What's The Sense In Sharing This One And Only Life, Ending Up Just Another Lost & Lonely Wife, You Count Up The Years & They Will Be Filled With Tears

--"Young Hearts Run Free", Candi Station

'Just slow down, honey, and explain it to me again."

I tried to stifle down the tears, what little I had left, and attempted to make my voice clearer. I said, "Mother, this is is really it. It's really over." As I said those words I thought to myself that I should be more broken-hearted over the announcement. I announced it almost too confidently. No, that wasn't the word for it. I said it with a tinge of defiance, as if I was the one still behind the reins and my marriage was some stallion still under my control. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

It was beyond my mother asking if Greg and I had had another fight. That much was obvious. True to my mother's personality, she skipped right to the chase while remaining as courteous as ever.

"Now, now, honey. There's no use in getting worked over something that hasn't happened yet. I know it feels..."

"Feels like, mother. Like my world's been set on fire? Like I'm dying inside? Hell's bells, that's exactly what it feels like."

Sometimes I questioned the sanity of my decision to make my mother my first call, especially since I had such a large network of friends and family I could go to. It was just like one of things, like water flowing downstream, that you don't question. When you're car breaks down you call your mechanic. When you want to go see a movie you call your friend. And when your marriage dissipates into thin air, why, hell, you call your mother. Honestly, there wasn't anyone else that leapt to mind when it first happened. Besides, there would be plenty of time left to distribute the news afterwards, after the confirmation had come through that it was true. There was no sense in honking the horn if you haven't started the car yet, as my daddy says.

And now that I was on the phone with her it felt right. It felt like this is the person I needed to be talking to. My parents have been married to one another longer than there's been dirt on the Earth, or, at the very least, it's felt that way. It's been even longer than most folks' parents since they had to wait almost six years longer than they wanted to in having me. They were coming up quickly on that age where most people of their generation would have had their second grandchild by now. If there was anyone in the world I could ask the simplest advice about what goes into (and out of) a good marriage, she'd be the one. Granted, we haven't always had the easiest of times communicating with one another. At times it felt like trying to start a fire by rubbing two oranges together, you know? But when it's counted, when I've really needed someone who had my best interests at heart, without an ounce of cushioning the blow, it's my mother I've turned to. I love my daddy, but one failing of his is he always tries to shield me from the worst of it all. Involuntary as it may be, I know if I want to hear it straight from word one there's only one parent I can really turn to.

"Now tell me is that what you both decided?"

"Not in so many words, mother."

"Then in what words. Why don't you explain it to me from the beginning."

"I don't want to explain it from the beginning."

"Don't be petulant. I know I raised you better than that."

"Sorry," I offered.

"So start it from where you'd be comfortable starting it, Breanne."

I cradled the phone to my shoulder, wiped the beginnings of tear from beneath my eye, and explained as best as I could without delving too deeply into it. I explained how I said I needed to go on this business excursion for a prospective new client down near Florida. I had told Greg about it and he had reminded me how we had a couple's session with our therapist on two of the four days I needed to be down there. Clearly, not thinking, I told him it was okay. We could reschedule, I offered. That's when he had flown into a huff like ducks flying into a hurricane. He "reminded" me how I had told him that I would do anything to keep this marriage stable. He "reminded" me how I had made this solemn oath that keeping us was my only important goal and how everything else could wait. I tried to play it off, keep it light, which only fanned the flames of his indignation. He continued on how I wasn't taking this seriously. He postulated that I was only giving half of my effort when, there he was, giving it his everything. He said that it wasn't fair. It wasn't right. That's when I grew defensive. I started telling him that I was working. I pointed out to him how much time I'd already sacrificed in the last six months. I pointed out how I had stopped working five days a week, slowing my schedule down to four, sometimes three, workdays to allow for those counseling sessions. I pointed out how I never saw or traded news with my friends anymore because our doctor had said to minimize the distractions. I pointed out how I had given up writing on the blog, going out of town with anybody else but him, and how I had even curtailed the amount of time I spent in my own pursuits--jogging, reading, and fiddling around the dance studio--all so I could spend as much time with him as possible.

I told him in no uncertain terms that I deserved this break. I told him that I would be taking it and there was nothing he could do to stop me.

"The look he gave me, mother--I've only seen that look on daddy's face once or twice. It's the look he gave you when you and him were fighting over his ex, what's-her-name. It scared me then and I can tell you it still scares me. It's that look of absolute desperation, when you can see what they'd like to do as plain as rainbows on their face. And what they want to do ain't the kinds of things that can be called exactly Christian.

"That's when he walked out, but not before telling me there would be no need for me to wait up."

"Oh, honey."

"I've really done it this time, haven't I?"

"Now, there isn't any situation that can't be fixed so I wouldn't say that, child. But, yes, you may have pushed a bit too hard against the mountain on that one."

"I thought so."

I felt my eyes start to tear up again. Everyone always said that I was far too much prone to act out upon my emotions. I was impetuous, temperamental, and stubborn. It was a veritable trifecta of the worst traits of being prideful. Sometimes it made me feel strong as an ox. I knew, I just knew, there wasn't anyone who could truly push me around. There wasn't anyone who was the better of me because I wouldn't allow anyone to triumph over me. Other times, like the time on the phone with my mother, when my tears seemed never-ending and the regrets twice as abundant, I just felt like I wasn't in control of my own thinking. I was just a passenger on this journey through my life; the real woman at the reins was the gamut of emotions threatening to destroy any chance I would ever have at real happiness.

I had a habit of doing this, making myself seem more important than anyone else. I thought what was best for me was best for everyone. And it always got me into the most scalding of hot waters. Look at what it had gotten me, a husband that felt like he couldn't believe me as far as he could throw me and one more night on the phone trying to explain where it had all gone wrong. Between my mother, Patrick, and Katie--I felt like I had been spending the last eight months defending my actions. Frankly, I was tired of it. I was tired of being in arrears it seemed like every few days. Every time it felt like Greg and I had gotten somewhere, it all kept sliding back. Every time I felt like we had gone that extra mile, that we had crossed over that last hurdle and had left it behind us, another hurdle would appear--this one even higher than the last. It was exhausting. More than that, it was beginning to feel like more than little 'ole me could handle.

That's why I was crying. Not because I was overwhelmingly sad, but because it had really become sadly and suddenly (saddenly?) overwhelming. Hell's bells, it was nearing that point where even I had to admit I had been thoroughly trounced.

I had met my Waterloo and it looked an awful lot like little 'ole me.

"Why am I like this? Why can't I get anything right," I whispered, choking a bit through the words.

"Like what? Headstrong?"

"And a bitch."

"Language, Breanne."

"Sorry."

I heard her mulling it around a bit before she came back to the conversation. On my end, I was still waiting an eternity for my eyes to stop their procession, but the tears would not be quelled. I patted my eyes softly with hands that had had a whole night of practice of wiping the drops away from reddened cheeks.

"Do you really want to know, honey?"

"Please, thank you. It would help me a lot, mother."

"So you're fiery. You came from a long line of fiery women on my side. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's nothing you should apologize for. You speak your mind when the situation warrants it and hold your tongue when it doesn't."

"It's that last criteria that I fall short."

"And you do at that," she laughed in her own delicate way.

Laughing at her only child's character flaws. You've got to love my mother for her tact.

"I'm only saying you've got a spirit about you that doesn't need explanation. That husband of yours knew exactly what he was hitching him to when he signed up to wrangle you in. He knew what you were like. He knew he was never going to tame, not really. I don't think it's mighty understanding of him to crucify you for the very same things he once in high regard about you. That's like celebrating your birthday with peals of joy and cursing the day you were born underneath his breath, in my book."

"So you don't think he's right, in some way?"

"He's right. You're right. What does it matter? Why does there always have to be one person who's right? All that means is that there has to be one person who's wrong all the time. You don't want that person to be you and I know he doesn't want to be that person. That's where the problem lies. Right there."

She was right, like she always is. But she didn't feel right. To me it just felt like she was guessing. How could she know what my life was like? She wasn't involved in a marriage that seemed doomed to failure. Her marriage to my daddy had been relatively without its share of missteps. They had fought to be sure, but they had also made up in short fashion as well. To be plain, it had taken me a long time to even recognize the signs that they were, in fact, fighting. They always did their best to hide it away from me. They would be in the den before they thought I was even awake or else after they were sure I had drifted into slumber. Even then they would disguise their voices to a whisper-like state of yelling. Or I would catch them out in public exchanging a few words here and there. Encoded, they were free to carry out entire minutes of discourse back and forth without me being the wiser. Yet the picture they always presented was a united front. They presented that picture because that was what they had, a marriage of equals with neither husband nor wife having to give ground in the grand scheme of things.

They had what I wanted. They had what I felt I could never have.

"Mother?"

"Yes, my baby girl."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"What's yours and daddy's secret? How do you do it?"

"I don't understand."

"How do you keep it all together when obviously it's so easy to have it all fall apart on you?"

There it was. There was me asking what my mother's secret as plain as asking her for her favorite chicken recipe. I was expecting about as much success in this endeavor as that one. My mother is a lot of things, but forthwith when it comes to how and why she loves my daddy has never been one of those areas she's been eager to share with the world. The thing you have to understand about my mother is that she classifies all subjects into two areas: those that she's an expert in and those she doesn't speak at all about. Life, politics, religion, philosophy, the universe, and most everything fall into the former category. How my mother relates to my daddy falls into the latter category. It's always been that way. At a young age I would only catch a whiff of all this supposed romancing that my daddy was famous for when he was a younger man. They would sneak a kiss here, hold hands for a few precious moments, or sneak off in the middle of a vacation for a few minutes while I amused myself with the television on the hotel room. They weren't exactly firm supporters of public displays of affection, but, hell's bells, were they staunch backers of its lesser known offshoot, private displays of affection.

I knew they loved each other. I knew that about as well as I knew the chestnut shade of my hair, the unique shade of oceanic blue-green my eyes held, or which side my dimples were deeper upon. It wasn't something that I ever thought to have my parents explain in words. There was never a need.

Until just then.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, I rephrased the question a little more playfully.

"Come on, mother. How deep is your love?" I giggled with more than a few of my drying facial muscles.

It took her a few more seconds, but in the end, she ended up answering me.

"The secret, little lady, is that there is no secret. There's no secret in loving your husband just as there isn't a secret loving your parents or loving your friends. You just do it. You just think to yourself, what would I do normally in this situation. Then you start thinking what would I do if I really love this person. Nine times out of ten, honey, they're not going to be one and the same. Nine times out of ten you're going to have to go above and beyond what you normally do. And it isn't because it gets any easier when you're in love or when you get married. If anything, the trouble only escalates when you make that leap.

"You start having to worry about problems you never had to worry about before. You start fretting over if you're losing that special something the two of had when you first started seeing each other. You start seeing the sameness of your days and wondering if you have the fortitude to suffer through the monotony. You start wandering in different directions in your head when he starts telling the same 'ole story for the fiftieth time, each time forgetting he has already told you the story before. Then, after your daughter is born, you start having to worry about him loving her more than you. That leads to you feeling goddamn awful, because you're jealous of your own precious little girl. You start wondering if their marriage portion has at long last been pushed to the back burner of your life.

"And then you dwell on all the squabbles that taken separately don't amount to much, but pushed together add up to an agony you've never known before. It's like a thousand tiny pinpricks directly to your forehead--constant and barely noticeable except for its constancy.

"You start worrying if the struggle is too much of a payment for the reward," she finishes.

"I never knew," you reply.

"But then you realize maybe the struggle is the reward. Up until you got married, you had the bird well in hand. You never had to worry, you never had to complain. And another thing, you never had to worry about if you were happy. You just knew it But, that all changed, as soon as you got married. Now when you feel happiest, it's when you're with him. And you don't worry about being happy, because after all the pain and pressure and plain hogwash that occupies most of your days, you can feel the happiness. You feel it. You get so backed up in all the routine of what it takes to care for the house, care for the family, care for everyone and everything else, that when by some miracle the happiness creeps down upon you, you feel it. You feel it like a thunderbolt hitting deep within your skull, honey. And what passed for happiness when you were a teenager or, worse yet, a silly wisp of a girl, is ten times or maybe a hundred times more miniscule than this feeling of overall warmth that true joy, true bliss, takes on as its form.

"You don't take a pass on having a happy marriage. You muddle through it. You march right through the thick of it, like stomping on three-foot deep mud. Because what else are you going to do? Go back to being on your own when you only thought you could be happy? That's not an option.

"Marriage, at least my marriage, isn't about being happy everyday. That would be impossible. Being married is about getting to those moments when the happiness just fills you up inside like a candle filling a darkened room with light. It's about having those moments time and time again with the person next to you who is feeling just the same as you. It's about doing everything humanly possible to make those moments last longer the next time. It's about doing everything humanly possible to make those moments as frequent as possible. And most of all it's about appreciating those moments whenever and however they come because you know they aren't a constant. They're like clouds passing through the sky, Breanne. You've just got to smile at their wonder while they're there, because with the next gust of wind it seems, they'll be gone.

"You want to know the secret to a happy marriage. It's that. A happy marriage isn't some prize you win at the fair like Mary Mary, shooting water out of pistol at some clown's mouth. If anything it's the shooting water to fill a balloon you hope will pay off in the end, but probably won't. A happy marriage is the marriage that struggles to be happy, because without the struggle you wouldn't have anything at all. You'd be... what?"

"The foolish girl crying to her mom?" I offered.

"Perhaps. More like you'd be the young woman, beautiful and intelligent, thinking that she was too smart to get married or maybe that she was too good for anyone she might meet."

I don't know if her comment was directed at me or more at herself. But I took it for what it was, a stern warning that there are worse things to be in a marriage that needed attention. I could have been in a marriage where everything had been decided already. Instead, I at least had something in the process of being salvageable. I at least had the room to resume the struggle as my mother so eloquently put it.

I talked with my mother until Greg came home three hours later. We didn't continue any further on the topic of being married or being happy. What else was there to say? The proof was in the pudding, as they say. For as long as I knew my parents had been happy with one another and they were still together after thirty years of marriage. That's more than most folks these days get.

They never once talked about separating or getting divorced... and I already had.

They never once cheated on one another (as far as I know)... and I already had.

They never once paraded around their grievances with one another to the whole world... and I already had time and time again.

When I think of happy marriages, my parents are it. And if my mother told me the secret was just to endure the uncomfortableness, that's what I'd do. Hell's bells, if my mother had told me that the secret was a daily bath in oatmeal followed by a quick rinse in toothpaste I would have given it a shot.

----

The way I see it, if my marriage lasts as half as long and burns half as bright as my parents', I'll have done something right. With all the mistakes I've made so far, I know it's asking a lot to go the whole distance, but at this moment I'm starting to believe that Greg and I just may get there someday. And, at the end of it all, I'll have my mother to thank, for instilling in me the idea that perfection is only another word for hard work and steel grit.

Hard work I can do.

And steel grit I've got in spades. LOL

Breanne

Remember All You Wished For, Believe It Will Be True, You Will Never Find Yourself Anywhere Else, You'll Find Yourself In You

--"Find Yourself in You", Everlife

three six eight

on my back, eyes closed--
it doesn't matter where I
happen to lie down.
~dw

----

They ask her what her father is like, this man who raised her. They ask her to get up in front of the conclave of her peers and describe in detail a person who has always preferred to stay hidden for most of her life. She obliges them. She tells them the story that he told her not so long ago when the world was spinning around a momentous decision. She tells them in the hopes they could possibly understand in a thousand words (maybe less) what it has taken her thousands and thousands of days (maybe more) to understand herself. She stands there and she tells them all.

She says:

When he was my age he was given the option of inheriting his older brother's CB750--with its in-line single overhead cam four-cylinder engine, its electric starter (with kick-start back-up), five-speed gearbox, disc brakes and all--he jumped at the offer. His father had told him it was dangerous. His mother had begged him not to go off riding until his brother could get back from school to show him how to properly ride it. He told them it was all good, though. He was just going to practice by himself until his brother got back just so he could study enough to get his own license. And so he went whipping around week after week in the confines of his own neighborhood, always careful to not venture too far... not to venture too fast... not to do anything that jeapordize his dream of being able to traverse the open road someday like Kerouac or Dempsey or Dain. For two weeks he traveled around on his brother's Honda.

Then it happened. A few days before his brother was scheduled to get back. He ran into the wrong side of the moving Trans-Am. He skidded and rolled and skidded for about sixty feet just outside the intersection of Lewis and Bridgeson. His legs took the brunt of it as the leather jacket (again, his brother's) absorbed most of the burns, scrapes, and assorted roadwork that would have otherwise marred his all damageable skin. His legs took the worst of it in the worst sort of way. Broken, twisted to an extent--they told him that his knees were all but irreparably damaged in the accident. They told him there were going to be days where it felt fine and then there would be days where it would swell and fill with fluid that it would be agony even to walk. They told him every couple of months he would have to come into the doctor's office to go through the process of draining his knee. For how long, he asked them, the three experts huddled around him and his parents. For the rest of your life they told him.

Even to this day, he can't talk about how horrifying it is it have that needle jammed up and under his kneecap time after time without scaring you or himself.

And yet when she was seriously considering learning how to ride a scooter and, much later on eventually, a motorcycle, he was the first to sign off. He wasn't the one who brought up what had happened to himself to dissuade. He never once discouraged her with horror stories about what it would be like if she fell. He had told her the story to be clear he understood where her wanderlust originated from. He just told her to make sure that it was what she wanted and, upon hearing it was, he just told her to enjoy herself.

You want to know what kind of man my father is, she queries the class. He's the one who never let his own life dictate how she was to live hers.

That's the kind of man he is.

dw

When You're Young You Find Inspiration, In Anyone Who's Ever Gone, And Opened Up A Closing Door

--"Being Boring (cover)", West End Girls

In my family we always had this little clique. It was me, my brother Francis, my cousin Vincent, and his brother Victor, whom we called V.J. No matter what the occasion was, no matter what we were celebrating, the four of us always broke off from the main gathering. If it was at my parents' home, we retreated to my room since my room was actually the guest house. If it was at my aunt and uncle's house, we usually retired to what they referred to as the "bonus" room, which was just actually the upstairs den.

