the circles I tend to hang around in.

It just seems the farther we travel, though, we always end up meeting somewhere down the line again and again. I've never been this huge proponent of close-knit families. But, as different as he and I might be, he's one of the few family members that I could say I give a damn about. I've never believed in "loving" your family just because they're blood, but my brother is one of the few members of my family that I kind of respect... both because of his beliefs and despite them.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers