california is a recipe for a black hole

No Matter How I Try To Convince Myself, This Time I Won't Lose Control, One Look In Your Blue Eyes And Suddenly, My Heart Can't Tell You No

2011-12-15T22:52:00.000-08:00

--"My Heart Can't Tell You No", Sara Evans

A wise man once said that life is war and sometimes the casualties are everyone you've ever known. The truth, sad as it may be, is that I'm not destined to have people in my life for lengthy periods of time. While I cannot entirely shift the blame away from me, there are moments where I truly believe that such is my lot in life. I'm simply not someone who suffers friendships or relationships for any durable amount of years or even months.

Toby is no more--at least not in the way I'm accustomed to knowing her. While I cannot say she died, for all intents and purposes she ceases to be somebody I can reliably count on or consider friendly to me. If life really is a war I'd have to consider her an enemy of the state and all subsequent communications between us as unabashedly hostile.

I doubt you'll be seeing her any longer. I doubt you'll be hearing her perspective on anything contained here within. It truly is the end of an era.

For all of you asking why nobody has been posting here recently, that's the only explanation I can give. Lucy kept suggesting that I get back on the horse, as they say, but my heart just wasn't in it. It would have been lying to say that any other topic was relevant to me. It would have been awkward to say that there wasn't so much going on in the world that I wanted to relate to as much as I wanted to discuss in detail as what was going on in my own heart.

I was recently reading a post on opu.net where the lovely Jewel Staite related how she had been going through the process of a divorce from her husband. What she wanted to get across was the fact she wasn't relating this change in her status to elicit sympathy. On the contrary, she was relating the news in order to convey how, yes, her living conditions had changed and to explain a somewhat noticeable absence from her writing. Such is the same message that I'd like to get across as well. I mean--I've been hurt before. This brand of heartache is a particular favorite of mine. And I don't believe it shall be the last time my sadness shall get the best of me. But I also know that, contrary to what others might think of me, I don't always to devolve into obsessing over the same old troubles I possess. I believe that three or so months to clear my head in private is sufficient enough to have done just that.

I still have lovely praises to shine upon the original Miss Frisson. The time for name-calling and admonishments had quietly passed on like a ship sailing in the night. There will be no incidents. There will be no rants. There will be no tirades against her. What there will be is the unspoken hope that someday hers and my path shall cross someday, and I will leave it at that.

Because as much as I'd like to hold this tear between us against her, I just can't hold that bitterness in me any longer. Not any more.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

On And On And On We Go, Just Like A Carousel That's Lost Control, And We Don't Know Why, We Don't Know Why, We Go And Go And Go In Circles

2011-09-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

--"Carousel", Paper Route

Someone once said that life is bigger than you. I've always envisioned that in some respects I may just have been bigger than it. After all, when you're in the midst of living your life, when you're in the middle of what some would term a successful career, you don't always have the means to slow down and contemplate how there is so much more out there for you. All you know is all you know. You forget to concern yourself with the rest of the world that doesn't involve you in it.

Hell's bells, if there is anything I have a reputation for I reckon it's being someone who holds a spotlight to herself. That's the thing about holding yourself up for all the world to see, you don't always have the wherewithal to see out into the world. I play my part and hold a breath while waiting for the applause. You don't take stock of the audience watching you, except to gauge their reaction. You don't suss out what they're going on in their own life. You don't take the time to worry about their concerns--not like you would for the folks you feel close to. I can honestly see that about myself, how I put the world at large as there to acknowledge me and not vice-versa.

However, it's recently been pointed out to me that I may lead a semi-charmed life where I never really had to depend on other as others had to depend on me. I've always been the caregiver. I've always been the rock. So it's never fallen to me to understand what it's like to have concerns and no one to turn to. I've never had the misfortune to be adrift in this world alone. I've had family and friends at my beck and call whenever I needed to beckon or call.

And that was my life.

But as I've gotten older I've realized that maybe the ride I'm on isn't exactly the only ride in the park, you know? I've been so busy going around the merry-go-round with the same circle of folks riding alongside me that I've never really experienced the novelty of what life has to offer. I imagine I've never really been single, never really been on my own. I lived in my parents' house until I went to college. I started dating my husband my third year at college. There hasn't been a period of life where I've truly roughed it in one place for a lengthy duration. As much as I moan about being independent and being the boss, I reckon I've always surrounded myself with company. You can't be in charge if you have nobody to be in charge of, you know? I don't know what it's like to only be fending for myself without the luxury of somebody to support me at a moment's notice.

The way I see it now, though, is that that's not always going to be the case. There's going to be a point in time where I really need to start living for me and start seeing what else there is to this world. For while I'll always have Greg around and Fanny and Patrick, the days are slowly evolving where I'm not so much in their lives as I used to be. By extension they're not always in my life like they used to be either. Frankly, there are more days where it's just Greg and I home alone than days where somebody's interests come intruding into mine.

While that does make me a bit sad, it's not a sadness that I'm entirely fighting. What use is there in fighting the inevitable? I rather welcome it. It's brought me to the realization that all the time I've spent going back to the well of the familiar and the comfortable I could have spent seeking something new, something novel. The well's always going to be there regardless of how often I drink from it. I say it's high time I start trekking off on my own without the safety of the water nearby. It's time to explore the wilderness of my life and find new sights that might astonish or amaze me. It's time to wander the world and perhaps let a bit more of the world wander into me.

It's time to get off this carousel for a bit and try a new ride.

Breanne

Days Pass And Turn Into Weeks, When We Don't Even Speak, We Just Lay Wide Awake And Pretend We're Asleep

2011-09-06T18:06:00.000-07:00

--"Changing", The Airborne Toxic Event

Mojo,

Please refrain from any speeches of encouragement, or lack thereof. My intention wasn't anything so sinister. My venom has proven short-lived. This strange discomfort that passes for our friendship will pass soon and then these lonesome nights will be over forever. But until we are again made whole I am feeling the loss of what we had every tiny minute of the day and night. Perhaps you may not understand this, but sometimes when I miss you the most, it's the hardest to write to you. It's the hardest to even picture you when the heart wants what it wants that much.

But you knew that. Your perception on what I might profess to be feeling and what I hide away is keenly acute. It's a gift, alas, I do not share with you. You always know when I make myself talk to you, show interest in you, even though my soul might be slowly fading away from the inside out. You know my ache at that moment when it is hardest to tell you at all.

I fear if we were together in person, you'd feel how strong it is. You'd feel its sickly sweetness, its absent melancholy. You might even grow to love the sad tenderness of it all--that is, if you could gloss over the amount of hurt you've caused in your proximity. That's one of the reasons why I could never be sorry for the distance, though they have bothered me a time or two, because they afforded me the space to parse the events of my life in relation to you. The changes I make don't all seem like mistakes when nobody else seems to be watching, I can tell you that much.

Mojo, there's nothing in the world that has the potential to please me as much as you--but I acquiesce to your point. Potential is not actuality. The guarantees which accompany life are slim, and grow slimmer by the minute. I just feel that all the material things of this world are nothing. I would just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence because that would only cause you to love me less. And less. And I'd do anything to keep your respect for me, to keep that potential for your fondness, for my own. I don't want to merely live. I want to love first and live incidentally.

But try not to dwell on the things you cannot in good conscience give me at present. You've trusted me with more of yourself than I sometimes know what to do with. It's so much more than anyone else has deigned to give me. It's so much more than sometimes I feel I am worth. Gosh. Sometimes I feel it's infinitely easier to think of myself outside of life than to think of me in it. I often wonder if people have attempted to deliberately think of life without me. And then I think of people like you and all the rest of my friends who I know would feel the void my absence would leave behind.

That gives me the hope to soldier through the adversity of my current days. That gives me the courage to go on placing this brave smile on my face when all the while my spirit gently weeps for the boy who cannot ever possibly love me back.

All my heart,

Toby

You See I've Forgotten If They're Green Or They're Blue, Anyway, The Thing Is What I Really Mean, Yours Are The Swetest Eyes I've Ever Seen

2011-09-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

--"Your Song", Elton John

Seventh anniversary and you don't think I was going to come back for this?

Dear Toby,

I know it's been awhile. And for awhile there I wasn't sure I was going to come back. We both needed a break from each other. While I don't know if two months is quite the respite that the situation calls for I know that the wait has seemed like forever. I don't know if you feel any better about me or if this just seems like a pathetic attempt to weasel my way back into your good graces, but it is what it is. I've never feigned being okay just for appearance's sake and I've never kept silent when I felt like I had important thoughts to convey.

My message to you is simple. You can't say I don't miss you or I don't care. I do care. A lot. I don't know how to make that any more clearer to you without speaking to you in person. You don't seem to want to hear it on the phone. You say it's not appropriate to have this discussion with you through e-mail. So this is the only respite I have. And maybe that's the problem we seem to be facing. Despite everything, you're finding out the hard truth that Breanne and I ran into a long time ago. Sometimes me being over here and you being over there isn't the best of situations. It's not really conducive to building anything substantial. I believe you're running into the wall where you realize that the time together truly is miniscule compared to the time apart we'll have. It's sad. It's also true.

When you told me you love me I was flattered. I don't often have that said to me. Every opportunity to receive that particular ego boost is a welcome boon. I can tell by your inflection that you truly meant it. And when I said it back to you I know I meant it. The problem lies where the definition of love falls for both of us. I love you like a niece or a good friend, or maybe someone I flirt with but never quite get serious with. I don't know--somewhere in the back of my mind I just never pictured us being serious someday. Maybe Breanne spoiled me or I'm just exhausted at the effort it would entail to give you what you want. I just know that in my current mindset I don't look upon us as a couple. And when you say you love me I can hear the romance in the catch of your throat because, believe me, I've been there too. I know what it's like to hope that all the snags and tears will work themselves out. I know what it's like to believe that love can conquer all. And I know what it's like to be let down when you find out it cannot. I've been down those roads too.

I'm not saying this to hurt you.

I'm not saying this to be cruel.

The last thing I'd want to do is drive you away, Toby. I care about you in a way that I don't know how to describe to you. I think you're smart. I think you're beautiful. I think you're talented. And I think you get me in a way few others really do get me. There's a big part of me that would like nothing better to fall madly, deeply in love with you and make all your dreams come true. But short of you coming to California permanently or me winning the lotto and have the money to just shuttle back and forth from the midwest I don't see us happening. I'm set in my ways. And that means I don't want to move unless it's a sure thing. And, fuck, if it wasn't a sure thing with Lucy then you can only imagine how I see our chances together.

You told me once that you don't get how I can get so enamored of people who lived so far away from. You didn't understand how smitten I can become about somebody I didn't really hang out with all the time. Well, now you know, because it's happened to you. For my part, it was easy to get wrapped up in you with your winning smile, your cautious outlook on life, and your eye for beauty in the simplest acts and sights. It was easy to just lose myself in your one-of-a-kind perspective on life. And, yeah, fooling around with you on my last trip kind of sealed the deal on what I suspected about my feelings for you. But I never meant to lead you on or give you false ideas about where I saw us headed. I just liked being in your company. Very often I don't know where to draw the line between keeping things safe and keeping things headed down a course that will lead to heartache and tears. I wanted to love you. I still do. But something tells me that, yet again, you're quite like me and aren't looking for the casual relationship I seemed to have been offering you. Something tells me, that like me, you've placed far too much stock in how we are "here" on-line, across the country, as to how we'll be in "reality". And I just don't know how good I've ever been able to translate taking that connection from phone calls and texts to the holding hand and kissing bits. It doesn't always work out. And there's a reason why most cases are the exception to the rule and not the rule itself.

I'm just sorry you had to go to Breanne about this, visit her down in Macon, instead of coming to me. I'm just sorry that I had to hear about it secondhand instead of you personally. And I'm just sorry it lead to what was a difficult time for this site. This site's supposed to be about our personal life; our personal lives aren't supposed to lead to the site being on hiatus because certain people can't seem to get along. You don't want that, right? And I certainly don't want that. If anything, it should have lead to further discussion here and not less.

As aforementioned I'm not looking to hurt your feelings. I really do love you and I do care what you feel for me. But you're a big girl now, Toby, and I want to treat you as such. Sulking and blockading yourself off from me isn't the way we solve our problems. And threatening to give up on me doesn't feel so much like an ultimatum to me as you being kind of bratty. I'm glad you're finally heeding my advice and letting yourself show a little more of what's going on inside. That's a good thing. But having feelings is one thing, how you act upon is the true content of your character. Frankly, I don't want to be the reason you're unhappy. But I'm also not going to be the way who smoothes everything over by myself. Reconciliation between any two people requires participation from both parties. The only reason you don't want to engage me in a dialogue is if reconciliation isn't your ultimate goal. And I really hope that isn't true.

Despite what you may think of me, I don't want to lose you. Not at all.

I would miss those eyes. And I would miss that smile too much.

You're important to me, Marion. You're important to me in so many ways, the least of which is you're the one person I can come to about Breanne when I don't want to come to Breanne about her. You've always been the outlet for some of the darker feelings I've had about my family and friends. I mean--Breanne is great in a lot of ways--but you and I share that succinct gift for wanting to be left alone some of the time. She doesn't understand that mentality like we do. Not only that, but you're the one person I can come to about understanding what it's like to live in a world where nobody watches over you when you make mistakes, where no higher power is watching over us to make everything better. You get my feeling of isolation. You know what that's like.

You're important to me, Toby. You fill my days with the idea that I can still matter to someone so much that it hurts. I mean--with my family, with all my old friends, their love is a given. But with you, with us having met only recently comparatively, it still warms my heart that I can induce such grandiose feelings in someone new. It makes me feel like I've still got it. That I've still got the mojo working--so to speak. You love me in a way that's pure and youthful and exciting, and who doesn't want that in their life?

You're important to me, Toby, in all the ways that I should tell you about everyday. I know I forget to do that sometimes. It's easy to grow complacent when you believe that certain people will stay in your life through the long haul. But if telling you that you're easily one of my most favorite people on the planet, easily one of my most beloved treasures, gets you to stick around then that's what I want to tell you, little Marion. I want to tell you that because it's the truth and because I believe it, and not just because I'm scared of you leaving me like so many others. I want to tell you that because I want you to know everything I'm feeling about--both the good and the bad. I want you to know that because, even now, I still harbor no ill will towards you.

I want you to know that because I love you. And I miss those eyes.

Whether they're more green or blue today. LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Who Are You To Tell Me It'll Always Be This Way, I Close My Eyes And I Turn Around, And Leave It All Behind

2011-07-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

--"Free", Martinis

While I was watching the new miniseries Torchwood: Miracle Day I was struck with thoughts of my own mortality. For those of you who don't know, the miniseries posits what would happen in a world where people suddenly stopped dying. It doesn't matter how grotesque the accident--one individual gets skewered by several pipes--or how terminal the disease, people all over the world lose the ability to die. At first everyone believes it a blessing. However, eventually people start figuring out the dire implications. Everyday fifty thousand people die. If that process suddenly stops, then the world grows another 1.5 million every month--not to mention with more people, the more babies are born. Food and water supplies wouldn't be able to handle the surge.

What I also liked about the show was the other implications it had. If fetuses are unable to be aborted, then what does that do to the abortion debate? And if everyone is immortal, but not free from pain, then who decides who gets what medicine--especially when everyone can afford it? And if no one can die, then how do you curb violent crimes? All these issues were brought up in the pilot episode and I for one am eagerly anticipating what else the show has to offer in terms of moral dilemmas.

----

Yet it wasn't merely these mundane thoughts that stirred within me. I also began to think how such a bending of the natural order of things would affect me. Folks always talk about what they would do with the rest of their lives if they couldn't die. What risks would they take? People think being immortal would embolden them. I suppose in the short run I might feel the same way. I probably would finally take that plunge from a plane that I never said I would do. Or possibly I might attempt a fire walk that people say is invigorating. In the short run I probably would slap death in the face with a smile.

However, in the long run I think it's the fear of death that emboldens people more. When you have all the time in the world you never truly want to get around doing anything. That's at least how I operate. I need the ticking clock to push me into action. I need a deadline to make my effort mean something. Devoid of that everything would seem like busywork--a lot of nonsense that ultimately doesn't accomplish much. And I, for one, cannot abide the concept of putting effort into a project if it ultimately proves meaningless. Especially for me, I need the idea that time is running out for me to make everything I do seem important. I only have a certain amount of days left, which makes the projects I pursue take on added significance. Not merely because I choose to do it, but because I choose to do it at the expense of everything else I plan to do.

I especially began to think of the idea of mortality as motivator in regards to people who die young. People like my friend Jennifer, who barely made it into her twenties, manage to accomplish more in their short years on this planet than people who reach their sixties, seventies, or eighties. They just have that impetus to accomplish all they can before they perish, whereas everybody who has that invincible mentality tend to rest on their routines. Jennifer managed to write out four volumes of her thoughts in her last three months of life. That's more than I could do in fourteen years. I mean--my novel is only at 156 pages and I started that in 2004. If you stack those four volumes together it would measure at some two thousand pages. That's more words put together than everything I have ever written fiction-wise. Not only that, but she managed to read every single book on her must-read list. I'm not even an eighth of the way through.

I just don't see that happening if she didn't feel like her time was running out.

And I just don't see me reaching my potential without the notion that I've squandered the first thirty years of my life and that's it about time I utilize the next thirty. Live forever? That just sounds like a life spent in ennui, wandering from place to place because every place and every act has lost all significance. More than starvation, more than overcrowdedness, even more than rampant violence, I would hate to live in a world where nothing matters because everything becomes a zero-sum game. I want every choice I make to leave an impact. I want to know what I do will be remembered because I will only be on this Earth for a short time comparatively. I want to know I'm free to live my life as I choose... and not consigned to merely existing without the aid of a purpose or the context of meaning.

I want to be free to die, knowing I left my mark with the opportunity provided me.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Oh, Please Don't Drop Me Home, Because It's Not My Home, It's Their Home, And I'm Welcome No More

2011-07-06T23:59:00.001-07:00

--"There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (cover)", The Dum Dum Girls

More than a few years back I wrote a poem called "Arcady" about a couple visiting this pristine beach and having their first, best romantic encounter there. Then, many years after the woman of the piece has died, the man returns to the beach to find the beach a mere shadow of its former self. When I wrote the piece I hadn't experience the phenomenon myself. I thought it was a neat conceit that I had seen done before in other works of literature and wished to try my hand at it. I had never experienced that sense of loss. I had never gone through that questioning of my memory. The whole exercise was purely conjectural.

I'm a romantic idealist; that's been said before. Therefore, before I could have very easily seen myself experiencing the same range of emotions as the narrator of the piece given the circumstances. I would dearly miss a beloved place if it all fell to ruin just as I would miss a beloved person should they slowly succumb to illness.

----

This past weekend I went to Chicago for the second time in my life. I went with my friend Cara to see The Elected to play there. The last time I was in Chicago was in 2007. The last time I was in Chicago I was complicit in the act of adultery being committed. The last time I was in Chicago it completely felt like I was running away from real life and running towards a dream that I knew I would have to wake up from. The last time I was in Chicago I left practically in tears because there was an immense sadness that had filled in my heart.

It was also some of the best six days of my life.

Going back, I was let down from the get-go. There was no anticipation, no feeling of impending joy. What I felt instead was the sense that no experience was ever going to match that of the original journey. I mean--like the poem says, when you've already been to Paradise and been forced to leave, what really is the purpose of going back? What you had there will never be had again. What you felt there is something that's been locked away in your heart and going back isn't going to pull that feeling out. It was like walking through the pictures of a former dream devoid of all sense of motion and emotion. I just couldn't put myself into a place where I could see this trip as being something separate from the original trip.

I know that doesn't say a lot of my powers of separating memory from real life. But sometimes I think my memories are the world I really want to live in and real life just the time in-between my moments when I'm back there again. Chicago this past weekend is not the Chicago I want to remember. It was just a postcard sent from the real thing.

No, the real Chicago will always be the one where I was happy four years ago and that's the place I long to go back to someday.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Even In Dreams I Could Not Betray You

2011-06-30T03:41:00.000-07:00

--"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

2011-06-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

--"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

2011-06-15T00:37:00.000-07:00

--"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

2011-06-14T01:58:00.001-07:00

--"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

2011-06-08T04:13:00.000-07:00

--"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

I Feel Too Young, I Can't Lie On My Bed Without Thinking I Was Wrong, But When This Feeling Calls This World Becomes Another

2011-05-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

--"Too Young", Phoenix

It's not secret that I was an admirer of Garden State when it came out. I felt I could relate to the issues brought up in the story seeing as the characters were about the same age as me at the time. I also went on in length how I thought Natalie Portman's character was the end-all be-all of greatest film girlfriends. To me, at the time, it was the perfect movie and one I believed I would hold in high esteem for a long time coming.

Lost in translation (ha) from then till now is how other movies I saw during the same approximate period I thought were good, but weren't going be pieces I would consider watching over and over again. In simpler terms, I thought Garden State would become one of my all-time classics and the rest of them would fade into obscurity. Included among these other films was a little film called Lost in Translation. At the time I thought it was good, but not great. I thought it was entertaining, dramatic at points, but ultimately something I didn't believe I could endure watching time and time again. The characters felt too distant from what I was going through. Yes, I felt isolated and lonely like them--but their sense of the feeling and how they handled it seemed miles away from my experience. The whole story just felt like it could never happen to me in that fashion. That's why I wrote it off. That's why I didn't think I'd be talking about eight years later.

I was watching Lost in Translation yesterday--well, a piece of it. It was probably the twentieth time I've seen it since that first time I saw it in the theaters. I'm here to admit that it still holds up. I still feel just as moved as I did that first time. Meanwhile, I can't even remember the last time I wanted to see Garden State. It's not that I believe it suddenly transformed into a bad movie. It's merely that all the problems that I thought I could relate to in that film seem beneath me, behind me. They all seem like concerns that I had in my twenties, my post-college days. Now it's like those kinds of questions never creep into my head, whereas the sense of being adrift in a sea of people like Bob and Charlotte never quite goes away and never is a problem anyone else has ever come up with a lasting solution to. I'm afraid to admit it, but I identify more with the sense of being held in place by life than life dealing you a bum hand. For me it's a much worse fate to be stuck in the middle than have your life seem to be all bad luck.

Maybe it's a sign I'm getting older, that bad news would almost seem preferable to no news. But I'm thinking why I seem so hung-up on Lost in Translation and not Garden State is that you can't always predict who or what can fill your heart. The people and experiences you hope will complete you are often the ones that fall considerably short. Meanwhile, the people and experience you never meant to let in, the ones you were sure weren't built to last often surprise you.

That's kind of like the movie too. Life isn't about planning who you're going to find comfort in, it's about finding comfort in the person you just happen to stumble upon. You can't predict human kindness, you can't plot emotional connections. It's kind of like Toby always says. Don't postpone joy. If you find it or if it finds you, just run with it. Don't hold out for something better. Take comfort in who or what you can when you can.

Because sometimes it's the movie you liked, but didn't love, at first can turn out to be the one that stays with you for your whole life. And sometimes the person you found annoying and clingy can turn out to be someone you still find annoying and clingy (but in a good way) some eighteen years later.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Ooh, I Lost My Sense Of Passion And Direction, To Protect Myself From Hurting And Despair, Listen To My Heart, My Soul Is Aching

2011-05-19T00:34:00.000-07:00

--"Heart of Stone", Erasure

There comes that moment where your heart is all aflutter and you convince yourself that the person you're sitting next to could be the one. At least that's the way it is with me. I exchange words, trade meaningful glances, and hope that my best is good enough to convince the person looking back at me that I'm worth keeping in their life. And when the night ends I'm left with the idea that I've done the impossible, that I've managed to secure a foothold in their life.

I'm a romantic idealist. It's in my nature to believe that a universal truth like love does exist, that it is attainable. That's why whenever the spark of hope is seen I almost always immediately try fanning it into the flames of passion. I'm complicit in my own bid for failure. I raise the stakes when the game at hand, at first, is friendly. I invest meaning into every moment, lacing every word and every gesture with hidden depths and subtle nuances that probably were never there in the first place. Every time her arm brushes against mine, every couple of seconds her eyes spend looking into mine, I take as a sign that the road I'm taking is headed in the right direction. I believe because I want to believe and not because there's actually something there to believe in. I take solace in her smile because I can imagine myself seeing that smile every morning for the rest of my life.

Yet eventually I know what comes next. I expect the cold wind that blows the clouds over my sunshine. I start analyzing all the same telltale signs of true love's embrace. But now I start to divest the meaning from the motion. I willingly remove the veil of magic and mystery from the situation. I don't want to get my hopes up. I don't want to set myself up for that fall. The touches suddenly become accidental. The words suddenly are just words without an inch of subtext. The looks aren't aimed at me, but through me or around me. I'm just the person she's standing next to and not the person she's there with.

About the only quality that doesn't change is my view of her. I know she's worth all the extra analysis. I know she's worth it. The way she can fill me with such hope and such dread allows me such certainty. With most I'm used to not making an impression. That's pretty much standard fare for me. But with her I want to say some part of her will remember me. I want to say that five years from now, ten years from now introductions I won't have to be made again. She'll know my face, the way my eyes will still gently lay upon her, and my name will instantly spring to her lips. We may not end up tethered in this life or the next, but I'm confident there was a connection made that wasn't just ephemeral. More importantly, I know she made an impression on me, which, these days, is even more rare of occurrence. For a small part of my life I allowed some new light in through the shutters.

That's what I was thinking on my drive. I think I even set a record on how fast I went from the first part to the second part. I don't know if that's a sign of maturity or a sign of surrender.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Take Me Out Tonight, Because I Want To See People, And I Want To See Life

2011-05-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

--"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out (cover)", The Ocean Blue

Dear Emily,

You can't regret the way a relationship ended nor wish things had gone differently. I've found that relationships are what they are, from start to finish. The only thing you can do is accept them for everything they meant to you, good or bad, and try to learn from them so the next one goes a little bit smoother. I know you were trying to help him, but sometimes I think people do themselves a disservice when they resume contact with their exes too soon. You know me, I'm a huge believer in maintaining some distance with somebody you've broken up with recently to evaluate where the two of you stand and where the two of you can go from there. For some of us, like you, the need to mother somebody overrides the basic idea that the two of you didn't work out for a reason. That reason doesn't disappear simply because you feel needed.

Sometimes you can't pull out of the spiral until it's too late and no amount of assistance is going to change the point when you pull yourself out. I think he's just that kind of person who'll accept help even if, in the end, that help doesn't really change anything for him. The only way to get yourself out of funk is, like it or not, to physically crawl your way out of it. You can't be dragged, you can't be pushed, and you certainly can't have your hand held while somebody gently dries you off. It isn't a cake walk leading a happy life. It isn't supposed to be easy getting some or all of what you want. You're going to fall. The best thing you can do is not drag somebody down with you... or, in some people's case, is not to let other people drag you down with them.

The sad thing is I know exactly what you mean about all you want is someone to curl up next to and tell them how your day want. That's what I want too. I've never been the type to sleep with dozens of women. I've only slept with four girls... and two of those were only once or twice. The other two were people I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life. That's what made those times special. Frankly, I always thought the part afterwards, the part where the two of you are all sweaty from making love and just fall asleep in each other's embrace was the better part of the night. There's a comfort there that just barely edges out the excitement and earth-shattering passion of sex. Give me a night of just getting lost in another person's quiet caress as you rest next to each other over a whole night of unbridled fucking any time.

I want the meatloaf and potatoes too. I want the girl next door as opposed to the girl from the clubs or the bars. I want the suburban mom over the big city fashionista. I want the quiet, simple life over the stress of a high maintenance existence. I want to be in my routine already and not struggling to figure out what comes next.

I guess I'm lucky in that regard compared to you. I may have lost my one best chance at finding that perfect wife, but I never did lose my best friend. I made sure that even when she got married we didn't drift apart. I made sure that I didn't let my feelings of being hurt and abandoned by her cloud my judgment in what a truly good thing I have with her. And, for her part, she didn't let her stupid husband dictate to her who she can and cannot still be friends with. There isn't a day I don't miss what I once had with her, how intimate and romantic and just darling we used to be with one another. But that's just the ex-boyfriend talking. The part that's still her best friend hasn't gone more than eight months without her company and doesn't plan on fucking that any time soon.

I know what it's like to lose her already. There is nothing--no fight, no difference of opinion, no request--too big to lose sight of what losing her forever would mean. And, frankly, I'm too much of a coward to find out. There's a lot of people who've told me that it's unhealthy to put so much stock into one person. That it's unhealthy to treat her like she's my best friend and my little sister wrapped up into one... but that's exactly like she feels to me, like she's both my one true friend and family at the same time. There's people that have told her that it's unhealthy to keep in touch with me as much as she does, given our history and given she's nine years into her marriage almost. I don't know--we just make it work--because we made a promise to make it work and we both put in the extra effort to see that it does.

Yeah, that brings its own set of problems. For instance, I don't know if I'll ever be able to really fall in love with someone again. I mean--I dated DeAnn for three years and lived with her for one. I kept running into the problem that whatever was lacking in our relationship I could always find in Breanne. I kept running into the concern that on the days when putting up with the gal I was with was too difficult I always had a place to run to with the gal I used to be. Maybe that's not a good thing, to have an easy, dependable way out of dealing with problems that truly needed dealing with. BUt that's my life. She's my crutch. And even if for some reason I could ever want to walk on my own, it's gotten to the point where I think I've forgotten how. It's gotten to the point where I think I would cease to function properly if I didn't know I could call her if I was in trouble or lonely or just feeling out of it on any particular given day. It's gotten to the point where I don't actively look to date people because I get a lot of the comforting and care I need from a gal who lives thousands of miles away from me. And perhaps it's not all I want or deserve... but it's enough for me to live on. She's like my bread and water, when I know there could be real food and drink out there somewhere but I'm just too scared to spend all the days it would take to search for it.

And I know what you mean about Taylor. Jennifer was my Taylor. I didn't know her as long as you knew Taylor, but she made an impact on my life in the brief time that I knew her. She was just good. Not just a good person. She was like goodness personified. I never had a bad day with her. I never had a huge fight with her that I can remember. I never saw myself being annoyed she was my friend even for a second.

I lose friends so quickly. Technically, I give up on friends so quickly. It doesn't take much for me to give them up when they do the littlest thing to annoy me. I stopped being friends with everyone in my elementary school after I went to high school even though they all lived in the same town as me because I didn't want to make the effort to stay in touch with them. I lost my high school friends because I refused to adapt to the way they had grown up. To me their mature interests was not what I had signed up for and I felt like they never wanted to do anything I liked. They wanted to go snowboarding, when all I ever wanted to do was stay at home and play games like we used to. They wanted to go to strip clubs, and I just wanted to go find some place to eat and talk over dinner. They wanted to be different people and I just wanted to be the same person I was and always have been. They just made me feel stupid for staying the same or for having simpler tastes or for liking quieter, more subdued hobbies. But there were others I quit out on for stupid reasons. I quit on Heidi because she wrote bad letters (true story). I quit on Ilessa, for a time, because she moved away from me. I don't know--I've always taken it hard when people move away from me. If you've always lived far from me, that's fine. But if you're a nearby friend, well, then you should stay a nearby friend. I don't know how to make the conversion from one to the other. On the other hand, I would have loved to have one of my faraway friends like B. or Toby just move somewhere close to me. Just once I want to see somebody I'm friends with move to California.

And, I know when a girl's been crying because I always seem to be the person girls come to when they're feeling hurt or alone or scared. I never joke when it comes to a girl crying. I don't have that mechanism where I deflect the tension with humor. When I see a girl crying I want to know what's wrong. I want to know what I can do to help. I want to know how to make it better as soon as possible. I wasn't raised that way. I wasn't taught that. It's just a peculiarity of mine that a girl is downright beautiful when she's crying... and yet I hate to see beautiful things hurt.

there is a light that never goes out

I hope you find happiness soon, Slicks. You do deserve it. We all deserve it. We're all good people and, you're right, good things should happen to good people. I think what it is is it's a simple fact that we all have to go through the rough times before we're ready for the better times. We have to go through the heartache and the loneliness and the yelling, before we know how to smile again. Sometimes we have to experience colder weather to appreciate the sunshine as much as we should.

Hold in there, the sun will come out tomorrow, Slicks. I promise.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Everyone Showed You Where To Turn, Told You When To Runaway, Nobody Told You Where To Hide, Nobody Told You What To Say

2011-05-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

--"Blurry", Puddle of Mudd

Horse

I have never ridden the horse
much like I have never drunk from
the dirty glass. Such bravery
I have never possessed in its entirety.
I have heard you can speak to him
in whispers; becalm him by
conversing in his tongue.
It's sensible since I am insisting
he bear my weight without sass
or inquiries. But it isn't presumption
that prevents my mounting his
dappled back immediately.
I believe I was given dominion over
the beasts of the earth and sky and waves.
It's the simple fear that the horse,
like the rider, doesn't know where
it belongs and the simple fear
that I could be carried away by him
indefinitely.

dw

----

I prefer plans. I prefer planning. When you leave too much to chance, then the chances can you spin you wily-nilly wherever they want. They do in my case, I can tell you that much. If I had my way I would schedule out my next ten years, day by day, rather than leave the majority of my time to something I can see. It's the same way with my obsessions. I'm not a huge proponent of fighting against an enemy I can't see. Dirt, destiny--they're expressions of the same enemy. The unknown. I'm not looking forward to the big nothing. People always tell me that the outcome isn't set in stone, that the future might be bright if I just roll the dice. But brightness isn't necessarily a good thing. Brightness can blind you. Brightness can kill you given the chance. Gosh. I'd much prefer some light to see my way by. I'd rather be able to walk along at my own pace than feel like I have to rush headlong into the breach. That's why I don't see myself pushing myself to the edges just because I can. I'm not courageous for courage's sake. Push me and I'll fight back. Chase me and I'll run. But there's no need to test my capabilities when my capabilities aren't being tested. I firmly believe. Accept what you have. Accept where you're going. The only time you should deviate is if it's unhealthy or unlikely you can be happy in your present position or at your current pace. There's nothing we can't survive. There's nowhere we can't thrive. But if you give up too quickly, if you turn your focus too swiftly to that of hoping and praying, there's no way of knowing how much your self-will can overcome. That's what I say, focus on the present and don't hitch your horse to a better future. Fight for your better present. Leaving the hoping to those truly without hope.

dw

I Wouldn't If I Were You, I Know What She Can Do, She's Deadly, Man, And She Could Really Rip Your World Apart

2011-05-10T04:28:00.000-07:00

--"Maneater", Hall & Oates

I love my cousin Katie like she was my own sister. I've felt like that for quite some time, ever since I came to the realization that the relation I thought would be there for me wasn't as loyal as she feigned to be. I've known her all my life. In that time I've come to learn a few things about her. For instance, I know how embarrassed she gets when she's put on the spot. I know how she still kisses your hand when she's especially grateful, the way they do in the movies. And I know--I just know--that Katie's always been upfront with me, "as open as a highway in the dead of night," and I've felt it's my duty to be as honest with her.

There was a time, though, where holding up to that duty wasn't exactly easy. A few years back she was completely smitten with a boy that seemed the perfect gentleman. He seemed to dote on her, say all the right things and did his best to be thoughtful of her every need. He palled around with all her friends. He was affectionate, kind, and funny when he was around her. And when he met with her kin (including me) he was especially charming. To the right kind of eyes he seemed the perfect gentleman. As things go in our family, it wasn't very long before talk of marriage had spread through the phone tree like wildfire. Most of it was prompted by Katie herself, but some of it was fanned by my mother, bless her little heart, as well as the other matriarchs of the extended family.

Most of us gals knew we wanted to get married young. Hell's bells, I got married right out of college so I suppose part of the blame can be laid at my feet as well. Katie was no different. It was a game she couldn't win. She felt the pressure to find that right person as soon as possible and, to be kind, it really did seem like she had found the tree that bore the golden fruit on her first foray into the woods.

The trouble was all was not it appeared to be with Katie's beau. The more he came to call on her while she was with her family, the more most of us saw through the chinks in his armor. He was presumptuous, taking liberties with our hospitality in ways most boys saw occasion to be more well-reserved. He would give his opinion on personal matters that he did not have the whole truth about to people as varied as Katie's dad, my cousins. Even my daddy was no stranger to getting an earful of his "honest opinion." It's one thing to chime in now and again to participate in the conversation, but Katie's beau would full-on dominate the proceedings as if he were the expert we all were in desperate need of. He was clingy with her to the point of distraction. There would be times where I would want to take my favorite cousin out for dinner or drinks, only to be rebuffed at the last minute with the weak excuse of him "needing" her right then. Granted, I expected most of her time to be spent in his company. That's to be expected with any relationship. I wasn't asking her to give up any more of her time than she was willing to give to me. But there came a point where his sudden need for her managed to coincide with my plans with her without fail. He started to look like the petulant boy who raises a fuss to keep all the attention on him at the exclusion of everyone else around him. Worst of all, he seemed to be settling her down in all the worst ways. She became more reserved, more timid, and more apologetic. Granted, Katie's always been shy and respectful. But she's also always had a fire that's common in the women of our extended brood.

The truth was the more she was around him the more that fire seemed to be less and less brightly.

We all came to the conclusion around the same time, all the cousins, all the aunts and uncles, everyone... except Katie and her parents. On the outside we all were hugs and smiles at the prospect of her settling down with a husband. On the inside, though, it seemed nothing but a mistake. She might have found her life with him content and pleasant, but I knew she was never going to be happy. She would never find the bliss of true love with a boy whose only thought was to keeping himself happy.

I know what it's like to get married earlier than you need to. While I wouldn't go so far as to say I married the wrong man, I could say now that if I had to do it over again I would have waited another few years to make sure. I wouldn't have allowed the idea of being married to outweigh the considerations that a successful marriage requires. I jumped in whole-hog, as I'm wont to do, because I'd been convinced that once you've found the right guy and he asks you that you don't keep him waiting. I didn't take as much time with the decision as I should have.

I didn't want to see Katie fall off the same horse.

The problem was how to tell somebody I loved deeply that she deserved better than what she buying into. There's no easy way to damn that river, even if you have the best intentions. Not one of us--not my folks, not my cousins, not my aunts or uncles--wanted to be the person who threw the first stone. We all knew whoever made the first move to straightening her out would receive the lion's share of the scrutiny. It wouldn't matter that the rest of us agreed. It wouldn't even matter if she eventually came around to our line of thinking. Whoever said the first word would be branded as the instigator of her heartache and loneliness. That was one title I didn't want to be bestowed on me. I liked my cousin. More importantly, she liked me, you know? I wanted to insure that things stayed that way for as long as possible.

Yet in time I began to see that the only gal who could deliver the blow was little 'ole me. No one else was close enough or understood the situation for all its particulars like I did. If someone was to be the scapegoat I had the requisite stubbornness to pull off the transformation convincingly. That's what I did. I took her to lunch one day. There, I told her in no uncertain terms that I didn't like her boyfriend and that the rest of the family didn't approve as well. I told her, "sugar, I'm not telling you what to do, mostly because I know how well that works on me. I'm only saying you should consider the facts that so many of your kin disapprove. We all can't be wrong, you know?" She was stunned. To her it seemed like my proclamation was a complete turnaround from my previous position on the matter. I had turned my back on her and her happiness, which couldn't have been farther from the truth. If anything, it was entirely her happiness I was considering. It took her a few moments to compose herself. When she did she kindly thanked me for my opinion and then walked out of the restaurant one short tiptoe away from tears.

When I caught up to her at her car she'd already taken a dozen steps over that line. I hugged her from behind before she could drive away. I didn't let go as much as asked to be released. I didn't let go as much as she struggled against me. When she finally calmed down sufficiently I told her what I should have said in the restaurant.

"Look, Katydon't, you know I love you. There's no one in my family I love more than you except my folks. Whatever your decision--not just in this marriage--I'll support you. I'll support you till the day I die. So if you can tell me that this is what you truly want, that he's truly what you want, then I won't say another word. And on your wedding day, when I see you up there with my future cousin-in-law you won't see a bigger smile than mine. And when I walk up to you to congratulate the two of you you won't hear a louder voice than mine. Your happiness will be my happiness.

"I just want to see you happy. That's all that matters to me."

With that I let her go. I watched her drive away unsure as to what my little 'ole speech's effect on her was. It would be almost thirty-six hours later that I would receive a phone call from her, telling me she had decided a few things with her beau. These few things, she would explain to me, would involve ironing out how she saw their future together and the steps he needed to take to make that future happen. She would also explain to me how calm he seemed and how reassuring his voice sounded... a little too calm and a little too reassuring, she would tell me.

A week later they were broken up and she was devastated, to say the least. I felt every bit the instigator and every bit the scapegoat. I only hoped that had enough room in her broken little heart to forgive me. Aside from that fear, though, I had confidence that what I had said was right in its clarity. I didn't mince words. I told her exactly what I felt and the reasons I felt them. I didn't sugarcoat that I had a strong dislike for him or my opinion that she was far too good for him. Never once did the notion that I was being overprotective of my faux-sister enter my thoughts. My only thought was how she was my blood and that meant something to me in a way that those who don't come from a close-knit family can't ever understand. It wasn't that I wanted to interfere with my cousin's life, or that I wanted to take over running it. The only thing I wanted, the only thing I've ever wanted for her, was that she have a full, healthy life where she ultimately finds happiness and never lets go of it.

When people say they had to be cruel in order to be kind it's usually an excuse for their own inherent venom. When I had to be cruel to be kind, however, I went into with a heavy heart. Sometimes I reckon that's the only difference between thinking of yourself as wicked and being truly wicked. When you're wicked you do things devoid of personal investment. When you're only pretending to be you feel each and every tear right along with them, you hurt just as much as they do, and you die just as much as they do.

Killing Katie's dream in order that she may find another one to fulfill was probably one of the hardest tasks I've ever been asked to undertake. But I don't regret doing it. Not one inch. Not for even one second.

Breanne

And I Wonder, When I Sing Along With You, If Everything Could Ever Feel This Real Forever, If Anything Could Ever Be This Good Again

2011-05-05T00:40:00.000-07:00

--"Everlong", Foo Fighters

I have a toothache right now. I can't remember the last time I had one of those. For all my life I've never had a problem with my teeth, except for when my wisdom teeth were growing in impacted. Aside from that, I haven't had one cavity, one root canal, one sign of trouble that required any special attention on the part of my dentist.

Therein lies the problem. I'm a person who grows complacent easy. I'm easily deluded into believing that just because things are going good now that they will continue to do so ad infinitum. That's the reason I haven't been to see a dentist in almost six years. It isn't because I don't believe in preventative care--which I kind of do. It more has to do with the fact that I have a gods complex when it comes to messing around with a good thing. When I'm on a roll I'm very hesitant to do anything to mess with the streak of good fortune. Ever since 2005 I haven't had one problem with my teeth till now. During that time I really did think I was invincible, that possibly I wouldn't have to go the dentist ever again in my life.

I don't know if it's the smart bet to have taken, but it's the route I almost always seem to take. That's part of the reason I hold onto my favorites for so long. It's easier to place my faith in old standbys than risk being hurt by something new. It's easier to rely on routines than changing direction every so often. It's easier to desperately cling to old friends than put myself out there for new ones. It's easier to not read about what's going on in the world at large than it is to discover that there are serious problems out there that need solving. And, yes, it's easier to let the chips fall where they may when it comes to my health, dental or otherwise, than go out there to get that yearly check-up and discover problems.

Because when it comes down to it, I'm scared of the big bad news. I'd rather put myself in a position where I have no access to new information so as to believe the old information is still true. If I had my way it would still be 1987 and the biggest concern I would have is being thought of as the weird kid at school. I wouldn't have to worry about my body degrading, the people I care about moving further and further away from me, or something so silly as the future. Caring about my teeth, just like caring about any of the other so-called important concerns, just puts me at risk for having to worry about them. If I had my way I wouldn't have to worry about anything at all.

Not my health, not my well-being, not paying for a new condo for the next thirty years. Nothing. I just want everything to be okay and drown out anyone and anything who has the potential to tell me otherwise.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Pick A Star On The Dark Horizon, And Follow The Light, You'll Come Back, When It's Over, No Need To Say Good Bye

2011-05-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

--"The Call", Regina Spektor

While I was watching Michael Scott's final episode on The Office I was reminded of another show having to carry on without its supposed star. Back in 1994 Avonlea aired an episode that was unlike any episode that had come before it. The reason? It failed to feature Sara Stanley, the ostensible main character of the show, at all in any scene of the episode. Back when the show started in 1989 almost every episode was built around her. If she wasn't in the "A" storyline, she at least made the "B" storyline. Back then it was inconceivable to think that she wouldn't even rate a cameo in any episode to come in the show. She felt that integral to the whole fabric of the reality of the show.

After that episode in 1994 it became more prevalent that Sara Stanley wouldn't be seen in stretches of episodes. More and more, it came to feel like the show had less of a central store and more an ensemble of characters who would take center stage in turns. Granted, some shows can function very well in this capacity. However, Avonlea, was always best when it had Sara as its bedrock. Without her, the entire reality felt fractured. It was hard to see where Felicity's travails connected with that of the Lesters, or how Hetty's journey of self-discovery jibed with that of her brother Alec's more mundane trials. Like the books, The Story Girl was the audience's surrogate. It made sense she could see all the stories of the other characters because she was the town's Pollyanna; she ingratiated herself into everyone's company. Thus, it made sense that she'd be present in so many different environments, that she would get into so many scrapes, that she could have these many stories to tell about her, because that was who she was. She literally was the one who the stories were built around and for.

Now some may say that there isn't a show on the air that entirely needs a main star to be successful. There are dozens of cases where shows have carried on with the loss of their main "star". Valerie became The Hogan Family. Diane Chambers left Cheers, Richie left Happy Days, and even 8 Simple Rules carried on when John Ritter died. I'm not saying there aren't instances where losing the major star cannot be overcome.

But sometimes a journey is laid out that calls out for a leader. It isn't so much that this lead figure is anywhere better than the rest of the party. It isn't so much that this lead figure deserves the spotlight any more than the rest. It's just sometimes the journey requires somebody come to the forefront, somebody to take on the responsibility of doing the majority of the heavy lifting. That's what Michael Scott was. That's what Sara Stanley was. Both shows aren't the same after the loss of the person who bore the brunt of the load.

It's just like this website. I know for a fact that my story isn't any more important than yours. I don't write a blog because I feel my life is any more interesting, exciting, or unique than anybody who reads this. Yet, like it or not, this blog simply would cease to function as an entity if I were to leave it. True, Breanne and Toby could carry on for awhile, but the truth is this place has always been more of my home away from home than it has been for them. If I die, if I leave, or if I'm otherwise prevented from writing here I know there would be no recovery. That's why these last few weeks of me fretting about the condo have been stressful. It's taken up the time I normally devote to planning what I write here. Lately, it's felt like I've neglected this site moreso than I have in the past.

And I can't do that to this place. I'm not ready to leave the spotlight just yet. I'm not ready to move on to whatever I'm destined to do next. I'm not about to unravel everything here just yet.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Loving Would Be Easy If Your Colors Were Like My Dreams, Red, Gold, And Green, Red, Gold, And Green

2011-04-28T01:07:00.001-07:00

--"Kharma Chameleon", Culture Club

I have ever been the fan of homages. It seems everything I do in some small part at least honors somebody I know. For a variety of different interests and topics, for whatever reason, I find it simply easier to appropriate people I know or, at the very least, their interests into a lot of what I do.

I believe it started in fourth grade when I created my own calendar--don't ask--and named all the months after my friends. They didn't ask to be included on my little project. I also don't know how honored they were to be included. But it made me feel good to put the people I liked into something I put together. The ball just got rolling from there. Now there's just certain givens when it comes to working on certain projects. For instance, on almost every short story I write now there's a character named Rachel in honor of Rachel Joy Scott, whose story really touched me. This Rachel inevitably turns out to be what I picture the real life Rachel Joy to have been like--honest, caring, sweet. Speaking of which, my new car's middle name, Joy, is because of her too. Another huge source of inspiration is anything Story Girl/Avonlea related. I mean--there's a whole plethora of objects and pieces of writing that had their genesis in the world L.M. Montgomery created. I started a 'zine back in college called Our Magazine simply because that was the name of the literary journal the cousins started in that series of book. I named more than a few characters of mine with the last name Carlisle, which just happens to be the village where King Farm is located. Not to mention--for the longest time I adopted red and blue as my favorite colors simply because everyone--and I mean everyone--either wore blue or red on the show.

That brings me to my main point. I believe the biggest way I honor people is that I tend to adopt certain colors as belonging to certain people. Most of the time it's people's favorite colors or professed favorite colors. Sometimes, though, it's just the color I tend to associate with them most of the time. For instance, I've never met a single other person who has had orange as their favorite color besides Breanne. In that case, orange is just her color simply because no one else will take it. In other cases, I get the sense that a person feels strongly identified with a color like delftwaves' affiliation for blue and white. Because of that I always think of her as belonging to blue. Having established those parameters it was simple for me to design monograms to denote which one of us would be writing that day's post by keying off these color considerations. I myself have had green as a favorite color for years now so that's where my emblem comes in. Yet whenever I take a gander at the orange B or the blue D that begins a post here I get a sense of what to expect right away--moreso than seeing the familiar koala or wave cresting that accompanies the insignias.

It is with that reasoning that I decided to keep a bit of my favorite people with me when I move to my new place. My living room I'm having painted orange to acknowledge a certain someone's contributions to my life. I imagine it to look a little something like this:

My bedroom I'm painting green for me. But my bathroom will be painted blue--well, a bluish teal as my friend Slicks suggested--in commemoration of my other good friend Toby. And I imagine that to look a little like this:

By painting my place these colors it isn't like I believe I'm bringing a part of them into my home. It's more like when I wear my Red Sox gear. When people see the distinctive blue and red hues of my favorite team they immediately know my affiliation as for as baseball teams go. That's all I'm trying to accomplish by doing my walls up the colors that some of my friends have. I want people who know me and know them to realize that they're a part of my life a lot of the time. That's why I'm not painting some far-off corner orange or a closet door blue; I'm painting entire rooms those colors because it's only fitting people know that they're a part of my everyday life, not just my weekend life or whatever folks may think our friendship is like.

Choosing a color for one's place is a bit like choosing who one associates with. In either case, it's safe to say that the choices I've made are choices that have an impact on me for the rest of my life... which doesn't bother me one bit.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Remember The Footsteps, Remember The Words Said & All Your Little Brother's Favorite Songs, I Just Realized Everything I Have Is Someday Gonna Be Gone

2011-04-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

--"Never Grow Up", Taylor Swift

You get up like you do every year on your birthday, the sleep still in your eyes, at 2:13 a.m. The world at large might not know it, but you know it. Today is the first day of you trying out what it's like to be thirty-one. You're raring to go. You shake yourself loose, give a quick check on the cats, peck your husband on the cheek, and head downstairs.

Ever since you turned seven the ritual has always been to get up at 2:13 a.m., a minute before you were born, and just take a few minutes to welcome the new year in. It's something you've always done alone. It's a bit of a tradition, you reckon. To you there's something about welcoming a new year of life alone, like watching the sunrise alone. It gives you the sense that it's yours and yours alone. It doesn't matter who else might be up at this hour. When you prowl down the upstairs hallway and down the stairs it's only you awake in the house. The perception is that little 'ole you is the only one who knows what today feels like you. The perception is you're the first one let in on the surprise, on the secret. You head down to the kitchen where you go to sit at the breakfast table. You want a better view of the world outside on your day. You want to know what the day has in store for you. But, natch, it's two in the morning so the world doesn't let you know very much. You do see some activity--the whir of a neighbor's morning sprinklers, the lights from a good distance down the street of some folks who probably merely forgot to turn them off, the smell of the dew forming on the lawn--but most of the world is asleep, as they should be.

When you were still at your parents you used to perform this routing sitting on your balcony, legs interlaced through the railing. You used to stare out at the horizon, hoping to catch some glimpse of the first morning light. Even then you never saw very much. However, it still felt new and exciting. You knew what day it was and because of that every whisper and spark seemed especially meant for you to notice. Because of that the whole day took on added significance, starting with your first few minutes in it.

You sit at the breakfast table and try to think of all that you have to be thankful for. You're thankful for your husband and your house, your parents, and Patrick. You're thankful for Katie, for Fanny, for Fawn, for Toby, and Torry, wherever she might be. You're thankful for your business, and your car, and Mary and Louie, who didn't even have the decency to follow you downstairs. You're thankful for your morning jogs, your dance lessons, your times with your daddy at all those Braves games, your nights spent scaring your friends with your frightening ghost stories, and all those downright hilarious times you tried your hand karaoke. You're thankful for all those times you ran away and still managed to make it back safe. You're thankful for all those days you woke up in tears and went to sleep laughing the night away. You're thankful for all those times you drank too much, talked too loud, and just plain 'ole made a fool of yourself. You're thankful for all those times you plowed the field frontwards and back, you didn't turn tail, and saw the job done with your own eyes. And you're thankful that you are who you are today. When you think of all the things that could have gone wrong or different, you're amazed everything worked out so flawlessly as it did.

But mostly you're thankful for your faith and belief in God, through whom all things are possible.

You don't know how long you'll sit staring out at the window. You've always just played it by ear when it comes to these middle of the night sojourns, Some years you go straight from these moments of reflection into going for an hour jog. Some years you're up only for ten minutes and then you head back to bed. Today feels sort of in-between. You really don't feel like jogging today, seeing as you've already gone four days straight. Neither do you feel comfortable in returning to the loving arms of your husband. You tell yourself you'll wait a few more moments, when the feeling of anticipation has passed.

You start humming to yourself an old BeeGees tune, "Massachusetts," for no apparent reason other than it was the first song that popped into your head this morning. "And the lights all went down in Massachusetts/The day I left her standing on her own," you hum to yourself. It's somehow appropriate--lights being out and all, and all this talk of being left standing on your own. That's what this ritual is, a time for you to be alone with the idea of your being another year older, before everyone else chimes in. You know what the rest of the day means--your husband cooking you a birthday breakfast like he always does; a nice, long chat with Eeyore about how it feels to be another year older; a visit to your folks in the afternoon; and then usually a dinner out with Greg and some other friends where you usually splurge on the entrees and especially the drinks. But these mornings? These mornings are for you and you alone. You're the only one who ever knows what really goes on during them and you're the only one who knows what the thoughts are that these reflective moments awaken in you. The rest of your birthday is the show, the smiling face for all you know to let them know how special they're making you feel. But the time after 2:13 a.m. till you properly get up with the rest of the world is your turn to remind yourself of how special you truly are.

I could still be little

In the end, you never make it back to bed. Your husband finds you asleep with your head laying tilted on the breakfast table. He gathers you up like a cord of firewood, carries you back upstairs to your bed in your bedroom with orange walls, and tucks you back in. There, the two of you fall asleep once more, till it's his turn to get up without you all so he can make you breakfast in bed. And when he asks you, while you're eating his scrumptuous french toast, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, what you did last night on your "time-out" you answer him like you do every year.

"I honestly can't remember, honey," even though you remember every second of it. After all, you're thirty-one these days, not three-hundred-and-one.

Breanne

You Loved Me 'Cause I'm Fragile, When I Thought That I Was Strong, But You Touch Me For A Little While And All My Fragile Strength Is Gone

2011-04-22T04:34:00.000-07:00

--"Gravity", Sara Bareilles

Silly Toto

the spread of the cards
in my sister's fingers reminded me
of a seashell found on the beach
when I was ten. (I hear the ocean.)
watching them being dealt
was like those times of her counting out
change for me when I needed money
for hot lunch. (I was always hungry.)
the way the cards felt in
my palms was like the back seat
of her car when she would treat
me out for ice cream. ("Smile for a scoop...
you know the rules.")
listening to her tell me that
it's my bet took me back to when she
used to yell at me to get ready for
services at church. (I was never a squirmer.)
seeing her take the last bit
of my meager reserves reminded
me what it was like to be the younger
sister once more. (Silly Toto.)

dw

----

Denial was never my strong suit. I try to never hold myself back or push myself forward. I feel what I feel when I feel it. That's me.

That's not my sister Nora. Where I've always been the quiet, contemplative one and Faye's always been the loud, popular one, Nora's the sweet one. Nora has always been the mothering one, keeping us younger sister in line. Especially to me. Gosh. It's only a wonder why she even took an interest in me at all. I'm not just the younger sister; I'm the youngest sister. I'm almost a full six years younger than her. Yet despite the age difference she always made it her business to make me feel like I mattered to the family. Faye? Faye's more mercurial than all of us so there were times where I uniquely felt that I wasn't welcome in her company. But, Nora? Nora made me feel like I was appreciated even when she was teasing with me, even when she was bickering with me, I can tell you that much.

With her married now I'm beginning to feel like she is fading away from this family and fading into her own more. I know the transition is necessary, natural even. However, I get the distinct impression that it will be a transition that will have an unfortunate ending for me. I know I talk a mean talk about being self-sufficient. I know I've preached about not postponing joy and little gifts in little packages. But even I have a few stumbling blocks when it comes to essential components to my happy life. I don't care what else I lose or gain--I know I need my family within shouting distance. Even if I don't talk to them for weeks or months at a time, I like the security. I'm a survivor. I can put up with a lot and still remain stoic throughout the experience.

What I cannot abide is the notion that my support system will be gone someday. I'm a strong, young woman, capable of persevering when I have to and thriving whenever and wherever possible. But I'm only as strong as the shoulders that have boosted me up this far for this long. Without them, without her and the rest of my beloved, who's to say how powerful my will is after all. That much I cannot tell you.

dw

A Day Might Come And You'll Realize That If You Could See Through My Eyes, There Was No Other Way To Work It Out, And A Part Of You Might Hate Me

2011-04-20T01:08:00.000-07:00

--"Highway 20 Ride", Zac Brown Band

I'm not sure whether it's due to coincidence or to simple personal taste but I don't have a close friend whose parents are either separated or divorced. Sure, I know people who have parents that aren't together, but as far as people who I hang around with normally or people whose parents I've actually gotten to know I don't know a single person from a broken home. Maybe it's coming from a small town way up in the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley as opposed to Los Angeles or even Pasadena, but it just never fell to me to learn about what it's like to be in a family where you spend half of your time with one parent or the other. All my friends lived in one home and had one set of brothers and sisters. That's the norm for me.

Basically, all my information on the experience of belonging to an extended family of step-children and half-brothers came by way of television and movies. In fact, part of the reason I liked The Wizard was its extended glimpse on how the other half lives. I don't know if I would go so far as saying that I have a built-up fascination with the subject. Yet there's a part of me that's wondered what it would have been like to have been raised in a set of circumstances other than my own. What kind of person would I have been had my dad and mom not remain married, not stayed in the same city as each other, or not stopped having kids after my brother? It's safe to say that I would have turned out vastly different, but as to how that's a question I cannot answer.

I've been fixating on this thought more recently this year because it's quickly approaching the time where the twins I might have been father to would be turning twelve. That's almost high school age. The idea that I'm actually at that age where I could have been a father to almost-teenagers is quite terrifying to me. The reason? I would have made a horrible father. I'm not even exaggerating. Forget the fact that we weren't married at the time or the fact I was making $5.50 an hour at the time. You can even forget the fact that we didn't have an apartment to call our own. The reason I know I would have made a horrible father is that I wasn't even a good person at the time. I was a horrible boyfriend--quick to anger, thoughtless, and prone to moments of real hate for her. I was a horrible friend--again, thoughtless; selfish; and rather naive as to the way people are supposed to treat one another. And that's how I was with people my own age, people who knew what to expect from me, people who had grown up with my idiosyncrasies and foibles.

Having to be responsible and mature for the sake of my kids would have proven a horrible experiment with what I fear would have been disastrous results. I mean--the person I was at the time was somebody who would throw a hissy fit if the attention was focused on somebody else for more than an hour. I cannot imagine the levels of resentment I would've manifested if I had to give over the focus of my life to somebody, two somebodies, for the rest of my life. The person I was at the time--sad to say--wasn't above lashing out physically and verbally when he grew sufficiently agitated. That's not a person you want in charge when it comes to raising individuals who don't know how to restrain their behavior, who don't know when what they're doing might be upsetting to me. The person I was at the time just wasn't father material in any sense of the word.

That's why I imagine the only result for me would have been her raising the two of them, along with her parents, up near Victorville somewhere. I would have had to make that horrible ninety-minute drive up to see them and her. And it's in those imagined visits that I take in my head that I begin to wonder how much of me would have really wanted to see them. I know it's all conjecture, that there's no real way to tell how much I would have bonded with them had they been born. I understand that there simply no substitute for having gone through the experience. But all I can think of is had I continued down the path I was on, had I been railroaded into making choices for my life that weren't necessarily the ones I would've wanted, I might not have changed my attitude in the least. Instead, I might have just grown more bitter. I might have just grown more resentful for being stuck in a life not of my choosing. There's a very good chance that I would've blamed the twins for supposedly ruining my life.

I suppose that's the reason I get a skeptical look on my face whenever I see a show or hear a song about a father being apart from his child and wishing he could be more involved. It's not that I don't believe such fathers exists. It's just that I know that, like me possibly, there are men (and women) out there whose day of becoming a parent isn't exactly looked upon with fondness. They don't sit in their cars and count the days till they can see their kid again. And they certainly don't convince themselves that everything was for the best. I think sometimes, truthfully, not all people are fit to be parents in every stage of their lives.

Taking a look at my life now--with my recent house purchase, working finally at a job where I'm actually putting whole paychecks into the bank without any of it being earmarked for bills or rent or what have you, and being on okay terms with almost all my friends and family--I honestly think now would be the best time to start thinking about a family. I'm not the person I was back then. Back then, the first thought I had in my head when I heard I had gotten someone pregnant was how quickly I could get myself out of that position. I harbored no inclinations to ever go through with it. There was no hesitation in my mind that such a fate was one I wanted to keep. You can go into all the moral and ethical debates you want, but in the state I was in and the mindset I had at the time I still believe I made the responsible choice.

But then there's a small part of me that wonders if being a dad would changed me for the better. Part of me wonders if forcing me to grow would have been a bad fate. I mean--I was twenty-three at the time. It's not like I was having kids in high school. Hell, I was already graduated by then. I don't know--maybe putting that fear into me would have made me look for that better job far sooner than I did. Maybe putting that fear into me would have made forgo all that personality crap that I retained through high school and college. Perhaps being responsible for somebody else's livelihood, somebody else's health and well being, might have made me responsible for myself as well.

That's when I see that other picture of me now with almost teenagers to call my own... and I'm actually happy. As much as I try to convince myself that not keeping them was the right choice, it'll never be 100% because you can't ever be 100% a choice like that is ever for the best. It isn't a choice of what you had for breakfast. It's a life-altering decision where if you go one way your life is completely flipped around--which can be both tumultuous and ultimately satisfying. Instead, I chose to go on with more of the same, which, while safe and content, is still more of the same. For as many scenarios as I see my being a dad ending in a disaster, there's a least a couple where it doesn't. It's these scenarios that keep me up at night as I weigh what kind of person I am now against the man I would've been had I chosen to go the other way.

It's scenarios like those that make me empathize with all those songs and shows and movies where all the guy can do is lament how little time he gets to see his kids. I know what that's like. In fact, my case is somewhat worse because my lament is that of someone who'll never know his kids, what they could have been or what they could have meant to me--good or bad.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I'll Take A Quiet Life, A Handshake Of Carbon Monoxide, And No Alarms And No Surprises

2011-04-19T01:21:00.000-07:00

--"No Surprises (cover)", Regina Spektor

Last year was the first year in my eighteen years of buying gifts for Breanne that I really didn't give her a proper gift. I blame that on the unemployment. But every year before that I've managed to get her something "nice." In 2009 we made the theme watches so I managed to find her a $400 watch I thought she might like and she ended up doing the same for me. It didn't matter that neither of us were watch people. We both thought it was high time we had "nice" watches. In 2007 we agreed the present would be meeting up in Chicago--I taking care of the tickets and hotels, and she taking care of the food and outings--so I guess that was a year where we didn't exactly give each other presents.

My point is that I've known her for such a long time that I'm actually struggling as to what to get her this year. This year there is no theme. This year I'm on my own. Without that guidance it feels like looking for a key among a pile of a thousand keys... and you're not even sure that any of them open it up in the first place. I want it to be decent. I want it to be special. But most of all I just want her to like it. Everybody says that it's the thought that counts, but I've received plenty of gifts (not from her) where I can tell there was a lot of thought put into them and I was still disappointed. Granted, she's more gracious than I am, but when nails get pounded into walls, a lackluster gift is a lackluster gift.

And after eighteen years I have no excuses for a lackluster gift.

The trouble is I've set the bar too high. More precisely, I've set the bar too wide. Over the years I've given everything from jewelry to movies to clothing to trips to what have you. There doesn't seem to be any type of gift I haven't given to her for either her birthday or Christmas. That's why it feels like at this point everything I'm considering would be a retread of something she's already received from me. The originality is gone. The surprise factor just isn't there any more.

You would have thought that after this many years I might have run into this problem before. Surprisingly, I haven't. Each year I've had an inkling of something she might like. Without fail, I've received inspiration from whatever source and it's inevitably turned out for the best when I settled on something. I used to think she was the easiest person to shop for because I knew her so well and I knew which way her tastes ran. Well, that information hasn't all of a sudden dried up. What's run dry are the manifestations of that knowledge. There's only so many koala-inspired stuffed animals I can look for, only so many orange-tinged perfumes and sprays and body washes I can buy, and only so much Bee-Gee collectibles I can scour the earth for before it seems blase. I've just run out of options that seem fresh and new.

I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling like looking for stuff for her is a chore because it really isn't. It's just that this one of the two days of the year where I can fully express how much she means to me. I don't want to ever fall short on that attempt and squander the opportunity. The way I see it, the early years of our friendship was all about making a good impression on her. The middle years were suggestive of solidifying the foundation we had built. And these later years, it's about keeping the life pumping through the veins. I want to forestall the feeling that we've grown stagnant as people who know each other as much as possible. We're not old folks just yet.

Part of the problem I believe too is that we're not small gestures kind of people. We've always been and always will continue to be grand gestures kind of people. We'll always be Ephram Brown, wanting to find the big, sweeping moments to footnote the important milestones in our life. We never want it to be said that we didn't do enough, say enough, or care enough to make that extra effort to show one another how we feel.

Maybe if we were more boring people a card and a phone call might be enough every year. We could be people who believed the thought that counts. As it stands now, we're people who think the thought is only the first step in a very long journey to getting the right gift. And as it stands now, I'm very much a person who hasn't even taken that first step yet.

Sometimes I wish there was one gift that could really say it all, encapsulate everything I've ever felt or wanted or had with her or because of her. Sometimes I wish there was one gift that could be the end-all-be-all of gifts and prove once and for all how much I truly do love her in every possible way.

Then I could just buy that for her every year.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Hush, Hush, We Both Can't Fight It, It's Us That Made This Mess, Why Can't You Understand? Whoa, I Won't Sleep Tonight

2011-04-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

--"Animal", Neon Trees

Mementos

when those pictures were taken
I was a different person then.
when those videos were recorded
I had no idea they were being saved.
when you heard those words
I didn't know what I was saying.
when you played my messages
I thought you'd have erased them already.
when you waved and I didn't wave back,
well, that I meant.

dw

----

Even after the sun goes down people still continue to function. We are beings capable of self-determination, are we not? Despite the adversity we might encounter, the setbacks we might suffer through, and the heartache that it entails, we always manage to cling to our most basic trait of survivability. That's what I've learned in my first full year of independence. I'm not a woman to be trifled with--mostly because nothing is trifling to me, I can tell you that much. Perhaps I might suffer from that great affliction any who have listened before inevitably comes down with, perhaps I do "choose sadness--that it once has never chosen me." But I prefer to believe to the contrary. I've come to believe that before I had blinders on. I refused to see the world in the whole array of colors it is really painted in. Whereas before I was content to delude myself into believing what I did had no affect on others in the long run and that what others did could not affect me unless I let it, I know now that was a myth. Regardless of how much I want to remain aloof, something will pull me back into the frame inevitably. Regardless of how stoic I resign myself to act, there is need and a calling for some sort of passion to rise to the fray. I'm not saying that I have all of a sudden into the empathic counselor of my fellow men and women, but I'm beginning to realize that I'm not playing my own game here. Gosh. This isn't some movie I'm living here starring myself. We're all filming this period piece together and sometimes the scenes I'm in have far more resonance for the other players than for me.

dw

That's Just The Way It Is, Some Things'll Never Change, That's Just The Way It Is, Ha, But Don't You Believe Them

2011-04-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

--"The Way It Is", Bruce Hornsby

When I was younger people used to identify by four trademarks. One, I would always wear a bow in my hair. From the age of two to about eight you can hardly find one photograph of me without one in my hair. It wasn't a conscious choice. My mother started me on the regiment from an early age and, after that, it sorta became my thing. It certainly wasn't anything I remember fighting against until I was eight, you know? Bows were part of my morning routine as much as brushing my teeth was. Two, coinciding with that, people could always tell me by my chestnut brown hair. Hell's bells, it ain't like I had the color trademarked or anything, but folks were forever remarking what a unique shade of brown it was. Aside from my mother, nobody had ever seen its counterpart, if these folks were to be believed. Three, folks could not resist commenting on my oceanic blue-green eyes. Granted, I do believe my eyes are pretty. They're one of the features I love best about myself, but the way everyone would talk it was like seeing the image of Jesus beneath my eyelids. Lastly, of any physical attribute I possessed my dimples were the ones that got remarked about the most. Whether it was to squeeze them, or ask me to show them off, or to plain ooh and ahh, my dimples were my signature feature if I were to have just one.

It's flattering to be thought of as comely, as being worthy of someone's gaze, but as my daddy says, "Nobody ever asked a flower for its opinion." There came a point where I felt like all I was was the sum of my collective body parts. It didn't matter what I felt or thought; nobody ever asked me to show those off. Nope, all they wanted to see was, well, what they could see.

That's when I started writing. I started writing about how trapped I felt behind this costume that I couldn't take off. I started writing about how all I wanted to do was find the person beneath the layers. I started writing about how I worried once my beauty faded people might found out that they didn't want me around at all.

----

The Flower Fading - Breanne Holins

Through these blue-green eyes of mine
(Like the ocean anywhere but near the U.S.)
I saw a flower fading
Its color dulling into nothingness
And I thought how I'd never wish a fate like
A fate like this on anyone
What in youth was fragrant and full of verve
Now woefully limps over, head hung in shame
I tossed my chestnut curls in the same bows
But somehow I felt glad I had someone
Someone who still cared to bother with bows
Unlike this poor flower
This poor, poor flower
(How ever like so many individuals)
It lives in such bittersweet agony
Forgotten, forsaken, and forlorn
And like a bullet through the brain
I softly pluck it from its stem
And toss it to the winds above
Oh, if only our lives were so easy to decide
Given the choice to go
Or fade away
Few would be the lips pausing in response
(June 26th, 1994)

----

Now that I've reached that age where I'm beginning to resemble the flower fading, where it isn't about noticing my face growing more full of life, but watching it slowly shift into maturity, I'm beginning to become the prophecy fulfilled. Someone recently asked me if I regret being so adamant people take me seriously for only my mind and my philosophies, that maybe I wished I had just enjoyed being thought of as a great beauty a little more. I replied that it wasn't like I never took advantage of my natural wattage. I can only be myself after all--no more, no less. There were many days where I had a hoot-and-a-half courtesy of some poor 'ole fools rapt attention on my physical appearance. As to whether I thought I downplayed my looks when I should have been coasting by on them, maybe, yeah, I could have had a little more fun with it. But on the whole, I'm rather proud of myself for being the kind of person whose stock and trade isn't how people perceive her. I take pride in my stock and trade being how I present myself, in the way I act and carry myself.

Because, you know what? I don't wear bows in my hair any more, I've changed my hair color more than once, and you can find me at home in a pair of reading glasses as out I am out of them. About the only thing I haven't been able to cover up or hide are my dimples. Sometimes I reckon that's the small piece of me at six, at twelve, at eighteen, that I carry with me. And that's a good thing because even though far less people think it's cute of me to have dimples upon my cheeks, far more of me remembers the girl who thought it was utterly magical that I had these distinguishing features that only showed themselves when I smiled. It was like my little gift to the world, shy and sweet at the time. You had to coax it out of me. But once you got them to reveal themselves it was very difficult of me to hide them away again.

So, yeah, I may be the flower fading soon if not already, but I know there's a small part of me that time and change can't take away from me. Because, hell's bells, on most days if you're nice to me and you put me in a good mood, you too can see a bit of the face of that certain bows-in-her-chestnut-brown-hair-and-stars-in-her-eyes girl I was in the eighties and early nineties. She'll never fade away. She can't--not while these dimples still wait in patient repose beneath my rosy cheeks.

Breanne

Do You Wake Up On Your Own, And Wonder Where You Are, You Live With All Your Faults

2011-04-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

--"Slide", Goo Goo Dolls

For as long as I've been listening to Rilo Kiley, which is a considerable length, there is one song I have never heard played live despite numerous requests to do just that. "Glendora" remains the only song in their catalogue that categorically will never grace their fans' ears. Oh, sure, there are reports that they played it back in the day, back when they were first gathering momentum as a band, around 2000-2002. But you would be fortunate to find a fan who can count themselves among the company who attended these mythic shows. It's kind of like Woodstock; you'll get people who make the claim, but very few people honestly heard the deed.

And what's so evil about the song that the band would adopt such a steadfast policy against playing it? What exactly is all the hubbub about? Well, as far as I can tell, it relates a story or situation where a young woman who allows to be mistreated by the guy she is with repeatedly. She comes to him, is made to feel bad in some way, swears she's had enough, and then comes crawling back to him. Is the whole scandal regarding that this is a story ripped from Jenny's own life? Who's to say? All I know is that the band's official position is that they wrote the song when they were first learning the ropes about songcraft. Subtlety wasn't a forte nor a foremost concern in those days as, it's true, this song out of all their songs contains some of the most graphically uncomfortable situations that you'll ever hear (e.g. being talked into a threesome despite her insistence she doesn't want to do it, shitting on a person's face). There isn't a clear-cut answer as to whether the animosity towards the song is more personal or professional in nature.

If it is personal, though, I can understand why they would be hesitant to revisit the topic. Nobody likes dragging the skeletons out of their closet time and time again. At the time, they probably wrote the song as some kind of catharsis, a way of purging the demons that may have possessed over. But, with each passing year, the need to get it out of her system diminished. Maybe there simply ceased to be any reason to reopen old wounds again.

I know there's many a post here and many a short story I've written which details knowledge I never expected to last into perpetuity. Sometimes I forget what I write doesn't just eventually fade like so much ink. Sometimes I fool myself into believing that I'm making my chicken scratch into the sand. It's times where I go digging into my archives that I realize how much of my life I've spilled onto the tablet. At those moments I get the irresistible urge to take it all back. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to delete posts from three or four years ago for fear somebody might come upon them that I don't want coming into contact with them. At the point when I write them I might be fearless, but years later the propensity for anxiety at their discovery runs very high for me.

It's in those moments my solidarity for Jenny becomes clear. I understand why my thoughts may need to be written down... but very often I fail to see the need for people to read them.

In the end, though, I always leave them up--mostly because of the sense that anybody who may have wanted to read them has already done so. But it's also because I believe it's partly my duty to stand by my thoughts. Anything I may have once believed, anything I may have felt at one time was important, doesn't suddenly lose its value just because my opinion may have changed. There's value in seeing the kind of person I was when I wrote the thoughts down. There's value in ascertaining the journey I've taken from there to here. And there's value in being secure that I as a person have nothing to hide.

I cry, I cry, I cry, I cry
then I complain, come back for more,
do it again

I mean--yeah, it's a great song. Yeah, it would mean the world to their fans. But sometimes as an artist you have to make decisions about your art on a purely personal level rather than an artistic level. I respect Jenny and company for not comprising their opinion that playing the song would compromise their beliefs... just as I hope many you can respect my belief that if I've got something to say it is important to me for a reason, and will continue to be important to me even if the reason for doing so fades away.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Facts Versus Romance, You Go And Call Yourself The Boss, But We're Not Robots, Inside A Grid

2011-04-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

--"Science vs. Romance", Rilo Kiley

I like watching baseball. I have never played baseball as an organized sport. Hell, I was never even that good at it when I played it at P.E. or lunch. Yet it's plain to see that one statement has no bearing on the other. I don't need to be good at baseball to enjoy watching it. That axiom is very similar to the old rumor that Shakespeare was a horrible actor. It also brings to mind Mitch Hedberg's famous joke about being asked to write when some Hollywood people found out he was a talented comic. His response was that you don't ask a great chef if he can form. Just because you can do something well, doesn't mean you can do something related to it well also.

That's always bothered me how people assume when you're knowledgeable about a subject it means you're good at executing. To me that's like saying that if someone is a great astronomer they'd be a good astronaut. It took me a long time to realize that pertaining to most subjects I'm a much better critic/researcher than someone who actually doer. I'd rather read up on topics that interest me than rush right out to do them. I would be the first one to tell you that my accomplishments tend to be more intellectual than physical ownership.

This has led to the strange phenomena that I'm afraid most of us experience where I tend to identify with a concept from a distance than up close. Take the Red Sox for instance; I feel like they're my team though I haven't played a day for them. I feel every loss and win more completely than any fan should. It kills me that I live so goddamn far away from them as well as the fact that I'm constantly having to explain my enamoration of them. I don't claim to have discovered them, but I do feel like that I'm one of the only people in California who loves them as much as a true Bostonian might. Therein lies the problem. I tend to get territorial when it comes to them or anything else I favorite. I take it personally when people criticize them and, yes, I probably take too much pride in their accomplishments, as if they're my accomplishments as well by proximity.

Also, on the flip side, I get very antsy when it comes to truly losing myself in an object that somebody else recommended to me. To me it feels like they "own" it or that they "discovered" it, and are only letting me borrow it. In the end it'll never be mine due to the illogical notion that I can't every truly like something that somebody liked before me. It's used; it's secondhand. More to the point it can't ever be mine when somebody else got to it first. I can't tell you how much it kills me that Rilo Kiley was suggested to me by my ex-friend. There they are, my favorite band, and I have to reconcile the fact that somebody I knew had to point them out to me. It terrifies me that, but for the most passing of comments, I might have never known of their existence at all. Life would have been so wonderful if I could truthfully say that they were a band that I stumbled upon independently and was wise enough to recognize that absolute talent they had.

Now, however, all I can see is how slightly tainted my respect for them is, having originated from somebody whose opinion I don't even consider competent any more.

I don't know--sometimes I believe my prerogative for wanting to be as unique as possible leads me to over-think whether or not I like a thing. It shouldn't matter to me how many other people like something I like. It shouldn't matter to me how many other people got to experience it first. It shouldn't matter how long something has been around in relation to how long I've known about it.

But it does.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

She's Got Eyes Of The Bluest Skies, As If They Thought Of Rain

2011-03-31T01:25:00.000-07:00

--"Sweet Child O' Mine", Guns N' Roses

Her name was Sarah. She was Canadian. And she had the lightest blue eyes I have ever seen in my life. She had such light blue eyes that I honestly thought they were transparent at first. I know what you're thinking. I must be talking about Miss Polley (again), but in that assumption you would be mistaken.

Nope, the particular Canadian actress I'm speaking about is one Sarah Sawatsky.

I've liked a lot of actresses over the years. I've developed many a fanboy crush on all types of performers. However, for some reason, it's been the Canadians that I remember the most. I mean--Sarah Polley, obviously. But I've liked just about every young female performer from Avonlea at one time or another. Gema Zamprogna, Tara Meyer, Heather Brown--I can name them all and I can tell you exactly when I was most under the spell during my run through watching the episodes hundreds of times. Being a Canadians, along with drumming and playing basketball, seems to be one of those inexplicable facets of being that I seem drawn to. I can't explain why. Just knowing someone is Canadian ups their "score," as it were, with me.

I remember the first time I saw Sarah Sawatsky. I was watching a little-known show--even then--called Bordertown. It was an alright show dealing with a small town in the 1800's that had the unique case of being half on U.S. soil and half on Canadian soil. This required both a sheriff and a mounted policeman (?) to stay vigilant over its confines. There i was, watching the show, when a beguiling actress with eyes the color of blown glass came onto the scene. I did what I always do, ask myself who this lovely sight was and why hadn't I known about her before. I watched the rest of the episode with renewed interest.

From that point on I followed her career as best as I could. I tracked down the movie she did with Miss Zamprogna, The Challengers. I even went so far as to ascertain whether I could get my hands on some of the Canadian programs she had guest-starred on without much luck. Each new nugget of news that she might have been in this or been seen in that brought a smile to my heart as I loved watching her act. She was naturally easy to watch and didn't seem overly cloying or cutesy.

I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain

The shame of it all is that she never had the career that Sarah Polley has. Not many actresses do. I'm not saying the Miss Sawatsky is of the same caliber as Sarah Polley is, but she definitely deserved to have a much longer career than she did. She was a bright star, at least to my eyes, that faded far too quickly. I would have loved to have been discussing her next movie role or her performance in a recent film in much the same manner as I do for Sarah.

The other shame of it all is I kind of let her light dim too. After new roles became scarce and after they stopped showing re-runs of Bordertown on television I stopped thinking about Sarah Sawatsky. Out of sight, out of mind, right? I admit it; I can be as fickle a fan as everybody else. Without a daily, or even monthly, presence to put her name and those eyes front and center, it was rather an easy task for me to forget all about her. It's the natural selection process in the entertainment industry. You either stand out or you fade back into the crowd. Sadly, aside from those eyes, there was very little to suggest she was ever going to stand out all that much.

Yet sometimes I reflect back onto my initial impression of her, how she had something indelible which pulled me into her world. I begin to question whether or not she ever lost that initial blush of genius or if I, as part of her audience, just lost the ability to see it. There's only so much I can watch in a day or a week. Maybe after watching enough of the same humdrum programs I used to watch I became jaded. Maybe I stopped wanting to see how difficult it is to be on camera and to make a televsion show good, if not great. Maybe when I put Bordertown against genius like Avonlea , and Sarah up against SARAH, it was inevitable it and she would pale in comparison. Perhaps that's why I lost interest in her and why my enamoration of her soon dried up like so much water.

I think it was rather unfair of me to make those kinds of comparisons. She had something unique in her own right. Simply because I had a favorite performer already doesn't mean that should take away the accolades I had for this girl. Sometimes I believe I was too quick to dismiss her contributions to film and television as being minimal.

I could have had more faith in her. In fact, I should have had more faith in her. Maybe if more people thought like that and, instead of assigning praise after the fact, could give credit to where credit is due she would still be on the air today. And I could once more gaze upon the loveliest eyes this side this side of Toronto.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Once, All My Dreams Were Tied Up In You, And I Walked In Fear That You Would Not Come True, But I'm Not Afraid, Anymore

2011-03-29T04:10:00.000-07:00

--"Easy Come, Easy Go", Sierra Hull

I have a recollection from my childhood where I was palling around with the kids from the block on one of those rare occasions where I had a free afternoon. It had been decided that everyone was going to walk down to the local park to play some basketball. Now I may be good at a lot of things but I have never been good at the particular game. I can't play worth a lick. I'm too short, I lack the court vision, and, while I may be fast and agile thanks to running and dance, I'm less than adept at making the sharp stops and turns with the ball necessary for an overall game.

As my daddy says, if you get me on the court "it's like watching a fish trying to ride a bicycle." I just wasn't built for the game. That doesn't mean I didn't want to accompany them, you know? It just meant that on that afternoon I wasn't exactly the happiest of gals. I tried my best to put on a brave face while we were playing. However, there's a special brand of cruelty involved in attempting to perform an activity you know in your heart of hearts you have no business attempting. It's like me and singing; I'll do it if you ask me nicely but I'm of that age where I know my limitations and the consequences of trying to test those limits. Every shot that I put up that day flew like a bag of bricks, contemptuously falling short of their intended target. Every pass I made inevitably made its way to the opposing team. And, naturally, every time I tried to guard somebody they would breeze right by me like a hurricane past a trailer park on their way to scoring. Hell's bells, it was the definition of an exercise in futility.

Among our small circle I was always been the great consoler. I was always the one extolling the virtues of a positive attitude. It's how I got the nickname Little Miss Chipper. What I was never good at (besides basketball) was being able to accept consolation from others. Stern advice with a bit of condescension? That I could take from years of listening to it from my mother. But the "there-theres" and "you did your best" never sat well with me. Losing, naturally, is never a hoot-and-a-half to go through. Yet I can stomach it as long as you tell me what I did wrong so that I may improve my chances next time. If all you've got for me is a pat on the shoulder without any real advice, really all you're doing is making it worse for me. Sure, they were kids. As such, they weren't the best suited to giving advice, but I've always had a keen ear for words that are usable to me and words that are said only because someone doesn't know what to say.

What I heard after that game were examples of the latter.

I didn't cry, if that's what you're thinking. Nope, I only cry when I'm sad. Disappointment, bitterness, and frustration usually manifests itself in more subtle signs I've found. On that day, when it was time for me to head back home, they came out in the form of acquiescence. I walked home with a cloud over my head. I began to think that, despite my parents' words to the contrary, I wasn't God's gift to everything under the sun. I began to see that all the things I couldn't do at that point in my life weren't going to be stuff I'd eventually get the hang of. It started to dawn on me that basketball, like singing, was going to be a weakness of mine. And while I didn't consider myself infallible (I'm already vain enough--there's no need to add thoughts of perfection in there), I did consider myself capable of anything if I applied myself long enough and diligently enough. I saw potential. But on that day I began to realize that potential only goes so far; it's impossible to be potentially good at everything. Somewhere the line between what you can do or what you're built for and what you aren't built for has already been drawn for you.

After that, I did what I always did in those days. I went and complained to Patrick. Rather than try to console, he knew exactly what I wanted to hear. He suggested ways to do better next time. Practice shooting a bit, you know? I distinctly remembering him laughing when I told him that it was maybe my twelfth time playing a game and expecting me to be good at the game. I called it confidence in my natural abilities. He called it arrogance in the disguise of confidence. He then went on to tell me what I was already ruminating over.

"I've known you for a good while now, Breanne. And I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you suck. What I mean by that is that, like the rest of the human race, there are going to be far more things you fail at than you'll succeed at. But that shouldn't get you down."

"And why not?"

"Some people spend their whole lives thinking they're not good at anything, thinking they're just average at best. At least you have the courage to believe in yourself. That's a rare gift."

"Hell's bells, I don't know how not to. It doesn't make sense to me to be a bird afraid to fly rather than be the bird who falls, but gets back up again."

"You know what I think the trick is?"

"What's that?"

"I think the trick is to find those things that'll make you happy twenty or thirty years from now, even if you're horrible at them. And vice-versa. If you want to sing and it makes you happy, then do it. Or if you don't want to dance, even if you're the best dancer in the world, then don't do it if it isn't putting a smile on your face. Too many people decide who they are based on what they can do."

"And that's a bad thing, sugar? I reckon that's a good thing."

"No, I think it's more important to know you enjoy the experience rather than embrace your victories. Because--you know what--the victories they'll fade. But if you can have fun placing one foot in front of the other in a rapid fashion, then that's something you can have fun doing for the rest of your life."

I have never forgotten those words.

----

sworn that I'd given up on love
but I'm not afraid, anymore

Folks who don't know me too well who first hear the long, drawn-out story of me and Patrick constantly ask me how we've managed to keep our friendship going for as long as we have. "Don't you guys fight?" they ask. "You've drifted apart over the years, haven't you?" they also ask. And I tell them what I tell everybody, "Of course, we do," and "Of course, we have." It would be a lie to tell you that we're as strong of friends as we were when we were in teens and twenties. I still consider him my strongest friend and there's no getting around the fact he's the friend I've had the longest. But there's also no denying that what we've had has lost a bit of the luster over the years.

Friendship, like most things, ain't something you can be good at for all of your life in all the ways you can be friends with someone. Now I love Patrick like he's my own brother, like he's my soul mate, but there's a much dimmer hue with which I view what goes on between us. I no longer feel the need to call him for every little thing. These days I share a good portion of my triumphs and disappointments with my husband before I share them with Patrick, as it should be. And I no longer feel the tether that my future lives and breathes because of his influence upon it. Before everything I did and every decision I made accounted for how it could best accommodate him. Every choice I contemplated had to be viewed in the light of the consequences for the best of us. It's just how I thought in my younger days. And it's safe to say it's how we both thought.

Part of me reckons it was easier to have that constant in my life, to put my faith in the notion that we'd always be what we were to one another. It was easier to believe that the flame of passion for one another wouldn't ever flicker or eventually fade away. Part of me was fond of the idea that a friendship like ours was forever.

But then a funny thing happened after I got married/graduated. I started to need Patrick less and less. It caused a barnful of problems, naturally. Whenever one person pulls away without the other's blessing it becomes a tense situation. A certain animosity crept into the friendship that hadn't been there before. It became easier and easier to foresee a tomorrow without him in it.

I honestly thought that's where the two of us were headed for awhile there. I got it from all sides--how it wasn't Christian-like to stay in touch with an ex-boyfriend, how it's the natural order of things for friendships to fade away as you get older, how we were into different areas of interests these days. And for awhile there I made a concerted effort to extricate myself from his life and him from mine without completely "breaking up" with him. I did what I always did, run away without looking back. It was difficult to do because we had this blog going, all the while we were somewhat pretending that we were closer than we were at times. We probably hid more fights than we actually let on in our posts here. All the while there was this constant chatter of packing up stakes between us and calling it quits.

It wasn't until 2007 that events unfurled themselves to show us exactly what a unique case we were. Forget Chicago and forget the part of my life that involved me drifting apart from Greg for awhile and growing closer to Patrick in that way while I was afraid I was losing my marriage. That had a lot to do with my outlook on Patrick and me, sure, but that wasn't everything. What I also began to see was that, more or less, Patrick had been a positive outlier in my life. He helped me in so many ways that I couldn't see them all at once until I started missing them from my life. He had been a part of my life for so long and so deeply that I began to see it was impossible to cut him out of my without cutting a piece of myself away with him. Losing him wouldn't just be like losing a friend, it would be like losing the last fourteen years at my life at that point. It would be like the time from twelve to twenty-seven had just been a happy dream that I had been awakened from.

2007 was when I realized that I didn't have to be dependent on Patrick to maintain what we had. I could still claim him as my closest confidante, my partner-in-crime, my older brother without having to pencil him into every decision I made or milestone that befell me. We could remain friends for the rest of our lives... just not to the degree that we were friends in the 1993-1998 era.

Like he once told me, simply because you're not the best at something (whether you were once or never were) doesn't mean you have to stop doing it. Hell's bells, I think those things that we keep doing because it makes us happy and not because we trained to or practiced or like to show it off are the things are what life's joy are all about. No, it's not easy being friends with Patrick sometimes as it's probably not easy being my friend sometimes. But somewhere in the last five years we made the unconscious choice to remain close, to remain nearby one another's heart because they've grown to be familiar and it would be such a shame to lose that kind of familiarity. That's what friendship is about, it's about knowing that kind of closeness.

It's about knowing that I don't stay friends with a guy because he's still my whole world and everything in it, it's about knowing I stay friends with a guy because I want to make room him for him in my world and that he'll always make room for me in his.

Breanne

Only Whispers Can Tell, Of The Sweet Dreams That We Know So Well, I'll See You Around Our Dear Ocean Town

2011-03-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

--"Brielle", Sky Sailing

Japan
1.

I never spent the time to learn about them (it?).

I know it resides on an ocean.

I like oceans so it strikes me as some place I'd like to visit once in my life.

I don't know how to speak Japanese, though.

When I was younger I thought Japanese would be one of those languages I'd eventually
learn, but the knowledge never found its way to me.

2.

I've never spent time with a Japanese person--a lot of Asians, never a Japanese person.

Much like their language I've never felt the absence all that much.

I suppose that stems from a Japanese person never wanting to spend all that much time
with me, not a one.

My ex-boyfriend was involved with a Japanese girl once. It didn't last. I was never
told the particulars as to the cause or causes.

He was an asshole, however.

3.

When I saw on the news that Japan had suffered such devastation from
an earthquake I didn't feel the impact as much as I felt I should have. It left me wishing
that I had been more curious about the nation, its people, and its culture.

When I saw how high the waves had crashed into the houses and cars and children it hurt me. I wasn't personally involved. I wasn't personally invested. I wanted to be, though.

I wanted to know where all these places they talked about were. I wanted to see a Japanese person and reflect how much they reminded me of my various Japanese friends. I wanted to feel their loss as if I had lost my hypothetical friends.

I could have had a Japanese boyfriend, I can tell you that much. We could have
watched the news together. We could have called his family back home together
to make sure everyone was okay.

I would have done that for him... unless he was an asshole too.

dw

I'm Not A Coward, I've Just Never Been Tested, I'd Like To Think That If I Was, I Would Pass

2011-03-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

--"The Impression That I Get", The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

When I was a child I never had an appreciation for art. Painting, sculpture, even photography all eluded me as to the nature of their beauty. I could have told you I liked one piece over another, but I couldn't quite put into words why. They were momentary seconds of joy as opposed to my first love, that of plot and story like novels and films could provide. I never had a favorite photographer growing up and I certainly didn't have a favorite painter either.

That all changed in 1997 from, of all impetuses, the movie Titanic. I've mentioned before how it doesn't take much to get me interested in a subject. Practically half of my influences can be directly traced back to Avonlea, L.M. Montgomery, or what have you. They would mention a novel, a piece of music, or some other piece and I would rush right out to peruse it for myself. It also happens a lot with other shows or movies too. I'll hear a throwaway line or another innocuous mention that another person won't even remember hearing ten seconds later. Then, for some reason, it will pique my interest and I'll end up buying a copy for myself. Well, in the movie Titanic Jack mentions Monet as being one of his revered artists. Quite literally that's the moment I started liking him myself.

I'm aware it sounds odd to say, but it bothered me for some time that I didn't have favorite painter. I'm a person who believes in favorites. I believe a person should know right off where he stands when it comes to culture. I couldn't care less where people stand on social, political, or religious issues... but when it comes to popular culture I cannot abide individuals who advocate agnosticism. You simply must have a favorite band, a favorite film, a favorite book, a favorite song, and, of course, a favorite Peanuts and Winnie the Pooh character. The lack of any of these vital pieces of information brands you a man without a country, a soul lost in the wind without any kind of direction guiding him. For me to go that long without a favorite painter was a loss that I felt every day of my life. While not crippling, one can see how eager I was to fill the void by the relative with which I adopted Monet as my patron.

I started perusing art books, looking at all his series of paintings. The haystacks, mornings on the Seine, and, of course, water lilies (my favorite of his series). I even started buying prints at the mall to hang up in my bedroom and elsewhere around where I was living. It was yet another case where I decided to like something first and then find out more about it. It still amazes my mind works that way, but I've gotten used to the fact that sometimes the announcement of a feeling is tantamount to the actual expression of that feeling for me. I can decide to like something based on a description or simple research before I come into actual contact with it. That's how Monet was for me. The idea of someone who painted landscapes in broad strokes intrigued me immediately whereas it took awhile for the actual works to impress me.

Yet the more I saw more of his paintings, the more I realized how much Impressionism fits my personality. Much like a certain someone, I don't like to delve into something at first. I rather like going with my gut in the beginning. For me that first blush of recognition, that feeling that something is making me happy or sad or angry, really doesn't set the tone for the rest of my relationship with that something. I can hear a song and tell you I like it or dislike before I could ever explain to you why. I could tell you somebody rubs me the wrong way before I could ever point out what about them exactly irks me. When I see an Impressionist painting I totally get the idea of trying to capture the experience rather than the reality. I'm much more a person who puts people and things in boxes based on how they affect me rather than on what or who they are in the world.

Also, I'm rather fond of landscapes as opposed to portraits. The absence of people is something that's a luxury in my life. I'm not saying I'm anti-social, but I think the evidence of how far and how long I will travel to get away from the people who occasionally crowd in on me speaks for itself. I believe in the power of escaping the life that has been chosen for me, and for me that almost always entails escaping society altogether. When I see the lilies and the sunsets with a minimum presence of humanity intruding on the scene, it brings a flutter to my heart. I long to have a place like that, where I can sojourn to and count on the absence of other people. Every Monet painting is like ten minutes I don't have to think about the world at large and can think about the immediate area around me. It's like I'm literally by that lily pond, by that haystack, on my own and nobody knows how to find me.

Brandy thinks it says something about me that I have a fondness for landscapes and vistas. She thinks it means I think of myself as separate from the world.

I don't know--maybe there's a small part of me that believes that the world is beautiful when other people aren't fucking up the view. Or maybe I just haven't discovered a plethora of people who can see the beauty in the world in the exact same impressionist fashion that I do. They're too busy looking for that perfect place to vacation or travel to instead of finding it in the window outside or, like I do, in a secondhand print of a painting created over a hundred years ago.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

They Rip You To Shreds, Make You Feel Useless, You'll Never Forget, Those Fuckers Stay In Your Head

2011-03-17T01:58:00.001-07:00

--"Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)", The Raveonettes

Usually I'm for all artistic freedom. The majority of the time I don't care what the author does with his characters as long as he has a clear vision of where he wants to take them. The rudest thing an author can do is set-up this great through line and then abandon it halfway through. I don't care what they do as long as what they do makes sense and is entertaining at the same time.

In fact, the only time I've ever been considerably upset with an author's choices in an otherwise enjoyable book was when I was reading a series called A Handful of Men by Dave Duncan in high school. This series was a sequel to Mr. Duncan's first series A Man of His Word and revolved around a former stableboy turned King/Wizard named Rap and his wife, the former princess turned Queen Inosolan. I had enjoyed the earlier series, with its twists on traditional fantasy tropes. I was completely expecting to enjoy this series as well. For the most part I was enjoying my time visiting the world Dave Duncan had introduced in the first series. I was enjoying until a very specific event occurs in one of the first two books (I forget which) that irrevocably soured my enjoyment of the series if not the series itself.

Somewhere near the middle of one of those two books Inos, the Queen herself, gets raped by an old enemy of Rap's. Never mind that she's described as being thoroughly middle-aged as opposed to the young beauty she was when the enemy first lusted after her. Never mind she is the mother of two teenage children. And never mind that the whole affair is handled brusquely and matter-of-factly. What bothered me the most about the incident was the fact that by series' end the enemy is never brought to justice for his deed. Sure, he is dispatched with, but revenge or justice for the attack on his wife plays no part in why Rap does away with him. What's more, along the same lines, it bothers me that Inos never tells her husband what happened to her. Instead, she keeps silent when they are reunited.

I don't know if this how everyone else read the last two books. I'm pretty sure it isn't. But I read the last two books with an eye for a good 'ole fashioned comeuppance. I was completely waiting for the moment when Inos would reveal to Rap what had been done to her. From there, I was anticipating Rap flying into a murderous rage and completely obliterating the one person who had pushed him and his wife too far. I coudln't even describe how quickly I sped through the last two books with this scene in mind. It was the main thing keeping me interested in the story. When an author goes to that place where rape and torture are brought into the picture, whereas before the worst that had been written was standard violence and routine death, I think most people are conditioned to expect the consequences will be just as severe.

Except, in the case of this series, it wasn't.

boys who rape
should all be destroyed

When I got to the end of the books I felt like Fred Savage's character in The Princess Bride when he's led to believe that Wesley has been killed and that the Princess Buttercup, indeed, ends up marrying Humperdink. I felt cheated. Betrayed. I felt like I had invested all this time in seeing justice play itself out only to see injustice served. Sure, I guess it doesn't matter in the long run why Rap kills the guy--just as long as he does. Yet it matters to me. I wanted Rap to know and I wanted Rap to have that extra certainty that his actions were justified instead of the moral ambiguity that most of these kinds of books thrive on. It really bothered to me that a rape can happen... and is never spoken of by anyone ever again.

Maybe it's just my personal bias reflecting on the plot of the book. Maybe I took it especially hard because I've always been of the mindset that rape is the most evil act a man can do to a woman. And maybe it still bothers me today because I've known too many women and young ladies who have come close to being raped and otherwise sexually assaulted, and their attackers never were punished either. However, where I think my desire to see the plot of those books change stems from is the idea that the consequences for an action should be clearly delineated. By letting the evildoer skate on the assault it's almost like telling me that it's okay to rape women because they're too ashamed to tell anyone anyway.

On any level that's the wrong message to be sending. And on a reading level it just feels like a huge plot thread that's left dangling for all time since there was no sequel series after that. I don't know--perhaps I'm conditioned to see plots in a Hollywood light. If you do X, then Y ALWAYS happens to you. The bad guy is always punished. The good guy always protects his family from any serious or long-lasting harm befalling them. The story punishes the wicked in the end, ALWAYS. But, to this day, I feel like these books let me down for not including these basic tenets within its pages.

So, yeah, the books are all wonderfully written. The plot itself is completely awesome, full of twists and discoveries that make sense to the overall progress of the characters.

But to this day it remains the one series of books that leaves a rather bitter taste in my mouth.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

My Heart, It's Beating, 'Don't Say No," My Head Keeps Saying, 'Take It Slow'

2011-03-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

--"Impulsive", Wilson Phillips

I'm not really sad. I'm feeling stressed out over this whole buying a condo process.

First off, I didn't really want to do it now since my job at Honda is very unstable. I was literally hired as temporary employee--a long-term temporary employee, granted--but still a temporary employee, nonetheless. Who's to say I'm going to be still gainfully employed in a year's time? The thought of buying a house now with a job that still doesn't really feel mine is prospectively intimidating right now. Sure, everyone in my department started off in the same boat as a long-term temporary employees. Yet they're all telling me they weren't hired as permanent employees until after two or three years of worrying about their jobs. I don't know if I can stand the constant pressure to be on my best behavior lest I lose my livelihood for that extended period of time.

Second, I didn't pick this place out. It was chosen for me. Yes, it's very nice and it's probably close to what I'd pick out for myself. It's 1200 square feet, has two master bedrooms both with their own full bathrooms, a working gas fireplace, and a balcony. Yet the constant thought I'm having is that there's probably a better place for me, but because I didn't have the time to really scout for myself I might be ending up with something that I truly don't love fully or, worse yet, will grow to hate in a few months time. Maybe if I weren't in a new job that I'm afraid to request time off for and maybe if I weren't so skeptical that I'd even qualify for a home loan I could have been seeing houses here or there over the last few months.

Instead, I had people look for a home for me on their time. And rather than choosing the best from a bunch of possible candidates I got to look at one--their best one, for sure. It's very unsettling to me that the new place I could be moving into in a short forty-five days is the first and only house I've seen. Nobody does that. Nobody buys the first car they like at the first dealership they go to. Nobody proposes to the first girl they go out with. Nobody accepts the first college acceptance letter they get without waiting to find out about the rest.

Except apparently me because I've done all those things. I swear, my impulsiveness has to be my worst trait. I do shit without thinking because I get restless or because I get talked into it. If it isn't something I'm 100% against, then eventually it becomes something I'm 100% for. I don't waffle in the middle for very long about things even though I'd like to. It's why I'm a below-average chess player. Taking too long to think about anything bores me to tears and I got through school with flying colors relying on my first instincts. It's been a long, hard process realizing that fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants antics might work for taking tests, writing essays, and what have you, but when it comes to the big stuff like who to love, where to work, and where to live, it's not always the brightest of ideas to latch on to the first idea that pops in your idea. I've been burned so many times running into figurative fires because I thought sheer pluck would carry me through instead of taking the time to consider how to go around the fires. Now, like always, would be a good time to learn the nature of patience.

Hell, the whole reason I'm living down here in the first place is because I made a spot decision to work down here to live closer to someone. Then it turns out the same someone ended up going to school on the other side of the country... and I was this close to following right behind as well. It's like I have a disease in my brain which tells me that whether or not a decision is right isn't what's important. The only criteria for the value of decision is how quickly you make it. That's what I truly believe sometimes. That's why I feel good about a lot of decisions I make for a few days... and then end up with years of regrets later on.

And, worst of all, this is going to be the first time I'll be living on my own. I went straight from living with my parents to living with DeAnn, from living with DeAnn back to living with my parents for awhile, from my parents to living with Amber, and from living with Amber to living with my cousin for the last two-and-a-half years. I'm not worried about living on my own; I'm goddamn terrified, so to speak. I already have insomnia from thinking supernatural crap I know I shouldn't be scared of. The whole reason I write, watch tv, read, or whatever into the wee hours of the morning is to make myself tired enough not to think of ghosts, phantoms, or the commonplace horrors of just everyday living. I don't really want to deal with worrying about that stuff and the thought of being alone at the same time.

I'm just worried I'm making a huge mistake here. I'm not the kind of person who wants to be responsible for such a huge undertaking. I don't want to be saddled with that kind of debt, I don't want to fix things that go wrong, and I certainly don't want to be tethered to one location for the next three decades. Yes, I know I could always sell the house, but that just means going through all this hassle and worry all over again.

I really do like being in debt for less than a thousand dollars like I am now. I really do like having it be somebody else's headache when something breaks around here. And I really do like that I'm not on a lease, or on a rental agreement, or even owe first, last, or a security deposit for where I'm living now. Thirty years is a long time to wait in inner turmoil at a place I'm pretty sure I'm going to come to despise eventually.

Everyone constantly congratulating me isn't helping either. It just makes it that much harder to walk away, which half of me wants to do all the time. In the end it's my decision, but it's like little by little that decision to just fuck it and walk away gets taken from me. It just seems like everyone else, my friends and family are more eager to see me in this house than I am. And it just seems like everyone else is 100% more sure I'm making the right decision than I ever will be.

It could be my house and I'm like the only person who still could go either way on it. And because I hate being the lone voice of dissent and I can't just abstain like I normally do on these huge issues, I've been keeping silent for the most part about all these gripes. Maybe that's why I needed to post here because it's like the one place where the parties I'd be letting down can't see what I'm really thinking.

Call it what you will, I'm not a happy camper right now.

I would love a new house to call my own... but I'm not positive now's the time to pull the trigger or that's the place to do it with.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

It Doesn't Matter What Might Come True, It's Simple Enough To Try, It Hardly Matters, It Does Not Matter

2011-03-10T23:20:00.000-08:00

--"Proofs", Mates of State

With My Eyes Open

With my eyes open I fall asleep on the ground;
I sleep long hours as if fevered and immobile.
I listen in my dreams: each dream a sound.

For hours my breath sounds short, hollow.
The ground beneath me feels rough, shallow;
yet with my eyes open I fall asleep on the ground

and wonder when in dreams I might be found;
my body bent, my bright-hued clothes in disarray;
I die loudly in my dreams, each dream a sound.

Around the spindle of the world I am wound,
the threads of my life unravelling minute by minute.
I watch them with eyes open asleep on the ground;

watch them pool upon the dirt by the pound.
Then I'm nothing but memories and the mist,
listening for dreams; each dream a sound.

I'm buried beneath my life in a heart-shaped mound
that people come to see in curious rushes;
falling asleep with their eyes open; there, on the ground.
They listen to their dreams: each dream a sound.

dw

You Can Kiss Me With The Windows Open, While The Rain Comes Pouring Inside, Kiss Me In Sweet Slow Motion, Let's Let Everything Slide

2011-03-09T03:44:00.000-08:00

--"This Kiss", Faith Hill

There they stood in the middle of the movie theater parking lot, locked in each other's arms, with their faces pressed right up against each other. He was taller than her by six inches, but it didn't matter. Somehow their mouths just met in the right place. And it must have been fifty degrees outside yet they both looked as warm as two people who had been sunbathing all afternoon. Eyes closed, mouths open, and probably a dozen eyes on them from both the parking lot and those waiting to buy tickets--none of that mattered to them. All they knew was what and who was right in front of them. All they heard was each other.

It was impossible to guess how long they'd been kissing one another, but by the expression their faces wore that night last week it may just have been this side of forever. As I drove by them, looking for a parking space in order to meet my husband inside, that was the first thought I had. Those two look like they've been out in the parking lot smooching for a spell, I thought to myself, and they don't care who knows it. They don't care who sees them. They don't care how many cars they cause to slow down. Those two look like all they're capable of at the moment is feeling one another's lips for as long as possible. I didn't even suppose they had a reason. It didn't look like a good-bye kiss nor a haven't-seen-you-in-awhile kiss. This was the kiss you gave when you're madly in love with someone and have been for awhile. This was the kiss you gave when all caution was being thrown to the wind. This was the kiss people wished someone would give them.

Simply, this was how kissing was supposed to be done. There ain't anything more fundamental to the human experience than the expression of one's passion for another. And it's something you can never quite stop learning about or stop practicing--not if you don't want to, that is.

Breanne

But My Will Gets Weak, And My Thoughts Seem To Scatter, But I Think It's About Forgiveness, Forgiveness, Even If, Even If You Don't Love Me Anymore

2011-03-05T07:22:00.000-08:00

--"The Heart of the Matter", Don Henley

I spent a lot of my early life resenting my mother, resenting the life I was born into. It's a lot of pressure to put a young lady to have to be perfect all the time when deep down she knows she's far from it. It often felt like trying to hold your breath underwater; you can only do it for so long before you suffocate. No, it was worse than that. It was like trying to hold your breath while the whole world around you is going up in flames and it's all you can do not to breathe in the smoke. I held onto a lot of anger there placed squarely on the shoulders of everybody, like my mother, who held me to a higher standard than I saw others of my age being held to.

I am not perfect. I can pretend for quite awhile, you know. But the heart of the matter is that deep down I know I'm as wicked as they come. Deep down I reckon I struggle with the same problem we all struggle with, trying to be somebody you like when all you can recall are the times when you were somebody you hated, you know? It seems like for all the good in the world that I've put out there I can recall a dozen times when all I've put out there is negative feelings, negative energies that didn't do anyone the least bit of good. I've hurt people. I've made people angry. I've even broke a few hearts in my time. Sometimes the evidence against my being a good person seems overwhelming. During those times I began to wonder if there's anything to be done to clear my name. I begin to wonder if there's anything little 'ole me can do to make up for all I've done wrong. Most of the time the conclusion is that there simply isn't anything that can clear the slate out like that. Most of the time I feel like it's been too long and I've done too much to ever be completely clean again.

When I was younger we used to visit my aunt and uncle up in Peachtree City. They used to have a bottle tree in their backyard there. Its branches were filled with dozens and dozens of multi-colored wine bottles which used to whistle with the passing wind. The story with bottle trees is that they're supposed to ward off evil spirits. More specifically, when evil spirits come passing by they get so entranced by all the dazzling colors in the sunlight they get entranced. They fly up into the bottles themselves and become trapped for all eternity. That was the story my Uncle Thomas told me, at least. I used to sit out in their backyard, listening to the tree whistle, and try to count how many bottles they actually had on the tree. It was staggering, at that age, at least, that both my aunt and uncle could have had that many wicked spirits fly by in order to tempt them.

Later on, I was told that wicked spirit was just a substitute for sin, and that each bottle held a sin that my aunt and uncle had committed one time in their life. That's when the tree made a lot more sense to me. The concept of sin, the idea of having memories you regret, was something I could relate to. The idea that you could capture them somehow and put them on display was amazing to me, especially if you could rid yourself of the guilt at the same time. Having to be reminded of them constantly was a small price to pay in order to be free of them.

I've been trying to get down to the heart of the matter

I wish life were that easy. I wish it were as simple as hanging a pretty bottle on a string and allowing yourself to let go of all those burdens that you walk around with for your whole life. Wouldn't life be so much better then?

Folks say that it helps to talk to other people about what's bothering you at any given moment. Sharing can have that effect on people, but in the end telling somebody the story of your greatest failings as a Christian person ain't the same thing as actually having committed them. In the former case it's just a story, in the latter case it's just your whole life. I've spent years assigning blame to myself when it came to the choices I've made and the results of those choices. I just could never rid myself of all the anxiety I'd built up with my mistakes.

But like I said in the beginning, there was a time where I used to blame my mother and teachers and whomever for being so hard on me. Yet with time I learned to let go of that resentment because, in the end, I came to see that they had my best interests at heart. In the end I came to accept that they all loved me and they all wanted to see me succeed because they wanted me to be truly happy in this life. Accepting that, how could you blame somebody for loving you and for trying to make sure that your future was a happy one? Folks do what they think is best when it comes to the people they care about. It may not happen all the time, but if the love is true then in the end they'll always choose to do whatever it takes to see that person smile in the long run. Yes, my mother may have impeded my happiness in the short run, but she truly did believe I would be happier in the end because of her pushing me so hard. I can't fault her for that.

The difference with forgiving others for the choices they've made on your behalf and forgiving yourself for your choices is that you know that some of the choices you've made weren't always for the right reasons. Many choices I've made for me were rooted in selfishness, vanity, and plain 'ole pride. It's more difficult to forgive yourself when you know that you haven't always done your best to be the person you wanted to be. It's more difficult to forgive yourself when you're constantly thinking about how much more you could have done. It's easier when other people let you down, I reckon, because there's always the chance they just didn't know any better. When it's you, though, you always know better.

Personal redemption is one of those things I have to work. I find it so easy to forgive others but find it so hard to forgive myself. And that's no way to live life. I can't keep being this woman who charges ahead fearlessly in the moment, but weeks and months down the line begins to second-guess herself. I need to find my own version of the bottle tree, someplace I can give away for good all the things which weigh me down. I need to be able to work on being more understanding of the way I do things and more patient when it comes to the choices that don't turn out well for me.

As has been told to me countless times by countless folks, I'm a person worthy of love. That doesn't just mean other people, I need to start seeing that includes me as well. I need to start seeing how, despite everything, my life is worth something more than caring about others. I need to start seeing how it's also about how you care about yourself when you're at lowest. I wouldn't give up on a friend when they're down on themselves so, really, there's absolutely no point in doing the same when the person I'm trying to help is the person looking back at me in the mirror.

Forgiveness is definitely something people forget to do when it comes to their own sins and regrets, myself included.

Breanne

What Would You Say, If You A Monkey On A String, If You A Doggie On A Chain, What Would You Say

2011-03-03T01:26:00.000-08:00

--"What Would You Say?", Dave Matthews Band

I used to believe that catchphrases was an invention of television. Specifically, I thought that they were manufactured by sit-coms wishing to sell merchandise, branding their dialogue in such a way as to be marketable. Overall, it wasn't a bad deal. They got laughs without having to actually put in all the work that traditional comedies had to. I mean--you never saw a single catchphrase in a comedy by Shakespeare ("Whatcha talking about Juliet?"), did you?

But the more I listened to my friends and family, it dawned on me everyone has catchphrases. The only difference is we never call them that. Everyone has phrases ingrained into their headds, whether it be from a favorite movie or cherished childhood memory, that they love to repeat ad nauseum in certain situations. Call it a verbal shorthand, but I believe we're all wired to plug in certain sayings once we make a connection to an earlier memory. Rather than experience the feeling or feelings anew, we all draw comparisons to whenever that situation first arose and how we reacted when we first encountered it. More specifically, we all recall the first time what we said or what we heard being said when somebody else first had to go through it. After that it's linked in our brains as a sort of mathematical equation--if A happens then you say X, where X is our go-to verbal response.

Be it the way Lucy says, "Hell's bells" when she's surprised or "That's just great," when she's upset, be it the way Marion says, "Gosh," when she comes to a realization or "I can tell you that much," when she's trying to prove a point--I've trained myself to be a student of the way the people in my life say certain things. And it's not from a conscious effort, it's merely from the fact that since I'm aware people have catchphrases I just hear them more.

----

And, yes, I have my own myriad of things I like to say.

I like to say "apparently" so that it rhymes more with die than tree when I'm coming to the funny part of a story. As verbal cues go, anyone who knows me knows I'm about to get to the humorous part of the story when I begin the sentence, "Apparently, the guy didn't..." And I remember exactly where I picked up this bad habit. It's from the Nickelodeon show The Amanda Bynes Show when Amanda used to play The Procrastinator and would answer, "eventually" to every question about when she might show up to save the day. To me it always sounded like she was blunting the ending of the word to come out with an "i" sound rather than an "e". Somehow it just stuck. From there I just appropriated that quirk to the word "apparently". The rest is history as they say.

"Cool beans" is another thing I like to say and text more than I like to utilize in writing. It's a very laid-back way to convey agreement without sounding overly anxious. I don't know--I've just never been a big fan of being overly enthusiastic when the situation doesn't warrant it. Whereas Casey asking me to go see Les Miserables when it comes back to Los Angeles in June of this year might be greeted with a "Hell yeah!" response, my gaming friend Julie asking me to come out for a game day some Sunday might only elicit a "cool beans" response. I heard somebody say it once on the phone when I was working as a collector for Sears and I've been using it ever since. More than that, I've been seeing it pop up more and more in literature and films.

Also, of any of my catchphrases, it's the only that has its own pre-programmed shortcut on my cel phone to text back to someone.

However, the phrase I've probably uttered the most over the last five years has to be, "Whatever, woman." It's totally dismissive. It sounds completely misogynistic. But it never fails to bring a smile to everyone who hears it, especially the women. I think it's because I never say it to be mean to someone. I only say it when somebody is being either completely silly or I'm pretending to be upset because I lost an argument. In those two instances those particular two words escape my lips before I even realize what I'm saying--it's that much of my go-to catchphrase. I'll drop on a girl, a guy, a young person, an old person--whomever. I'm completely equal opportunity with its usage. As aforementioned, I'm not trying to be mean; I'm merely emulating some imagined 50's husband dismissing his wife's comments as being of no value at all. It's what I imagine a Bing Crosby chauvinist authoritarian type uttering when he's frustrated with those of the fairer sex. That's the tone I use... and that's why it always gets a laugh because there isn't a hint of hesitation or irony in it. People who know me know I love women and that I would never be so brazenly condescending towards them like that. Couple that knowledge with the difference in my tonal quality and you get a catchphrase tailor made to be coming out of my mouth.

You can blame that catchphrase on Lucy. The thing about conversing with that girl is that there are instances when she's particularly heated where she won't let you get a word in edgewise. In those instances you have to have something jarring to make her lose her train of thought. Well, during one especially fiery debate, she wasn't letting me talk. That's when I just said those two simple words and completely derailed her from the point she was trying to make. It's amazing how one little "Whatever, woman," became such a distraction to her. One might have thought I was actually trying to insult her from the way she reacted that initial time. It took me ten minutes to calm her down enough to explain that I didn't mean it and to completely assure her that I wasn't being cruel.

Ever since then I just toss it out when I, frankly, want her to, as she says, "shush up" just for one second. It's awe-inspiring to see how effective it is in this regard to this very day.

I've used it on my bosses, on customers I've been on the phone with, on people waiting on me while I was in line somewhere. I've even used it on a couple of bartenders when they've questioned my taste for bourbon as opposed to scotch. I haven't even had to consider it. It's completely something I say in a variety of different situations.

If anything, if I had to pick, "whatever, woman" has to be the only catchphrase I'll ever need. Now if only I could stick it on a thermos or lunch box sometime I would be well on my way to entering the national consciousness. Twenty years from now when everybody is going around saying it, just remember who made it his catchphrase first.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

It's Only The Wind, They Say It's Getting Worse, The Trouble That It Brings Us Haunts Us Like A Curse

2011-03-01T00:44:00.000-08:00

--"Only The Wind", Pet Shop Boys

I know exactly who I am. I'm the guy who doesn't wear a jacket when everyone else is freezing around him. It isn't from a lack of sensitivity to the cold; I simply cannot abide it when people tell me what to do, even if it is to be helpful. This is the thought that came to mind while I was out with some friends last night to watch Just Go With It. I had actually been thinking how cold it was and how I wished I had my jacket when one of my friends asked me where my jacket was. After that I was determined to demonstrate how much I didn't need it. If you need to know what kind of person I am when it comes to doing what I want, I'm a huge contrarian.

It doesn't matter what the subject is. If it involves someone else, I say let them do whatever they want. If it comes to me, I say let me do what I want. Or, as Rachel once said, "Right is right even if no one does it, and wrong is wrong even if everyone does it." I adamantly believe that the only person who should be telling an individual what they can or cannot do is themselves across the board. Be it from something as huge as their political leanings to something as innocuous as whether or not they should wear a jacket. I don't know--something inside of me gets rubbed the wrong way when people give me suggestions or try to nudge me one way or the other. If I'm not actively seeking advice or am generally undecided upon a matter, please, please, just stay out of my way. I actually like making up my own mind. I actually enjoy doing something for my own private reasons--be it because it reminds me of somebody special, or if it adds up to an eight, or just because I saw something at nine-years-old that convinced me that the particular way I like doing something is the best way to do it.

I saw a stand-up comedian illustrate my mindset perfectly. He was talking about how a guy working behind the counter at a sandwich asked him if he wanted a cook to cap off his lunch. The comedian practically went livid. To him it was as if the employee was accusing him of being soft. By the employee making a "suggestion," the comedian's whole world was thrown asunder. It's as if the employee saw such a glaring need for a cookie that he couldn't help but to speak up. And the funny part was that the comedian actually did want a cookie. Yet his whole position, like mine, is he's the one who tells the counter jockey when he wants a cookie and not the other way around.

I need to decide when the wind is cold enough for a jacket and not anyone else. When somebody else tells me I "ought" to do something or "asks" me to do something for my own good, it's as if they're saying I lack sound judgment. It makes it sound like I need help taking of my basic needs.

Honestly, I would just be happy if I could get through an entire day without listening to unsolicited advice or answering probing questions about my preferences on just about anything--music, food, women, books, philosophies, religion. Most of the time I don't want your help, I don't need your help, I can't stand people feeling like they have to go out of their way to help me. You'll know when I need assistance because it will probably be a pretty big emergency of some sort since that's the only time I tend to actively ask people what to do.

Till then just let me enjoy the wind, even if I freeze my ass off in the process.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

A Little Fall Of Rain, Can Hardly Hurt Me Now, You're Here, That's All I Need To Know

2011-02-26T01:16:00.001-08:00

--"A Little Fall of Rain", Les Miserables 10th Anniversary Cast

Sometimes when it's raining outside, like it is as I write this, there's a tendency to think the day is ruined. I remember when I was a kid in school how everyone would get so disappointed when it would be raining outside and they would have to cancel recess. Me? I've always been a board game nerd so it was perfectly acceptable to be stuck in the classroom all day. Not to mention that it was only during storms and the like that we got to trot out the old classics like Heads-Up Seven-Up. And yet even I would have to say, all in all, I was very much of the mentality that a day outside was far better than a day inside.

It's not even like I like the sun. My perfect day I would still describe as overcast, but not rainy. And it isn't for any good reason. It's not as if my favorite activities take place outdoors anyway. I don't need to be outside to watch a film, to read a book, to play a game, or to even go bowling. Yet when it starts to rain I start to feel like my options become limited. Sure, it's harder to get anywhere far while it's raining hard, which may be the biggest reason people don't like hearing it'll be raining all weekend. And, sure, for people who like the outdoors I can see how storm clouds may put a damper on the festivities. And, sure, for people like Lucy who have an unnatural fear about thunder and lightning, it becomes a legitimate reason to fret about the view outside. But for people like me, it really shouldn't be that bad.

I mean--the more I think about it, the more I realize some of the best times I've had were down while it was raining outside. When I took the cruise with my family in 2006 one of the most relaxing times on the trip was falling asleep on a pool chair outside at about nine or ten at night while it was raining. I must've slept for four hours. When I woke up, it was probably the most refreshed I had felt all year. Or in 2009 when Toby and I got caught in that lightning storm for two hours I was afraid for my life. But I still tell that story to that day, and each time I tell it it gets more and more exciting. The more I tell that story the more details I pack in and the more ludicrous it seems that the two of us would have ever taken such a huge risk like that. And Providence I love having a good anecdote to tell everyone.

Or, most poignantly, I remember in 2003 when I schemed to take DeAnn on a vacation at the beginning of February. It turned out to be the most cursed trip I've ever taken with anyone. For starters, DeAnn was only four days removed from having gastric bypass surgery, which meant she should have never been flying on a plane or straining herself in the first place. Secondly, I could only take off Monday so we basically had to fly out on Friday night and fly back in on Monday, giving us only really two days to see Washington D.C. I'm used to taking five to seven days off to vacation, especially when the plan was to show someone around your favorite haunts of a city. Lastly, dumbass me decided to fly out in, what the local newscasts called, "the worst snowstorm in nearly a hundred years." It was horrible. We literally got a foot to three feet of snow everyday we were there, except for the first. All I remember seeing when I looked outside was the sight of snow falling everywhere, burying everything in what looked like white dirt.

This was coupled with the fact that DeAnn was too fatigued to get out of bed much anyway. She basically slept for sixteen hours of every day we were there. While it might have made a difference if we had been able to see the sights and tour everything, I don't think it would have made all that much of a one. It would have just meant she would be slow in getting in and out of the car, and in a mild hurry to get back to the hotel room. As for me, I think the extent of my vacation was watching cable, waiting for DeAnn to get up so we could go downstairs to dinner in the hotel restaurant. Every plan we had made for the trip fell apart in one manner or another. That meant no Smithsonian, no Monticello, no Congress, and, most importantly, no fucking search for the best vanilla milkshake on the planet.

And yet, I would hesitate to call the trip ruined. We had had bad luck, yes, and the weather had played a huge part of it. But all the time indoors did something wonderful for us that was totally unexpected. It gave us a chance to just be together relaxing without all the stress of trying to fulfill a schedule. Indeed, except for the long waiting while DeAnn slept, we basically MacGyvered a pretty fun vacation where we never left a two block radius around our hotel. We walked and played out in the snow. We walked to some pretty neat small restaurants in the neighborhood. We got to know some of the other hotel guests at dinner and in the lobby. It's surprising how much of a bond you can form with people when you're all facing the same inclement weather ruining your plans. Also, I would have to say, watching the snow fall for hours on end was somewhat of a rare occurrence for me. It's not often I get to see something that I hadn't seen for about 98% of my life.

All in all, it turned out to be a decent vacation after the initial disappointment had subsided.

I don't know--I've gotten to the point where I'm beyond letting the weather affect my mood. I've seen baseball games at Fenway when it was 34 degrees outside. I've walked in the rain for two hours without an umbrella just because I wanted to walk. And, yes, I've even sat on the beach for six hours when it was completely foggy because I promised someone we would go to the beach that day. I mean--the way I figure it is that you can't control the weather. However, you can control how you spend your time and who you spend it with. Once I've decided that a certain day calls for a certain course of action it's very hard to dissuade me from continuing on in my plans, especially by citing the weather as an excuse to call it off. I can have a good time in any weather.

It all depends on what I'm doing and who I'm doing it with. Those should be the only factors in any attempt to have a good time. Like they say, "a little fall of rain" can't hurt you.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I Don't Know Why I Love You, I Just Know I Can't Stop Thinking Of You, Oh Wait, It's Cause You Make Me Smile, You Always Make Me Smile

2011-02-24T04:06:00.000-08:00

--"You Always Make Me Smile", Kyle Andrews

Yesterday, with the assistance of some very eager children from our neighborhood, I participated in my first water balloon fight in almost a decade. Fight may be too strong of a term, though. It resembled more of a skirmish, I reckon. I was walking in from the driveway and was cruelly ambushed by the ruffians from two doors down the street. At first I didn't comprehend what was happening to me. I felt more than saw the first balloon burst upon me, felt the freezing water soak through my top as the frigid winds exacerbated the discomfort. Hell's bells, who throws water balloons in the middle of February?

Wicked, wicked boys, that's who.

I had no recourse, but to fight back. My honor was at stake. I didn't want to be the target of future attacks upon my personage by individuals who had no mind for common courtesy. I knew there would be no explaining to them that such ventures are properly undertaken in the warmer months of summer. I knew there would be no extolling the virtues of organizing an outing beforehand, outlining the rules we would all abide by. Nope, when you violence meets you at your front doorstep you've got to have the willingness to not tarry in keeping your appointment. I chased those boys back to their home in my flats and everything. It was then that I capitalized upon their mistake of leaving a healthy supply of their ammunition by the garden hose. If they thought I was going to let them off with a stern talking to simply because I had babysat for them a time or two they were sorely mistaken. I pounded them both with every ounce of strength my poor, drenched muscles could muster. And, although I could only get in two licks apiece before they scurried into their household, I reckon we all knew who the victor was in our tête-á-tête. Little 'ole me.

I know it's terribly unfair for me to savagely pick on two young boys like that, but like my daddy says, "you shouldn't start the music if you can't dance." It really wasn't even much of an exchange. They threw two or three balloons at me and I threw like five or six at them. But, as they say, fun was had by all. I must say, it was a regular hoot-and-a-half, especially after the day I had been having. I had thought I only had a few hours of waiting for Greg to get home, cooking dinner, lighting a fire perhaps. I certainly wasn't expecting any sort of excitement in the manner of elastic spheres of watery death being hurled to and fro.

In fact, contrary to my previous position, I reckon that's the key to a decent water balloon fight. At least one party should not know that it's coming. Also, it should be a rule that once preyed upon you should allow your competitors decent access to some already pre-formed balloons. No one likes a one-sided fight unless it's in the name of a practical joke since it's over so quickly. Nope, if your aim is for the good, clean sustainable fun of an afternoon of getting yourself and others wet, there has to be a kind of equity in the allotment of water balloons. Lastly, it needs to be a key aim that everyone have fun. If at any time someone feels like they are being picked on, then the game must end, because there's no point to an all-out water war if someone isn't smiling.

I like the mess you make

It's been a long time since I last picked up a water balloon. I believe the last time I was caught up in that brand of excitement I was still in college and we had been embroiled in an on-going turf war with the guys from down the hall. Maybe in the intermittent years I had forgotten what a sense of happiness of child-like joy it is to duel with weapons incapable of doing any actual physical harm to someone, but it didn't take me long to recognize the feeling. That sense of just playing in water--be it in the rain, the local swimming hole, or just during bath time--never goes away no matter how old you get. And the smile it brings to your face remains fairly consistent whether you put it on at thirteen or thirty.

So, yeah, I'm hoping that one day soon I'll feel the familiar splash of a well-executed balloon toss from behind because fun isn't reserved for the young and, quite frankly, there ain't no such thing as a time-out when it comes to a water balloon fight.

Breanne

I Have Spoke With The Tongue Of Angels, I Have Held The Hand Of The Devil, It Was Warm In The Night, I Was Cold As A Stone

2011-02-21T23:32:00.000-08:00

--"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", U2

Closure

I accompanied the Devil,
not as a condemned woman
being led to the high gallows,
not with the sorrow of the penitent
who has been wronged in her day
and, as an unfortunate result,
done a fair bit of wrong
in return, but I held his hand,
walked beside him down a dusty street
from an old Western film
that builds forever its suspense
by maintaining periods of silence,
unbreakable minutes at a time,
and I never once turned my head
towards his stoic visage to inquire what
manner of closure we were headed for
or how long it would take to arrive.

dw

And If It's Cold, Will You Stay Warm?, You Drift Too Far, Will You Swim Towards The Shore? And If You Fell In Love, Will You Hold Onto It?

2011-02-17T00:52:00.000-08:00

--"If You Fall", Azure Ray

There's a point on every trip I go on where I'm just the guy traveling alone on a plane. Aside from one plane trip to Dallas with my cousin back in 2004 and a short trip to Milwaukee with Kerri Ray in 2006, my trips have all been the same. It's been me flying east to meet up with someone already there.

Granted, it's not the same circumstances as taking a trip completely on my own, but it always means that I'm flying out and back by myself. While I'm wherever I'm supposed to be at I have fun, catch up, and generally do all the things that one is supposed to do on a vacation. Yet the thought that it isn't a complete vacation lingers in my head because the end of the week means me saying good-bye to someone I really don't want to say good-bye too. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone else who goes on as many trips to reconnect with people as me; everyone else has someone they can reliably fly out with. Everyone else has someone to share the whole trip with and not just parts of it.

Thoughts like that always lead me to the notion that maybe it isn't all worth the effort of going anywhere at all. Much like going to dinner at a sit-down place on my own or going to the movies on my own, it simply doesn't feel as fulfilling to wander the earth (or at least the U.S.) on my own. Sure, Chicago I was pretty much with Lucy from the time I exited the airport till I had to come back to it. But Louisville in 2009 was me staying by myself in the hotel room at the end of the day and only hanging out with Toby and Faye during daylight. If anything, the disparity felt all the more jarring. It honestly felt like I was visiting relatives, but relatives not even close enough to stay in their guest room. Sure, they would show me the touristy stuff and Toby and I did have two solid days hanging out just by ourselves in Cincinnati (and looking for that blasted Maker's Mark distillery). Yet at the end of the night, after dinner, I was always having to say good night before the night had really started.

It's sobering to think that this is what my life has become--trips where I see my friends interspersed with long months and years where I don't see them at all? Me flying to and fro just to have what other people have at their very doorsteps? The worst part about it all is I don't really get like this all the time. The worst part is that over the last twenty or so years I've come to see such behavior as normal. Ever since 1994-1996, where I flew out first to see Breanne, then Jina, then Tara--I took flying out to see someone as something that was done in the name of friendship or love or whatever. In fact, as someone told me the other day, I really see the everyday relationship, where you meet up and go to dinner once or twice a week, as the oddity. For me, the long-distance, see each other once every couple of years and make a big spectacle of it is my version of a normal friendly relationship.

I don't know--sometimes I think I've gone so far astray of what is normal in an effort not to be constrained by doing what everybody else does, that I don't know if I can ever find my way back. Sometimes I think I've swam so far out into the sea that I don't truly realize that there is no coming back for me. And it's that thought that frightens me, that I can't ever be happy with a kind of life that makes thousands of people happy everyday.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

How Does It Feel, To Treat Me Like You Do, When You Laid Your Hands Upon Me, And Told Me Who You Are

2011-02-15T00:48:00.000-08:00

--"Blue Monday", New Order

I recently purchased a new card game called Yomi. It takes its name from the Japanese word for "reading" as in reading your opponent. It simulates an old-fashioned arcade fighting game like Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat, but in card form. And why shouldn't it? David Sirlin, the designer of the game, is one of the guys who helped balance all the characters and their iterations over the years in the Street Fighter Franchise. While the mechanics boil down to, at first glance, a glorified game of rock/paper/scissors, the more you play it, the more you realize he understands how to balance it out so it isn't mere luck that determines the winner, but actually sizing up your opponent's motivation, personality, and situation to determine what move he's going to thrown next.

He wrote this wonderful article on game designing, a topic I'm interested in, regarding how to make luck-based games such as rocks, papers, scissors into actual demonstrations of tactical and strategic prowess, that changed my whole philosophy on what actually qualifies as luck in games. "Rock, Paper, Scissors in Strategy Games" says that if you make the payoffs uneven then you give a different level of incentive to choose each option. For instance, if you won $1 if you won the match with paper, but $5 with scissors, and $10 with rock now people have another stimulus to worry about regarding what to choose.

Then he takes it a step further and posits the idea that the ideal situation would be if the payoffs changed depending on the situation in respect to all the choices that have occurred before it. Now the situation would become you get paid $15 if you won with paper in the current match if you won with rock in the previous match, but you would lose $15 if you lost with rock in the current match and won with rock in the previous match. Or on the other end of the spectrum, what if the situation was you got paid $50 if you could win three times in a row with paper? Now your own tendencies to go on streaks would work for or against you.

His basic three tenets are in any game with minimum choices but differing payoffs according to situation are:

1) People are very bad at actually playing randomly, especially at specific percentages such as 3/14ths.
2) When people fail to play randomly, they are probably falling back on tendencies they do not know they have, but that you can detect and exploit.
3) People cannot help but let their personalities spill over into decisions about how conservative (playing paper) or risky (playing rock) they are.

tell me how does it feel
to treat me like you do?

Which brings me back to Yomi and Street Fighter II. I've always found that a fascinating aspect of any fighting game that lets you pick a character. Since each character has their own strengths, weaknesses, and tactics, you kind of get an insight into what type of person each player is. Is he a defensive turtler? Is he a poker, nickel and diming you to death? Or is he the type to gung ho it, hoping to connect for the big payoff.

Myself? I always played two characters in Street Fighter II--Chun Li and Blanka. While they played differently, they did have some basic characteristics which made them appealing to me. They always brought the fight to the opponent. They didn't sit back like Ken, Ryu, or Guile, waiting for the opponent to come to them so they could counterattack. Also they did their best when they were constantly moving. They both played best by attacking relentlessly until the opponent left a hole in their defenses. And, yes, they both kind of got blown up if they got hit by the huge power attacks of some of the other characters. Sure, Blanka was always more offensive, with bigger damage attacks, and Chun Li was more defensive, with attacks that did less damage but could interrupt other characters.

I don't know--that's the way I play most games. I'm really aggressive when it comes to competition, almost to the point where I sacrifice myself if it means killing the other player faster. I don't mind putting myself in harm's way in the name of surprise and initiative.

That's why I think in Yomi I will definitively be leaning more to the rock side of the scale and less to the paper. I mean--within reason I like the constant pressure philosophy rather than getting that one, big payoff, but in the end come up farther on the aggressive side than defensive side. Part of me think that its bad that I have this tendency because it lets opponents read me very easily, but in some games where aggressiveness and self-sacrifice is just as valid a strategy as playing within a shell, I sometimes can come out on top.

It's just too bad that real life isn't so forgiving when it comes to putting yourself out there and not quite making it.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Stop Telling Me The Right Way To Go, I'm On My Own, You're Selling Our Old Ways, Stop Telling Me The Right Way To Go

2011-02-13T01:10:00.001-08:00

--"You Are Free", Mates of State

What It Means

read that paper again,
read it twice

to make sure the
message was not

lost within the crease. (gosh,
where did I place

those glasses?) give it
to your companion

on the other side of
the glass table. question

if he can make heads
or tails of it. see if

his titter sounds like yours.
stare at the ruined

cookie, dusty off to
the side of your blue

and white platter. sigh.
lift up the paper once more

for all the other patrons
to view. declare this

(THIS!!!) ain't no fortune for
you, as you shake it like

thunder in your hands. "You
are free," it says.

if anything, what does that
even mean?

dw

----

I received my first credit card a few months back. There was no trumpets playing and no fireworks. I was not wished congratulations by my friends. If anything, from the outside nothing has been radically altered in my life. Inside, though, I feel unburdened. I shall not be buying any trips to Paris nor spending unwisely on closets full of clothes. The knowledge I have the ability to do so does factor into my abrupt redefining of my self-esteem, I can tell you that much. I don't have to walk through every door I come across. I just need to know that they are somewhere and they are unlocked for me should the need arise. And I know it isn't real money. It's as virtual as the dollars I used to throw around whenever I'd exclaim, "I'd buy that for a dollar," or "I bet you a dollar I can make that." I know I can't spend it as if it's an endless river. There are limits to the power which accompanies it. But it's like a silver key to a silver house that's going to be mine someday. Even if I'm not able to use it for weeks at a time most of the time, I now have the ability to do so. No one can advise me against it. No one can deny me permission to access it. It is done. It is mine. With it I'm one step closer to the joy that is out there expecting me and I don't intend to postpone my meeting with it any longer.

Freedom. Independence. Maturity. I don't know why these qualities go hand in hand, but I know that there are certain times in my life where the trio of them hit me like a giant swell. I can either run from it, frightened by the responsibility of managing my own life, or I can let it sweep me up and not fight the inevitable. Gosh. It really isn't even a fair decision at all.

dw

Words I Speak Make Puddles At Your Feet, Too Shallow To Dive In, But For You I'd Do Anything

2011-02-11T04:36:00.000-08:00

--"Maybe Next Fall", Gospel Gossip

Watching The King's Speech the other day with Greg I was struck with how moving it all was. What could have been a lifeless still of aristocratic fools dancing around a seemingly mundane problem instead turned into a moving drama about an individual with the conviction and drive to be a leader of men almost reduced to being a footnote in history because of his inability to communicate. I didn't believe I could be so wrapped up in watching one man overcome his limitations, but often the best stories arise out of one's struggle to overcome internal adversity rather than external adversity.

Luckily, I was never saddled with a speech impediment. I use my conversation skills everyday for my business as a lot of what I do is salesmanship and persuasion. I cannot imagine little 'ole me being half as effective at what I do if I couldn't get my message out as succinctly as I do. I may have a lot of shortcomings, but not being heard or, more importantly, not being listened to is not among them.

I am acquainted with what it's like, however. My onetime college roommate and still darling Fanny has always had a difficult time talking in certain situations. I learned of it the first time we were being introduced to each other a few weeks before my first year at Georgia. She doesn't have anything as drastic as stuttering. No, she always used to describe her condition as closer to "clustering." When Fanny gets flustered, when little 'ole her starts feeling like the situation is getting away from her, the tempo of her speech begins to increase. If that goes on long enough she starts to misplace phrases, reverse the order of her words, and other flubs that most folks would ascribe to nerves.

Hell's bells, that's what I believed it at first. I simply thought she got nervous at times. But the more I spent time with her the more I saw it was something she struggle to rein in almost every day of her life. The more I had to console her after her mangling another presentation or job interview or first date, the more I saw it wasn't something she had a firm handle on. It literally felt like to her, as she says, "as if my mouth gets loose from my mind and it's all I can do to catch it." I've been there through the times when at parties people would openly gape at her ineffectual attempts to say the simplest things. I've been there when she didn't feel like going to some big event for fear of her nerves and the many chances it would ambush her. All I can say is that going through life like that isn't as simple as some folks might think. It doesn't just affect one specific part of your life; it influences everything you do. When you can't count on your words to be there for you, you start avoiding having to put yourself into positions where your rambling might be a liability.

For the same reason I shy away from karaoke, I reckon Fanny became a photographer. You always want to play away from your weaknesses and in taking pictures she manages to communicate much more of who she is than what she sometimes can tell you herself.

but I know where I'd like to be

She's gotten professional assistance over the years. She's done the whole speech therapist route. For the most part, she's a much different woman than the shy, young flower I met over ten years ago. Yet I'm also here to say that even before she got help I thought her brave because even though I've seen her down as a pebble at the bottom of the ocean, I've seen her come back the next day with even more determination in her step. For every embarrassment, for every scene she was at the center of, I watched her come back the next day and make it through without a single word out of place. For every time she seemed to spewing out words faster than we could hear them, I've been there the next time where she was as eloquent as a preacher at noontime service.

Just as the film, my friend Fanny shows sometimes it's knowing where we fall behind the rest of the world, what crosses we bear, to know what kind of strength we have. Her story inspires me to make every word count because being understood is something I could've taken for granted before I met her. I'm proud to have her as my friend, even when I have a hard time understanding her, because even when I can't make out a single word she's saying I still know what she means to me.

Breanne

And She Replies, "I'm In No Position To Make Demands, I Have No Past, No One Else Has Done To Me What You Do, I've Got No One Else To Compare You To"

2011-02-09T00:11:00.000-08:00

--"Childcatcher", Lush

I've only had to place this disclaimer once before, but, yeah, this post is definitely intended for mature audiences...

I haven't always been the nicest person. Especially to my friends I haven't exactly always been the picture of someone who would be willing to sacrifice or put myself out in any respect. Indeed, some of the clearest memories my friends and former friends possess of me are times involving when I purposefully chose to disappoint them rather than compromise what I wanted. It's part of my nature to want what I want and to give less consideration to what others want. I'm not saying proud of that characteristic; I just know it's been a lifelong struggle to not only say the right things to a person, but to also do right by the same person.

In the same respect I have never been able to resist turning any relationship to my favor in some regard. Some of it is unconsciously, some of it is also intentional, but I don't believe I've entered into a relationship where I didn't feel like I hold the upper hand in some manner. From looking for women less intelligent, less traveled, less experienced, and sometimes less ambitious than me--I go into most relationships seeking at least a few area that I know I'm clearly ahead in points in. Not only that, but I also go into most relationships trying to minimize areas where I can be bested. It's very petty of me. It's also very childish. Yet I know how I get when I'm around someone I clearly consider my better. I become jealous, often vindictive. I can't stand to feel overmatched. More likely, I can't stand to feel like my opinions on any subject is being drowned out.

I like to be in control somewhat, meaning I don't need to be the boss in any given situation. I just need to know I have veto power if need be. I need to know that, sure, I can let you have your way most of the time, but when it comes down to the big stuff, the important stuff, there's only going to be one voice providing the direction and that voice is going to be mine.

A major motif along those lines is my seemingly unwavering attraction to not only date women younger than myself, but much younger than myself. I mean--I've talked to Brandy many, many times about the subject. She feels like it's just another way I exert control over the situation. Like it or not, I seem to believe that younger women or girls are that much easier to sway. She seems to feel that I feel that when push comes to shove I can push my agenda ahead of theirs. She asserts that I like to use my experience and my supposed wisdom in all matters as the trump card in any argument, much like a parent asserting his authority by telling his child of a decision before any discourse has taken place, all the while saying that the child will understand why it has to be so when they get older. From the stories I've related to her, she says I tend to manage a situation in my relationships than actually reaching any sort of compromise.

In a way, I suppose that's true. I can recall plenty of instances where I felt like I was on the losing end of an argument, only to turn it around by whipping it out some anecdote how I had gone through a similar argument before. From there I would either demonstrate how doing things my way had ended triumphantly or how not doing things my way had ended disastrously. Trust me, I would say, I've seen it all play it out before. And that would be that. Most of the time, since they were so young, so inexperienced compared to me, they couldn't really defend their position in the same manner. Most of the time they would defer to my judgment, which would be just the way I liked things.

It would be the same for sex or how fast things progressed in that department. It was almost always in my power to either rush or slacken the pace depending on how fast I thought matters in the physical relations department were moving. With some, like Tara, I just couldn't get things to move ever fast enough. I was forever in negotiations to run away to some motel with her while I was in Maryland or while she was visiting me here in California. With others, like DeAnn, there came a point where I became the typical househusband, where I had to be basically coaxed into having sex. I don't know--maybe it's in my nature simply to be a contrarian in order to prove that I have some semblance of power. I can't remember one relationship where my physical needs were ever in complete sync with somebody's I was dating over the long haul. Eventually, like Brandy says, I had to assert my jurisdiction by completely opposing my girlfriend at the time just to disagree with her.

And then there was the unique case with Breanne.

----

When I was growing up, I hadn't even heard of phone sex. There was only one type of sex I knew about and that was good old-fashioned fornication and whatever it was called when married people had sex. I wasn't very experimental when it came to talking about my own desires. I suppose I was still very shy when it came to a lot of different areas when it came to dating and relationships. As with a lot of things, Breanne and I kind of opened each other up when it came to giving voice to some of our wants and fantasies. Before her I never thought it was okay to talk about all the stuff that goes on behind closed doors, er, with the doors wide open.

In fact, it was Breanne who broached the topic first. She's always been more right-to-the-point when it came to sex or when it came to explicitly spelling out what was going on in that wicked mind of hers. That's not to say I didn't think and want the same things from her, but when it came to getting the conversation going it almost always started from her lips and continued to mine.

I don't know--I must've been almost nineteen at the time and to this day it still kind of makes me blush thinking about the conversation.

"Oh, sugar, you can tell me if you did. It'll be alright. I'm not going to laugh. I just want to know what it was like--if it was a hoot-and-a-half or only 'eh,'" my fourteen-year-old friend announced. There wasn't a hint of condescension in her voice, only the sense of wistfulness and forlorness that was the hallmark of a lot of our conversations in those days. She had a long list of experiences she couldn't wait to feel for herself. Chief among these was what it was like to, as she put it once, know the mysteries of men and women.

"Truth be told, I've never done that. I've never had an opportunity to do that," I replied. "I don't even know if would like it even if did have the chance."

"Why not?"

"I don't know--it doesn't seem like my cup of tea, Breanne."

"Prude," she laughed.

I had given up arguing with her over this point. When you've never had sex before, there's a lot about it that you think is unsettling. I had a lot of reservations about what I would and would not like about it. One of those reservations was reserved for type of illicit conversation about it over unsecured lines while there was still daylight outside.

"Because you're just such an expert on the topic."

"Hey, just because you've ridden a bull before doesn't mean you wouldn't like it, you know? A lot of life is trial and error, and I aim to try just about anything and everything I can get my hands on by the time I'm laid in my grave."

"Right."

"Come on, Mr. Patrick, let's be adventurous."

"I don't think your idea of adventure exactly gibes with mine. I don't think I can bring myself to go where you want to lead me this time."

"Please, thank you," she said in just that way she says that particular phrase. She sounded exactly the way she had sounded when I told her I didn't like ghosts. In that argument she had remained utterly unconvinced that anyone, especially me, could be so unreceptive to ghost stories and other scary tales. She had spent the rest of the afternoon extolling their virtues, explaining to me how everyone needed a good scare now and then. And now she was building up the same determinedness in her tone of voice. I knew the clear symptoms of an attack of Breanne's stubbornness preparing to manifest itself.

It wasn't as if the thought of having sex with Breanne had never crossed my mind. It had crossed my mind a lot over the previous months. But I had remained chaste for the most part in my intentions for her. From my vantage, there was a lot of time for fooling around. What I was mostly interested in was building a sure foundation for something more substantial to develop later on. I didn't want to wreck it by acting on my developing feelings for her too soon. The party line I towed in those days was there could be romance, but no talk of lust; there could be admiration, but no wanton discussions of craving. I thought of myself in a precarious place that I had invested my time in getting to. I didn't want to ruin it by suddenly succumbing to impatience or my usual impulsive inclinations.

I had a good thing going with her and I wanted to enjoy that aspect of what we had before even beginning to think of wanting a bit more.

"Forget it. It's a stupid idea, Breanne. I'm telling you, no."

I might as well have been drawing a line in the sand for her.

"That's just great. You can tell me no till you're blue in the face, but that don't make it so. Hell's bells, I'm telling you right now that this ain't going to be the way things work between us... not if you intend for little 'ole me to be a part of this. You can disagree with me, that's fine. I welcome that. What you can't do, what you ain't going to ever do, is tell me no and expect me to be done with it, darling."

"It's just phone sex. It's stupid. I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I'm only trying to tell you that I know what I am and am not comfortable with. I'm not comfortable with this, Miss Breanne."

"That's fine. Nobody's going to fish you out of any lake you're happy swimming in, you know?"

"I'm glad we can agree with each other on that point."

By the sound of her breathing I could tell she was disappointed. She was a young lady who almost always got her way from everyone. If it wasn't her charm or her sense of determination that would convince you, it would almost always come down to the sound of her compassion ringing through her words that did you in. She never sounded like she was pushing this hard for herself; it was always to do you a favor. She always sounded like she held your best interests in her mind.

It's rather difficult to marshall any sort of resistance against odds like that. Eventually, most people's defenses fell and they felt themselves being convinced of something only moments earlier they had been fighting tooth and nail against. Even myself, who went into most conversations with her with the intention of impressing her with somewhere I had been or something I had done, often walked away scratching my head at the instance upon instance of her thoroughly making an impression on me. Yes, I had the age and experience over, which allowed me to hold a healthy amount of sway over her, but she has always possessed a self-awareness about her, a preternatural wisdom, that makes it impossible to ever discount anything she has to offer in way of imparting her thoughts on you.

"All I'm saying is that if you're scared, you don't need to be. If you're shy about saying the wrong thing to me, don't fret about it. Anything you could say about me probably is something that I've been thinking along the same lines about all this time," she said sweetly. "It's one thing if you truly don't think it's appropriate--that I can understand. But if it's me you're worried about creeping out, well, you can stop worrying."

I don't know who's ever had the real control in our relationship/friendship. Sometimes I feel like I have it because there are times where it's felt like I've won more battles than she had. Sometimes it feels like I've won all the important battles, the ones that have mattered. But other times, when I really look back at the conversations we've held and the times the very future of what we had hung in the balance, I see it's always been her pushing for something more for us than was ever said on the surface. I wouldn't go so far as to say she manipulated me, but she definitely has more experience playing the psychology card on me than I've had in playing it on her. I'm a blunt hammer when it comes to deciding what happens between us compared to the razor-sharp scalpel she wields.

"I know that. That's part of it."

"Not all of it."

"No, part of me, just thinks it'll be stupid."

"Stupid can be good too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean--I don't expect either of us to be any sort of Casanova or Shakespeare. We'll probably laugh a lot the first time, but that's a good thing. Like my daddy says, you can't preach your way through life. Not everything is a solemn occasion and this certainly wouldn't qualify, you know? This would be two friends trying something out for fun. This would be you and me."

"I see your point, Miss Breanne. I see your point."

When Lucy knows she has won an argument, you can almost hear the smile in her voice. The sensation of triumph pervades every word out of her mouth. But even when she's won, she never sounds boastful. Like aforementioned--it seems like her argument works out for both of you. That's one of the best qualities about her.

Before I had a chance to argue she launched into what would be our first foray into "telecommunication fornication," as it came to be called.

"We're in the park. You're just off from Crown and I've just come from school. I'm wearing a simple white top with thin straps tied with bows at the shoulders. A few inches of midriff are bare, below which I'm wearing some snug fitting shorts in a bright orange flower pattern..." she started out.

"We're really going to do this?" I said, trying to stifle a laugh.

"We're really going to do this. Now shush up.

"With my long legs and strong shoulders, you think my body has the scaled-down but perfect proportions of a much older girl."

I responded by saying, "I had been noticing you for awhile. All those times when we crossed each other on the street or at the mall, I made a mental note to myself that you seemed a pretty, young thing. You would have been exactly the kind of girl I would have never had a shot at in high school. In fact, if you had graduated with me last year, you would have never noticed me at all. As it is now, I'm humbly dressed in jean shorts and a t-shirt. I had actually only meant to cut through the park on my walk, but when I saw you I had to stop. I sit next to you on the park bench to say hello."

"We get to talking. We're having what I reckon is a casual conversation until I notice your hands momentarily brush against my arm or my thigh. At first, I think you're just being friendly. Then I begin to notice your hands linger on me a few seconds too long. My first instinct is to move away, establish a perimeter around myself. Yet with every touch of your skin against me it starts to feel nicer and nicer. Fairly soon, you've neglected even the pretense of moving your hands away. Your hands come to rest on my shoulders. I feel them atop the bows on my top, threatening to leave them untied and me exposed."

"Can I just say something?"

"What?"

"You're really good at this, Breanne. I was afraid we wouldn't take it seriously, but...."

"Shush, I know. Your turn."

"As I'm struggling to keep my hands to myself, I notice the position of the park bench in relation to the rest of the park. Feeling too exposed, I suggest we go for a walk deeper into the park, to a more secluded area, under the pretense of me wanting to continue my walk. Without even thinking, I grab your hand and we go walking together down the trail to where only the locals and not just casual visitors know about. We continue walking, as we see less and less people walking the other direction. I start to comment how pretty you are. I comment on how chestnut brown your hair is, how oceanic blue-green your eyes are, and how cute your dimples are."

"And I'm loving it. I'm like a lazy dog in sunshine. I grow emboldened. I spy a nice clearing beneath some trees and suggest we stop for awhile underneath it. I tug your arm behind me, not giving you a chance to tell me no. There we sit on an exposed tree trunk, while it's my turn to start exploring your body. I playfully run my hand through your dark, black hair, then over your tanned arms and hands. I don't know what else to do without giving myself away so I scoot up next to you till I'm practically in your lap."

"By that time I'm dying of want for you. Again, I place my hands on the delicate bows which are barely holding your top on you. I steal a glance at the curve in your top, trying to imagine what your breasts would look like were it not for their covering. I toy with just brazenly untying the bows to see for myself. But a moment of panic takes over me and I have to ask," I say, taking a pause.

"Yes?" she replies.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. And yes again, Patrick."

"Slowly, purposefully, I take hold of one loose end of the bow on your left shoulder. As I gently tug it, the strap lifts away from your shoulder, and you bite down on your lower lip. Finally, all play drawn out of the strap, the end in my hand begins to slip through the bow knot. In slow motion, one half of the bow shrinks until it disappears. Then with a final tug, it pops through
the knot, and the two ends of the strap hang loosely across each other. Releasing the end in my hand, I flick the loose straps and they fall away from your shoulder, one to the front and one to the back. You audibly exhale."

"I feel the breeze on my bare skin, while my left breast almost comes into view. I make a move to increase the pace of the proceedings. Taking your other hand, I guide it to the other bow. I let human nature do the rest. You tug on the other strap just as carefully as you did the first. For the first time that day you see me exposed from the neck down as my top slips downward. I wait for you to gaze upon on my, to be nice, gentle curves, afraid that there is a hint of disappointment in your expression."

"And I tell you that there is nothing more beautiful to me at that moment than you are, Breanne. I make a motion to cup you in my hands, to feel your nipples between my fingers, but you stop me. You tell me that you want to feel my mouth on them. You get up briefly, remove the top from your waist, and sit back down--this time facing me. I bend over to place my head on your chest. I start to softly explore your breasts with my mouth and tongue."

"I feel your lips on my sensitive area. I feel every tug, nip, and pull as you dive into making sure that both mounds are being paid attention to. That's when I start to notice your hands inching my shorts down intermittently. I quickly pull them back up and move your head away.

"'No fair,' I say. 'I'm not rowing this canoe alone here."

"I smile and tell you to take my shirt off. You comply hastily, making sure to run your hands up and down my back with deviousness. I tell you to really rake your nails up my back. You respond by pressing your chest against mine and taking a good rip with both hands up the length of my back, or, at least, as far as your hands can reach. And that's when we finally kiss for the first time."

"Hell's bells, I forgot about that part," she laughs like a hurricane. "Very important, that part."

I laughed right along with her because I had recognized that in our haste we had neglected that simple act that both of us had been desiring for a few months then. Sure, I nixed all sexual talk up until that conversation, but I had been very succinct in my desire to kiss her for awhile by then. That had never been a secret between us.

"Our lips meet like two waves crashing into each other," she elaborates. "It's like two flames becoming entwined with one another, not knowing where one pair ends and the other begins. And it feels like music would feel like if music could be felt. We proceed to play a whole symphony by the time we're done kissing each other. And if it were up to me I would have recommended another piece to continue the evening, but you remind me that we're pressed for time."

"I ask you to undress the rest of me and you answer yes, but only if I do the same," I said. "There we continue to disrobe until we're both standing nude as jaybirds next to one another. We each look the other over hungrily before we both continue the afternoon's activities. I tell you to stand next to the tree. Once there, I tell you to bend over and hug. Sensing my meaning, you do as I ask. As you get into position I stand behind you and slowly, but purposefully, lick two of my fingers and slide them into you from behind. As I feel you getting wet from the inside out..."

"I reach behind me to prepare you as well, sugar. I close my grip around your dick. It feels soft at first, but the more I coax it in my hand, the more it stiffens like a piece of wire being straightened out. I wait until I feel it completely hard in my hand and tell you to enter me now. You ask me again what I want. And that's when I holler at you to do as I ask."

"I push in. I push in and it's like the rest of the day ceases to matter. I feel your body envelop me like a warm, wet vice. I feel myself get lost in you over and over again. It seems like the more I shove myself into you the more I sink in."

"I alternately relax and tighten around you, all the while brushing back against you for some much needed tension. The minutes slip into one another ceaselessly as you fuck me mercilessly until I can see, more than feel, us getting closer to climax. I tell you to hold on, darling. I tell you to hold onto me, darling, I'm almost there. Then we begin to explode into what feels like a million pieces. Then those pieces explode into smaller pieces, and all we're left with is the scent of sex on our bodies and the sound of two people out of breath and very much in love with one another."

What followed next was me listening to her breathe over the phone rather heavily and her probably listening the very same thing over on her end. I was completely floored. I had no inkling going into the experience that I would enjoy it all that much. Similar to my experiences with drinking, I think I had been dissuaded from trying phone sex out by my idea of what it would be like. However, once face to face with the real thing, I discovered that the genuine article was far more exquisite than my preconception of it ever was. I found myself out of breath and not the least bit wondering when the next time we could try it would be.

"So what'd you think, Mr. Patrick?" I finally heard her ask, once she had caught up to her breath.

"I think I was wrong in every way, Miss Breanne... about everything," I said.

She laughed and we continued our conversation with some newfound knowledge about ourselves and about where our minds liked to wonder when let loose in the more primitive parts of minds.

----

And for the first time I stopped seeing her as somebody to control and try to have my way with, and more of as a formidable foe when it came to the direction our friendship/relationship was going to take. To this day Lucy remains the only person I neither feel jealous of for her vast accomplishments (at least most of the time) nor contemptuous of because I consider her beneath me in some respect. Ours is a congress of equals, as far as two people can be the equals of one another. I mean--she took me from a position of being firmly opposed to the idea of ever expressing myself in such a carnal way to another human being to getting pretty graphic about how much I wanted to pursue her biblically. Couple that was in the span of one conversation and I knew that my days of having reign over what she did or thought would be tenuous and fleeting at best.

I guess that's the unique aspect about our dynamics. We're the first people to treat each other as partners rather than as master and servant. Instead of falling back to some built-up dynamic of me being in charge, like I have been accused of in future relationships, I had no experience in that situation to realize that power was even there to be seized. Basically, because I've always treated Breanne as my best friend first and foremost, I shall ever treat her as such rather than a relationship to shape and mold as I see fit.

I mean--it isn't the most conventional place to see the equality of two human spirits. Yet it was precisely the way we took control over the scenario and ceded it just as easily that illustrated to me just how much I trust her judgment. If I had held to what would be later form, that scenario would be much more heavily driven by me. It also illustrated to me that I would never have to control her because, similarly, she had no intention of ever trying to control me.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

What Am I Supposed To Do When The Best Part Of Me Was Always You, What Am I Supposed To Say When I'm All Choked Up And You're Okay

2011-02-04T01:51:00.000-08:00

--"Break Even", The Script

"You say you never asked for this. You say you warned me that there was a chance this was going to happen. And I didn't believe you. It might have been foolish pride or plain stubbornness, but I thought we had a chance. Of any two people I thought we had a shot of proving them wrong. You know who they are, all the people who said we were kidding ourselves. All the people who said we were too young, too blind, too impatient to see that anything of real value takes time. I just wanted to rush into this with everything to prove them wrong. Yet the way things turned out maybe they are right. Maybe I did get my hopes up too high. Maybe I was in over my head. Maybe I am the stupid one for ever thinking that you loved me, but maybe, just maybe, I was tired of being alone. Maybe you were tired of it too. At the time that could have been all that was driving us to move so fast and so hard to keep this going. Now, perhaps, we've just run out of steam. Now we're just crashing from the heights we sustained for so long.

It didn't have to be like this, though. Part of me believes that we could have stayed flying forever, that whatever problems eventually weighed us down never had to happen. Part of me believes this thing never had to end, that forever was a possibility, that that happy ending was in reach. But that's coming from someone who really has never done the serious relationship before.

The tough thing about following your heart is that people assume you've had practice at it before--that it somehow gets easier every time you take that flying leap. As you once told me, you're not afraid of heights, you're afraid of falling. Well, I am afraid of heights and I still chose to fall pretty hard for you. It wasn't easy, but I did it any way. I took a chance and that chance backfired. The tough thing about following your heart is that people forget to mention that sometimes the heart takes you to places you shouldn't be--places that are scary as they are exciting and as dangerous as they are alluring. Sometimes your heart cannot take you to places that lead to happy ending. That's not even the difficult part; the difficult part is when you follow your heart, you leave normal; you go into the unknown and once you do you can never go back. The tough thing about following your heart is people think they know it can only lead to good things. But the heart isn't exactly the world's best guide. It can lose its way just as easily as anybody. Sometimes it really can get so lost that there really is no way finding its way back again.

I'm falling to pieces

I'm not here to berate you. I'm not here to blame you. I'm just writing this to tell you that I think it's a mistake to say there's coming back from this whole mess. It's wrong to say that eventually we'll be as good as new. We're not going back to good or new ever again. That time in our life is over. There's some chance we'll get back to some semblance of being okay again, but both of us will know it isn't as good as it once was. Both of us will know it isn't as new as it once felt. What it will feel is comfortable and comforting, but never again exciting and never again alive is it was when we had the two of us together. I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mending whole was good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live.

I didn't ask for it to be over, but then again, I didn't ask for it to begin. For that's the way it is with life, as some of the most beautiful days come completely by chance. But even the most beautiful days eventually have their sunsets. And I suppose we did have quite a run of beautiful days and I suppose now it's time to welcome those damn sunsets. Just don't expect me to be happy about them. At least not now. You might be right, someday I'll get over this and someday it won't seem so bad. But that day isn't today.

You'll never be that easily forgotten. You'll never be that easily replaced."

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Hey, It's Me Again, I'm So In Love With You Again, Please, Can I See You Everyday?

2011-02-03T02:08:00.000-08:00

--"Voices", Cheap Trick

I can remember crying on my mom's shoulder a week after we had broken up. It wasn't a pretty sight nor was it one of proudest moments. That's always the first image I see when people talk about the inscrutable pain of losing somebody you deeply care about because that's what losing somebody should feel like--ugly and embarrassing. Even though I don't talk about that particular moment all the time, I can't bury it away. It's an image stretched all over the process of becoming okay again.

I don't even remember how it happened. It wasn't like my mom and I were talking about the break-up. It wasn't like I was sitting there with her at the table, spilling my guts. I honestly was doing my best not to burden anyone with my sorrows. It's just not my style to spill at length aloud. I usually reserve such thoughts for writing or for people who I feel honestly want to know all the gory details. I just remember I was sitting there, after having just put back all the stuff I ever gave to her, was given by her, and stuff we had bought together that she didn't want any longer.

I thought I was doing okay. At most I was being really quiet, really still. Sure, that might be a sign in and of itself that things weren't normal with me. Yet it wasn't like I was acting broken or dejected.

I remember thinking at the time of all the things I was going to do to get over her. I was planning all these different ways to put life back together. It all seemed so sorted out in my head, as if being alone had all of a sudden given me the clarity to see my future as it should be. And I remember feeling kind of psyched to begin this new chapter of my life, even if it was without her. Honestly, I thought I was in a good place. Near happy--that's where I thought was at the time.

The next thing I recall is the tears starting to flow as the realization that all my optimism was built on the principle that life would get better without her. It all sounded so revenge-driven suddenly. It started sounding like the kid who couldn't have the toy he really wanted and starts yelling that he was going to get a better toy. They'd all be sorry--she'd be sorry--once I came back with a life that was even better than before. But try as I might to fool everyone around me into thinking that I was handling the whole situation very well, I couldn't fool myself. All my plans, all my wishful thinking, were all seeming like a consolation prize that was a thousand times less appealing than the prize I really wanted.

And that's when I started bawlng, at first to myself then with my mother next to me. We never even discussed it. She didn't need to ask. To this day I still don't think she knows all the details--the pregnancy scare, the threatening to crash the car if she broke up with me, the late-night phone calls which would wake up her parents, the months and months of letting the already poisoned relationship wither rather than killing it all once mercifully. My mom didn't know. I think all she needed to know was that I had my life ruined and that there was a gal at the center of it all.

Say what you will, I've never really had a heart-to-heart conversation with either of my parents. The most I've ever gotten is a cursory, "things will get better line." Talking really isn't a big priority in my family. But I've been through many times where they've just done right by me, even if they've never really said the right words to me. I'm thankful for that because, in the end, I have a lot of people in my life who can talk things over with me, but only a few who can DO something to make me feel okay, if not better. And one of the best things that my family has always done is to do nothing.

They've never prodded me to get right back on that horse or told me that I was allowing myself to get too depressed over something. They've just given me space to let me work out for myself how to feel better. They've never told me not to see one of my exes again even if it's just been a few days after I've just sworn to them that the last thing I wanted to do was get back in touch. And even if my family has questioned my methods (driving at two or three in the morning to see an ex, spending gobs of money to win another over, having the police called on me not once, not twice, but three times because I just had to spend one more night with yet another), they've never left me feeling like I was crazy, messed up, or plain stupid. They've all just chalked it up to me being what I am, very impulsive and very idealistic about how love is supposed to go. It would have been very easy for them to try to press their beliefs on me about staying in control. They could have talked a very good game about not letting my feelings run the ship all the time... but they know me better than that.

I will always say what I'm feeling if I want that person to know it. And I will always do whatever it takes to be with someone I feel I need to be with.

I've always had a hard time just letting a relationship go.

I recently heard the best thing you can do after suffering a broken heart is do nothing. You don't try to jump right back into another relationship. You don't do stuff to try and forget about it. And for heaven's sake you don't do anything to reconcile with the person you broke up with or from in the first place. You just go on with life as you did before--just without her. You live in the pain. You just sit in the pain. Then, like they say, it get a little easier every day until one day months or years later you're better. You might not be over it, but you're okay enough to not let it eat away at you every moment of every day.

For me all of that comes harder than most. Whereas other people can suck it up and move on after a month or a year, there's been some relationships where it literally has taken me three years to get over. Or maybe I just never get over having someone special seemingly stolen out of my life. All I know is that were I born into a different kind of family, where keeping a stiff, upper lip and keeping up appearances were the mandates of the day, I might have ended up even worse. I could have ended up with serious repression problems, which would have only exacerbated my already fragile temper. It's only because I grew up in a house with parents who understood that I was very emotional and that the best thing for me was time and a space to cool off rather than stern lectures or long-winded pep talks that I ever made it through any sort of heartbreak.

That idea that it's okay to wallow in my own misery at my own pace... and lots of bourbon have been the only things that have gotten me through "many a night man simply was not made to suffer."

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

For So Long, You And Me Been Finding Each Other For So Long, And The Feeling That I Feel For You Is More Than Strong, Girl

2011-02-01T04:51:00.000-08:00

--"I Just Want To Be Your Everything", Andy Gibb

When you've been married for a few years you start to realize your husband (or wife) has a lot of habits you once thought were peculiar, but now you've come to accept. For instance, for reasons unknown, Greg possesses a ritual of having to be the first person to brush his teeth in the morning. He says it's because he doesn't want to be the one with bad breath in the morning when we first kiss, but I ain't buying it. I reckon over the years it's just been his habit to get at his teeth first that he's put off when I happen to wake up before him to brush mine. I've spoken to him about this peculiarity of his over the years. He always manages to brush it off. But, hell's bells, as God is my witness, I will get him to spill why he is this way over this one issue.

It ain't like I mind. Folks will do what folks like to do. There's nothing we can do to stop that even if we tried. I just find it humorous that piddly annoyances like that are what I used to focus on early in our relationship and now they are the very practices that I never seem to notice. You get so used to functioning around somebody at all hours of the day that it becomes like an orchestra of maneuvers. It might not make complete sense to me why he seems so intent on making sure he's the first to brush his teeth in the morning. However, it works out for the best since it means most mornings I get the master bathroom free and clear when it's time for me to rise. Even though little 'ole me loves to get up at six, sometimes five in the morning, I can always count on Greg getting up with me just to use the washroom for his own nefarious purposes. I'll jog while he gets ready, and by the time I get back he's kissing me farewell at the front door, leaving my a bathroom all to myself. No intrusions. No pestering. Just me and the bathroom that loves me, you know?

I'm sure I have my bad habits as well. I don't like Greg doing the usual chivalrous acts for me. I like getting my own door. I like glad-handing the hosts and hostesses, and, for Providence's sake, I like being the one who pays. Hell's bells, have we gotten into some big rows over the years because each of us wants to be the one who picks up the tab. It's all a lesson in futility since the money all gets drawn from the same place. Yet somehow the act of paying itself becomes this competition that neither of us wants to acquiesce to the other over. Whenever my daddy sees Greg and I arguing over the bill, he usually picks it up, and dismisses us by saying, "it's like watching two fish fight over the same hook."

I really don't like appearing helpless. The worst description someone could apply to me is that I cannot fend for myself. Even though it is my husband and not some stranger, and even though there are enough meals eaten out or other bills to pick up, each every check really doesn't turn into a life-or-death struggle of wills. All I can offer up in my defense is the usual I can only be myself. I can only be Breanne--no more, no less.

But that's the rub of being tied to another person as tightly as twine on a stack of newspapers, you're going to have the opportunity to see each tic that drives you up a wall. You're going to eventually hear every glib anecdote or turn of phrase that has the ability to turn your stomach. At first, it's going to be more than you can fathom. You're going to say to yourself that, like Popeye, you're going to have all you's can stands and you can't stands no more. You're going to attempt to reason with him to stop his nefarious ways. You're going to plead with him. You're going to bargain with him. Eventually you may resort to bribery or extortion. Yet at the end of it all, because he is who he is, he's going to get right back to every bad habit that annoys you from your head all the way down to your lily-white ass.

What's more, for every rude utterance or embarrassing display of ignorance you see in him, he's going to have a similar bone to pick with you. And he's going to list each and every one of them for your benefit as well. Repeatedly. And that's going to cause you all sorts of consternation as well because, hey, none of us like to have our faults labeled so readily for us, you know? Along with that, it's going to itch away at us that somebody knows all those things we dislike about ourselves. You're going to wonder why in the world did we ever allow another person to pick us apart so easily.

This goes on for awhile until one day, many years later, you come to the realization that all those trifle affectations and nagging turns of phrase have suddenly become endearing. In one form or another they've all become a part of this person we've come to love. You suddenly realize that were he to lose any of his bad habits, well, hell's bells, you'd miss them. You might not know that that's what you were feeling, but that would be the feeling nonetheless. Like my daddy says, "One man's pest is another man's pet." It's all about familiarity in the long run.

My view on the matter is that if his actions and rituals can provoke such a sharp response then it has to be something substantial between you. If what he didn't matter to you so much then you wouldn't be with him. After all, we all can afford to be indifferent to those we plan to chuck away eventually like so much firewood. We're forever being driving ape-crazy by those we care about precisely because we care about them. We worry that their ways might cause a irreparable rift between us precisely because we plan to be with them for the long run. If we weren't accounting for being at sea with them for years to come then we wouldn't give one white about rocking any and all boats, now would we? We would allow the whole vessel to capsize and be done with it.

Yet because we care we keep coming back for more embarrassment and more slight rolling of the eyes when he's being strange.

Yes, Greg does have a lot of bad habits that it's taken a long while for me to grow accustomed to. But it didn't take as long as I thought it would. That's the test of how compatible you are with a person in my opinion. Are his bad habits going to eventually drive you to murder him one night where he lays? Or can you get over yourself?

Greg, for all his weakness, hasn't quite driven me to suffocate him in his sleep quite yet... so it must be love. haha

Breanne

I Wrote A Song, I Wrote It To You, I Knew It Was Wrong, It's Just Something I Do, And You Should Listen To It, And The Words That I Say

2011-01-30T17:28:00.000-08:00

--"I Wrote A Song", Pascal Pinon

There Are No Words

for creativity. It
exists invisibly like

pollution and
soundlessly like
sewing machines

operated by underpaid
earners. You might
explain it to me

through a sonata
or in a painting replete
with muted tones, but

you couldn't define it
in a poem because
no words exist.

dw

----

I read a lot of poems. In my free time, for school--most of my waking day is spent listening to other people's voices. While that does provide some semblance of guidance as to where my lyrical journeys should ultimately be headed, it does provide the impetus for undertaking the journey in the first place. Why do we do what we do? It certainly isn't to make a fortune or, for most of us, fame beyond comprehension. It's a path devoid of vistas or milestones or even company that we who pick up the pen find ourselves on. Seeing how someone else copes isn't the same thing as coping yourself.

Also, with poetry there isn't a set diagram as to how it is done. You can't teach being a poet much like you can't teach being a woman. It's something you are from birth. Because of that it's hard to explain to others the writing process because it so individual to the writer. What works for me doesn't work for anyone else, I can tell you that much. Different strokes, and all that. That's why I find the whole business of reading other poets inspiration, but ultimately empty. I can recognize the greatness and appreciate the triumph of creativity over emptiness, but it doesn't lay out for me any kind blueprint for my future success in the same endeavor.

Every poet wants to be read. That's the ultimate goal, but unlike other mediums I don't believe imitation in poetry is the sincerest form of flattery. I can ape a million styles, study at the foot of a thousand poets, but I can't write Auden Toby-Style nor compose a book of faux-Bukowskis. No one's waiting for the next best Emily Dickinson.

They're waiting for the best Toby Frisson. She's not going to be found reading page after page of wonderful poems written by brilliant poets. You could spend your entire life reading anthology after anthology and still be no closer to writing a good poem. That person can only be found by writing volumes of awful trash masquerading as verses that no one would want to read. That person can only be found by indulging every silly litany, every misguided epiphany, that ever occurs to you. Then, and only then, you might find (maybe) a couple of dozen pieces that some of society might actually like.

dw

And Then One Day, You Put Me On The Highway, You Said That Gravity Was Gonna Do Me In

2011-01-28T23:11:00.000-08:00

--"Gravity", Rilo Kiley

Gravity Always Wins, Or So I've Been Told

Gravity always wins,
or so I've been told
by those it has bested.
It pulls down
the beads of sweat
which forms on the furrows of brows
long used to its tug.
Can't fight it.
Can't hide from it.
Gravity always wins
even in the best
of scenarios where
such sweet flight
would be a
flitting blessing;
a disaster, interrupted,
by the accident of
rediscovering
one's own bliss.
Gravity fights like
the dirtiest of cocks
in a chalk ring
of infinite size.
It takes no pleasure,
feels no pain,
and dispenses no justice
beneath its beveled robes of
black and black.
It just wins because its
nature is to do just that.
And only that.
Yet when Gravity
threatens to slam me
to the ground,
violently swiping my
equilibrium,
I shall fight back.

dw

My Heroes Had The Heart, To Lose Their Lives Out On A Limb, And All I Remember, Is Thinking, I Want To Be Like Them

2011-01-28T02:07:00.000-08:00

--"Crazy", Gnarls Barkley

It's no secret that my favorite actress is Sarah Polley. If you've been paying attention long enough--with my rants on Avonlea, all things Canadian, and my affinity for individuals who show undeniable talent at a young age--you would know that she appeals to me across a broad spectrum of interests. Not only do I think she is one of our generation's finest actresses and an up-and-coming director, but I have always thought of her as someone who isn't afraid to be an individual. Especially in the area of acting, it's a rare commodity to be thought of as someone who truly goes her own way.

From standing up to Disney to turning down roles in movies like Almost Famous and The Bourne Identity, you know becoming famous isn't exactly at the top of her list of reasons why she performs. True, she started out on a show that was a pretty big hit back in Canada and wasn't exactly unknown on American shores. Since then, though, she routinely alternates roles between smaller fare to an occasional "mainstream" picture. Also, much has been written about her political activism in her youth, about how she had two of her back teeth knocked out during a protest against the Provincial Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris. While I've always thought that was an interesting facet about her, it isn't the real reason I think of her as more than just some silly celebrity idol. It isn't the real reason why I tend to think of her more as a complete person than other famous crushes--like Jenny Lewis or Melody Kay--I've had in the past.

I think the real reason why Sarah Polley remains my favorite actress-slash-director-slash-human being is her ability to mature and change as the years go by.

I think you're crazy
just like me

I admit it--when I first started liking Sarah Polley it was because I thought she looked purdy. That, and the fact she was Canadian, is what made me stop on The Disney Channel that fateful day in 1992. But as soon as I started watching more episodes of Avonlea to see more of her, I found out what an awesome actress she is. Even at the age of ten or eleven she had the best emoting I'd ever seen for someone so young. One thing I can't stand is when kid actors fake their way through a crying scene. Covering the eyes with their hands, over-emphasizing their sobs, and changing the pitch of their voice unrealistically--it all bothers me. Sarah's gift, and what I've always liked from day one, is that she genuinely looks like what she's portraying. When she cries, it's very understated, yet memorable. She doesn't have to make the tears or the sobbing the focus of the scene. For me, I tend to care more about what she's saying and, in turn, what she's going through, than what she looks like when she's trying to be sad.

There's a famous story about her crying ten minutes after a scene ended on the show, so wrapped up in her performance she was. I believe it. Some of her best scenes on the show were when she was called on to be sad and stoic at the same time.

However, as time went and my admiration moved away from just loving her on the show. I found out she had all these pursuits that were far outside of the range of typical adolescent celebrities. From the authors she read, to the music she listened to, to the plain views she espoused politically and socially--she wasn't just some personality replete with politically correct sound bites. She didn't come prepackaged. She spoke her mind and did what she wanted because she felt it was right.

From supposedly dating Stephen Rea, thirty years her senior, to taking up with other men who were less than Entertainment Tonight material to living on her own at the age of fourteen, she could have been just another typical child actor out of control story. The only difference was her life choices were never reported as being destructive. They did not include tales of drinking, drugs, or wanton acts of violence. Nope, aside from the dating issue and the political protest stories, her choices always seemed more odd than scandalous. What they seemed like was a person who chose to do her own thing no matter what she was expected to do.

If anything, it was an example of an individual trying to find her own direction in the world, making the mistakes we all make and learning to make the best of the consequences. In the end, she came out better because of the experiences.

----

The Sarah Polley of today hardly resembles the rabblerouser of her youth. By her own admission, she's more mellow. The process by which she became this confident and talented woman who is gearing up for her next movie might seem puzzling on the outside. Yet it's what's kept me interested in her career all these years. Rather than roll my eyes at the same plain quotes or photo ops that every other actress or singer seems more than willing to give these days, every time I read a story about Sarah Polley I felt like I learned more about her, about who she really is. And the more I learned about her, the less I admired about her obvious talents and the more I admired her for the courage of her convictions and the will just to attack life head-on.

And, no, it isn't the same picture of her I get all the time. The "Sara Stanley" image may have been the one that sparked my interest in her, but she Sarah I admire these days is the artistic auteur behind an awe-inspiring film like Away From Her and the balls-to-the-wall performer who can almost pull off a crazy plot like Splice with her performance. These days it puts a smile on my face to hear her talk about getting excited for her next opportunity instead of sticking it to some big, faceless corporation like Disney or Becel--though she still does that on occasion.

Right now I'm more interested in the well-adjusted woman she is now than the too-wise-for-words ingenue and hellion she was for much of the nineties and early part of this century.

I mean--we're all entitled to the craziness of our youth and the never-ending battle of our college years. However, there comes a point where people should be praised less for the ardor of their fighting spirit and more for the ability to both hold onto the courage of their character and work to make society better rather than work against those who would make it worse. As I've grown, as I've changed my philosophies on life, I think Sarah's been there to provide a mirror image to my own journey of setting aside my own willingness to anger in order to learn some kind of temperance, of turning my swords into plowshares, as they say.

Sarah's living proof that you don't have to give up your beliefs. You just don't have to feel the need to fight for them twenty-four, seven. There is a happy medium between letting your beliefs go and pushing them to the forefront of who you are as a person. Sarah's my idol not only because she can act, but because she can--I don't know how else to put it--live. She's my idol because she seems to have a life that encompasses knowing herself and allowing that image of herself to change and blossom.

And she's still my idol because no one still can do a crying scene like she can. No one.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

She's Tryin' Hard, To Fit In In Some City, But Her Home Is 'Neath That Big, Blue Sky, And The Northern Plains And Those Other Wide Open Spaces

2011-01-26T01:33:00.001-08:00

--"How 'Bout Them Cowgirls", George Strait

A strange personality trait of mine is the fact I feel more at ease with people who talk with accents, especially Southern accents. Chalk it up to growing up with a best friend from Georgia or from working national call centers for the last ten years, whenever I get on the phone with someone with a thick drawl and spouting forth all sorts of down-home expressions I just get a huge smile on my face. I instantly feel at ease. They could be hollering at me for my incompetence or insulting the intelligence of my dog, but as long as they do it with the affectation of a Southern gentleman or lady it would be alright with me.

Maybe it's because I've always felt at home with my boot-scoot and boogeying side, but I think people just know how to talk in that part of the country. They still show a love of the language, of using some wit to spice up the way they converse. I mean--in most parts of the country people speak in a relatively conventional and dry fashion. Most people, including me, get right to the point. But in parts where they still take life slow it's like they've learned to speak slower and more ceremoniously. Listening to someone who's got the patter down and who is steeped in the language is like listening to music rather than just mere words. It's just fun to hear the turns of phrases, the expressions, and the way the language paints the whole world in big, bold colors. Not only that, but people who are from the South just seem to have fun with each and every sentence they say.

I'm not exactly known for my colorful way of speaking, but I have gotten a few comments over the years that I do slip into somewhat of a countryfied manner of expressing myself. I don't do the accent. However, every now and then a borrowed expression manages to work its way into my conversations. Or, more noticeably, I'll use words that simply aren't the norm in this part of the country like "ain't" and "y'all." Indeed, I caught myself telling one of my customers today that I'd "give him a holler when tomorrow comes," which isn't heard all that often in California, let alone in the Los Angeles area.

I don't know--perhaps I'm just a redneck at heart, that, like my cousin says, I was born in the wrong part of the country. Perhaps that's why hearing that distinct regional dialect can elicit such feelings of warmth from me. But it's no more than I adore Canadian speech patterns and phrases. There's just something in me that identifies with living somewhere other than here that I can so deeply be enamored of these far-off places for their language, food, and culture. I believe it's merely my wanderlust talking when I subconsciously mimic people from the places I'd like to be from. I believe it's merely my way of expressing my jealousy of their hailing from a place that seems so magical and larger-than-life for me.

Or maybe it is as simple as one of my other friends put it. I have warm feelings for Lucy. Lucy speaks in a identifiable manner. Ergo, when I hear somebody speak something that resembles that manner I immediately develop warm feelings instinctively like Pavlov's dogs. As they see it, it's no different than hearing a song which was playing during a happy moment in your life and instantly having your mood lift--except in this case the music is the language itself.

Who knows? It could be as corn pone simple as that. At any rate, it doesn't really matter why hearing someone speak with a Southern accent can bring a bit of joy into my life. It's just nice to know that it does. When the whole world around me is speaking flatly and without a bit of energy, it's good to count on one voice playing through the drone to put a smile on my face.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Tell Her Not To Get Upset, Second-Guessing Everything You Said And Done, And Then When She Gets Upsets Tell Her How You Never Meant To Hurt No One

2011-01-22T09:46:00.000-08:00

--"Call Your Girlfriend", Robyn

Smile

when you cry
you're alone,
tiny
in the space
between thoughts--
nothing;
when you smile
graveyards burn
to ash
and ashes
spread across
the earth.

dw

----

I was barely here, less than a whisper, when I found someone real. Finding someone real was never my goal, you see, because finding someone amidst the crashing waves of students and wannabe scholars is as easy as finding music in the city. But I did find someone despite the darkness. For a time there it felt like the next quarter of my life was ready to get underway whether or not I was ready for it. She was real, which made me real and not just someone content to play the observer, letting her heart skip a beat whenever it was presented with decisions far above her clearance level. She opened me up like a hard-boiled egg when I didn't even know I was a hard-boiled egg. My face did light up every time I saw her, I can tell you that much.

I smiled because of the surprise of it all, not because I was secretly looking forward to developments. I smiled because my state of being at the time dictated at the time that a smile was appropriate. Gosh, who am I kidding? At the time I smiled because there was joy in my life, a bliss incomparable to anything I had ever felt at home. When I wanted to stay up late listening to Woloch and Bukowski, she would watch the tapes right along with me. When I wanted to go walking against the cold of night, she would go walking with me till two in the morning, even if it meant just circling the dorm. And when I wanted to sleep, I'd find her asleep on the couch next to me.

It was the perfect distraction from the distraction I'd been feeling all along. That was the most important distinction. What we did wasn't the point; what she took me away from was the point. Nobody else I've met her could lay claim to the same distinction. I've been more than cordial, better than warm, but my aim was never to solidify connections to the point of having to change my priorities. Yet because I had no time for friendship, friendship came and found me.

We were in rhythm. We were rhythm. Everyone else was noise.

say it's not her fault
but you just met somebody new

But now that's fading and I'm feeling the fade immensely. I would never admit to it, but a certain part of me has felt the pangs of fear that my future is wrapped up in myself. Not by happenstance, but by choice, since I choose my happenstances very carefully. She's found someone new to occupy her time, to give her more of the college experience, and now I'm relegated to the choir of the drama we had been starring into together. I'm not sad because she's still around. It only feels like I'm talking to a ghost since she probably doesn't notice the fade at all. To her it's like the difference between sunshine and lamplight, to me it's like the difference between rain and a waterfall.

When she came to me and told me she'd met somebody, at first I thought she meant me. But she didn't mean me. I'd already been met. I suppose the fact she came to me at all says something about the strength of all convinced. While it doesn't completely feel like a loss, it's definitely not a win. It leaves the distinct impression of being a draw.

And I know I should be happy for her, which is the reason I smile because I've always been able to hide behind its beauty. Yet inside I feel like the song has ended and it'll be a long time in rotation before it's ever heard again. And I know that pain is temporary and that memories last forever, but there's something very temporary about it all that I would have never bothered to reflect upon before. So I'll smile because she still elicits that response. And I'll smile because sometimes that's all it takes to forget what you've lost and remember what you had in the first place.

dw

When I'm Walking By The Water, Come Up Through My Toes, To My Ankles, To My Head, To My Soul, And I'm Blown Away

2011-01-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

--"Lie In Our Graves", Dave Matthews Band

I've taken a lot of guff over the years about my childhood belief that God looks like a pre-surgery Kenny Rogers. Folks have shared a laugh or two at my expense, asking if God does requests and if the Bible is merely a thinly veiled collection of Mr. Rogers' oeuvre. The only defense I can give is, hey, it's what I was told as a child by my daddy. I was told that God looked an older-looking man, with a white beard and soft eyes, and who had a voice that millions of people wanted to listen to. Some people jump to their granddaddies, I just happened to jump to a best-selling Country artist.

That's the thing about childhood beliefs, they always seem to make sense at the time you first conceive of them. And even when they're dispelled by the onset of maturity, because you believed them so heartily in your youth there's a part of you that wants to believe in them even into adulthood. Even if you get laughed at, even if it defies all logic, the truths we dreamt up in your youth often trumps the truth that science and the universe can conjure up.

For instance, when I was around seven my cousin Shelly told me that the people who choose to get their car washed while they're still in the car get washed as well. She told me that while the outside of the car was being scrubbed down the car wash attendants were simultaneously filling the inside of the car with water and soap as well. Shelly told me that the people inside of the cars were doing it as a way to save time in the day by bathing at the same time as their car was. Hell's bells, I didn't know any better. All I knew was that when my mother gave me my bath she filled the tub with water. Car, tub--it was the same difference. This lead to me for the longest time asking my folks repeatedly to go through the car wash with me inside of the car instead of waiting outside of it. I reckoned one of those days my mother would tell me to get my bathing suit on and say, "Honey, we're going to car wash!"

dreaming of things that
we might have been

Speaking of water, it was at around the same age that my friends and I first started talking about sex. Well, one of the topics that came up was the idea of wetness. I was forever hearing women in movies speaking about how "wet" they were and how thinking about a certain beau hunk was making them "wet". That's when Torry, Fawn, Hanna, and I came to the conclusion that splashing yourself down there was like a woman's way of signaling to a man that she wanted to make love to him. It didn't take long for the older kids to dispel this particular myth, but I remember a few months there where in private we would spill water on ourselves to see if we felt any more mature, you know?

Also, very wickedly, I happened to this same rumor on to Katie when she was six or seven as well.

But I think the truth I had the hardest time wrapping my head around was pregnancy. Like some other people I have talked to, when I was a kid I reckoned that doctors got women pregnant. I imagined that was part of their job as much as giving physicals or giving people shots. All I ever heard from aunts and uncles, friends' folks', or in books was women going to the doctor to get pregnant or to find out if they were pregnant. It didn't take me long to put two and two together. A doctor was where you went to get a baby as well as have a baby. There was a sense of logic there. Like my dad always says, "if you help to make dinner then it's only right you get to eat and enjoy it too," except in his case he was talking about being the sole breadwinner in the family. At any rate, I reckoned that a doctor was responsible for getting the women pregnant so it was only natural that he'd want to be there when she delivered too.

Perhaps I was a naive little 'ole gal. Breanne doesn't think--she just goes, after all. However, I suppose we're all naive at that age, before it's explained to us how everything little 'ole thing works. There just ain't enough time to learn everything in your first few years of life and perhaps our brains aren't sophisticated enough to let it all sink in even if everything were explained to us. That's why we have to rely on our imagination so much to fill in the blanks. It ain't because we want to know everything for its own sake, it's because we want to know what everyone else knows, what our parents know, what the "old" people know.

It's no fun being out of the loop about something. I was forever complaining that with all the secrets my folks withheld from me I could probably take over the world. That's why I invented my reasons, fooled around with my own way of seeing the world work, because then I felt like I was a part of the world. It was only then that I felt like people could treat me seriously because I knew about car washes and Kenny Rogers and doctors making babies.

The more I thought I knew, the more I felt comfortable in my own skin. I guess in a sense, making up the rules to the way the universe functioned gave me permission to carve out my little 'ole piece of it rather than be afraid of it.

Breanne

Love Was When I Loved You, One True Time I Hold To, In My Life We'll Always Go On

2011-01-19T00:02:00.000-08:00

--"My Heart Will Go On", Celine Dion

There's an episode of Friends where Phoebe is mad at Ross for something he did in a dream she had. It's funny because she gets all worked up over something that never really happened and there's nothing he can do or say to make up for it until she admits that it wasn't anything he did in reality, but something he did in a dream.

I go through the same dilemma sometimes. Sometimes it more what I perceived an individual did to slight me than the slight itself. I mean--it's all perspective when it comes down to it. What a person does isn't nearly as important as how we react to it, right? For instance, a friend could insult me today and I could laugh it off whereas some days (most days) I could really be stung by it. A lot of different factors can enter into the complex equation of how a moment will affect us. More importantly, seemingly random stimuli can alter whether or not a given memory actually stays with us. Chance encounters, snippets of conversation, &c... are all fair game to be retained if the stars align in a particular way.

That message seems to lie at the heart of the book I recently finished, Jonathan Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You. It tells the story of three brothers, their sister, and their mom, coming together to sit shiva for seven days after their father dies. They're all in the thirties and forties. Most of them are married. Some of them have kids. But they all haven't seen each other in years, even decades. Normally, this would be a recipe for some great angsty family drama. While the novel does have it fair share of drama, it also mines weaknesses of the human condition for some pretty gutsy (and hilarious) moments of humor. It's the kind of book you feel embarrassed to read in public simply because it has the audacity to both make you laugh and make you cry.

Our guide through the seven-day journey through hell in a hand basket is Judd. His wife recently left him for his boss, following a pretty devastating miscarriage. And just to ratchet up the hilarity is the fact his wife Jen tells him she's pregnant near the beginning of the book. As aforementioned, such details don't exactly spell out comedy gold, but Tropper has a gift for seeing the drunk leprechaun at the end of every thunderstorm.

One of Judd's key personality traits is, much like Phoebe, he likes to daydream about people he sees in the street, on the road, or even in Church and imagining what their life is like. More specifically he likes to imagine about women he sees and what their life would be like if they were to start dating, get married, have kids, &c... What's great is that for every relationship he imagines working out, he has one that ends in disaster for whatever reason his imagination can surmise. What's also great is that he proceeds, still much like Phoebe, to base his behavior around them on these daydreams as if he absolutely knows for certain that this will be their future together. While I wouldn't go so far as to sat these visions take up the bulk of his day Walter Mitty-like, it is a key trait to unlocking what makes Judd tick.

A lot of us, if our husbands or wives, boyfriends or girlfriends, were to leave us right before our dad died would probably be imagining a better life being out there, right? And this better life for a lot of us would probably include an upgrade in the significant other category.

near, far, wherever you are
I believe the heart does go on

Another major motif in the book which I like and which ties into Judd's personality is the fact a lot of the characters make decisions in the book based on prior histories with other characters. Old flames have one last fling with one another after not seeing each other in twenty years. Brothers hold grudges over events that happened in high school. Hell, a relationship develops out of nowhere simply because two of the characters have been neighbors. It's amazing how many people make what looks like to be the wrong choice because of nostalgia, because of a memory of how things used to be. More specifically a lot of the characters make decisions because they want to bring back the old days when everything seemed to work out in the end, to replace present day where almost everything is fucked up in one way or another.

That also goes to the point that sometimes the decisions we make in our lives are mercurial and aren't based on reason. I hate to give her credit, but Breanne had it right when she told me all those years ago when she said that more than fifty percent of the decisions we make aren't based on logic. She said that more than fifty percent of our decisions are based on emotion, on instinct, on what our gut is telling us to do. And this book seems to postulate--indeed, its main focus seems to be--that memory is directly tied up in everything we do. The characters may not remember everything as it happened. Some of the characters even have conflicting versions of the actual account of the way things went down. Yet they sure all remember how it made them feel and they sure all know how it apparently affected the course of their life to come. Every one of them harbors a decision or two that followed wherever they went, a decision that at the time was made in the heat of the moment and ended up closing certain avenues while opening other ones.

Deep in the heart of the all--in Judd's mental wanderings, in the last flings of high school sweethearts, in the blossoming of new romances--is that love is tied up also in memory. Tropper seems to throw out there that love, like memory, might be subjective, that it isn't a genuine article at all. He puts forth that love may be flimsy at best, subject to the same twists of circumstance that makes some memories permanent and others fade away. More than anything he says that everybody is capable of love; that it relies on instinct and going with the flow of fate more than anything else. And because of that people are capable of being in love with more than one person at a time, that there isn't anything wrong with loving your husband AND still being in love with the guy with whom you had all your firsts with. He seems to be saying it's okay to still love your wife even after she's cheated on you with your boss because, hey, you fell in love with her once. He wants to say if you're capable of loving someone in the best of times, you should be capable of loving someone in the worst of times too.

Love and memory. They're all tied in together. For just because your father dies doesn't mean you stop loving him. Or just because your family has grown up and apart, and aren't the family you once shared the dinner table with, doesn't mean you get to ever stop loving them. Or, finally, just because you stop being that person you used to be with that certain person he or she used to be doesn't mean the feelings you once felt for another are no longer real or go away.

People are entitled to how they feel forever. Loving the memory of someone is just a good a reason as any to continue loving them now, I say.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

But I Would Walk 500 Miles, And I Would Walk 500 More, Just To Be The Man Who Walks A Thousand Miles, To Fall Down At Your Door

2011-01-18T00:39:00.000-08:00

--"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)", The Proclaimers

I've been thinking about buying a new pair of cowboy boots.

I know--cowboy boots aren't exactly everyone's cup of tea. Plus, wearing them in California isn't exactly a common occurrence, but ever since I had my first pair gifted to me about seven years ago I've thought, somehow in some way, they work for me. I mean--I'm not exactly known for my overwhelming love of shoes. I don't rush out and buy a new pair every year. Overall, I'd much rather have a good pair of shoes that goes with everything, or at least what I normally wear, and lasts a long time. I don't need to know what everyone else is wearing. Hell, I don't even need to know what goes with what. I like what I like and I don't necessarily feel the need to have seventeen pairs of shoes for seventeen different occasions.

Cowboy boots fit the bill.

Mostly I'm just looking for something to reward myself with after getting this new job. For almost a year now I've had to curtail my impulsive purchasing. Rather than buy everything I wanted when I wanted, I only did it half the time, which is my version of self-control. And high on the list of things I wanted to buy this year were cowboy boots. Before it always seemed like a splurge rather than a necessity since the chief reason I want them is to proclaim my desire to be somewhat different than the teeming masses who go out in the world. Yet somehow I felt wanting to be different was not truly a worthwhile reason to spend northwards of $150 on a pair of shoes. There are other ways to verify my uniqueness, ways that don't require me to spend a day's wages on a single item.

and when I'm dreaming, well I know I'm gonna dream
I'm gonna dream about the time when I'm with you

I don't know what it is about me that equates being different with being myself, but I feel like there's a part of me that's forever stretching to display all these different sides of me in order to get someone to notice me. I've never thought of myself as someone who gravitated towards the spotlight. However, deep down, while most of us don't need fame exactly, we're all searching for some type of recognition. Like Radiohead said, we want someone to notice when we're not around. We want to make an impression on the people around us, good or bad, just to assure ourselves that somehow we matter. And it can be showcasing our talents, or befriending a thousand people, or even something as simple as wearing a specific type of footwear, but we're all searching for that next best thing that will get the world to see us for who we want to be.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

And We Know It's Never Simple, Never Easy, Never A Clean Break, No One Here To Save Me, You're The Only Thing I Know Like The Back Of My Hand

2011-01-15T16:10:00.000-08:00

--"Breathe", Taylor Swift featuring Colbie Caillat

When I was younger I used to wonder why it was okay for someone to get married after their first husband died, but not okay for someone to take two husbands. It used to bother me that anyone would ever even consider getting married because I thought of it as a betrayal of everything they ever promised when they first got married. I was of the belief that when you married, you married for life, you know? Everything else was breaking the rules.

I reckon my folks set the bar for this. Though they've had their share of problems and their share of fights, never once did it ever cross my mind that those two would ever get a divorce. Hell's bells, it was unheard of that those two would even separate for a spell. That's how strong everyone, including myself, considered their relationship. If marriages were foundations for the rest of your life, theirs would be Gibraltar. Whenever I needed inspiration for what I hoped my married life to be like it's always to them I would look. Every other couple--my aunts and uncles, my friends' folks, even my cousins who were older than me--seemed to have it together, but not a single one of them ever quite measured up to the example set in my household every day when I was growing up.

As the years rushed by and I witnessed more and more people I knew having their parents' marriages break up or otherwise fall apart, I started to see that perhaps that my folks were the exception and not the rule. My perception of marriage began to grow shakier than an orange tree in a Miami hurricane. I began to understand that love, while noble, isn't necessarily permanent--that it could falter just as easily as God's creatures themselves. While I never lost hope that my marriage, whenever it happened, could beat the odds, a bit of doubt had managed to skulk its way into my mindset.

Yet never did I think that a marriage could fall apart at the seams so easily.

When I cheated on Greg it was the result of many years of working so hard at a relationship that didn't seem to be bringing any tangible results. For awhile there it was as if we were both paddling the same rowboat, only in different directions, as my daddy would say. Nothing we did mattered, except to aggravate the problems even more. Every day I woke up slightly worried at the prospect of igniting the next inevitable scuffle or, worse yet, blowing up at my husband for something that wasn't even entirely his fault.

That's the thing about fighting once you get to be grown-up. You can be mad at your husband for staying at the office late or missing dinner for the fifth time, but your anger can choose to manifest itself instead at the moment he's five minutes to pick you up at the airport or something else that petty. You don't ever fight the battle at hand, what you're fighting is the battle you should have had weeks or even months prior. I don't know any other creature on the planet which has the capability to procrastinate like humans do. We're so adept at it, that we even procrastinate our anger. We're forever putting off saying something to the people who matter to us, excusing ourselves with the thought that it ain't no big deal, that it can wait for a better time. The only thing is there is no better time to point out your annoyance or your hurt feelings than at the point of impact, there's only a worse time to bring it up.

Even someone like little 'ole me, who prides herself at being outspoken, goes through the same turmoil of trying to preserve Greg's feelings more than I should. When we were fighting like the Hatfields and the McCoys there were many days where I literally had to keep my mouth shut for stretches at a time because everything little 'ole word he said or choice he made could have set me off on expressing my frustration with him. Looking back, I should have let more of those thoughts out, despite it leading to a fight because it may have prevented later turmoil. Looking back, I should have been a little less careful and more deliberate like my instincts were telling me to be.

Maybe then Greg and I wouldn't have separated for a time nor would we have gone to almost a year of counseling to fix the problems.

Sometimes I think the problem was that he felt too familiar to me. I grew too comfortable with him too soon. When something feels easy from the get-go it's usually a sign that there will be problems much later. And when I first met him I felt like I knew Greg like the back of my hand. It was easy to predict what he would say in any given moment or what he would decide in every given instance. I don't know if that's the way he felt about me, but I reckoned I had him figured out from the start. What that usually means is that one person is sublimating his personality for another. And I reckon that's what happened in our case. Greg, who's normally the gentlest, sweetest guy on Earth, just allowed me to run the show in the early years. He saw that I was naturally a take-charge kind of gal and, hell's bells, did he allow me to take charge. I was like a one-woman wrecking ball, blindly deconstructing everything he ever was before he met me only to put him back together in a fashion I saw fit.

The trouble with that was that's not who he was, who he is; that wasn't what was going to make him happy. He was so busy trying to be the man I wanted him to be that kind of forgot how to be the man he wanted to be. And once he figured that out we started to clash more and more. I thought the changes I had made had done him some good, while he finally saw me for the controlling shrew he says he should've seen all along.

Finally there came a point where the only quiet we could afford for ourselves was when we were apart. It seemed like whenever we were together there was only the cacophony of two people who just weren't in the same place any more. That's when we decided a few weeks of being apart from one another might do us some good. I moved in with my parents at first, and then later moved down to Fanny's place for the last few weeks. I didn't see Greg except for our counseling sessions and, even there, I talked to him even less. It was what I called isolating myself from the problem. In other words, it was my adult version of running away from the problem just like I'd ran away from my problems when I was a little 'ole child.

For awhile there it worked wonders. I felt happier. I felt free. I felt like I didn't have to take care of anyone any more. While it was true that Greg did a lot of changing for me, it also felt like I had changed a lot of who I was for him as well. With him gone I went back to being more headstrong and less inclined to second guess myself. With Greg it's like I had to take into consideration another voice who was always so much more timid than me. I had to be more patient. I had to be more careful. I may be a lot of things, but patient and careful have never been adjectives used all that much to describe me. I started going out more. I started drinking with my girlfriends again. It felt like I started living life again, doing all those things that being married had forced me to miss.

Say what you will, but getting married at twenty-two is still rather young. Maybe there are those like my parents who have the patience to go through their young adulthood being locked into a marriage, but for me it might have been better if I'd waited till I was a bit older. I feel like if I'd waited till I was twenty-five or twenty-six instead of getting married right after graduating college I would have been better prepared. I basically went from living with my folks, to living in a dorm, to living with Greg with no break in-between. What I needed was some alone time to figure out who Breanne the woman was without parents, without school, and without a husband having their say on her. What I needed was some alone time to function on my own and to prove to myself that I could hack it. Without that I was forever under the impression that I only got so far because of the support and direction of others. With my personality, that's not a good feeling to possess.

Something in me can't function if I'm forever beholden unto others, even if it's only an imaginary debt I feel I owe them. You're either driving or being driven, as my daddy says, and it took being separated from Greg to realize that I like driving myself. More than that, there's a part of me that sincerely likes driving alone every once in awhile.

Yes, it all worked out in the end. Greg and I fixed our problems by figuring who we were as individuals and not just who we are as a couple. Yet there's a part of me that now understands the fragility of a marriage and how easily it can all disappear when even one person isn't happy. Now I understand more fully that when you're married it means that being together adds more to who you are as people than it takes away. Being married isn't just about making each other laugh. It isn't just about having a great sex life or having a nice, big house. It's also about doing your best not to make each other cry, when it sometimes feels like that's the easiest thing to do in the world. It's about kissing and cuddling even when your day hasn't been perfect. It's about sharing your heart with someone as easily as you share a house with them, even if that means saying things that aren't complimentary in nature. Being married is about staying true to who you are as much as it is finding out what you have to offer somebody else.

Most of all it's about getting to know someone for who they are, rather than trying to manipulate them to be someone you think is perfect. Marriage isn't about being perfect or living out your years in ignorant bliss. It's about signing up for the long haul despite the bumps and dips along the way because you both feel like the journey's worth it in the end. It's about knowing someone and letting them get to know you because you want to and not because you feel you have to.

And, yes, for me it's still about loving someone not just for the rest of his life... but for the rest of mine.

Breanne

You Know I Know How, To Make 'Em Stop And Stare As I Zone Out

2011-01-13T20:32:00.000-08:00

--"Club Can't Even Handle Me", Flo Rida Featuring David Guetta

Women Who Stare Out Windows

who are these women,
sitting in big, comfy chairs
meant for paying customers,
wearing purple scarves
(and even more purple faces),
and staring out windows
at the echoes
of their former lives?

who are these women
never buying a single
book or
cup of coffee,
while others more impatient
and not particular proud
of their own achievements,
stand idly by and
fume at the
inconvenience?

dw

The Handshake, Seals The Contract, From The Contract, There's No Turning Back, The Turning Point, Of A Career

2011-01-13T00:16:00.000-08:00

--"Everything Counts", Depeche Mode

Come Monday I shall be back among the gainfully employed. I was recently offered employment through DSS with Honda for a long-term assignment. I'll be doing what I basically did at my last job with Eclipse/Fujitsu Ten. As a Credit Analyst I'll be in charge of maintaining different businesses' credit lines, collecting on overdue accounts, and staying on top of any potential problems that may arise. The pay's more than good and while the long-term designation as opposed to permanent designation is somewhat worrisome, even that isn't enough to detract from my excitement at being back to work again.

The only aspect of going to work on Monday that might diminish my enthusiasm is the idea of losing all that free time. I wouldn't recommend being out of work for a year, but my "sabbatical," as Miss Flib called it, did me some good when it came to recharging my batteries. I didn't have to worry about who I would have to haggle with or contend with the next day. I didn't have to come home stressed out about that day's worth of work. And I didn't have to make sure to stay rested and refreshed just do it all over again the next day.

I do need structure in my life just to keep me sane. But there's something to be said of living your life unfettered for extensive stretches of time. I'm just sad that this stretch is quickly coming to an end.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

She Looks Like The Real Thing, She Tastes Like The Real Thing, My Fake Plastic Love

2011-01-11T05:04:00.000-08:00

--"Fake Plastic Trees (cover)", Molly Tuttle

When it comes to music one might say I possess eclectic tastes. From country to j-pop to alternative, there isn't a style of music I haven't at least given a fair shake of trying to get into. And while I haven't embraced every genre of music equally, I can safely say that when it comes to a musical library that spans all eras and all types my library is one to be reckoned with. I don't say this with any ounce of arrogance. I know I'm not the musical gourmet; I don't claim to have the best taste in music. But I am rather proud that no matter who I'm with I know I can at least get along with whatever they're listening to--be it classical, christian, or hip hop.

That being said, a guilty pleasure of mine has always been a good cover of an already established hit, especially when that cover is being done by a relative unknown. I adore discovering somebody just getting their foot in the door by tackling a song that some would claim to have already been done to perfection by the original artist. While it's true that a good cover would have never been born without the original recording, I'm of the opinion that, yes, sometimes the copy can be better than the original. I mean--when I first heard "Silver Springs" being done by Stacee Dupree, I would have been hard-pressed to give you definitive answer as to which version I thought was better. Or when I first stumbled across Mary Lou Lord's version of "I Don't Want To Get Over You" by The Magnetic Fields I actually thought it was her song. It wasn't until later that I heard the irrepressible original. Indeed, some of Mary Lou Lord's best work have been covers and she still manages to be my overall favorite female singer/songwriter.

When it comes to a lot of different areas I'm not one to stand on ceremony. To me it really doesn't matter who did it first. I just want to know who does it the best. Sometimes innovation isn't as important as refinement.

That brings me to Molly Tuttle, a teenager from the Bay Area of California with a background in bluegrass and folk music, and her awesome rendition of "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead. It's no big secret that I love bluegrass music and the musicians who perform it. It's also no secret that I hold a special place in my heart for individuals who show a talent for the arts at an early age. Molly Tuttle fits both of these criteria. Not only can she play the banjo and the guitar, but she has an uncanny singing voice that is almost pitch perfect. What may come as a surprise is that I've never been a huge fan of Radiohead. I've never disliked them per se, but it has never been an all-encompassing need to delve further into their back catalog. One could say that admiration for them pretty much began and ended with "Creep".

You can imagine my surprise when I instantly became enamored with this version of their "Fake Plastic Trees" the other day. Not only did it make me feel like I had missed out on an absolutely great song when it was first released, but it gave me a new appreciation for what makes Radiohead, well, Radiohead. Yes, part of the intrigue to this version of the song was that the voice behind it is a tad more pleasant to the ear that Thomas Yorke (That's another thing, I'm a big fan of female singers as opposed to male singers. I always have been.). And, yes, this song is more clearly defined than some of the others in their repertoire. But I think the real reason I feel remiss that I never appreciated this song in its time is expressly because I've been playing this cover version of it with great frequency in the last few days.

That's what I like best about covers. They can point you back to the inspiration behind them while at the same time stand on their own as a work of art. A good deal of people will tell you that a cover will never be as good as the original because it lacks the authenticity of its first performer or of its creator. I say, however, that there is an authenticity to taking something that holds true as something monumental and making it your own... as long as you completely make it your own. I don't abide people who change one facet and claim that they redid it with their own shine; those works can be truly qualified as being pale imitations. But when someone of genuine talent takes a monumental work and pays homage to it by applying their unique gifts and perspective to it, then I believe something as great, if not greater than the original, can arise from the combination. After all, to borrow my friend Casey's remark when we had this discussion tonight, "just because you're the person who invented French Toast doesn't mean you're the only one who can perfect the recipe."

"Fake Plastic Trees" may have been a song that didn't need perfecting when it was first recorded by Radiohead, but like anyone who ever made a great cover, Molly Tuttle perfected it anyway.

Enjoy the song.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

And I'm In Pieces, Baby, Fix Me, And Just Shake Me Till You Wake Me From This Bad Dream, And I'm Going Down, Down, Down, Down

2011-01-10T00:23:00.000-08:00

--"Baby", Justin Bieber

I went into watching Country Strong expecting a feel-good movie. Usually when one purchases a ticket for a movie set in the heartland or in the South one can expect a plot involving the triumph of the human spirit or some other uplifting message. While Country Strong does have its moments of inspiration one will certainly walk away feeling very much shaken by what transpires.

I shan't give away all the plot turns that lead me to say that, but I will speak on one aspect that especially affected me. Tim McGraw's character, the husband of Gwyneth Paltrow's character, Kelly Canter is a man whose been let down one too many times by his wife. I don't know if it's the proper aspect to be admiring, but he does a remarkable job of portraying a man whose disappointment and frank distrust of his wife's ability to recover ultimately lead to a tragic choice. On one hand, you want to hate the guy because while he still wants to be her manager and friend, he has basically frozen her out of ever being his wife again--at least how she used to be his wife. But on the other hand, Kelly's mistake is a huge mistake marriage-wise and you kind of sympathize with him for being so distant from somebody he used to love deeply. It's a delicate balance to maintain and he manages to carry it off well. You feel him emotionally starving his wife, but you also feel why he does it in every scene in the film.

and I just can't believe my first love won't be around

That got me thinking all the way through dinner with my friends and on the way home afterwards. Sometimes couples grow apart because it's the natural order of things. Other times it's one incident that changes the relationship forever. One fight, one wrong choice--and you can instantly fall out of love with someone. I mean--the romantic idealist in me doesn't want to believe it, but I have to admit that given the same set of circumstances encountered in the film I might have been led down the same road that Tim McGraw's character was.

That's what makes Paltrow's arc so convincing. You feel the helplessness of a person whose life fell apart in the matter of one moment. You feel her struggling to get her life together even while almost everyone around her doesn't believe she has it in her any longer. Most of all, you feel that she honestly could survive her journey back if her husband would simply back her play. When he doesn't time and time again you begin to understand that however this film ends it's not going to be pretty. More than that, you begin to understand that sometimes strength isn't the courage to overcome adversity.

Sometimes courage is the strength to recognize that there are some obstacles that can't be overcame, some challenges you can't win, and to press on regardless.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers