Been So Long Since I Seen Your Face, Or Felt A Part Of This Human Race, I've Been Living Out Of This Here Suitcase For Way Too Long

--"Jolene", Ray Lamontagne

A Statue of Me

I slid myself down the ice
the other day,
unable to halt my momentum
no matter how determined
my resolve became.

I became a statue of me
below the cold eye
of a fate
that has never once felt freeing.

there was no audience
except for that of my recollection
who has always been my harshest critic.
she was the one
who I heard laughing
as my sojourn came to an abrupt halt
into that certain snowbank.
she was the one
who then knew what I was made of,
all purpose without a whit
of drive.

that's what made the situation
laughable.

I slid myself down the ice
the other day.
it was the most I'd ever been moved
in months.

dw

----

When we were younger, my sisters and I used to sneak a peek at our Christmas presents early. Like Vandals on the hunt we would gallop down the staircase to the tree adorned with all manner of gifts beneath it. There, while our parents slept, we would unveil the treasures contained within without marring the wrapping paper noticeably. Then, once we had ascertained what what we had been given, we would re-wrap the presents and sneak back upstairs. Our parents would be none the wiser the next morning or in the intervening days leading up to Christmas.

I cannot confess to a feeling a guilt regarding this venture, I can tell you that much. To me the whole activity has been wrapped up in the mythology of tradition and ritual as far back as I can remember. I've never held it to be against the rules or even against the spirit of gratitude. I've never wanted a gift returned once I found out. Gosh. I've never even been disappointed by the lengths my friends and family will go to please me. It's all been smiles the size of legends whenever we've enacted this ceremony of ours. It's been a shared experience between the younger Frissons, something they could all look back upon with fondness when looking back upon the Christmases of their youth.

However, it's occurred to me that there are some who do not share my opinion of the innocuous nature of our frivolity. There are some who may lay claim that a bit of deceit lies at the heart of our motives.

It astonishes me how choices we take for granted as being harmless can in fact be the most harmful of all. I took it for granted that my sisters had everyone's best interests at heart. I didn't question them. I followed along. Blindly. And while it seemed at the time to follow my maxim of not postponing joy, it seems to me that there is contention that it may have caused some kind of imbalance to the universe as well. It may not have hurt anyone directly, but I've discovered that it's often the actions we undertake that carry the stink of being against the spirit of what other people want without harming the directly that are often the worst transgressions. For instance, my parents were never the wiser. They were never distraught by the magnitude of our treachery. And yet it would have hurt them somewhat to hear how their efforts to conceal their generosity was all for naught. The capacity for disappointment was ever present with each instance of our sneaking downstairs.

Maybe that's all I am right now, someone who subsists on rote rituals. I've trained myself to make the same decisions time and time again because at the initial choice I was rewarded with a small amount of joy. Rather than actually experiencing the joy with each following instance, maybe all I've been rewarded with is an even small expectation of joy. It certainly feels that this has been the case.

Perhaps I've just been going through the motions of trying to find what makes me happy rather than actually finding happiness. All I know is with the new year approaching I want to get back to what I've always sought, the genuine feeling of fulfillment, and not some approximation of what it used to feel like.

I don't want to allow the momentum of what has been up until now a seemingly happy life dictate every future choice I make. Because I know if I do there'll come a day where I wake up, go down the stairs, open up my presents only to find empty boxes... and I won't know the difference.

dw

Bang, While You Wait, It All Goes Down, Swipe Through The City, That I Call My Town

--"Bang", Rye Rye

I've Already Seen This

watching the rain slide down my window
like eggs sliding off the griddle,
I remind myself
I've seen it all before.

move along, kid.
nothing to see here.

except the rain doesn't fall quite the same
two-hundred fifty miles away.
except the windows are smaller, cleaner
and contain no soul
and retain no memories
of the nights I would spend staring out them.

over there when the rain falls
I sometimes fail to hear it
due to my perspective,
due to my priorities.
over there rare is the chance
to sit for an hour
(or two)
just to remember what the rain looks like.

watching the rain slide down my window
like eggs sliding off the griddle,
I soak the experience in.
I know I've already seen this.
I know I've already been here.

but you can never watch the rain enough
and that window will always be
mine.

dw

Kyrie Eleison, Down The Road I Must Travel, Kyrie Eleison, Through The Darkness Of The Night

--"Kyrie", Mr. Mister

Sometimes I'll hear a title--for a song, a movie, &c...--and my mind will instantly jump to how awesome that would be for a person's name. I mean--I've wrote before how I thought Whiskey God would be a kickass first and middle name for an individual, a girl especially. While I still hold to that truth, my tastes don't necessarily run strictly to the unique and ostentatious. A myriad of songs and films exist that have piqued my ear for awesome sounding names.

The latest I heard was when I was watching The Sing-Off yesterday. A group from the University of Oregon sang a cover of Mr. Mister's "Kyrie Eleison" as their guilty pleasure. Now I vaguely remember the song when it originally came out. However, at the time I was in elementary so my impressions, good or bad, of it are minimal at best. As I sat listening to it, though, my mind came back to what an interesting title for the song "Kyrie Eleison" was. I could not imagine how I had gone my whole life without ever running across this melodic turn of phrase. Sure, it's Greek in origin, meaning "Lord, have mercy," but to me it almost has a Celtic feel to it. What I kept coming back to was how it would be a perfect name for some sylph of a girl in an old sea shanty or something. For me it evokes that old standy image of a girl wistful and forlorn on some cliff somewhere.

Granted, a lot of phrases evoke these same emotions, but it's not often a name can elicit these selfsame feelings. I don't know--I just find it amusing that I'm forever on the lookout for these small wonders that other people can overlook. I also find it amusing that something so miniscule in relevance can provoke such a pronounced response in me.

Perhaps it's my blessing and my curse that I get so emotionally stimulated by something so flimsy in its construction.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I Wake Up To The Sound Of Music, Mother Mary Comes To Me, Speaking Words Of Wisdom, Let It Be, Let It Be, Let It Be

--"Let It Be", The Beatles

Back in high school I wrote a story involving a rather large cast of superheroes. I was very much into the idea of superheroes back then and it was only natural that a majority of my narratives revolved around their exploits. Most of my influences were other comic book heroes, plots, &c.... It was a simple affair to draw inspiration from all the other stories I read. However, there was one character whose genesis came from my love of music and the idea of music as a stabilizing force in one's life.

Her name was C.C. Harmony. Her back story played out much like the idea of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan fame. Somewhere in the world I imagined there existed an island where certain abandoned, abused, or otherwise neglected children could escape to through magical means. Once there the children ceased to age and were bestowed certain powers and abilities appropriate to their particular interests. The name of the island eludes me at the moment, but I remember the number of inhabitants were in flux except for a dozen or so children who simply refused to leave the island permanently. Foremost among them was one C.C. Harmony, a girl of unknown age, but on the outside looked no older than twelve. She had dirty blonde hair with a prominent red streak running down the front of it. She also had light blue eyes that were almost as clear as water. Other than that she had no distinguishing features except for the ever-present earphones nestled on her head.

She had three main powers. One, she could fly--as far and as fast as any jet plane. Two, she could shoot energy blasts that could send a villain flying into the next block or through two or three walls. Three, she could put up a force field that could block both bullets and energy beams alike.

And powering all of these wonderful powers? The music that she listened to through her headphones. The longer and the louder she played her music from the discman that was attached to her hip, the stronger her powers became. Sure, it was an homage to the Marvel hero Dazzler, who had similar abilities, but the genius was in the details. For you see, she didn't just listen to any old thing that she could get her tiny, little hands on. Her discman always played the same set of songs, songs she had listened to when she had escaped whatever fractured former life she used to have. And not only would she become empowered by the music from her youth, she would be affected by it too.

What could have been just an interesting character device became an apartment continuity element for her. Much like how I title every post that I write her with lyrics, each scene she was in was heavily influenced by whatever song happened to be playing in her ears. It became one more way to characterize her and to ground what could have been a fantastical creature in the world of the here and now. It humanized her in a way that was simple and immediately accessible to the reader.

----

I don't know--maybe that's just the way I think of music. It's not something you're supposed to do casually. It should be an interactive process whereby the sounds changes you and challenges you. Much like C.C. was empowered by the familiar strains emanating from her headphones, so too should music embolden you to feel that sense of being alive every second of every day. And rather than just listen any old ditty that comes on the radio you should develop a symbiotic relationship to the groups you favor. They shouldn't just fade away into obscurity from neglect. If you have a favorite song, a favorite band, a favorite genre--you should embrace their particular strengths. Rather than ever be afraid of associating yourself with what isn't en vogue with your circle or in your area of the world, you should be proud of your tastes because they're your tastes.

That's a lot of what informed C.C.'s character, the idea that if you give up your beliefs that you lose something intangible. She didn't have powers because the island gave it to her. There was no one to tell her that music was her touchstone. She had that belief from the day she was born. And she didn't give music the ability to assist in her efforts, that was always a part of her even before she got to the island. She saw for herself what a guiding force music in her life could be, what a touchstone to her makeup as a person it could be.

I take music in much the same way. Everything around could change--the people I associate with, the places I live, the philosophies I espouse--but as long as have my favorite songs within reach I know I'll remain intact. My soul and music go hand in hand because most of the life-affirming choices I've made and most of the monumental events that have transpired in my life carry with them a very distinct soundtrack. I don't ever forget what I was listening at the time something happened to me. I also don't grow tired of the songs of my youth. I don't know--maybe I'm afraid to let any music I used to listen to fall into neglect.

For much like the children from that island, neglect is something I tend to see as more profoundly devastating than outright hatred. At least with hatred there's a sense of involvement involved in the emotion. With neglect it's pure indifference, which is a far worse fate. And when you start down that path of neglecting the music that used to inspire you, transform you, and motivate you, it's only a short road to neglecting the other aspects of your life that provide you any sense of joy.

C.C. was much more than a character to me. She embodied a philosophy of mine whereby music, indeed, did have the power to change the world in a measurable way. In some small sense she was my acknowledgement that music had changed me in a measurable way... for the better. And much like C.C. and that island of hers, there would be no going back to a state of what I was like before I had found music.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

There's Always Gonna Be Another Mountain, I'm Always Gonna Wanna Make It Move, Always Gonna Be An Uphill Battle, Sometimes I'm Gonna Have To Lose

--"The Climb", Miley Cyrus

When I was fifteen and going out on job interviews for the first time I went to everyone I knew for advice. Everybody had all manner of encouragement for me, telling me gems like "Be yourself," "Make a good first impression," and "Smile even when you think the interview is going bad." I could tell that they had my best interests at heart. The last thing they wanted to do was discourage me. They'd all been through the harrowing introspection that accompanies placing your value before veritable strangers to be judged. They'd all found that a bit of the stiff upper lip mentality is necessary to steel oneself against the considerable adversity.

What was said in good faith though only ended up making me more nervous than I'd already been. It was as if they were preparing me for the worst whereas before it hadn't even occurred to me the worst was even a possibility. Me--I'm so accustomed to charging into a situation blind and accepting the consequences--I wasn't prepared for the aforementioned introspection. As my daddy says, "you can't go swimming without getting your face wet." All of a sudden people were telling me advice like I was already two feet into drowning. It all had the cumulative effect of my beginning to doubt in myself.

That's when I received some of the most sage advice I've ever received in my life.

I called up Eeyore and his one chestnut of wisdom was "Don't suck." That was it all, that was all.

After I had quieted my impulse to laugh I asked him to explain. He told me that most interviewers are interested in hearing what you have to contribute to their company, sure. Really, though, he reckoned that they're out to hear that you're not going to drag down the company. Anybody can come into an interview praising themselves and pointing out the gloss on their apples. If you really want to stand out, rather than point out how you excelled at this or that, point out how you toughed out a bad situation. Point out all the places where you handled yourselves admirably when you could have fallen apart.

"That's your real strength, Breanne. You're the toughest person I know. And if you sell them on the fact that you don't anything or anyone cower you, they're going to see that they would be fools not to hire you."

----

I've never forgotten the advice. It was so different than everyone else telling me to be something I'm not. I'm not the person who positions myself as being perfect at everything, able to do a hundred things at once, or wear seventeen different hats. I'm the person who shines because I have certain abilities that other people don't. I shine because I have no fear in most instances. I shine because I'm willing to take the bullet when others are unwilling to hang their lily white ass out in their work. I shine because I talk to folks honestly, as if I'm not any better or worse than them.

Anybody can be pleasant. Anybody can be shiny and polished when they're out to impress somebody. Hell's bells, I'm not above fussing over myself and looking my best if the situation warrants it. But when the curtain goes up and all you've got out there on stage is yourself and your nerves, you don't want to be the gal (or guy) who is all polish. You want to be the individual who's proven to have true grit, the raw determination to see a job through. You want to be who you are be the main focus of your interview, not what you can do. When it comes right down to it, it's more impressive to let the content of your character speak for itself than paper over it with the content of your resume. In the end I can only be Breanne--no more, no less--just like we all can only be the simplest of our natures.

And as Patrick goes on his umpteenth interview today I just want to remind him what he told me. It's not about showing how shiny you are. It's about showing how solid of a person you are, what a self-confident and solid human being you can be. I know him better than most and I know, given the right encouragement, he can be just as assertive and as passionate person as I am on my best days. Most of all I just want to tell him one thing on his important day.

Don't suck.

Breanne

You Got Me Caught In All This Mess, I Guess We Can Blame It On The Rain, My Pain Is Knowing I Can't Have You, I Can't Have You

--"Blame It on the Rain", He Is We

It was still raining by the time we got to the movie theater. It was the slight, silent rain of a storm on its way out, but the telltale signs of its impact were everywhere. From the pitter-patter of the raindrops hitting the sidewalk below to the bleariness the air took on just then, it was obvious that this was to be a day of varying shades of gray. I didn't mind, though. I never minded. I was never one to let a silly thing like the weather affect my mood.

In fact, I had went into that day determined not to be distracted by anything but the company I was keeping. It's not often that one gets to go on an outing with one's girlhood crush and I was going to make the most of it. Like my daddy always says, "you can only go looking at the bluest skies for so long." Eventually, you've got to learn to lean on yourself for your happiness. And this was a happy occasion. It was my first week back after my first year at Georgia. It had been a whirlwind of catching up with old high school and church friends, as well as re-familiarizing myself with my old haunts. It was walking out of one of these haunts, my favorite bakery in all the world, that I had bumped into him, the Unnamed Boy from my youth.

We got to talking--yammering about how I was doing now that I was a big 'ole college gal, how he was doing now that he was out in the real world. For a minute there, it was like I was back to being that infatuated wisp who had spent so many of her hours pining for a boy who would ultimately never be hers. He looked the same--older, but the same. He still had the same easygoing demeanor that had made it easy to be friends with him growing up. And he still had that way about him that had made it so simple to fall head over heels for him in the first place. While it was true that eventually I outgrew the phase where I basically stalked his every movement and came to know him somewhat, my gut reaction to the Unnamed Boy will always be that of that little 'ole Breanne, who at nine absolutely fell in love with the neighborhood boy. As much as the twenty-year-old version of me understood our friendship to be more casual at that point, I can't say it was easy keeping the girl inside at bay with arguments of logic or, you know, reality.

At some point in the conversation it was mentioned that he was headed to a nearby movie theater to catch The Mummy, which had just opened that week, with some friends. He invited me to join him as I would already know most of the folks going. Apparently, everybody and their cousin were getting back into town that very week. I didn't know what to say. What could I say? I wasn't really all that impressed with the previews for the movie, but I felt I owed it to my inner child to say yes. Yes, I had had other plans, I told him, but what could be more important than catching up with old friends?

We walked the few blocks together in the dying rain, remembering how we used to be. We talked about how the old neighborhood had changed (when it really hadn't) and what it was like living outside of that comfortable bubble. I couldn't contribute much since I had only gone from being ensconced at home with my parents to being ensconced at school with my dorm mates. I empathized with him as best as I could, though. I told him it can't be easy letting go of your past when it only recently made up so much of your life.

"I know, right?" is all he could reply.

I mentioned how I would be getting my own place off-campus the upcoming school year. Then I would be in a better position to know what it's like to be on my own, alone. He patted me on the shoulder just as we were getting to the theater, telling me that I shouldn't be in that much of a hurry to prove I could tough it out by myself, that there's something to be said about having that feeling of safety and support when you come back home. It's rough being by yourself, he said. It's rough having only you to count on.

It occurred to me that I didn't know what he was going through at the time, but as I watched him buy the tickets for both of us I understood that seeing me wasn't just about seeing someone he grew up with. It was about seeing a familiar face, any familiar face for him. As we waited for the rest of his friends to show up I grew ever more concerned that there was more to his funk than the mere pains of growing up. I'd like to think I knew him well enough to know when something was bothering him. We weren't longtime friends, but after that initial stage of shyness which lasted for six years, it wasn't such an uncommon sight to see the two of us talking in the street outside of his parents' house on some nights. During that time I'd like to believe that I picked up more than an inkling of what made him tick and what his moods ran to. I'd like to think that we grew close enough for him to trust me with a problem as obvious as he was going through. Hell's bells, I passed out on his front lawn once (or twice). If that doesn't bond in some small way then I don't know what does, you know?

Eventually his friends made it to the theater within a few minutes of each other. There were seven of us total. He wasn't totally wrong. I did know most of his friends by sight or by name. Yet to classify the rest of our party as being close acquaintances of mine would be a misnomer. As my daddy says, "Just because you swim in the same pond don't make you fishes of the same color." While I found his friends interesting and did my best to endear myself to them, I was more interested in continuing the discussion with him. I knew it wouldn't be easy, though. With five other individuals competing for his and my attention it was all I could do to keep abreast of his whereabouts, let alone monopolize his time.

I got the same 'ole feeling I used to get when I was eleven or twelve. I would see him with his friends, all of them four or five years older than me at the time. I'd be so intimidated by their stature, how they would tower over me, that it was unconceivable of me to ever approach him while he was flanked by them. And even when I would walk by I would eavesdrop on their conversation and I'd hear them discussing all manner of subjects I just didn't understand. Cars, sports, girls, colleges--whatever they were fussing over at that particular moment was something I was ill prepared to chime in on. That's what it was like watching him conversing with his friends in front of the movie theater. It was all I could do to maintain some semblance of passionate interest in the conversation I was carrying on with one of them myself. I just didn't know how I was ever going to get back to him later that night, especially during the movie.

Sometimes Gracious Providence has a way of working itself out, though.

I found myself sitting next to him in the actual movie theater with no one on the other side of him. I do not recall if this was by his design or some accident of fate. Whatever it was, I took control of the situation almost immediately. I started him talking about how I used to have the biggest of crushes on him (which he already knew) and how he was the best part of our neighborhood. He laughed at that, He said that having me in the neighborhood had been a good thing too. I moved onto how sometimes life is like that. Growing up, folks think it's going to be all the big stuff in their life that they're going to miss--the houses, the schools, the grand gestures. But I had a theory that what we really miss the most is the small moments, the people that we see everyday, the smells we grow accustomed to, the familiarity of it all. I told him that sometimes losing those small touches pains us just as much as the huge losses in our lives. The only difference is with the huge losses there's a precedent for people wanting to console us. We're always comforted in the bosom of those who love and guide us. But with the small pains of being forced to move on we usually don't have anyone willing to listen to us. We're usually on our own to cheer ourselves up because most of the world can't see what's wrong, most of the world can't see the dull ache that consistently drives us into despondency.

"But I'm different," I told him flat out.

"And why are you different, Breasy? What makes you so special?" he asked me.

I told him I was different because I was Little Miss Chipper, didn't he know. I had had a lifetime of being the go-to gal when it comes to cheering people up, stroking their egos, and plain just being the crutch when people needed help on taking that next step. I was born to the role, I said.

He laughed again. He then asked me if I was so knowledgeable about these things, what my prescription was to cure his doldrums.

I told him that there used to be a gal, beautiful as all hell, graceful and charming too, who used to pine for a boy much like himself. This gal used to dream up elaborate scenarios where she and this boy would someday be together. Then she would write these scenarios down on paper in poems and stories. Yet everyday she would see this boy she couldn't manage to say a single peep to him. It wasn't because she was shy. It wasn't because she was intimidated by him. It was because the more she learned about the boy, the more she realized that all the elaborate scenarios and all the perfections that she thought could be attributed to him were too farfetched. She began to realize that she was pining for something she could never have. She began to realize that she was wishing for something that just couldn't ever be true.

However, one day when she had all but given up on the fantasy of ever introducing herself to this boy, she took the plunge. She walked right up to him and said hello. That's when she found out that, while her preconceptions of him were rendered moot, who he actually was was a much better prospect. She realized that changing her perspective of him was a huge change and that letting go of her idealized romance was difficult. Yet she also realized that getting to know him was far better than any experience she had ever had imagining who he was.

Eventually, she came to learn that she would never have the boy of her dreams. Instead she got something far sweeter, a friend that she actually had taken the time to learn all about.

"What does this have to do with me?" he asked me.

I told him that I felt that getting the neighborhood was sort of the girl of his dreams, something that he had his heart set on that was impossible to get (or get back). However, I let him on a little secret. I said that there was whole wide world that could be his neighborhood and that if he took the time to know its ins and outs as much as he had with the neighborhood back home that he might discover he liked the memory just as much, if not more, as the memory of his youth. There's something to be said about holding onto dreams or memories, but there's also approaching the world as the dream each one of us is fortunate to live in.

Instead of replying, he merely settled his head on my shoulder as the movie started--little 'ole Breanne with The Unnamed Boy. If somebody had told nine-year-old me that I would have him with his head on my shoulder she might have died from disbelief. What's more if you told her that all she would be feeling at that moment was compassion, and not love, she might have even died again. He could have told me it was all bull crap or that my theory was nice, but given our history together he knew I was speaking from the heart about understanding what it's like to lose some sense of perfection that only existed in your mind. The fact he didn't refute my arguments was how I knew that I might not have cheered him up completely, but I had gotten through to him.

He knew that I knew that losing a childhood dream is hard, but finding hope for something better because of that loss might just make it worth it. After all, as my daddy says, "you can only go looking at blue skies for so long." Sometimes you have to learn to love the rain as much as you love the sunshine.

Breanne