Cryptic Words Meander, Now There Is A Song Beneath The Song, One Day You'll Learn, You'll Soon Discern Its True Meaning
--"Song Beneath the Song", Maria Taylor
We stare at thousands of faces a day, millions of faces a year, bumping into a myriad of people in our lifetimes. Sometimes we are truly blessed to bump into the right people and make a connection that lasts sometimes your whole life. I've made a few of these kinds of friendships--randomly butting up against the jetty of fate--where I sometimes wonder what might have been had I not come across this certain individual or that certain individual.
However, sometimes the opposite comes sneaking along into my journey.
----
I swear--I stare at faces everyday. There is something more imminently decisive about a person's face when it comes to demonstrating their character. Call it a first impression, call it reading body language, but the nuances of a person's features makes facegazing a fascinating hobby. I don't know--some people call it people-watching or maybe even looking at life, but for me it all boils down to studying people's emotions and their quirks. And all of that starts with their face.
For instance, when I was sick with a cold back in freshman year of high school and my mother made me still go to mass, I'm sure my face must have appeared a sight. I'm sure that I must have been displaying every bit of the annoyance and discomfort I had been feeling at the time, just as I'm sure I must have been also displaying an unadulterated grimace of misery as my nose and cheeks felt incredibly warm at the time. Since I was never a big fan of church anyway I used my boredom as an impetus to engage in some facegazing myself. Most of the people in the assorted pews were people I recognized. Half of them were the families of people I or my brother went to school with. It was the rare sight when I could actually spot an individual who I hadn't seen in mass before. In fact, the sight was so rare, most of my time was spent trying to see just how many people had attended and just how many times they would actually come back.
It was in this manner that I came across a certain redheaded girl. Let's just say she had a face worth remembering and leave it at that.
It's no big secret that a good deal of my time is spent wondering whatever became of her and how close we really were. I mean--how close can any two people get, sharing bits and pieces of conversation in a limited time span? The fact I still don't know her real name tells you a little something of the depth of our conversations. Most of the time, my thoughts just trail off. I come to the unmistakable conclusion that Sniffler was nothing more than schoolboy fascination prompted by an almost unholy attraction to redheads coupled with an insane sense of boredom whilst in church, and topped off with the "awww" factor that just as often as I subtly pushed my family to sit by her family she somehow always managed to sit close by me as well, depending on whose family sat down first. It was nothing, I tell myself. I had no shot.
Yet I always come back to that face--how the two of us just clicked at first glance. I wouldn't call it love at first sight, but there was something I saw in her visage that made me want to talk to her. People often chalk that crap up to beauty, but I see a lot of pretty faces. However, I don't always want to talk to the pretty faces because something else tells me they either have nothing of import to say or they would have no interest in what I would have to say. Sniffer's face immediately told me I could talk to her. More importantly, it told me that I should want to talk to this girl.
Eighteen months later after we first talked I stopped going to church.
Eighteen months and one day later I started wondering if I should have kept going for the sole purpose of hopefully building something more substantial with her.
For the most part, I try not to think of her much. I've grown accustomed to the notion that my decision to quit the church was a good one. Every decision comes with advantages and disadvantages. I've come to accept that losing out on the chance to know Sniffler was one of the prices I had to pay for my freedom. I try not to sweat it much anymore.
oh now the roots are reminiscing
recurring dreams of minor chords
But maybe life has a way of telling you that you missed something. Maybe in the grand scheme of things people really do get portents that there some kind of master plan being executed without you ever knowing. Maybe my gazing deeply into those green eyes of hers was supposed to be the start of something more substantial, that somehow I had missed the significance behind the encounter. Perhaps my growing immediately comforted by her face was the universe's way of telling me which direction to go and that, by forsaking her comforting presence along with the unholy precepts of religion, I had missed the subtext of my times with her. Perhaps those chats were a lot more important to my growth as a person than I gave them credit for.
For me, life smacked pretty hard that I could have been blind to that theory when I was in Chicago with Breanne. There we were sitting at Charlie's Ale House when I spotted a dead ringer for Sniffler and once more I immediately grew comforted by this stranger's whole look. With Sniffer 2.0 I didn't exchange any words, but the brief eye contact we made in passing in and out of the restaurant awakened feelings of being whole that I had apparently forgotten. It's like I was a jigsaw puzzle that had most of its pieces in place, but had managed to lose a central piece. It was like I was song missing out that great backing track that you don't you need until you add it and suddenly the whole song feels richer.
It was just a face and I'm probably bending it to fit the proportions of a girl I haven't stared at or seen in fifteen years, but in my heart of hearts I know 2.0 is a darn good replica of 1.0. It was just a face but maybe it's a subtle nudge, like the ones I used to give my family, that I should try looking for my Sniffler again.
It was just a face, but it could be the face that I was supposed to be seeing all along now.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
We stare at thousands of faces a day, millions of faces a year, bumping into a myriad of people in our lifetimes. Sometimes we are truly blessed to bump into the right people and make a connection that lasts sometimes your whole life. I've made a few of these kinds of friendships--randomly butting up against the jetty of fate--where I sometimes wonder what might have been had I not come across this certain individual or that certain individual.However, sometimes the opposite comes sneaking along into my journey.
----
I swear--I stare at faces everyday. There is something more imminently decisive about a person's face when it comes to demonstrating their character. Call it a first impression, call it reading body language, but the nuances of a person's features makes facegazing a fascinating hobby. I don't know--some people call it people-watching or maybe even looking at life, but for me it all boils down to studying people's emotions and their quirks. And all of that starts with their face.
For instance, when I was sick with a cold back in freshman year of high school and my mother made me still go to mass, I'm sure my face must have appeared a sight. I'm sure that I must have been displaying every bit of the annoyance and discomfort I had been feeling at the time, just as I'm sure I must have been also displaying an unadulterated grimace of misery as my nose and cheeks felt incredibly warm at the time. Since I was never a big fan of church anyway I used my boredom as an impetus to engage in some facegazing myself. Most of the people in the assorted pews were people I recognized. Half of them were the families of people I or my brother went to school with. It was the rare sight when I could actually spot an individual who I hadn't seen in mass before. In fact, the sight was so rare, most of my time was spent trying to see just how many people had attended and just how many times they would actually come back.
It was in this manner that I came across a certain redheaded girl. Let's just say she had a face worth remembering and leave it at that.
It's no big secret that a good deal of my time is spent wondering whatever became of her and how close we really were. I mean--how close can any two people get, sharing bits and pieces of conversation in a limited time span? The fact I still don't know her real name tells you a little something of the depth of our conversations. Most of the time, my thoughts just trail off. I come to the unmistakable conclusion that Sniffler was nothing more than schoolboy fascination prompted by an almost unholy attraction to redheads coupled with an insane sense of boredom whilst in church, and topped off with the "awww" factor that just as often as I subtly pushed my family to sit by her family she somehow always managed to sit close by me as well, depending on whose family sat down first. It was nothing, I tell myself. I had no shot.
Yet I always come back to that face--how the two of us just clicked at first glance. I wouldn't call it love at first sight, but there was something I saw in her visage that made me want to talk to her. People often chalk that crap up to beauty, but I see a lot of pretty faces. However, I don't always want to talk to the pretty faces because something else tells me they either have nothing of import to say or they would have no interest in what I would have to say. Sniffer's face immediately told me I could talk to her. More importantly, it told me that I should want to talk to this girl.
Eighteen months later after we first talked I stopped going to church.
Eighteen months and one day later I started wondering if I should have kept going for the sole purpose of hopefully building something more substantial with her.
For the most part, I try not to think of her much. I've grown accustomed to the notion that my decision to quit the church was a good one. Every decision comes with advantages and disadvantages. I've come to accept that losing out on the chance to know Sniffler was one of the prices I had to pay for my freedom. I try not to sweat it much anymore.
oh now the roots are reminiscing
recurring dreams of minor chords
But maybe life has a way of telling you that you missed something. Maybe in the grand scheme of things people really do get portents that there some kind of master plan being executed without you ever knowing. Maybe my gazing deeply into those green eyes of hers was supposed to be the start of something more substantial, that somehow I had missed the significance behind the encounter. Perhaps my growing immediately comforted by her face was the universe's way of telling me which direction to go and that, by forsaking her comforting presence along with the unholy precepts of religion, I had missed the subtext of my times with her. Perhaps those chats were a lot more important to my growth as a person than I gave them credit for.
For me, life smacked pretty hard that I could have been blind to that theory when I was in Chicago with Breanne. There we were sitting at Charlie's Ale House when I spotted a dead ringer for Sniffler and once more I immediately grew comforted by this stranger's whole look. With Sniffer 2.0 I didn't exchange any words, but the brief eye contact we made in passing in and out of the restaurant awakened feelings of being whole that I had apparently forgotten. It's like I was a jigsaw puzzle that had most of its pieces in place, but had managed to lose a central piece. It was like I was song missing out that great backing track that you don't you need until you add it and suddenly the whole song feels richer.
It was just a face and I'm probably bending it to fit the proportions of a girl I haven't stared at or seen in fifteen years, but in my heart of hearts I know 2.0 is a darn good replica of 1.0. It was just a face but maybe it's a subtle nudge, like the ones I used to give my family, that I should try looking for my Sniffler again.
It was just a face, but it could be the face that I was supposed to be seeing all along now.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
Labels: Chicago, coincidences, facegazing, Sniffler
posted by mojo shivers @ 11:58 PM
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