Even In Dreams I Could Not Betray You

--"Even In Dreams", The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

"Surely you must be joshing, sugar. I was the greatest cashier to have ever lived," you managed to say between sips of your sweet tea. "Speed, accuracy, winning smile--I had it all."

You watched your companion, with retaliation on his mind, shake his head vigorously. He had brought up the subject only minutes earlier of how much he had loved his previous job at the bookstore and how he was widely recognized as the best cashier to have ever taken to the floor. You had taken in his devilish grin in stride, watching him bask in the light of his former glory. With his every word you had noticed how much fondness his memories of that job held. You let him finish his stories, let him have his say.

Then you stole his thunder.

"I may not have worked in the paradise of Crown Books, but I'm telling you that Jean & Hall was a good place to work as well. It was fun."

"But come on, Breanne, how many customers could you have gotten in a day?" you heard him ask.

"You'd be surprised. You would be surprised. Hell's bells, there were some days around the holidays where it seemed like the customers were multiplying like gremlins."

"What with all the water around the flowers and plants."

You both laughed sheepishly. You were both having lunch in the middle of Geno's East. Although the place was normally busy, you were both there in the middle of the week just after the lunch rush had ended. The dinner rush wasn't going to get rolling for another few hours. You two had the dining room almost all to yourself. Any laughter above a whisper would have called attention to yourselves even more than the sight of two people obviously not dressed for Chicago weather already had. There you were, in a red sundress on the windiest of July days, hair rent all asunder, and there he was, dressed in t-shirt and jeans that screamed out-of-towner. You both had noticed early on how everyone was dressed more upscale, more refined in Chicago. Only the vacationers were treading lightly in their pastels and khakis and what have you. As your daddy would have said, the two of you were like two hounds running in a wolf pack.

Yet all of that seemed to matter very little to the both of you. You were having fun and, hell's bells, you were on vacation. You didn't have to answer to anyone's perception of y'all. What they thought of you and yours was their business. All that mattered to you was that, so far, you were having a good time. The pizza there was amazing--as was the food everywhere else you had gone--and lunch was turning out to be yet another great memory to add to the list of great memories you had been making since you both had arrived in town. Patrick was being quite charming. From arranging to take you dancing on one of the first nights you were in town to acquiescing to every request you made so far, he was laying on thick the fact this trip was an attempt to shore up the connection you two had shared for over half of your life. The city was amazing. And, for the first time in a long time, you were beginning to forget what life as married Breanne was like. You were remembering what life was like as young, vibrant Breanne instead. You were starting to remember how bright the whole world used to seem, especially when you didn't have to be at the beck and call of somebody else's whims.

"At any rate they always stuck me on register because that was my strong point. I could upsell a customer before he even knew what was hitting them."

"You want to talk about upselling, Breannie? I not only used to talk people into certain books. I used to talk people into falling in love with authors. I was selling people on entire serieses--is that even a word?"

"I understood you."

"Well, that was me. I think I was just born to recommend crap to people, specifically crap that I enjoyed and that I felt people should enjoy right along with me. Flowers can't compete with that. Nothing can."

"You'd be surprised at how much joy a simple bouquet can bring to someone."

"As much as a good book?"

"Different kind of joy. I ain't saying books don't have a place in people's lives, but there's something to be said about coming home and seeing something as simply breathtaking as fresh cut flowers arranged in the most pleasant fashion. I believe there's such things as food for the soul and seeing something that uplifts your spirit is like feasting on nature itself."

"Well, when you put it that way, I can see that."

"I knew you could see things my way, Eeyore," you said while taking another sip of your sweet tea.

"But I was still a better register jockey than you," you heard him say as a parting shot before shoveling another bite of sausage pizza into his mouth.

The rest of the afternoon was still up in the air. The two of you hadn't really planned daily activities for the trip. Naturally, you wanted to partake of some of the better museums in the country while you were here. He wanted to catch a game at both Wrigley and Cellular Field. And, of course, you both wanted to sample as many restaurants as possible with the short time you'd been given. However, if he wanted to wile away the rest of afternoon sitting there and talking, that would have been more than okay with you. You didn't have anywhere specific to be. You didn't have any plans. You didn't have anyone else to meet. The focus of the day was reconnecting with an old friend, as was the focus of the entire trip.

Just then you caught him looking your way in that certain way he has when he wants to ask you something but isn't sure of your response. It didn't make a difference that you two had just been talking about bookstore and florists; his mind tended to wander like an orphan cat with the afternoon off. Whereas you tended to hone in on one subject and could whittle away at it for the whole day, his mind tended to flit from one subject to the next--funny to serious and back again. Right then you could tell you were in store for something more serious in nature, probably about the state of the two of you.

"I had a dream about you, Breanne."

Uh oh.

"When? Last night?"

"No, the other week. Before we flew out here."

You felt him reach for your hand atop the table. You readily grabbed it without thinking. The routine had already been established. He didn't just say things to you; he made announcements. That was one thing you'd always admired about the boy. He spoke his mind, damn the consequences. It mattered little that this had the effect of making him seem like a drama queen, spouting his thoughts as if every situation was dire. All that mattered was that he was earnest in his proclamations. When he told you that you were funny, you felt like you could make the world laugh. When he told you that he was sad, you hadn't heard of anyone else who had faced such sadness. And when he told you that he loved you, you felt like you didn't deserve such affection. So what if he was prone to melodramatic gestures and posturing? It was a small price to pay to find someone who told the truth in all its ugliness and in all its beauty.

You felt his hand in yours, felt the longing in his touch. You were almost silently whispering him to continue his thought.

"What were you dreaming about?" you asked.

"I was dreaming about us coming here, which was strange because I had no idea what Chicago looked like until we got here. It was my idea of Chicago at the time anyway. We were in the city, visiting various places hand in hand, when you stopped in the middle of the street. You let go right before a red VW rabbit crashed into you."

"I died? Well, that's no fun."

"But that's the thing you didn't die. You just got up and walked in the opposite direction. I tried to chase you, but you ran away from me. I don't know--I must've chased you for fourteen blocks but I could never quite reach you. At one point I think I was chasing you along the canals of Venice and at another point the city started looking like Everwood or something--mountains in the background and everything. But even there I couldn't catch you. I ran until I was exhausted.

"But when I stopped, you stopped too--always out of reach, but always in sight. It was very frustrating. I would call to you. Sometimes you would answer, but other times you just wouldn't hear me. Then when I'd run after you again you would start to jog again."

You half-expected him to ask you what the dream meant. That's what most people did in this situation. Yet he never got around to that part. His aim was clear. This was not a tale that needed deciphering. This was more an airing of grievances. It didn't matter that the grievance was imaginary. What mattered most was the feeling of helplessness, of abandonment, that it elicited. If anything, it sounded like he was waiting for you to apologize.

For a long time before that day that seemed to be the ebb-and-flow of your friendship with Patrick. You would do something ill-advised and he would grow irritated. You'd apologize, tell him that was who you were, that you could only be yourself--no more, no less. And the two of you would make up. You would be good for a few weeks until the process would start over again. Or sometimes he would say something intentionally cruel, designed to puncture your precarious notion your life was perfect as is, and it would be he who would have to rectify the situation. He would write a grandiose letter explaining his unfettered regret. Amends would be made. Then the two of you would be as thick as thieves again.

But then there came one day just after college when the pattern changed. You made a choice that seemingly there was no coming back from.

"Awww, Patrick. That sounds like a horrible dream."

"It was a terrifying dream actually."


'cuz there's nobody like you

You watched his eyes alight upon yours. For the longest time the two of you stared at one another over the table. You could tell he wanted to say it, he wanted to tell you to come back to him. You could tell he wanted to extend this getaway from real life to the rest of your lives rather than the week you had both agreed to set aside for one another. You could tell he was going to break the promised that this was merely going to be a short respite from what had to be. This was going to be the exception to the rule. But the rule of what? The rule of what was proper? The rule of what was acceptable? Perhaps he wanted to tell you that he'd been feeling everything you had been feeling for the last three days, that you were having too much fun with him, here, to ever want to go back home.

He was probably watching your eyes for some sign of complicit agreement. As much as you could read his face like words on a page, he could read yours just as easily. It wouldn't take him long to scan for the smallest weak point in the wall of joviality you were trying to erect. You'd both agreed that this was going to be something casual. You'd both made a point to reiterate that this was going to be a one-time thing. It wasn't fair that his resolve was weakening and yours wasn't. That didn't mean he had to undermine your confidence as well. There was agreements in place. There was a long-standing understanding that the two of you could meet here, have your fun, but that you both weren't allowed to go home with one another. Everything had to go back to the way it was for this week in Chicago to work for what it was intended.

He wanted to ask you if everything you left behind was worth going back to. And if he did ask you, in those certain words, you really didn't have a rehearsed answer to tell him.

Before he could phrase the question that might shatter both your lives, you interrupted him.

"The other good thing about flowers is that you can admire them from afar just as well as you can admire them up close. I can stand in my yard and see my neighbor's garden. Even from there I can admire how bright and cheery his orchids or roses or tulips are. I don't need to be in the same yard. I don't need to own the flowers to appreciate them all the same. I can feel the same pang of joy even from there."

You watched him pause and smile. He shook his head slightly before slowly letting go of your hand.

"And the nice thing about books is that you can still enjoy them even if you hadn't read them for a long time. Once you come back to the story you know you'll find all the familiar smiles and laughs... and even tears waiting for you. Those stories, those great, enduring stories never change. They just get more cherished every time you get a chance to read them."

You smiled back at him, sighing to yourself the relief you were straining to contain. You had come close to breaking something good that could never be fixed again. You had peered at that edge and managed to slowly back away from it. All that was left was getting back to the hotel room to use what little time you had left to show him that all was not lost. You still had time to reminisce about everything you ever were to one another, to go back for one week to the way things used to be and could have been had certain pages not been turned when they had, had certain seeds not been planted where they had. You still had time to be something more of the kids who had imagined growing old together in each other's arms.

But before you could leave the restaurant you just had to say one more thing to him.

"Silly, Eeyore. You should know by now that if ever seem to be running away from you that eventually I'm going to come running right back to you. Even in a dream I can't ever quite leave you behind...."

Breanne

This Is A Happy End, Cause You Don't Understand, Everything You Have Done, Why's Everything So Wrong

--"New Soul", Yael Naim

Maybe the world doesn't end with a bang. Maybe the world doesn't end at all. Instead of death I'd prefer if my life ended in stillness--if I could go to sleep one day and the world froze in its place for eternity. That's a concept I can back. Rather than the hellfire or the silver clouds I would prefer the constant state of neutrality. Neither overjoyed or suffering, resting in the arms of something in the middle is where I'd like to be.

It isn't because I fear death or because I despise life. I've simply come to a point in my existence where I'm realizing that where we end up shouldn't be a topic of contemplation. We all end up where we end up, and while I believe in God and Heaven and all that, I'm tired of trying to live up to a standard that nobody can be entirely sure of. And it's not because I especially espouse hedonism or minimalism, or any specific brand of philosophy. What I believe in is what makes me smile and what I can do to make others smile. All the rest is folly. That's why I'm taking it upon myself to forgo from this point forward any grandiose central statement that sums up what I believe in a few words. Don't postpone joy--that's less a philosophy than a mission statement. It's not what I believe; it's my occupation. From this point on I'll focus my strength on living through as much as I can than what I can accomplish before I die.

I don't want the happy ending. I don't want the sad ending. I just want a good story throughout. I want to take my cue from music or poetry that doesn't so much end with a complete thought, but rather a hypothetical upon occasion. Or maybe I want to take my cue from nature. A forest doesn't tell a story. Therefore, it has no ending. An ocean doesn't follow a discernible narrative structure. It just is.



Gosh. I just want to be.

I don't want to be tied to convention. I don't want to follow the plan. I don't want to have a plan. I want to live life like one of my poems. It's as simple as that. I want to stop and start. I want to abandon words altogether if the thought feels incomplete. I want direction to be an afterthought and emotion to be the prime motivation for everything. I want to feel, to feel, to feel, rather than live, breathe, think, or grow. I want to be timeless and still. I want to be nothing but nothing, rather than feel pressure to be someone or somebody's someone. I want to care about everything you're not supposed to care about and nothing about the things you are. I want to lose my sense of progress. I want to lose my sense of failure. I want to lose hope and regret and comparing where I was to where I am to where I will be.

To be still forever, that's how I want it all to end.

dw

I Realize Why, I Cannot Fly, Said The Bird With A Broken Wing. Though My Lift Is Gone, My Voice Is Strong, And I Can Still Sing

--"Clouds Parting (8:14 a.m.)", The Elected

Earlier this evening I had to to dispose of a dead bird from outside my balcony door. Apparently it had flown into the glass door sometime while I was at work. However, I didn't notice the body until I had retired to my bedroom. The whole process was very unpleasant for me. I was very tempted to leave the body outside till tomorrow when I was more in the mood to deal with the implications and expend the effort. In the end, I grabbed a plastic cup, scooped up the body, and threw it in the trash can near the elevator.

I just don't handle death well. I'm not exactly afraid of it, but I know myself to be someone who can't overly emote on the subject on a whim. For death to really affect me I have to know the person who died very well and, frankly, I have to like the person who died very well. For those two specific reasons there just hasn't been too many people whose passing has stirred in me the desire to ruminate on the subject for very long. In fact, there's only been Jennifer. For her I even went so far as to write a eulogy. But folks like my grandfathers, my grandmother, and my various aunts and uncles I neither knew them all that much and definitely didn't care about them all that much to want to be subjected to the sight of their fading away and their ultimate passing.

I'm just not the kind of person who needs to be present at scenes that are upsetting to me. I already have on my plate to be sad and mournful about; I never want to add death to that mix. I just can't ever get behind the idea of fixating on somebody's end for hours at a time, especially when it's somebody I really didn't spend hours at time with in the first place.

Maybe if it were parents, my brother, or my cousina I could see the point in spending an appropriate amount of time focusing on how much their loss would affect me.

Or if I lost another close friend like Toby.

Or, heaven forbid, Breanne.

Till then I don't need the annoyance of taking time out of my day to acknowledge the passage of a life. And I certainly don't need the hassle of having to do my part in laying to rest their corpses. A bird is bad enough, but I just don't get the point of attending funerals for everybody I may have met once in my life. From now on I'm not going to any funerals for anybody I don't already genuinely love.

That way if I do show up at someone's memorial you know it's because I had general affection for the person and not just out of a sense of obligation.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

The Picture You See Is No Portrait Of Me, It's Too Real To Be Shown To Someone I Don't Know

--"Round and Round", New Order

It occurred to me while I was out with Kerri Ray this past weekend that there's a reason I like Impressionist paintings (especially Monet). It happened when I caught myself fudging the answer to yet another personal question. I like to think of myself as an open book. I like to think that there's nothing I'm not willing to admit to even strangers. That's why I write this blog; to prove that there isn't any big, dark secrets I'm keeping from those I care about. However, when Kerri Ray's queries seem to burrow into some pretty dark recesses of my memory I couldn't help but obscure the complete answer as best I could. I didn't want to and it wasn't like the answers were particularly terrifying. If anything my hazy responses were the direct result of a desire to position myself in the best possible light.

I mean--I like Kerri Ray. But, aside from people like Carly or Ilessa, I don't think there's one person I see less often than her. And that presents problems when I'm attempting forge a connection. With most people, if I think they're going to stick around for awhile I have no problem divulging the truth. I figure it's going to come out anyway since I have never been good at hiding the fundamentals of my nature nor the certain habits that I've owned all my life. It's like the fact I can't smell. I usually tell that tidbit up-front to anybody I believe has a chance of knowing me for more than a few hours because that's a fact I can't hide. However, when it comes to people I see occasionally I stop seeing the point in going down the checklist of all my faults and weaknesses. I start to smudge out the delicate lines that delineate my personality. Instead, I subconsciously try to position myself as being the possible version of me. I try to give the best impression of me.

So, after watching Super 8, with its many reflections on the nature of reputation and redemption, when Kerri Ray asked me if there was anything in my life I thought I could never be forgiven for I lied and said that there wasn't. She knows some of the bad stuff. She knows about the burning of Jina's stuff. She knows about the fights with DeAnn. She knows about the pushing incident with Breanne. My temper isn't exactly something I can hide when I'm recounting anecdotes about how I used to be. But those I really have no shame about since it isn't me now. It's not like I go around hitting women or threatening to crash my car.

No, it was a lie because there are things I regret that most people don't know. For instance, I don't think I've ever said this allowed or written it down, but I really regret putting DeAnn and Breanne through the whole pregnancy scares. At the time I made light of it because all I could focus on was the relief, but a large part of me now realizes I took the whole situation callously and rather lightly. I should have been more mature. I should have been more involved.

And I regret being so cavalier about the friends I pushed away or let go of impulsively. I know I have a tendency to freak out over the tiniest things and convert them into excuses to sever ties with people. But the only reason I do that is out of a fear my friends will eventually outgrow me. It's my way of doing unto them what I feel they'll inevitably do to me. All my life I've been surrounded with people I was either jealous of, envious of, or just plain in awe of. Part of the attraction to the friends I have now is their capability to amaze me with their talents or just their life story. In comparison, I feel rather dull and uninteresting. And there always comes a point where my inferiority complex sets off alarms that I'm about to be ditched for far more interesting individuals. That's most of the reason why I let Jina go after she was a sophomore in high school, because she was too intelligent for me and I had the skulking suspicion that she was only going to get more intelligent and more cultured than I ever could. I didn't want to be the person she had to dumb down her conversations for. It was the same with Peter and Dan. I noticed there was a trend of them exploring new and varied pursuits, like snowboard, strip clubs, and traveling abroad, when I'm pretty much still content with the pursuits that amused me in high school--going to baseball games, playing board games, and watching movies. I'm rather intractable when it comes to finding new hobbies or discovering new interests. With those two I just felt like what I wanted to do was forever going to be brushed aside since the hobbies that bonded us together were no longer the hobbies they enjoyed.

And I regret being so timid in my approach to life, and especially romance. So much of my story I feel revolves around the chances I never took or sometimes took too late. I wish I could go back and change some of those opportunities. I like to think of myself as somebody impulsive. I mean--I take trips on a whim. In fact, I'm going to Chicago with my friend Cara come July 1st since I wanted to see The Elected play somewhere other than California. I'm still willing to drive out to a friend's house at 2 a.m. whenever they call. But when it comes to the big things--love, my career, my finding my bliss--I'm still as timid as a doe. No one should be as afraid of finding happiness as I seem to be.

I consider Kerri Ray a friend. It's not like I'd lie to her face. The days of me spreading untruths just for sport are long behind me. But when it comes down to it I know there are times where I intentionally give obtuse answers when it would be very easy to give a detailed one. I know there are certain people I'd rather not get into all the reasons why I'm fucked up with. Kerri Ray still thinks of me as somebody relatively smart, relatively funny, and relatively lively because that's the persona I try to tailor myself to when I'm around her. It's very easy for me to sublimate my more dour thoughts and curtail my more melancholy expressions for the couple of hours we catch up with each other. That ability, coupled with the knowledge that there's a good chance I won't see her again for a year or two, makes me feel like it's not worth wrecking her perception of me in order to forge something deeper and more substantial. What's the point of doing all the work of building a bridge if it's going to be eighteen months between crossings? There isn't a point.

I don't classify myself as a hard person to figure out. All my likes and dislikes are pretty much well-known. What I think keep guarded are the motivations for my actions and my reactions to these selfsame actions. Stories and incidents I have no problem relating to people I hardly know. After all, they're just choices I made a long time ago and the results of these choices. But my philosophy of life, especially my life, is what I tend to keep for myself and a select few. How I view the world and my place in it is something I feel is very precious. Once I give my opinion about a subject, especially a subject as important as life or love, it's out there and I can't take it back. People can see what I do or what I look like however they want. I have no modesty when it comes to personal history.

But how I feel about things? That's what truly matters to me and that's what I tend to guard rather closely when it comes to new people in my life. And like Monet or Sisley, I tend to present a representation of my true feelings rather than the actual feelings when I'm talking to somebody new in my life. It's just easier to have them see a version of me they like rather than the "real" me which, even I have to admit, goes either way for most people.

I'm not the person Kerri Ray thinks I am... but neither am I the person I tend to think of myself as. The truth, cryptically, lies somewhere in the middle.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

'Cause I Wanted To Fly, So You Gave Me Your Wings, And Time Held Its Breath So I Could See, Yeah, And You Set Me Free

--"You Set Me Free", Michelle Branch

I shall be having a very special houseguest at the end of July. For a long spell now I've been angling to get my favorite Kentucky gal pal down here. With summer upon us she finally found the time for little 'ole me and will now be gracing my presence with her indomitable spirit and dazzling intellect. Never you mind the fact it's been awhile since I had some proper company around these parts aside from my husband and the usual suspects; it'll just be nice to have someone to impress again.

When Toby comes I can recite all my favorite stories about this town where I grew up, about the times I had when I was only so high, about what it was like to be me, only at a younger age. That's the thing about getting older being surrounded by the same people--they've heard all your stories, they know what everything means to you, they can almost gauge your reaction before you have it in any situation. On one hand it's nice having folks who know you so well. On the other hand, like my daddy says, "you can only hear the same sermon so many times before you have folks sleeping in the pews." I like my tales, you know? But do you know what I like even better? I like having someone to tell them to who hasn't heard them before. I like showing my town off to people who've never been there before. I like having people stay in my house who I've never had as guests before.

And, hell's bells, I'm telling y'all right now, I will be spoiling that gal silly when she's down here. She's the closest I have to a niece or nephew, and I intend to ruin her for "real" family. haha

She and I have spent a considerable amount of time discussing what it's like to grow up in a larger family, what it's like to be the youngest in a family. Being an only child I only know what it's like to have all the attention focused on me. Her stories about how her parents were almost too lax with her guidance-wise never cease to intrigue me. She never really had to fight to gain her independence. She was allowed more liberties at a younger age than I ever was. Conversely, she and I have had a few conversations about what it's like to be the star of your family--not just my immediate family--but the whole extended circle of kin that I possess as well. She's never been anyone's miracle baby. She's never been the one to grab hold of the spotlight, to have so many others place that much scrutiny upon her. As she said, she's more used to introspection and not extrospection. The burden she's placed on her shoulders have always been more than the burden others have laid upon her.

All my life I've tried to live up to a standard have set for me. Being successful, being intelligent, being well-mannered and cultured--those have always been qualities I had drilled in me. Dancing, writing, maybe running--those were the only hobbies I had which I felt were only for me. But I never really minded the push to impress people. It's only when the quest became obsessive that I felt the desire to push myself away from the grind. Over the years I've had so many mentors when it came to people whose talents and experience I admired that it truly seemed I was being passed from one to the next, culminating in the fully-rounded gal who sits here now.

That's the other reason I wanted to bring the youngest of the SFoM members down to these parts. I reckon it's about time I start being that mentor for somebody else. Who knows if I'll ever be a mother, you know? Maybe the closest I'll get to that bliss is passing on the wealth of my experience and the lifetime of hard-learned lessons onto other gals in search of some answers. I'm not claiming to have all the answers, but I've compiled a few truths in my day. I'm kind of relishing the opportunity to preserving my knowledge with individuals who can fully appreciate them. Miss Frisson is a good kid. The last thing I reckon she needs is somebody telling her what to think or what to do. It's my belief, though, that like any good auntie, there are things you can teach without preaching to someone. I think there's a lot more to preparing a person for life than can be explained in a classroom or church setting.

Most of all, though, I'm anticipating having a hoot-and-a-half with somebody I consider among my closest friends. If some knowledge gets spilled in the process, well, then so be it.

Breanne