She's Just One Of Those Corners In My Mind, And I Just Put Her Right Back With The Rest, That's The Way It Goes, I Guess
--Set Adrift On Memory Bliss, PM Dawn
I think Philadelphia is a great city with lots to offer--cheesesteaks, Phillies, and The Philadelphia Museum of Art to name a few. The one time I was there I enjoyed my visit enough to want to come back someday. I remember walking around the city early in the morning, the neighborhood not quite awake yet, and saying to myself this is what morning in the city should look like. I remember setting out from the dock on a short tour of the waterside and feeling that wind whip against my face. I remember the last night I was there before I had to take a train up to New York and wishing that I could stay another two or three days. It's been ten years since I was there, but I still have great memories of it. No, I wouldn't be averse to going back to Philly one more time.
For the last few weeks Miss Nancy Drew has been hinting that I should move out to Philadelphia. She's been using all of her usual tricks--passive aggressiveness, cajoling, bribery, and the like. My favorite tactic and one she's been using the most lately is to point out how pointless my life out here in Los Angeles. She's been saying that moving out of California would get me out of my comfort zone and afford me a much-needed fresh start. She's making it out that my life is a few small steps removed from being hellish and unbearable, but, not to worry, she knows the cure for all that ails me. Philadelphia. She's selling the city as if it's some mecca for all the disheartened and disenfranchised of the country. I can't argue with the logic that I do seem like I'm in a rut, but I'm also aware that she has an ulterior motive for her persuasiveness. She's attempting to break me down to sell me on her way of thinking. It's classic avoidance, as Brandy would say.
The real issue is that she's out there alone and she wants to bring a piece of her former home with her in the guise of me. And it's not even me she wants; she's merely figuring that I'm the easiest of her friends to uproot and cajole into joining her.
The thing is I've assigned her to being a friend I'll visit occasionally. She's no longer going to be someone I'm on quasi-friendly terms with but never really close. No, I don't look on her moving as a form of betrayal. The simple truth is knowing someone two years is not long enough to form a strong enough bond to want to move out to be with them as a friend. There has to be something more to take step. At the very least, there has to be more years stored up to even contemplate it. The way I see it, certain people are only supposed to be in your life for so long. If they're in your life they lose that certain quality that made them special. Ill's always been like that. She's like Miss Flib in that regard; a little of them goes a long way. Too much of them starts to taint their image. I'm certain that if I were to be her only long-standing friend out there, I'd get sick of her in the same way I was certain that I could only take her in small doses of one or two outings a month while she was living here.
With certain individuals it's not the quality of the time you spent with them, it's the brevity of time it took to get to know them. Sometimes the smallest of morsels of that individual's spirit can be chewed upon for the rest of your life.
----
I told her whispers in my heart were fine
"It's like a piece of a gum you can chew forever," Sniffler told me in the back of St. Rita's Church one day. We were supposed to be inside the service, but we'd both snuck out to the "bathroom" at the same time like we sometimes did when the monsignor was particularly boring or we just had had enough of sitting next to our families. We were both sitting on the steps, watching without much interest of how far the mass had progressed. Normally, we couldn't stay much longer than ten or fifteen minutes before we were just pushing our luck. We'd decided before we sat down that we'd go back after Intermission, which was our code for the sermon/ramblings/free association that came almost exactly at halftime.
"It never goes away," she continued. "You can just leave it in your mouth and it'll still be there in an hour."
"I'm sure your sister didn't cook that badly," I offered.
"Oh, she muffed it. She muffed it royally."
I laughed like a fool. I don't know if it was more because she was so adamant that her sister's culinary skills were that poor or because I was hopelessly mired in those auburn strands of hers.
I'm more inclined to believe it was due to the latter more than the former. Her red hair was the definition of entrancing. I would have probably laughed if she was spelling her name at the moment.
"So what'd you do, little lady?"
"What could I do? I excused myself from the table and jumped out of my second-story bedroom window."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
I felt bad laughing in the back of church since I'd been informed that laughter had been discontinued in the house of god, but I couldn't stop. Sniffler was on a roll that and it felt good to let loose with a good guffaw after being bored almost to tears next to my parents and my brother in that pew. If it weren't for these brief respites from the numbingly uninteresting masses, I might have stopped going to church a long time before I actually did. Who knows if I would have made it to Confirmation without her? She was the one reason I tolerated any of it in those last eighteen months. She was the one good thing about being religious at all. After all, any superstition that could bring me and her together definitely had its selling points.
I also felt bad laughing because she always seemed to do most of the entertaining. I would sit there stupefied because of her goddamn hair and not offer much in the way of a response. I had my moments, but the dynamic between me and her consisted of her giving of herself and me taking. Yet she kept talking each Sunday so I must have been doing something right.
"There are days when I know she has it in for me. Bad cooking is only one sign of the apocalypse she's planning."
I turned my gaze through the window which separated the entrance of the church to the inner sanctum where mass was being heard. I quickly found Sniffler's sister in the crowd. I decided from her plaintive face and soft features that she didn't look like a harbinger of the end days.
"She doesn't look that malicious from here."
"If you only knew her like I know her, you'd be cringing in fear like I do every night. Mark my words, it's only a matter of time before you're coming here for my funeral."
"Well, that would suck."
She took my hand in hers and placed it on my heart.
"You've got to promise me something before we have to go back."
"What's that?"
"Promise me if I'm still living with my sister in five years' time you'll come rescue me. If I'm there that long, it's because she's holding me prisoner. I can't live my whole life like that. You've got to take me out of there. You've got to swear that."
I know she was being facetious and it was just her way of furthering the story she'd concocted earlier. Yet there was a part of me that was quite proud to be asked to be her champion on such a noble quest. The mere fact of her asking was sufficient enough to stir my sense of gratitude. I wanted to get down on bended knee, tip my head down, and craft such a flattering speech of acceptance as to silence her with my mere words. I wanted to haul her off on the nearest pogo stick I could find. I wanted her question to be real and her to know my answer was just as real. To me it was like she picked me out of the entire congregation personally when it was more like a request of convenience. I just happened to be the nearest warm body at hand. She might have asked the Smoking Father Posse who were always outside waiting for their wives just as readily as she asked me. Of course, she may have gotten a different answer if she had.
"We've got to go back, little lady. Your sister's going to be pissed that you stayed out here with me this long."
"Fine, fine," she answered as I pulled her up off the stair she was sitting on. We'd almost reached the doors to go back in, when she stopped both of us in our tracks.
"Well?" she asked.
It took me all of five seconds to sigh, "Okay, if you're still being held prisoner in five years, I'll look you up and break you out."
"Thank you."
Then we went inside.
----
As you might have guessed, I never rescued her five years from then. I never even saw her again after a few more months. In truth, I stopped thinking about her for a couple of years. I became busy with going to college, with working, with falling in and out of love that I lost all track of the days I spent in the pew next to her or in the back of the church of her. She stopped being important to me. It wasn't a conscious effort and it certainly wasn't planned out to hurt her. She probably forgot me as quickly as I forgot about her. That's the way things go.
Sometimes I think that there might have been a chance that the question of why I never showed up when I swore I would crossed her mind. I'd envision her in some high tower of some old house/castle. She'd be up there, sighing to herself, wondering why I hadn't kept my promise. Then she'd die in the next few moments from the subsequent shattering of her heart. After each time, I quickly dismiss the ideas as being fallacy. There isn't a hope in the world that she thought I'd actually follow through. That promise was made by two--let's face it--kids who had dreams of staying in touch with one another but through the natural progression of, well, life never did. It isn't anyone's fault and there's no one to blame. It was a promise pinned to the back of a ship we both hoped to sail on. Instead, we went our separate ways and never looked back.
Yet I still think of her. I still think of the day I made the promise and the dozens of other days I made similar promises. A part of me still wonders what it would have been like to have continued going to church. I imagine that we might have gotten closer. Who knows? I might have actually learned her blasted real name.
What I do know now is, even if I were to learn what she is up to now, I don't think I'd take that opportunity to get back in touch with her. That part of my life ended many years ago. To resurrect that particular ghost couldn't end in anything but awkwardness. The only reason I would even attempt such a feat would be to satisfy my own curiosity. That's not a good enough reason to intrude into her life at this moment in time.
With some people it's easy to transition in and out of their lives. Whether it's because that's always been the relationship you've had with them or because your relationship was built on such a firm and tenable foundation that any time aways isn't thought of as "the end," with some people the book never closes on your friendship. With other people, it's like your friendship is the stuff of short stories--short, succinct, yet still deeply satisfying. There isn't a clamoring for a sequel because everything that needed to happen to the main characters happened, everything they needed to say was said, and every quest that needed championing was completed.
And the quests that never really needed championing? Well, those are reserved for other stories (perhaps jotted in a blog or something).
----
Yes, there's a part of me that would be interested in moving to Philadelphia, but it wouldn't be to further my dealings with Ilessa. She is a fun person and I enjoy her company to pieces. However, ours was never going to be an epic tale full of the reversals of fortunes associated with such missives. Our was always the stuff of amusing anecdotes and good chatter, the kind of stories you swap every couple of years couched in phrases, "remember the time when..." or "Well, how about the one day you..."
I've got enough stories with her and a change of scenery doesn't imply there will be any more to tell.
That doesn't diminish what we've shared. That doesn't take away from the fact she's been an integral part of my life for the last year. The story we've lived is quite compelling and worthy of repetition.
It's just that I know we've had our story already and, as they say, here's where the story ends.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
I think Philadelphia is a great city with lots to offer--cheesesteaks, Phillies, and The Philadelphia Museum of Art to name a few. The one time I was there I enjoyed my visit enough to want to come back someday. I remember walking around the city early in the morning, the neighborhood not quite awake yet, and saying to myself this is what morning in the city should look like. I remember setting out from the dock on a short tour of the waterside and feeling that wind whip against my face. I remember the last night I was there before I had to take a train up to New York and wishing that I could stay another two or three days. It's been ten years since I was there, but I still have great memories of it. No, I wouldn't be averse to going back to Philly one more time.For the last few weeks Miss Nancy Drew has been hinting that I should move out to Philadelphia. She's been using all of her usual tricks--passive aggressiveness, cajoling, bribery, and the like. My favorite tactic and one she's been using the most lately is to point out how pointless my life out here in Los Angeles. She's been saying that moving out of California would get me out of my comfort zone and afford me a much-needed fresh start. She's making it out that my life is a few small steps removed from being hellish and unbearable, but, not to worry, she knows the cure for all that ails me. Philadelphia. She's selling the city as if it's some mecca for all the disheartened and disenfranchised of the country. I can't argue with the logic that I do seem like I'm in a rut, but I'm also aware that she has an ulterior motive for her persuasiveness. She's attempting to break me down to sell me on her way of thinking. It's classic avoidance, as Brandy would say.
The real issue is that she's out there alone and she wants to bring a piece of her former home with her in the guise of me. And it's not even me she wants; she's merely figuring that I'm the easiest of her friends to uproot and cajole into joining her.
The thing is I've assigned her to being a friend I'll visit occasionally. She's no longer going to be someone I'm on quasi-friendly terms with but never really close. No, I don't look on her moving as a form of betrayal. The simple truth is knowing someone two years is not long enough to form a strong enough bond to want to move out to be with them as a friend. There has to be something more to take step. At the very least, there has to be more years stored up to even contemplate it. The way I see it, certain people are only supposed to be in your life for so long. If they're in your life they lose that certain quality that made them special. Ill's always been like that. She's like Miss Flib in that regard; a little of them goes a long way. Too much of them starts to taint their image. I'm certain that if I were to be her only long-standing friend out there, I'd get sick of her in the same way I was certain that I could only take her in small doses of one or two outings a month while she was living here.
With certain individuals it's not the quality of the time you spent with them, it's the brevity of time it took to get to know them. Sometimes the smallest of morsels of that individual's spirit can be chewed upon for the rest of your life.
----
I told her whispers in my heart were fine
"It's like a piece of a gum you can chew forever," Sniffler told me in the back of St. Rita's Church one day. We were supposed to be inside the service, but we'd both snuck out to the "bathroom" at the same time like we sometimes did when the monsignor was particularly boring or we just had had enough of sitting next to our families. We were both sitting on the steps, watching without much interest of how far the mass had progressed. Normally, we couldn't stay much longer than ten or fifteen minutes before we were just pushing our luck. We'd decided before we sat down that we'd go back after Intermission, which was our code for the sermon/ramblings/free association that came almost exactly at halftime.
"It never goes away," she continued. "You can just leave it in your mouth and it'll still be there in an hour."
"I'm sure your sister didn't cook that badly," I offered.
"Oh, she muffed it. She muffed it royally."
I laughed like a fool. I don't know if it was more because she was so adamant that her sister's culinary skills were that poor or because I was hopelessly mired in those auburn strands of hers.
I'm more inclined to believe it was due to the latter more than the former. Her red hair was the definition of entrancing. I would have probably laughed if she was spelling her name at the moment.
"So what'd you do, little lady?"
"What could I do? I excused myself from the table and jumped out of my second-story bedroom window."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
I felt bad laughing in the back of church since I'd been informed that laughter had been discontinued in the house of god, but I couldn't stop. Sniffler was on a roll that and it felt good to let loose with a good guffaw after being bored almost to tears next to my parents and my brother in that pew. If it weren't for these brief respites from the numbingly uninteresting masses, I might have stopped going to church a long time before I actually did. Who knows if I would have made it to Confirmation without her? She was the one reason I tolerated any of it in those last eighteen months. She was the one good thing about being religious at all. After all, any superstition that could bring me and her together definitely had its selling points.
I also felt bad laughing because she always seemed to do most of the entertaining. I would sit there stupefied because of her goddamn hair and not offer much in the way of a response. I had my moments, but the dynamic between me and her consisted of her giving of herself and me taking. Yet she kept talking each Sunday so I must have been doing something right.
"There are days when I know she has it in for me. Bad cooking is only one sign of the apocalypse she's planning."
I turned my gaze through the window which separated the entrance of the church to the inner sanctum where mass was being heard. I quickly found Sniffler's sister in the crowd. I decided from her plaintive face and soft features that she didn't look like a harbinger of the end days.
"She doesn't look that malicious from here."
"If you only knew her like I know her, you'd be cringing in fear like I do every night. Mark my words, it's only a matter of time before you're coming here for my funeral."
"Well, that would suck."
She took my hand in hers and placed it on my heart.
"You've got to promise me something before we have to go back."
"What's that?"
"Promise me if I'm still living with my sister in five years' time you'll come rescue me. If I'm there that long, it's because she's holding me prisoner. I can't live my whole life like that. You've got to take me out of there. You've got to swear that."
I know she was being facetious and it was just her way of furthering the story she'd concocted earlier. Yet there was a part of me that was quite proud to be asked to be her champion on such a noble quest. The mere fact of her asking was sufficient enough to stir my sense of gratitude. I wanted to get down on bended knee, tip my head down, and craft such a flattering speech of acceptance as to silence her with my mere words. I wanted to haul her off on the nearest pogo stick I could find. I wanted her question to be real and her to know my answer was just as real. To me it was like she picked me out of the entire congregation personally when it was more like a request of convenience. I just happened to be the nearest warm body at hand. She might have asked the Smoking Father Posse who were always outside waiting for their wives just as readily as she asked me. Of course, she may have gotten a different answer if she had.
"We've got to go back, little lady. Your sister's going to be pissed that you stayed out here with me this long."
"Fine, fine," she answered as I pulled her up off the stair she was sitting on. We'd almost reached the doors to go back in, when she stopped both of us in our tracks.
"Well?" she asked.
It took me all of five seconds to sigh, "Okay, if you're still being held prisoner in five years, I'll look you up and break you out."
"Thank you."
Then we went inside.
----
As you might have guessed, I never rescued her five years from then. I never even saw her again after a few more months. In truth, I stopped thinking about her for a couple of years. I became busy with going to college, with working, with falling in and out of love that I lost all track of the days I spent in the pew next to her or in the back of the church of her. She stopped being important to me. It wasn't a conscious effort and it certainly wasn't planned out to hurt her. She probably forgot me as quickly as I forgot about her. That's the way things go.
Sometimes I think that there might have been a chance that the question of why I never showed up when I swore I would crossed her mind. I'd envision her in some high tower of some old house/castle. She'd be up there, sighing to herself, wondering why I hadn't kept my promise. Then she'd die in the next few moments from the subsequent shattering of her heart. After each time, I quickly dismiss the ideas as being fallacy. There isn't a hope in the world that she thought I'd actually follow through. That promise was made by two--let's face it--kids who had dreams of staying in touch with one another but through the natural progression of, well, life never did. It isn't anyone's fault and there's no one to blame. It was a promise pinned to the back of a ship we both hoped to sail on. Instead, we went our separate ways and never looked back.
Yet I still think of her. I still think of the day I made the promise and the dozens of other days I made similar promises. A part of me still wonders what it would have been like to have continued going to church. I imagine that we might have gotten closer. Who knows? I might have actually learned her blasted real name.
What I do know now is, even if I were to learn what she is up to now, I don't think I'd take that opportunity to get back in touch with her. That part of my life ended many years ago. To resurrect that particular ghost couldn't end in anything but awkwardness. The only reason I would even attempt such a feat would be to satisfy my own curiosity. That's not a good enough reason to intrude into her life at this moment in time.
With some people it's easy to transition in and out of their lives. Whether it's because that's always been the relationship you've had with them or because your relationship was built on such a firm and tenable foundation that any time aways isn't thought of as "the end," with some people the book never closes on your friendship. With other people, it's like your friendship is the stuff of short stories--short, succinct, yet still deeply satisfying. There isn't a clamoring for a sequel because everything that needed to happen to the main characters happened, everything they needed to say was said, and every quest that needed championing was completed.
And the quests that never really needed championing? Well, those are reserved for other stories (perhaps jotted in a blog or something).
----
Yes, there's a part of me that would be interested in moving to Philadelphia, but it wouldn't be to further my dealings with Ilessa. She is a fun person and I enjoy her company to pieces. However, ours was never going to be an epic tale full of the reversals of fortunes associated with such missives. Our was always the stuff of amusing anecdotes and good chatter, the kind of stories you swap every couple of years couched in phrases, "remember the time when..." or "Well, how about the one day you..."
I've got enough stories with her and a change of scenery doesn't imply there will be any more to tell.
That doesn't diminish what we've shared. That doesn't take away from the fact she's been an integral part of my life for the last year. The story we've lived is quite compelling and worthy of repetition.
It's just that I know we've had our story already and, as they say, here's where the story ends.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
Labels: Ilessa, Philadelphia, PM Dawn, Promises, Sniffler
posted by mojo shivers @ 11:54 PM
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