I don't know how many hours I've wasted in that bonus room of theirs. I don't know how much joking around, kidding around, has occurred within its confines, but the dynamic was always the same when we were kids. My cousin Victor, being the eldest over me by ten months, has always been the unofficial leader, though he hated it when we used to call him that. It was simple. When it came time to making a decision we always used to look to him to be the tiebreaker. When it came time to pointing blame, he was always the first one we used to throw underneath the bus. I mean--it wasn't even his personality per se that caused us to bestow this mantle upon him. It literally was just the fact he was the oldest. I don't know if any of the four us could be described as a natural leader or if there is such a thing as someone who's born a natural leader, someone who doesn't learn the qualities as they go. Yet time and time again all the way up through high school we turned to my eldest cousin to be the de facto decision-maker. You might even say we looked up to him because he represented the best of both worlds, he was someone around our age and yet he was the closest to crossing over to that mystical realm of being looked upon as being grown up and mature.

That's just the way mentorships work.

Growing up, I thought being mentored and being taught were the same things. I thought they could be used interchangeably. It wasn't until much later on that I began to notice the distinction. When one is apprenticing below someone it's because that individual has a type of rarified knowledge he wishes to pass along. That is relationship built around the principle that the information will flow one way and one way only. While a mentorship is based around a perceived respect for a person based on their life experience. They might not have done anything worthwhile or gained any particular set of truths that can be gleaned directly, but because of their age, their travels, or even just their simple interaction with sets of people outside one's range of comfort, these people take on a mythical quality of having some inner spark that we need to see for ourselves.

It's the relationship Breanne has all but admitted we had when we first became friends. I was the big 'ole college dude. I was five years removed from being where she was at the time. I was the one who had criss-crossed the country three times before she had even left her immediate region of the country. It fell to me to be this all-knowing avatar of higher understanding. And I played the part well. I'm already a natural advice giver and the gods only know that, if you give me enough rope to lead you around with, I'm pretty much going to hold onto the reins as long as possible. It was like leading around a blind guy without any knowledge of where they needed to go beforehand. I was over eager to play the part of tour guide that I never stopped to consider that I was a little out of my element too. This isn't to say I gave her bad advice or that I lead her astray time and time again. It's only to say that mentorships, like me to my cousin, aren't often a contract agreed to by both parties. Often times the mentor is thrust into the role, whether he likes it or not, when the mentee decides that that's the type of symbiosis needs to be established.

Yes, sometimes it's entirely manufactured. For instance, I used to know this guy at St. Rita's named Marcos. I remember he had been invited over to my friend Tommy's house for his birthday. It had been this deal where we'd been allowed to pitch a tend and camp out in Tommy's backyard. Well, of course, we spent a lot of the night discussing girls and how far everyone had progressed in their deciphering of the ways of the fairer sex. When we found out this Marcos had done things we were at least a year or two away from experiencing ourselves, we simply had to pick his brain. It might have been bragging. It might have been an honest account of his experience up until then. Either way it represent an elevation in level of respect. It was a perceived promotion out from amongst the ranks of us peons, deserved or not. At any event, it was calculated and predetermined effort to distinguish himself and it worked to perfection.

The trouble with any mentorships is that since it isn't rarified knowledge the mentor is guarding, there's always a sense of being deceived when the mentee at last attains the same set of similar experiences as the mentor. It's inevitable. I remember when I realized that my cousin wasn't the end-all be-all of what was the cool thing to do. It was like visiting Disneyland for the first time. Sure, it's this magical place once you get there... but it's also not everything all those friends of yours said it was going to be. You stop looking at people the same way once you've done a lot of the same things they've done. You stop finding them special. Or, as Lucy says, as soon as she got as old as I was when we met it was like she had landed on the moon after me. I'd lost my edge. I'd lost a bit of the mystique that my age carried with it.

It's funny. By that time I'd already almost gotten her pregnant, had listened to her practically living on the streets for days at a time, and seen her blossom into the fiercely independent creature she is today. If anything, she was the one having all sorts of life experiences that I had never run into. She was the one, if we had chosen along the lines of who could be teaching whom, should have been explaining a bit more of how the world works to me. That's a reputation that's by rights deserved, which mine wasn't.

I think that's just the relationship I crave. I always seem to do better with people in general when I feel I'm above them. I don't necessarily look down on them. I never once looked down on Breanne or Jina (5 years younger) or Tara (4 years) or DeAnn (3 years), but inside I felt always had a marker over them. With most people I stay friends with for a long time, I either feel like I have things I can show them... or, more precisely, I can show off to them. I either feel like I'm more intelligent than them like I did when I was with DeAnn. Or I feel I've "lived" more like I did with Jina. Or I just plain feel like my age entitled me to be the ultimate decision-maker in the partnership. It's only when I feel like people have usurped my authority that I feel threatened and usually end things. Or all things to end. I kind of need that mentor mentality to keep me interested in a person.

Brandy calls it the "bargain mentality." I have to feel like I'm getting the better end of the deal. I have to feel like anything I do won't be one-upped by my friend. Remarkably, Lucy said she always felt like it was the opposite for her. She always felt like she's gotten the better end of the deal because for a long time I was doing all these things she couldn't do. She was sort of living vicariously through me. For her it was like getting to do all these things before she was emotionally ready or, indeed, legally able to do them for herself. I don't know--I guess that's why we lasted this long. Usually, I'm not one to hold the spotlight for very long, but I do like the ego stroke holding the spotlight of at least one or two people can provide. Conversely, she's used to being the center of attention and it's still of curious interest to her when she hears me do something she's never tried or she's never had the opportunity to involve herself in yet.

Even though by now it's really devolved into a an almost fair partnership, she still allows me the honorific of being the older one. She still pretends like a lot of what I tell her is of great fascination to her... like she did in the old days. I stopped being a mentor to her a long time ago.

And yet, what I've found in my own life, is that once you bestow that title onto somebody it stays that way, at least a little forever. I still catch myself deferring to my cousin strictly out of habit. And I guess she still finds it soothing, like an old song she used to sing, to treat me like the older brother who's been out and about a little bit longer than her. It might not be true, but to her (and I guess to me) that's the relationship that's been established. Even if it's only a name, that's far better a tradition to keep than to tear asunder now after all these years.

Once a mentor, always a mentor, I say.

And once a more than generous friend, always that kind of friend as well.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I Want To Keep This Feeling, Deep Inside Of Me, I Want You Always In My Heart, You Are Everything

--"Halo", The Cure

I wasn't angling for it. I neither dropped any hints or let it slip that it would be nice to possess one, but I came away from my trip to Louisville a few months ago the proud owner of a genuine Louisville Slugger with "mojo shivers" emblazoned across its sweet spot. It's a thoughtful gift, considering how big of a baseball fan I am. More than that, it's a gift that I didn't have to work hard to attain.


you hold my eyes in yours
and open up the world

Here's the thing.

I'm probably the worst person to get birthday or Christmas gifts for. I've repeated it a thousand times, but most folks don't seem to get it. If there's something I want I'll eventually get it myself. And if I don't have it already and you perchance would like to give it to me, then I don't see the point in waiting for my "actual" birthday (or one out of the three). More than anything, if you do wait to give it to me, I'll probably end up buying it before I open yours or, worse yet, I'll have fallen out of enamoration with it by that time. Or if I just don't need your gift, I'll flat out tell you that I don't need it. It's happened more than once. Case in point, DeAnn's sister gave me a subscription to the official WWF magazine for Christmas... about three months after I stopped liking wrestling. And when I told her that upon receiving the gift, it made her cry. Or, worse yet, Mrs. Holins, one Jean Holins, otherwise known as Breanne's mother, for my graduation from USC gave me an expensive Hublot watch. When I told her, thank you, but I don't really wear expensive watches, she hung up the phone on me.

I have this weird paranoid view towards gift-giving, which I've explained before. But, stranger still, I have an even weirder hesitation about receiving gifts. About the only people who are cleared to give me gifts of any sizes and shapes are my family, Breanne, whomever I dating at the time (but curiously not their family), and, I suppose, whomever my current boss. Everyone else is pretty much S.O.L. I think it stems from the fact that I still think people have an angle to anything they do. Gift-giving is just a reinforcement of that paranoia. For instance, I've been in situations where somebody has bought me two or three shirts because they "thought it might look good on me" and then expected me to pay her back twenty dollars for each of them. Granted, they didn't qualify as gifts, but the idea is the same. Whenever I receive a gift and accept it, it's like I'm signing a non-verbal contract to reciprocate. And, frankly, that's a deal I mostly never want to make. There's only a few people who ever knew how to shop for me:

1. Lucy (natch)
2. Francis (most of the time)
3. Either one of my cousins
4. Jina (when we were close)
5. Tara
6. DeAnn

Everyone else buys crap. It's that simple.

Well, not that simple. I will go as far as saying that Breanne's parents have given me a nice gift now and again, but it's uncomfortable because sometimes they're too nice. And my parents have given me awesome gifts now and again, but they've always been the huge kind--my car, a few of my trips across the country, my cool-ass pocket watch during my Avonlea phase. Anything small or meant to be thoughtful has failed miserably. It's too difficult to explain what I'm into at the time people want to get me a gift and that gets doubly hard when you want to delay it for a few weeks or months just so it falls on my birthday or Christmas.

The main problem I feel is that there are few people I truly want to buy gifts for at any one given time. The list as it stands now, stands at five. B, Marion, Tattie, my brother, and my two cousins. And one of my cousins doesn't even like getting gifts. Everyone else--EVERYONE ELSE--I could take or leave ever having to buy another gift for. For instance, I balk at every time I have to give my parents gifts. I've reached that age where there's nothing that they can give me that I'll want so I feel I don't really need to return the favor. That's not to say I wouldn't want to give them anything, but buying them stuff because they need something new (a new DVD player or a new camera) is vastly different than wrapping something up and waiting for a special occasion to present it to them. They know that if they want something that I have some expertise on they can ask me and I'll pick it out for them. But I call shenanigans on the whole "here's something I hope you really enjoy" aspect of appeasing my parents with gifts.

The five people I mentioned are the only five people where I ever get the urge to spend money on them just because they might like something. And those are the only five people who I feel honored whenever they spend money on me because most often than not it's something that's catered to me and they've taken the time to find out I'll like--be it music, movies, games, sports-related, clothes, or something else.

----

And yet, there's the question of the bat. Delfty got it for me because she said I'd spent enough on her and her sister while I was out there. The least they could do is get me a souvenir that they knew I would really enjoy having. And, even though it was two people who have unquestionably good taste in picking out gifts for me, it still made me feel uncomfortable accepting it from them. Normally with most people in that inner circle of mine I'm all for, "when's my time? When does mojo shivers get his?" LOL But this time it felt like I would be accepting too much.

I think I'm just starting to feel what other people have always felt like when they've received something nice. I guess you could say I was feeling a bit of gratitude. I mean--call me crazy if you want--but I've never been all that grateful of a person. I always tried to portray myself as being capable of getting by mostly without any generosity from anyone else. Yes, I don't mind if you help me, but I've always had this big pet peeve of people who want me to be grateful to them for doing something. When you do something for me, I'll say thank you, but I've never been one to be overly flattering about it. When you do something for me, you can expect me to pay you back someday for it with a similar favor or way to make up the difference. I just hate it when people stand there waiting for all the curtsies and bowing just because they did one thing for me. That really upsets me. That's also why most gift-giving bothers me... because as soon as I receive one, the next question always is "where's mine?" Funny, I think to myself, I thought the whole point was to give because you wanted to do and not because you wanted one back.

But now I kind of get it. The bat was totally a surprise, totally something I wanted, and it was given without any strings. They didn't want a bat in return and they refused to let me pay half. Before, when somebody did something that nice for me--like when Breanne flew me out for Christmas or Nancy got me that job interview, I would say thanks and move right past the uncomfortableness. That time in the Louisville Slugger Museum I really wanted to return the favor right away.

I don't know what's different. I don't know, if as Lucy says, I'm starting to finally grow a heart after all these years, but I'm starting to see that there really shouldn't be a quota about how many presents I should give out each year. More importantly, I'm starting to see that just because somebody wants a present in kind when they give me a gift doesn't make them a horrible person. Mostly it just makes them a normal human being, someone who sees the joy in giving to as many as possible and can't quite understand someone who is as miserly as I've been known to be in the past. I always thought the point was proving to myself and others that I wasn't beholden to any tradition of returning tit-for-tat. I always thought my stubbornness in this regard was my right as an independent individual.

Now l think it isn't about proving that I don't need to give something away to everyone I know... it's more about getting to know people enough and wanting to make them happy enough to give each and every one of them that bit of a smile that they seem to give me year after year.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

But Just Believe Me, Girl, Someday I'll Pay The Bills With This Guitar, We'll Have It Good, We'll Have The Life We Knew We Would, My Word Is Good

--"Hey There Delilah", Plain White T's

three five nine

she opens the mail
with two hands without waiting
to read who it's for.
~dw

----

The funny thing about eating yogurt in the morning is that it's almost never necessary to check if there's yogurt in the kitchen. It's one of those unspoken rules about living in a large house of yogurt lovers. There's always yogurt in the house. For as sure as the sun coming up in the morning or the clouds parting way in the midst of a huge declaration of love in a romantic movie, yogurt has been a staple of the Frisson household.

You can imagine my chagrin then when I woke up today only to find the last of my favorite Yoplait Key Lime Light Yogurt having all but vanished on me. It was as if someone were to have taken all the light from the world and tried convincing me that darkness was just as good. I was nonplussed. I was disappointed. But most of all I was perplexed as to what I should do next. My quandary stemmed from the fact that normally in situations like that I would have to wait until my mom or dad found the time to drive me to the store. I live too far to bike or walk there myself unless, of course, my day somehow included walking two or three miles just for some yogurt that day. Except today my parents had driven off to the hardware store to gather ideas regarding their planned remodel of the master bathroom. It would have been a good hour or so before they made their return. By then my craving for yogurt very well might have perished even before it had a suitable chance to live.

That's when I made the realization that I have my own transportation gotten by the sweat of my own hands. If I sought yogurt, then yogurt should I have! I can tell you that much.

It isn't like I haven't bought my own food before. But the bulk of those purchases were of the fast food variety or else meeting someone at a restaurant. For some unexplainable reason this morning when the absence of dairy nourishment presented itself to me, the first thing I thought of was who was going to be providing me that nourishment. My mind didn't immediately wander to thoughts of how to procure such an item for myself; it was still anchored to the antiquated notion that I could not fend for myself--or, maybe more importantly, I would not fend for myself.

Fairly soon there'll come a day when all my food, all my security, and possibly all my joy shall have to originate with me. Someday I'll be able to open the fridge and not have to ponder which leftover belongs to whom. Someday I'll be able to turn on the television and know I possess it all to myself for the duration of the evening. Someday I'll be able to open my mailbox and not have to sort it by intended recipient. Gosh. That's both a freeing and daunting realization to have. On one hand, I know a small allowance of independence shall do me good, but, on the other hand, there's a certain comfort in being able to look to others for most of what you need. Right now I'm like the kite being pulled along by others, uncertain if they were ever to stop pulling my strong if I could fly upon that certain wind. Can I soar on my own? Or shall I plummet like Icarus to the Earth without a given hand to guide me?

I know I'm not the first person ever to dwell on such weighty matters.

But when you're hungry for yogurt and have ten minutes to kill on your Vespa to and from the store, you think about things.

dw

You Lift My Feet Off The Ground, You Spin Me Around, You Make Me Crazier, Crazier

--"Crazier", Taylor Swift

You've always had the maddest cats in the world you've always thought. You've always thought that they might be all pillow cases and no actual pillows, as your daddy says. From Mary seeming to always manage getting herself trapped in the closet (you still don't know how she manages that one) to Louie's crazy leaps off the bottom of the stairs to leap at you and your husband at missile speed, you can't fathom in the slightest how you managed to adopt not one, but two of the strangest cats in the world. It's gotten to the point where you've actually had lengthy discussions with your friends and colleagues regarding whether it's crazy cats that drive their owner crazy or if it's a crazy owner who makes her cats go crazy. Nurture vs. nature, mouth-opening crazy vs. plain misunderstood--the debate rages on.

You used to have fights with your mother about getting rid of your cats. She's never liked them, you remember. All of it stems from the fact that Louie once dove off the bookcase in the northern guest room onto the bed while your parents were visiting. Your mother had just laid down for the night. She had told your daddy to shut the lights off. The only thing was, when he did, Louie decided to spring his trap from the position he had been hiding in most of the night. He dove off the bookcase in a perfect imitation of an Olympic athlete and landed with a thump on your poor mother's arm. The fright he gave her that night was loud enough to wake the dead and maybe even the dead's even deader ancestors. You had to take the next ninety minutes calming her down and explaining to her that Louie did these things because he was a reckless daredevil at heart (kind of like you) and that, no, he wasn't doing it to be mean or malicious. The whole time your daddy couldn't hardly contain his boundless merriment at the situation. Finally, when you had just about calmed your mother down, Louie attempted a second dive. Luckily that one was thwarted as you once again performed your amazing feat of plucking a streaking cat out of the air before hitting his intended target. Greg said what he always he said, "catching bullets mid-flight is easy; now, catching cats out of thin air takes some real skill, now don't it?"

Then there are those times when Randy and his wife Angie from your husband's office come over and you have to explain why Mary is trying to wedge herself between the trash bin and the side of the kitchen counter. Or you have to explain why Mary is trying to shimmy through a gap between a pair of stairs. Or you have to explain why you're not allowed to flush the toilet within forty feet of your cat or else she's likely to come down with a case of the shakes. Eventually, you give up and allow Randy to make his wisecracks about how when they were taking the class photos about what title everyone held, Mary's the picture that had the caption of "Scaredy Cat". It's almost not worth it to defend your beloved pet by saying she had been abused by her previous owner because all that does is make them feel awful for cracking the jokes. You'd much rather have this darn crazy cat than someone like that having ownership of her again.


I watched from a distance as you
made life your own...

But you know what makes it all worth it?

It's those afternoons when you're by your lonesome. You're just sitting at the kitchen table working on the latest contract, your laptop in front of you, a cup of coffee half-filled to your left on the table, and Louie just scampers over to you without your noticing. It's when he leaps up on your barely exposed leg, settles there, and starts slowly massaging his claws into you. Sure, the first few times it hurt like the stepping barefoot on the last thumbtack, but after years of practice you've finally built up a tolerance. Besides, you know he's not doing it to hurt you. You know he's doing it to show you his love and affection. You also know that on days like those it is some kind of pick-me-up when Louie just lays there caressing your leg for five, sometimes ten minutes at a time.

It's those nights when you find Mary buried in the clothes hamper, mewling softly for someone to let her out. Then when you finally do lift her out, she's so grateful to you that she proceeds to sing for you in your arms. You haven't heard such sweet music as the dulcet tones a frightened kitty can produce when her owner at last rescues her.

Hell's bells, it's all those days and nights combined that make you think you're the crazy one for ever, ever thinking your beloved friends might ever be more trouble than they're worth.

Breanne

But There's One Thing I'm Prepared To Do, To Make This Cesspool As Good As New, I'll Get My Guns& Both Of My Friends, We'll Make Some Righteous Amends

--"Cesspool (live)", Blake Babies

just to complete the Blake Babies trifecta...

It takes a lot of vanity to create something. It requires a sense of self-absorption that nearly borders on delusion. Most individuals, when faces with a blank page, a blank canvas, or an appealing slab of clay can only think about how much they would fail at any endeavor requiring them to mold something, to craft something seemingly out of thin air. It takes a real son-of-a-bitch to say, you know what, I can do something with this. I can make something great and grand and glorious all by the virtue of my sheer will.

That's what creating art is all about, imposing your will on the nothingness and hammering out something new. And it isn't something that you do because you're bored or because you think it might be a fun idea. You do it because you have to, because you don't what else you can do but pour something out of yourself into your chosen media.

I see blogs come and go. I see photo sites be put up one month, where the owner says she plans to keep it updated everyday, only to be abandoned a few months later. I see dozens of people who think they are something just because they have a passing fancy of being good at it. And while I would never claim to be the world's biggest authority in what makes an artist and what doesn't, I know being someone considered dedicated to his craft means sticking by it more than a few months, means grinding it out year in and year out. It really pains me to discover a new writer, writing something that I really care about, only to see them wither on the vine and stop writing for the public a year or two later. As Breanne once described it, it's like planting a seed and watching it grow almost to full bloom, but never reaching its full potential before dying off.

I don't know--writing's never been something I've done for fun. Yes, there are a lot of times when I have fun doing it, but, in the end, it comes down to the fact that this is the only way I know of getting ideas, memories, and general meanderings out without going crazy. Sure, I'd like to make some money doing this someday, but I don't really see myself stopping writing here or wherever for anything short of the Apocalypse. Believe me, there's been days where I couldn't think of anything decent to write and I still came onto here because I couldn't sleep otherwise. Having to choose between putting something to paper (or keyboard) that was only half-baked or letting the site lie fallow more than a few days, I've always chosen to post something up. If Breanne is busy, if Toby can't cover it, it always falls to me to make sure that this site keeps chugging along.

And, let's face it, it's not like I have brilliant ideas every day. I wrote a post about Capri Sun just the other week, for chrissakes. But that's just my personality. I always need to be writing something. Back in high school and college it was writing letters. I couldn't get enough of writing huge letters--usually to Jina--and I couldn't wait to get back replies from the twenty or so people I was writing to at the time. With the advent of the internet, it became a daily routine to write e-mails to everyone--long, blasted e-mails that basically served the same purpose as my letters, only with a faster response time. However, it wasn't until I discovered the old 5ilver.net and, of course, sdfsdfwox.org, that I truly found an outlet that could keep up with my production timetable. I've always thought I'd make a decent comic stip writer... if I knew how to draw. Or I've always thought I'd make a decent columnist, if I really cared about to write about any one particular subject outside of myself. But to me the topic I always fall back on is just plain simple throwing out into the world everything about me, guts and all, which, sure, people have written columns about. Yet those columns are almost always filled with humor, which makes them easier to digest, while my "columns" here, I guess, tend to swing towards the more emotional cesspool side of the spectrum. That doesn't make for a series that people could really stomach day after day.

And yet, come September 1st of this year, it will officially be FIVE FUCKING YEARS since I started writing this humble blog. And in about one hundred more posts the three of us will have combined for A FUCKING THOUSAND POSTS on this humble blog. That's not something you do because you're interested in getting read by millions of people. Yes, the few faithful followers we have here are nice, but I've been doing this for five years more to write something than to have somebody else read me. I would have written all the same posts in a real journal if A) my handwriting weren't atrocious and B) if it wasn't so much darn faster to type than it was to handwrite everything. Some have even suggested that I could have just written Word Documents detailing my posts, but I figured since I would be typing them up anyway, there wouldn't be that huge of a difference of posting them up for the whole universe to see. It's not like I'd write any more guardedly if I knew everyone and their dog would be reading this. In the end, I really don't care or mind who stumbles across my site.

I told myself (and I told the girls) that this site is never going to be a friends-only clubhouse. What's the fun in only giving away the stories my friends have already heard and been a part of?

I told myself that this site is never going to be about flashy graphics or writing about topics only to draw traffic. We're not putting on a show for audience as much as we're exhibiting a gallery. I'm not in it for the instantaneous response. I'm kind of glad that the bulk of the people who read here don't bother to comment because that would only lead to me trying to incorporate their ideas and suggestions more. I just want to hang something here permanently (or as permanently as posting to the internet is these day) and not stick around for the review or commentary. I did my job, let the critics fight out what it all means.

Come to think of it, that's a Deist philosophy if I've ever heard one. A person creating a piece of art, getting it to work, and then walking away once the project's finished and before it can fall apart on him? I think I've read that book before.

Truth be told, there are days when all I got going into a post is a line from a song. All I have to work with is a few lyrics and time enough to mold something into shape. I don't know what I'm going to write about. I don't know where it's going to head. But because I know myself and I know what I'm capable of, I put something up that speaks the truth about what I believe and what I remember. Because I know the thought of putting something out there into the world that isn't always prime choice; it allows me to put the table scraps and still call it a nourishing meal.

And, yes, because I have the nerve to think that what I have to say matters, I can look into the nothing... like tonight.. and actually write a good three or four pages that I think are worth reading. I may not be able to write a tune and looking out from behind a camera makes me feel like I'm a child playing with the grownups' toys, but I've always had a fearless heart when it came to writing. I've always felt that there is no assignment or topic somebody could give me that I'd feel apprehensive about writing about.


maybe we'll start a trend

That's what this blog's really about, imposing my sheer will over the fear that what I have to say isn't of any import whatsoever.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

And When You Start Afresh You Still Think of Days Gone By, And When A Heart Is Broken It Still Goes On Pumping

--"He'd Be A Diamond (cover)", Blake Babies

continuing with the Blake Babies covers motif...

The last time I had sex was July 2007.

Before that, the last time was four-and-a-half years earlier in December 2003.

But I think the statistic that matters most to me now is the fact the last time I had sex with a steady girlfriend or at least somebody I was living with was October 2000. Yes, it's been almost eight years since I shared that experience with somebody I could truly call my own. Everything else after that date, wondrous and exhilarating as they may have been, doesn't really signify all that much. They were both with people that I once shared something truly magical with, but let slip away. And while it was deeply gratifying to reconnect in that manner with both of them, each of the few times we were together were pale comparisons to what it was like when we were truly together. It was like having a road trip with buddies you used to hang out with in high school. Sure, it's an amazing adventure recalling the past, recalling how truly close you used to be. In the end, though, all it does is serve to remind you about how far things have fallen apart since those suppose halcyon days. All it does is remind you how much you miss that spark of human connection that at least has a chance of prospering into something more substantial.

Yes, I miss the sex. I would be lying if I didn't say that. But I think what I miss more is the notion that whenever we had sex it was just another expression of how truly in love we were or, more importantly, how truly in love I really was. Those other times in '07 and '03, they were sorely lacking that necessary ingredient. And while at the time I wasn't exactly thinking, "hey, you know what this needs? A mystique that it's going to lead somewhere more permanent and more in tune with my life goals," I did notice the difference.

I still loved the two women I slept with. They are probably two of the most influential and meaningful people in my life, so it wasn't like I was doing it with random strangers. I just knew I wasn't in love with them. I just knew that whatever happened, it wasn't going to end up how I ultimately wanted it to end up. I just knew that, if anything, they were more a signifier our involvement with one another intimately was coming to an end rather than signifying that something new and wonderful was about to blossom. However joyous the celebration, when you're celebrating the end of something it's never going to compare to the celebrating to be had when you're marking the beginning of a journey.

Because even when you're in throes of ex sex and you're thinking to yourself, you know, you can handle being friends with benefits or something even more esoteric, what you're really screaming for is a relationship where you don't have to make up boundaries and lines. And even when you're saying you can handle this time or that time being truly the last time the two of you ever do something like that, all you can see in your head is all the days and times you did the exact same things while foolishly believing those times would never end. And even while you're both screaming and laughing that the two of you could go all day and all night, what you're really picturing is all the days gone by.

That's what I miss the most, the days when making love was something you could look forward to and not just something you smile reflecting back on.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Do I Want Too Much? Am I Going Overboard To Want That Touch? I Shouted Out To The Night: "Give Me What I Deserve, 'Cause That's My Right!"

--"Passionate Kisses (cover)", Blake Babies

On Saturday I bought something that I'd been meaning to buy for some years now. I am now the proud honor of an honest-to-gods tarot deck, complete with a handy-dandy beginner's guide to reading them. Now I'm not intent on becoming the world's next greatest psychic--truth be told, I only bought it because I thought it would be conducive to my next great card game idea. But it has been kind of enlightening to parse through the booklet and find out just how replete with meaning each and every card in the deck is, minor and major arcana both.

At its heart, the practice of reading a tarot deck is symbology. You lay out the cards in whatever fashion suits you best and you make an interpretation of both the way the cards lay and the order in which they are dealt onto the pattern on the table. Every small nuance matters when making this interpretation, from the orientation of the card to the smallest details on the cards themselves, from the way the card rests on top of another card to even where the characters on the cards point to other cards. It all has relevance. And that's kind of what I missed when I was reading up on tarot decks a decade or so ago. Back then I only thought the name of the card mattered. I thought it was like constructing a sentence, the only aspect that had any significance was the way the cards were arranged. Now I'm finding out it's more like painting a picture, it's the details that hide or uncover other details that is the real key. I've probably poured over the cards for about two hours total since purchasing the deck. Every time I look I find more details to illuminate more and more meaning in each card. And with each morsel of understanding I add to every individual card, the more connections are formed when I lay out my rudimentary spreads on the table. How the professional fortune tellers make it all seem easy is starting to make a little more sense to me now.

I don't know why I couldn't decipher that before. It's maybe because I'm a look first type of person, a written word over brushstroke kind of guy. It's always been easier for me to solve a puzzle than interpret a piece of art. It's always been easier to come up with the solution to a math problem than puzzle my way through a piece of classic music. I've always had a reference for artistic beauty, I've just never been all that adept at telling you why I like something. Give me an academic essay to write about some novel or film or painting or song, and I can deliver you a first-rate composition. Ask me why something is good or why I like something and I tend to haver a minute or two. Eventually, I come up with the answer, but it's not what I think of first.

I think I'm a very sensitive person, but I'm not a very expressive person. I can compliment and flatter, but that's mostly due to possessing the knowledge of how to string the right words together. I don't know if I can always be counted on to feel exactly the way I'm professing to feel, or I don't know if I can always be trusted to mean everything I say or write in quite the magnitude I say or write things. I exaggerate. I take dramatic license all the time because I have a good handle on what makes an interesting read. I know how to explain most of what I write about; I don't always know how to fully explore most of what I write about. I get by on a lot of first impressions, quick takes, and initial comprehension since I can translate this into deeper explanations.

In many ways I think that's a failing of mine. Since I've always done okay to good by calling it like I see it (no rewriting, no editing), I've gotten used to flying by a lot of moments in my life without taking the time to let it all sink in. I've done a lot of watching.

I just don't know if I've ever done all that much seeing.

----

A year after we met Lucy latched onto my phrase du jour at the time, "wistful and forlorn". I was obsessed at the time (maybe I still am) with this concept of people and places looking wistful and forlorn. I know it had a lot to do with watching Avonlea. After all, it's where I borrowed the phrase from. But I think it also had to do with the fact I was in my first few years of college. I was in that period of time where I earnestly began to long for more carefree days of my youth. Now I've always been a nostalgic type of person. As evinced here, I'm a huge fan of recalling anecdotes and swapping old war stories. But in college it really began hitting me how fast those first few years really flew by.

It also had to do with finding out about Les Miserables and Eponine. The concept of unrequited love started popping up everywhere in my short stories and poems.

Wistful and forlorn became my pet project. I started gathering a portfolio of pictures of people, wistful and forlorn. I started reading books about people, wistful and forlorn. I started to listening to (more) music about people, wistful and forlorn. I started to create more projects dealing with people, wistful and forlorn. I don't know how I did it--but everything I consumed or produced in some way revolved around this concept. Hell, some might say that my blog is still very much a reflection of this motif.

That's when my good friend Little Miss Chipper started sending me pictures of herself in poses and settings, wistful and forlorn. They would always be outside, near the columns of the back of her parents' home. And they would always inevitably looking everywhere besides straight into the camera. It kind of reminds of that South Park episode where all the cool Christian album covers involve not looking directly into the camera and looking anything but gleeful. My initial impression was one of enjoyment and mock amusement. In my head, I thought she was mostly doing it for my benefit. I honestly believed that they were only pictures designed for me to smile at and not take seriously to any sizable degree. I thought she was playing.


shouldn't I have this?

But now I look at those pictures, knowing what I know now and they took on whole new meanings. At the time I thought she couldn't possibly know the full scope of the feelings she was seeking to portray. I thought she was imitating people more steeped in the human condition, people more like me. But now I don't see the girl she was at the time she took the picture; the only thing I see now is the woman she grew up to be. And suddenly her posture, the bend to her elbows, the far-off glances she manifests in these pictures, adopt added facets that I never saw before. Rather than viewing them as pretensions of an individual trying her hardest to be seen as someone older than she was, I've reexamined my viewpoint. Now what they are is portents of the storms that I know were lying ahead of her.

That's what I mean about me and initial impressions. I possibly might have perused through the ten pictures she sent me in the "wistful and forlorn" set she mailed to me for about half-an-hour, at most. I imbued them with no added significance because, hey, they were only pictures. These days, however, it's like playing the same snippet of music over and over again; attempting to hear each and every single note or intonation. When I look at these same ten pictures, or any pictures from more than five years ago featuring anyone I've ever known, they become filled with hidden depths. I'm at a point in my life where I have the patience to see what I couldn't see before and to really appreciate what striking portraits of the human condition they really are. I mean--not every lesson is grasped right at the beginning and not every answer comes from the outset.

I used to think it did. I used to think I was a fairly quick person to "get" something right away. I thought I had all the answers necessary to get by. I didn't have the time to look for anything in full when finding half of the truth was sufficient enough.

But in reality I'm that wistful and forlorn person in the picture. I'm Sara staring off the cliff into the Atlantic Ocean. I'm Eponine singing "On My Own". I'm Breanne lying on the bench outside her house. I don't have all the answers. I am still looking for all that I haven't found. The only difference now is I finally realized I'm still looking and that has given me the opportunity to really seek out the answers below the surface, the meaning between the lines. It's finally given me the chance to see the lovely details in the bigger picture and the understanding to appreciate these selfsame details.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Just Hold Me Tight, When You Love Me Tonight, And Don't Close Your Eyes

--"Don't Close Your Eyes (live)", Keith Whitley

I've never been able to get a fix on the proper etiquette for which items you keep after a separation. I've never been able to sort through what needs to be returned and which keepsakes are actually keepsakes. If it were up to me, I'd hold onto everything that ever meant something. Hell's bells, I'd hold onto anything that I ever imagined could mean something to me again. It's just too hard to imagine letting go of something that feels impressibly connected to a person who I may have once loved. It's like taking the last step on that road away from them.

I'm sore ashamed to admit it now, but there was this pendant that Torry once made for me out of her dad's old washers and screws. She'd spent a whole afternoon painting it up real nice in all different shades of oranges and reds and yellows. Granted, it's no Picasso, but to me it was a work of art. It was a sign of real friendship. I didn't wear it everyday (that would have been impossible under my mother's iron fist), but I wore it whenever I could. More to the point, I wore it whenever she asked me to. It felt like a privilege to possess it and it was my honor to proudly display it to all the world. I've never been overly sentimental about jewelry. The gold necklace my father gave me is about the only other thing that I can recall that I've ever guarded fiercely against losing as much I have with Torry's pendant. But I'm really sentimental over this little 'ole hunk of junk and I probably always will be.

But it's come to mind I never take it any more. Everyone I would want to show it to, every one who would have a care to listen to my tale of woe, has already seen it. In short, it just sits tucked away like a rabbit in its hole in the top drawer of my jewelry chest--not forgotten, but out of sight. I've talked about it more than I've actually worn the thing, and that's just not fair to anyone.

I can't keep impressing upon people how wondrous my friendship was with this girl I knew back was just a little 'ole wisp of a girl. No one was there. No one remembers. No one else can see how special all of it truly was. It's like pulling out Torry's pendant and asking them to see the beauty within. As much as they want to believe, they'll never see it. And it's just not fair to compare each and every experience I have now to that time in my life. I hear the disappointment in their voices--Greg, Patrick, Katie, Fanny, &c...--whenever I bring up an anecdote with Torry as being shinier than Heaven itself. I hear the acknowledgement that every time I've experienced after her pales in comparison, like a faded t-shirt when placed side-by-side with the same shirt brand-new. You can have only one first true soul mate, and she was mine. But she definitely wasn't the last.

I've been blessed to have been given a lot more pendants since hers as I've been blessed to have been given generous and truly caring friends to give them to me.

There'll never be another pendant, just like there'll never be another Torry. I have to learn to judge a connection on its own merits without always comparing it to some idealized picture of perfection I've been holding onto for far too long.

I reckon I need a place to keep my memories of her safe, but not always with me. I need to come to terms with the fact I'll never wear that pendant again and she just ain't coming back.

Breanne

But What I Had Between The Things I Never Tried, Was You Reaching Out In Hopes To Hold Your Hand, Forces That Make Your Way Down

--"Parachutes (Funeral Song) (live)", Mates of State

three five six

she will sit and wait
by the lake, watching their lives,
watching their lies fail.
~dw

----

THE ONLY ONE LEFT
by Toby Frisson

The only one left.

That's what she'd been instructed and that's what she intended to do. But sitting at the park bench just a few hundred yards from the shores of Lake Roosevelt, it was impossible to know the particulars of what the direction meant. It didn't make sense to her at all.

She laced up the red and white laces of her slightly faded Puma cross-trainers, hitched up the back of her athletic shorts, and started walking back towards the parking lot. It was at the point where late afternoon turned toward early afternoon, the point where the dappled blue waters of the lake began to take a dangerous orange hue. It was also at that point in the day where the crowds began to thin out as the families all started to head home and all the couples started to wend their way to the dinners eaten out or at home that they already had planned. With a little luck she wouldn't have to wait far past the six o'clock appointment time she had been given.

She began to stretch out again—never mind the fact that it was about the fourth time she had gone through the trouble of swinging her arms around, holding her elbows just so. She had to have a reason to be there and nobody would question just another teenage girl doing laps around the lake. It was running season, after all. She squatted down slowly, stretching our her calves, before coming back up again. She went through her entire stretching routine for the benefit of any who might be watching her.

It wasn't until she taken her first fifty steps to the easternmost edge of the lake that spotted her first possibility--a couple, mid-twenties maybe, sitting not on the park bench by the water's edge, but rather on top of the back. She had dark brown hair, and she wore it in a playful side ponytail. She wore a man's yellow button-up long sleeve shirt over black jeans, and everything was a size-and-a-half too big for her. He had lighter, fairer hair that had been shorn short recently. He had a matching color t-shirt as her and he too wore jeans, but his were emphatically blue. They would have made for a cute couple.

Except for the fact they were clearly breaking up.

She jogged up to a stone wall. She laid down atop, her face staring up at the dwindling sky above her. She couldn't hear what the couple was saying, but she didn't need to. Out of the corner of her eye she could see what was going down. The woman kept reaching out her hand, offering it to the man, but he kept refusing to accept it. Then the man's head would fall limp into his chest before slowly raising up again. She could hear their voices, hushed as they were, rising and falling as well. If it had been a more joyous occasion that pitch would have stayed consistent. And another thing, it would have been quicker, done in a flash. Good news tended to disguise itself as such—like a bolt of lightning. It just hit and laid to waste everything else you might have been feeling. But bad news? That was like a disease, she thought. It creeps on you and then it just lingers, defying you to fight it for as long as you could. With good news you process it and then you move on. With bad news, you resist. And it was the resisting that really does you in, she thought. It's the resisting that really twists the knife in.

She whistled to herself, a jaunty tune to break up the monotony. She had found the best tactic for giving off the impression you're not eavesdropping on someone is to go about your business. People always think that when you're spying on someone you need to be stealthy and invisible. That may work for some, but for her she blended in by not ever acting suspicious. She jogged across people's path. She rode her Vespa right behind people, parked right next to them, and even honked when the people she was following strayed too far into her lane. And they never knew she was even there. To them she was just some obnoxious kid on a lame black scooter. And most of all she whistled while she waited. She whistled while she worked.

Just like them dwarves.

She felt her heart beat a little bit faster. The wind was picking up. A chill was starting to run up and down her body. She needed this to be over quicker. It would be night soon. She didn't want to have to explain to her parents where she'd been and what she'd been doing. Yet she was powerless to move the procession along. It's not like she could tell the couple to get along with it, now could she? Wouldn't that have just been rude? And in a way, she wanted to wait until the whole affair played out. She wanted to know what kind of departure it would be. She wanted to know if the guy would eventually storm away all in a huff. She wanted to know if the girl would be left still on top of that park bench in tears. She wanted to know if the two of them would just sit there in silence. She wanted to know. She'd seen all the outcomes, enough to think that she had gotten quite good at predicting the results. She looked over briefly. The guy had swiveled his body around as to be facing away from the woman slightly. This one she was calling a lost cause. One of the two would be leaving upset or distraught, or maybe a combination of the two. All she knew was the manner in which they were arguing didn't leave much room for interpretation. She wanted to let go and he clearly didn't. And that was fight that wasn't going to end quickly.

She gathered her arms around herself to fight against the ceaseless breeze. She settled in for the next few minutes. She had a feeling that this was going to be a long wait. At some point they would grow tired of her being so near to them. At some point one of the two of them would suggest continuing this conversation at another time. That's when she'd make her move. Until then she didn't see why she could close her eyes and take advantage of the fact she couldn't hear the yelling. She didn't see why just because she was following them she had to know what they were doing every second.

She kicked her feet out one last time. She slept. It wasn't a deep sleep where she wouldn't hear them get up and leave. But it was restful enough to know she had succumbed to her weariness for a good five or ten minutes. During her sleep she dreamt of dolphins and blue waves and of being able to sleep beneath that great, big blanket of blue and white. She even swore she could feel the water's cool touch draped around her. But in actuality it was the wind kicking up around her. And it wasn't water that touched her now.

It was him.

“You fell asleep. We didn't know what to do,” he said to her quietly.

“Gosh. Thanks for waking me up. I don't know what I would have done,” she said, getting up and back into a seated position. She extended her arms just so, stretching out the kinks in her back. It wasn't a long rest, but it was long enough.

“She left, if you're wondering,” he offered, sitting next to her.

“I wasn't.”

“She wanted to leave you there, but I couldn't do that,” he continued. “Apparently, I couldn't do a lot of things that she wanted me to do.”

She knew this was the part where she was supposed to ask him if he wanted to talk about it. You don't walk up to a complete stranger and lead with a line like that unless you were itching to pull the trigger. She knew this was the part where he wanted to talk to her, to anyone, about what he was feeling. But she just couldn't bring herself to do it. That would be like poking a hole in the dam. Once you let a little through, you would have to let it all through. Once you let someone a little in, you had to let all of them in. That's the way it worked in these things. You could draw the line as much as you wanted. You could even intend to stick by those guidelines completely. But eventually people, thoughts—they decided how far they wanted to make themselves a part of you. Eventually your line would be nothing but a distant mirage once they got to where they were headed all along. Best to not even give them a line to saunter past, she thought. Best thing would be not to give him an opening at all. He wanted her to encroach on his personal life. That wasn't something she couldn't do.

Besides, the instructions were clear. She was to go after the only one left. She looked around the lake. He, indeed, was the only one left around its gently sloping shores. Whoever had hired her had been impeccable with the timing. The lake had been abandoned to its shadows. The two of them were the only living souls still anywhere near it. She started to whistle as the two of them sat on the grey walls. She looked to the lake. She decided it wouldn't be too far to drag someone of his size. Not too far at all.

She started to pull out the plastic restraints and the plastic bag she had in her back pocket. She would wait for him to turn his back. She would smash his face into the wall quickly, violently. After that it would be easy to slip the restraints on his wrists and ankles. After that it would be a piece of cake to slip the plastic bag over his head. Then she would wait to drag the body into the lake, where it probably wouldn't be discovered till the next morning. The woman would be another problem... if she wasn't the client, that is.

It made sense. A messy break-up caused messy problems. Maybe the woman had a job where she couldn't afford to have embarrassing loose ends or maybe she had a family that hadn't known about him. Or maybe the woman was just vindictive and petty. Whatever it was, she hoped she wouldn't have to deal with her too.

Or maybe there was a whole other explanation entirely.

“Does it hurt? When you go?”

“Not really,” she answered him slowly.

“Anything's got to be better than this, right?”

She nodded her head.

“I knew this was coming. I knew it'd be today. She never wanted to come up here again until today. She had hated the first time I had taken her here.”

“Why? It's gorgeous up here.”

“That's what I thought. But not her. She never wanted to come. As soon as she said, 'and we can go up to that lake you like even,' I knew something was wrong.”

She nodded her head again.

“I can't come up here again. Not without her. It wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be right. She was it. She was the one. And now she's gone. Well, she's been gone or at least been going. I could see it. I could see the signs. It was inevitable as they say. After four years you get to know a person, you get to know what they're like. That she wanted to leave me was as clear as day once I knew what to look for. It was like looking for the sun among the stars. All you had to do was convince yourself it was daylight already. All you had to do was convince yourself that it was time to stop dreaming. To wake up.”

She didn't know what to say. She'd never felt that way about anyone. She couldn't say it got any better. She couldn't say what he had planned was a mistake. It would be a horrible lie, she thought. Not only that, but it would be bad for business. The bartender doesn't tell the drunk guy that the whiskey he's serving will corrode his liver eventually. He serves the man what he wants and then goes on with his business. If he wanted her to talk him out of it, she couldn't do that.

He got up from the wall and started walking down to the water solemnly.

“If we're going to do this, we better make it quick. Before I lose my nerve.” She heard him laugh in front of her. “Do you know that's why I called you? I couldn't do this on my own. I heard you've done this sort of thing before.”

“A couple times,” she lied.

“Good. Good. That should make it easier for you.”

As they walked, she picked up a nearby rock from beside the campfire pit near the picnic area. She pretended to tie her shoes. Inside she debated if she needed to go through all the acting, the pretending. The man seemed intent on her going through with it; he didn't seem to need any coddling at all. Still, she thought, it makes it easier to stomach when they don't know what's coming, when they can't see the end themselves. People like to pretend they're prepared for the worst. They go through life laughing at death, thinking they're invincible. They go through relationships pretending they don't need it as much as the other person; they think they're strong and that they can take it. But when the end comes, it never comes quickly enough. It strangles them slowly. They struggle the entire time, even when they know it's coming for them. As much as he claimed he wanted this, if he knew what she had planned he'd fight her. And she couldn't have that at all.

He took a few more steps to the lake. He was on the verge of speaking again, his yellow t-shirt beginning to swing around to face her. That's when she struck. She took a running leap at him and swung the chunk of rock in one fluid motion. It ripped into the side of his face like a wolf tearing into an animal carcass. Skin shredded, cheek bones shattered, and he immediately fell to the ground with her right behind them. Once there, she continued to pound the rock into his face, into his now-shut eyes, burying all hope that he could fight his way back into consciousness.

Once that was done, she quickly moved to securing his wrists and ankles. She placed the bag over his head for effect. She dragged his body next to the lake. It was easier than she expected, the sand being firmer than she thought. She rolled his body into the lake in one good push. Next, she waded out with it, pulling it behind her until they were fifty yards from land, and let it go until it floated north to where she knew no one would find it before tomorrow. By tomorrow, it would be too late for anyone to remember who she was and what she looked like.

She'd have to lose the shorts and the shirt, but it was alright because they were brand new any way. Her family wouldn't even know she had bought them.

She felt bad about not letting him have his final words to her. She usually let them have that much at least. But she knew what he would say. He would have thanked her for doing this favor for him. He would have gone on how much better it would be for him to die than to live alone, unloved. He would have wanted her to hear his last confession about how he had deserved what he was getting, how it was better this way.

But she couldn't give him that.

There was only one thing she could give him, one parting favor that he had paid her dearly to perform. The one gift she knew she could give him and not many else could was the gift of making sure he wouldn't be the only one left.

dw

Spinning Around, I've Got This Funny Feeling, Turning My Whole World Upside Down

--"Spinnin' Around", Jump 5

When we are St. Rita's my mother never packed us tiny, little juiceboxes with our lunches. Nope, for her sons she always packed that good 'ole pouch of Capri Sun. Orange, punch, &c...--we must have ran through each and every flavor they offered at Albertson's by the time we were done with school. That in and of itself isn't anything of note; plenty of my classmates drank Capri Sun. What was weird about the fact I had it at practically every lunch was the way in which I carried and drank it. For whatever reason I would not carry those things right side up. As soon as it was out of the brown lunch bag I would hold it with the flat side towards my face. Then, when it came time to punch the straw into it, I would always poke it through the now-exposed bottom of the pouch. Ostensibly this was because I thought all the sugar had settled into the bottom during transport, but in reality it was just a ploy to be different.

This led to all sorts of situations that people who followed directions never had to run into. For instance, I couldn't just set my Capri Sun down. I had to lean it up against something if I wanted it to stay upright. Also, as I drank it, I would always have to adjust the straw shorter since the fat end of the pouch was closer to the entry hole. Lastly, it was impossible to put it back in my bag to save for later. Whereas other people had the luxury of positioning their drinks upright in their bags when they placed them back in their cubby holes, sadly, my drink would never survive such a positioning and would have probably leaked over everything.

I didn't care. I was a man of ritual and that was my daily ritual.


because you keep me spinning all around

The thing is this one ritual that seems to have followed me into adulthood. It's become one of my rules, so to speak. Now whenever I hold a canned or bottled beverage to carry somewhere, be it the table or just to the couch, I inevitably flip it upside down in my hand. That's what you get after eight years of holding my drinks the wrong way; it's somehow imprinted in my brain that that's the natural way to hold drinks. One only has to take a look at me buying my prerequisite root beer from the break room at work and carrying it upside-down to my desk to see that I'm still adhering to the principle that all the sugar is at the bottom of the drink to this day.

Actually, I believe part of the reason this habit has continued is that I've found it's so much easier to stack stuff when the can's upside-down. For example, a can of root beer costs fifty-five cents at work. Say I borrow a dollar from somebody, rather than stick their change in my pocket, which I'm going to have dig out again, I just stick the change in the concave portion of the can's underbelly. Or say I'm drinking Coronas on Casey and Laurel's porch. Rather than try to juggle the limes to the table out there, I've found the bottom of bottle works just dandy in keeping those errant limes in line. See what you can do when you have a different grasp of things?

I'm not an innovator. In the history of time I'm sure there's been one person who has made a point of holding his or her drinks the wrong way. But I do think, of the people I know, no one else goes to the extreme of attempting to do things differently than I do. Hell, I still get crap about signing off my business letters "Yours Swimmingly". I do things because they make sense to me, because initially I had some reason for doing something that got stuck in my brain. It's why I do things in eights (because my Boy Scout buddy told me I must like that number after cutting my pancakes into eights and leaving an eighth of the yolk runny on my scrambled eggs). It's why I put two straws into my drinks when I can (because you never know when somebody is going to want to share with you or, as Mitch once said, in case one breaks down). And it's why I have a dozen more rules when it comes to living my life. If I wanted to get the same results as everyone else, I would make the same choices as everyone else. I would fall into the same habits as everyone else. But, because I pride myself on my uniqueness, I try to break from the norm in as many ways as possible.

It's not the same as rebelling or doing the opposite of everyone. Hell, I'm not about to get pierced or tatted up just to separate myself from the herd. It's about having an idea and going with it without giving a thought whether or not it'll shock somebody. The point isn't to aggravate or annoy or shock; the point is to do what I want without ever thinking about how somebody else will react. It's about what Rachel said once long ago:

Right is right even if no one does it, and wrong is wrong even if everyone does it.

And the only person who ever decides what's right for me is me. That's why I'm going to continue to hold my drinks upside-down, because at the end of the day my holding a bottle the wrong way isn't going to kill you and it's not going to bother you to the point of distraction. At least it shouldn't. I'm going to continue this peculiarity of mine because at the end of the day the only person who's going to be affected by my choices is going to be me, the only person who's going to be drinking from my bottle (or can or pouch) is going to be me.

Hold your Capri Sun however you want and just let me do the same.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

You Know I Don't Like Being Stuck In A Crowd, And The Streets Don't Change But Maybe The Name, I Ain't Got Time For The Game

--"Patience", Guns N' Roses

Whenever my parents call to ask a favor of me, like they did tonight, I do my best to accommodate, but it's never quite to the levels people expect of me. I don't know what it is. I don't know why, after all these years, it still feels beneath me to help them out, but there are days when I can tell by the tone of their voice that they really need me. And that's when it's easiest for me to turn my back on them or, at the very least, give my assistance begrudgingly. On the contrary, when it's something small they need or I know they could turn to anyone for the help, that's when I'm more than willing to play nice and do what I can to pitch in. It's like my level of willingness wholly depends on the level of need.

I just have no patience for people who can't help themselves at least partially. It's like when I have a special skill or special knowledge, I believe that everybody should know at least a little how to do it too. And when they don't I look down upon them, especially if it's my family, and especially if it's my parents. The way I see it is my friends grew up in a different environment so I can excuse them not picking up the same set of skills as me. But my family? They grew up pretty much the same as me--the same place, the same time, the same everything. There's no reason they shouldn't have seen and learned the same things I have. And I know I double this impulse when it comes to my parents. It's one thing to know one's peers in the family--brothers and cousins--can't do everything as well as you. But when you surpass your parents in certain areas it's very disconcerting. Some people take it in stride. To me it's always been the unspoken promise they've broken.

When I found out I knew more about certain arenas of life than my dad or mom, it totally threw me. I admit that. It made me start to question what else they faked knowing more than me about. It genuinely raised some questions with me over how qualified they were to raise me. And I guess I've never let go of that feeling. In fact, I think I've passed the same sense of being betrayed to others.

I'm already an impatient person. I have a rarified temper that has gotten me into trouble many times before. But I'm especially impatient with people I feel I have an advantage over. Ignorance is not something I've ever been able to tolerate well. And when that ignorance manifests in a plea for help it just infuriates me. It's like when I see people trying to switch over to my lane on the freeway. You're asking me to do something for you for no commiserate favor. So I answer your question, so I do my favor for you? What then? What do I get out of it. Your gratitude. Gratitude matters little to me when I still feel like I've been taken advantage of. I used my knowledge, I used my time to better your position, but my position remains the same. Well, that's just like letting someone butt in friend of you in line like back in elementary school.

That's why I think I get upset or impatient when my parents ask me for favors. I know the best of what they have to offer me has passed. From this point on, it's me who will be doing more to help them out and that's a sinking feeling that I guess I haven't been able to look past. As matter how hard I try, I'm still not the person that can help anyone out altruistically. If anything I'm still that guy who needs to know that I'll be getting more in return with every favor I do.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers