Every Time I See You Falling, I Get Down On My Knees And Pray, I'm Waiting For That Final Moment, You'll Say The Words That I Can't Say

--"Bizarre Love Triangle", New Order

After a few weeks of agonizing, we've decided to welcome Toby into the fold at california. I was agonizing over it because I've only known her a short time and this place has always been somewhat personally directed. While there will be some stories she might be able to tell regarding me, the bulk is going to stem from her own experiences. I know she's more than a capable writer, but I was worried that, unlike Breanne whose stories sometimes relate to me in one way or another, Toby would be too independent.

That still might happen, but circumstances being as they are, with Breanne unfortunately dealing with problems at home and myself feeling like the majority of my best stories have been told, we thought a new voice might not be so bad. Or, as Breanne spun it, this could encompass the overall of theme of friendship that seems to permeate a lot of the writing here. Rather than be a picture of how two old coots, B. and myself, with Toby coming in we could sometimes shift attention to how friendships get built from the ground up.

Hopefully, she won't drift away in a few months time as that will entirely screw up the experiment in so many ways. But I think she fits in nicely here. In a few words since I don't want to try sum her up when she's perfectly capable of doing that herself, she reminds of myself in her fretting and her introspective qualities. But she also reminds me of a younger Breanne in her unwavering desire to find joy in the everyday.

At the bottom of it all, I'm hoping she'll find a niche here. I'm hoping she'll be a new voice with ideas that have never been explored before.

----

Back at La Salle, I had a similar desire. I don't know--I'd been writing all my life, but up until my junior year of high school, I'd never really shared my writing with too many people. It wasn't that I didn't think it was good enough. I merely thought my writing was for me and to share it would be diluting it somehow. I honestly think I could go my whole life with only two or three people reading my stuff. This was in the days before I met Breanne or Jina so there wasn't one obvious person who I automatically sent everything to once completed. And it was also ages before the internet, precluding any notions of my publishing anything seconds after writing it. Nope, those days I would write old-school on my word processor, print it out, and then lock it away for posterity.

One day my friend Peter came up with the idea of doing an underground arts journal to directly compete against the one La Salle Arts Society was positing as being new and edgy. At first mention, I thought it was a good idea. I don't know if that stemmed more from causing mischief, which has always been a motivating factor for my decisions, or more from being impulsive. I don't believe it was caused by an overwhelming desire to have my words read. That didn't come till much later.

When we started The Amethyst Exchange, or AE, we weren't out to change the world. It really was intended to be a place to thumb our noses at the school, certain student organizations, and any other topic we felt strongly about. I contented myself with my first few steps into poetry, with occasional one-off short stories for good measure. Peter and Dan forayed into opinion pieces and other more topical stuff, but I was always seeking something more literary with my own stuff. I was even less into what newsworthy and gossipy than I am now, so I was happy with leaving school topics and school news to the two friends who could cover those areas better than I could.

I've always had a detachment from dwelling too much on what was happening to the world around me. I've always done fine focusing on the people, the events, and the choices that directly affected me.

Eventually, it came to me that, unlike what I originally intended, I rather relished sharing my words with everybody. I started posting more of the stories and poems that mattered to me, rather than keeping those private and sharing what I thought was dreck with the journal. Soon, instead of differentiating between the two, I was writing expressly to put it into the journal. I became motivated to know what people were thinking about what I was writing. While it wasn't always wanted to hear, it was still rewarding to hear a few scattered groups discussing something I had written only days or sometimes hours before it was being read. I enjoyed that feedback.

When we eventually got caught/gave ourselves up to the administration, my love affair with writing for public review didn't end. I started another journal called Our Magazine without Peter and Dan, that was mailed across the country and featured writers I had met in my stumping for The Amethyst Exchange. It its two year history, I managed to produce twenty-four issues. In its heyday it had a circulation of forty "subscribers" and I was receiving a dozen submissions a week. I thought that was pretty good for a xerox-and-scotch tape production.

But I think the greatest bonus I ever got from doing OM was the fact that I met a certain poetess who was looking to share her thoughts on losing her best friend.

I also think I gained something else from the experience, the idea that my words are worth sharing. I don't know if I have full confidence yet that everyone would want to read them, but I think there's enough to keep me happy. I'm happy enough doing this. Even if my dreams of getting something put on the big screen or published in a novel never works out, I could really see myself doing this small little blog for the rest of my life with Breanne... and I guess now with Toby as well.

I still have words unsaid and a lifetime to say them.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers