Sometimes Love Surprises Me Like Raindrops, It Taps Me On The Shoulder Over And Again, And I Can't Go On, I Got To Wait Until The Rain Stops

--"Muse (live)", Jenny & Tyler

I bought a T & C Surfwear shirt off of Ebay tonight. I've been meaning to do it for some time, but I just never got around to it. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing. I just remember back in fifth through eighth grade, that's what everyone was wearing on free dress days. They were comfortable, they were bright in all their neon colors, and they had funny cartoon mascots on them with pithy captions describing the scene. One shirt would show a caveman chiseling out a surfboard made out of granite and below it would read, "Man's First Tool". Or another shirt would show the characters surfing all together on the top of the shirt and below it would be the same characters at some luau, and the caption would read "Surf All Day / Rage All Night". It would always be amusing captions like that. Back then we couldn't wait till the next free dress day to show off the latest design our parents had gotten us.

And it wasn't just the guys too. One of my favorite class pictures was taken in either seventh or eighth grade, and my crush at the time, Miss Erin, can be plainly seen wearing a ocean green T&C shirt over a sweatshirt. My god, did she ever look cute. For me, it's one of those weird situations where you remember a great time wrapped up in a meaningless detail. It's like when you're having sex for the first time and a particular song comes on the radio. From that point on every time you even catch a hint of the song you can't help but smile to yourself (or others). That's how it is when I remember something so mundane as T & C Surfwear shirts. It's just so connected to one of the happier periods in my life. I remember all the good times I had in those shirts. And I remember all the people I knew back then wearing those shirts a good deal of the time I saw them.

I was over at Casey's last night and I asked her if she ever wore those shirts because I couldn't honestly remember her wearing them a lot like the rest of us. Granted, she was never much of anything back in my St. Rita Raider days so it's not like I have all that impressive of a catalog in my head regarding what she used to wear. She thought it was funny that I would bring it up because she hadn't thought about those shirts in the last twenty years. But, yeah, she said, she had a couple. "It was a rite of passage, it was the totally bitching thing to wear...." And that's when I caught it, the same fondness for the time period that I still have. It's weird, but I look back on my time at St. Rita's with an almost disillusioned enamoration that most people don't possess about their elementary/junior high school. Yes, it had it's ups and downs, and, yes, that whole graduation dance snafu still rubs me the wrong way sometimes. But looking back is still a fun time for me and, by her own unconscious response, it was a fun time for Miss Weatherfield as well. It was funny too because once I saw the smile it was suddenly easy to see her back then, smiling as she was, clad in a bright orange or flaming red Town & Country shirt. Strip away the twenty years of baggage, strip away the weariness and the changes to her body, and I can see the girl just beneath the surface of the woman.

Sometimes remember what you used to be like is as easy as remembering a particular piece of clothing.

----

It's like reading this blog. Usually I'm loathe to read previous entries, especially entries I wrote three or four years ago. Even the difference from then to now is shocking. Together, the three of us have written close to nine hundred entries and in September this blog will officially be five years old. A lot has changed in that time. And there's a lot of memories and musings that I would do well to never read again. It isn't just that I no longer feel like I used to; it's almost like I've forgotten how it's like to ever have felt like that. Could I have been that miserable? Or could I have ever felt that way about a person who I now barely know? Could I have ever wanted to have do this crazy idea once? Or could I have ever felt so strongly opposed to something I now do all the time? I forget what it's like to have been that confused about certain aspects of my life that I don't find confusing any more.

But I've been reading a few of them recently. Some of them aren't even half-bad. I especially am enjoying the old Breanne posts... before Chicago, before her marriage troubles--because I never had an opportunity to read them really well. Back when we were posting five a week, there were days where all I did was edit them and really didn't pay attention to what she was actually writing about. If it didn't mention me, then I really wasn't going through it as thoroughly as I should have. Reading them now it's almost like finding old photographs you never knew were in your possession.

In fact, a lot of the posts are starting to bring back to mind some of the great things that have happened to me in the last five years. And I'm really starting to kick myself for not having dug this thoroughly into a habit/obsession that's been part of all of our lives for the last five years.

I used to think reading old posts was kind of pointless. If you don't feel the same way as you did back then, why bring it up now? I forgot that sometimes it doesn't matter what you're feeling like now. Sometimes resurrecting a ghost from your past is enough for you to start feeling like that again. Sometimes remembering what you like can come flooding back to you from even reading a few sentences of something you wrote years ago.

Sometimes remembering who you were and what you were like is as simple as looking at a picture of Miss Erin in a T & C shirt from way back when.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Little Rosa, The Boys Let Her Know, She's Just Not That Way, She Don't Put On A Show, For Nobody, Not Even You, She's Gonna Sit Alone

--"Little Rosa (Live)", Letters to Cleo

I've never been the root cause of any great tragedies. I've never started any fires bigger than a bonfire. I've never blown up any dynamite to cause any sizable cave-ins. I've never threatened to release any vials of anthrax into a crowded hospital. Taken as a whole, I've never taken action that would cause a sizable portion of society any long-lasting harm. I'm just not that type of person; I don't harbor this immense hatred for the world. But that doesn't mean I haven't been at fault for spreading misery into people's lives--far from it. I know there's been more than a few individuals who could claim to have been worse off for ever having met me just as I know there's been more than few individuals who I've chased away by often-times caustic behavior.

No avalanches. No floods. Nothing like that. Just a long list of people I've wronged irrevocably and often without any sense of remorse at the time.

It goes without saying that the people one hurts the most are the people one sees most often. My relationship with my family often times reads like a horror novel, filled with crazy instances where I just didn't care enough to even want to see them when they were ill, in some great misfortune, or even dying. And my friends? I'm fairly sure each of them can point to a time or two where I put what I wanted far ahead of what the group wanted. If not that, I would be confident they could recite an anecdote where I let my temper get the best of me, acted out in public for no apparent reason but that I lacked the proper social skills to effectively communicate my displeasure or frustration at the situation before me. My history is filled with many an anecdote, sometimes funny and sometimes not, where I lost all grip of proper manners and did whatever seemed most likely to get me what I wanted at the time. I've hurt a lot of people for a lot of different reason a lot of different times.

But no one's life have I ever fucked up more than Breanne's. Without a doubt.

Forget all the bad advice I've given her over the years--I've stumbled upon as many good suggestions as I've passed along bad ones. Forget the whole being one hundred percent of the reason she and her cousin Shelly do not converse any more--that's as much her cousin's problem as it is me. Forget even the whole almost getting her pregnant scare--that was a whole other headache that thankfully never actually came to fruition. For the most part I've made her life more complicated or tortured than it ever had to be. That's the truth right there. I have never so overtly made a total catastrophe of one's life as I have of Mrs. Breanne Haley Holins-Meier. The more I reflect upon it, the more I realize it's true. That has a lot more to do with a few factors than anything else. It's not like I set about to screw up her life the first day I met her. It was never my intention to do my worst to her or to cause her any pain. I don't think that's anyone's intentions when they first conspire to become friends with someone. When I first met her I thought she was going to be the one I couldn't screw up because it didn't feel like I had to try so hard to impress her or to win her over. She made my life so much easier than I ever thought it could be. Words flowed naturally, wanting to be helpful and decent wasn't a struggle with her, and she quite literally brought out the best in me. For awhile there, it seemed that I had found the most elusive of all relationships, the stress-free best friend, that person that improved your life in all respects without taking anything else away.

The trouble started when I realized just how accommodating she really was. I don't know what it is about me. I don't know why I can't ever leave people's good intentions alone. Maybe it's the opportunist in me, maybe it's all those novels and films I read about con artists or grifters. But for some reason I always have to test the limits of someone's affections. I did it with my parents, testing my boundaries of just how much freedom they would allow me and then taking one step further. I did it with DeAnn just recently. To some extent, I do it with everyone. But never worse than I ever did it with Miss Lucy.

It started innocently at first. I took advantage of the fact she was so much younger than me at the time. I would ask her for small favors here and there--buying me a book that supposedly was sold out at the bookstore I worked at even though it wasn't, making her wake up at odd hours because I supposedly couldn't get to the phone any other time, &c...--all for the sake of ascertaining whether or not she would do it. These requests weren't like one friend asking another friend for a favor; they more closely resembled an older brother asking his sister to fetch him this or that. And she did them, not out of any sense of knowledge that she was doing something I couldn't do for myself or out of a sense that she was helping me out of a jam, but because she wanted to please me in the same way kids have always been trying to please the kids a year or two ahead of them in school. She was willing to trade minor inconveniences at a misguided attempt to win my respect. My respect she had. It's just that I wanted more. I know this is the way people have dealing with other people since time immortal, buying them things or doing things to please them, but it's usually not the way things work between equals. That's the theory I always sold to both of us when we began this little partnership of ours, that we were equals. Sure, there was a four-and-a-half years age difference, but I always told her that it didn't make it difference. I always told her as far as I was concerned she was just like the young women I'd gone to class with, that she was just like my cousins who'd I always known, that she was just like the twin sister I should have had.

But that wasn't true. I may have talked at her like someone who wanted to be fifty-fifty partners, but I treated her like I was running a game on her. I treated her like she was the mark in some long-term scam that she had no idea about. From there it just grew worse. You can't really respect someone that you think is more naive than you. It doesn't make for a fair fight. While I never came right out and said that she was being gullible, there were plenty of times where I thought it. Not only that, there were plenty of times where I truly thought less of her because she couldn't see through my flattery to what I really wanted underneath. And while I never went so far as to ask for something she truly wasn't ready to give, I know for sure there were plenty of times I talked her into giving something that she knew I was going to ask about. They were physical objects, per se, but more words and admissions. It doesn't sound like much, but in any contest of wills there's going to be prizes one person does not wish to relinquish. It doesn't even matter what the prize is, the contest is always about holding onto those objects you wish to retain and getting others to let go of the things they wanted to keep. Words function just as well as books or letters or money. If I wanted her to say something, it always become a goal of mine to get her to say them before long.

Yes, there were a lot of things she asked me to do that I did willingly. And, yes, quite a few of them I had my doubts about. But the difference was she thought it was going against my nature to break the rules or even break the law when that's never been a big deal for me. So, yeah, technically buying that bottle of bourbon during my first visit to her during Christmas was against the law but it was never this huge sacrifice I was making for her. It wasn't like the time I held that zip-loc bag full of pot for Carly at the L.A. Weekly show a few years ago. That I could have been arrested for. But breaking the law so I could get Breanne drunk was never going to get me into any real trouble so it never felt like she was gaming me. And, yeah, over the years I've bought her some nice baubles (a necklace, a watch there) and I did treat her to a trip to Chicago, but, again it never felt like her pulling the wool over my eyes. It never felt like her using my obvious affection for her to suss out gifts and prizes galore. Most of the things she's asked me for I've been more than willing to give freely because I honestly do love her, whereas there has been times where I feel she truly didn't want to do something but that I won her over.

That's the main difference between us, I've won her over here and there over the years. But she? She only asks of me the stuff I was going to do anyway. At least that's the way it feels to me.

About the only thing I couldn't give her when she asked of it was my desire to be a couple. I held back on that for forever. It felt weird saying, "I love you," only to follow it up with, "now hurry along to high school, B." That's another reason why I liked the coupling of Ephram and Madison on Everwood, because it so closely mirrored the trials I had endured it. The insecurity, the hesitation, the plain confusion--I've been through all of that and more with her. But that's where I think treated her the most unfairly for the longest time.

I mean--she had made it pretty clear she was falling for me about six months after getting to know me. Chalk it up to the fact that I was older or maybe to the fact that, like she says, I was the first person that ever really heard her. Whatever I did I was glad I managed to somehow get that part right. I'm nothing without her faith in me compared to what I'm like with it. Yet I was always pussyfooting around how exactly I felt about her. It's not without a bit of sarcasm that I tell people that she's like my best friend, little sister, then ex-girlfriend all rolled into one because for the longest time the first two monikers were the only two I could allow myself to focus on. A best friend I could handle. I'd had a couple of best friends before her. A little sister was a new experience because the closest I'd ever come to that was a couple of younger cousins. They've never resembled in the least the frustration and the joy associated over watching someone younger than you that feels like family. Yes, there's Francis, but, at only two years younger than me, he never really felt like he needed taking care of. Breanne was different. When she was going through the last few years of running away I was actually in a position to give her brotherly advice. And when she needed assistance dealing with her parents regarding this or that, I could actually give her anecdotes about how I handled that selfsame conversation with my parents.

But love? Real romantic love? That was something that was seventeen worlds of scary. I'd never been in love like that before. I'd thought it had been something close when I had met and was talking with Jina, but I'd been wrong. And to possess that depth of feelings for someone who was so much younger and so much more innocent than me felt like I was living on another planet. Nobody knows what it's like to care about someone passionately until it happens and that's what it was like for me. I was apprehensive about the manner in which my emotions snuck up on me. For the longest times--I say months, she says years--I didn't act appropriately upon them. Meanwhile, there she was, ducking the advances of guys her own age, making up excuses to her friends and family about why she wasn't dating more. She was basically saving herself for me and I was too blind, too proud, to realize it. If I considered how many nights she forsook because of my dumb ass's hesitation, staying at home alone just so we could talk, it makes me wish she hadn't wasted so much of her formative years on me. It makes me feel bad that, of anyone she's ever known, I was the one who held her back the most in that regard. At what--fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen--she should have been getting to know what kind of guy she was attracted to and not settling for me.

It does strengthen her case that we did end up dating for a few years there. It makes me recognize that she saw something between the two of us for at least a year before I ever saw it clearly. Yet she could have been gaining some real-life experience in those months she was waiting for me to come around. Instead, I felt like she was holding back for me... when that was one area of her life I expressly did not ask for or try to trick her into.

She is my first love and I suppose I'm hers. But I never asked for that. I would have been well content to see her date other people while I sorted out how I felt in the mean time. In fact, I believe it was all that pressure knowing that she was stalling for a decision that made me deliberate even longer. It's a delicate matter, having someone claim you as the first person they've ever fallen for. It puts a lot of pressure on you to make it special for them. That's the part I was frightful of. That's the part I balked at. I didn't want to be the first person in line that everyone else gets measure against. I wanted to be the person that she finally saw for what I was, after she's been through all the jerks first. Everyone knows in the romantic comedy the heroine always starts with the person they're not supposed to end up with; I didn't want that schmuck to be me... even though that's exactly what ended up happening.

So, let's see, I've been manipulative with her and I wasted the best years of her life. What else did I do to totally mangle the way her life?

Oh yes, I didn't show up at her wedding even though she expressly told me I was one of only four people (Greg and her parents being the other three) she needed to be there. At the time I thought I was doing her a favor. I thought I would be more disruptive than anything else. I didn't think, though. I didn't think at all. The simple fact of the matter is this: when your younger sister gets married, you don't tell her, "I've got better things to do." You don't tell your best friend that you can't make her wedding because you're not man enough to cause a scene. Worse than the eight months of not speaking to one another (which is part of the reason I started this blog in the first place), worse than the berating I got from her parents and from mine about how much I disappointed her, worse even than the hollowness of having missed out on possibly Breanne's biggest shining moment, is the knowledge that I wrecked her wedding. i might not have derailed it, but I made it that much less perfect by my absence. I'm sure, at the very least, it was a distraction that she didn't need and, at worst, it was the one glaring imperfection on her otherwise perfect day. That's what I mean by ruining it. It's funny, by not wanting to be the one guy who took the attention away from the happy couple, that's exactly what I did.

It's probably the most unforgivable decision I've ever made. And I'm still making up for it. From begging her to join this blog, to taking it whenever she brings it up without comment or defense, to plain apologizing every time it comes up in conversation--I cannot do enough to show how sorry I am for causing her that level of pain. I thought she'd get over it. Maybe she has. But the worst part about it is that I still haven't. It'll be seven years to the day in a few days, but I constantly ruminate over how it could have turned out differently if only I had showed some maturity, if only I had learned my lesson about respecting her wishes and her concerns more. I constantly play back how the conversation might have been less abrasive and how I could have just stepped onto the plane that was waiting for me. I constantly imagine the tears, the yelling, and the whatever that must have followed in the days following her hanging up on me. I also start to picture how long it took for her to even work up the forgiveness to start taking my calls again because the gods only know that, if it had been me, I would have never forgive her. I might have walked away from her over something like that--ten years of friendship thrown away.

That's the biggest motif when it comes to mistakes regarding Breanne. I always seem to go astray when it comes to taking her feelings seriously, when it comes to treating her with the same level of respect she's always shown me. It may be close to sixteen years after I first laid eyes on the name of Breanne Holins on Prodigy all those years back but I still treat her like the eager-to-please young girl she was back then. I still expect her to fetch and follow me when I so ask of her and for her to be okay when I say no to her. And that isn't fair. All she's ever asked of me is to care about her and not treat her feelings as second-rate. She had enough of that growing up with her mother. Yet, time and time again, when it comes to following this simple request, I undervalue her and I plow right ahead with what I wanted to do. I take her for granted because I still feel like I know better than her because I have been living four-and-a-half years longer than her.

I think it's time to see that she's more than caught up to me in terms of her understanding of the world and her experience at most everything. I think it's time to see, if anything, she's surpassed me in terms of blossoming into a well-rounded woman of rare character and intelligence. I think it's time to stop inadvertently hurting her in the name of mentoring her.

I've made some mistakes with her in the past--more than I'd care to remember. The only mistake I haven't made yet is totally driving her away because that would be the real mistake. Losing her from my life is the only real tragedy I could ever think of.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Dark Winters Wear You Down, Up Again To See The Dawn, In Your Worn Sweatshirt, And Your Mother's Old Skirt, It's Enough To Turn My Studies Down

--"Young Adult Friction", The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

When people first find out that most nights I have a hard time sleeping they always ask the same things. Am I depressed? Am I stressed out? Even people that have gotten used to the idea that I only get four or five hours of sleep each night still attribute it to the fact that I'm not getting the right balance in my life--the right balance of food, the right balance of exercise, the right balance of fulfillment in my life. They believe that there's this huge in my life that I'm trying to fill during the hours I should be sleeping.

I believe it's something much simpler than that. I'm just a person who likes to do the work I love when nobody is around me. The more I analyze it, the more I realize that some of the most fulfilling activities I do are done when everything is quiet and when, for the most part, I'm by myself. I've never been a group guy. But it's even more than that, I've never been much of a loud guy. I like things that can be done quietly, secretly almost. One only has to look at the hours I tend to write my blog posts here to see that I'm a person who thrives when no one else is stirring (not even a mouse). I write most of my fiction then as well because I find the hours between ten and three in the morning the least distractive. You don't get the sounds of people walking outside the building, you don't get the usual noises associated with life as we know it, and, most importantly, you don't get life trying to intrude upon you in the form of phone calls, e-mails, or what have you. I can truly be alone with my thoughts.

Sure, I'll get the occasional call at two in the morning just because I've made it clear that I don't mind them since I'm up anyway. Or I'll get the spontaneous request to head down to the Denny's in Orange County because somebody is just getting back from somewhere and she doesn't know another soul that would be up when I'm up. But, for the most part, the night time is my time to concentrate on me. It's the time I do my real work. It's the time I do my real thinking.

People are always praising the summer, when the sun's out and when there's actual light to see by.

But me? I've always been a winter person, when the sky's clouded up and there's not much incentive to venture out into the greyish environs around us. I've always cherished more the activities that can be done indoors--a nice conversation over dinner, a lazy dusk spent watching movies with old friends (and some new ones), laying in bed next to people not to sleep but just to feel what it's like to have human contact that doesn't always necessitate sexual connotations. And, of course, to put my brain to use and read a book, or maybe write a book. Hell, I even enjoy watching some insane program on television because that's when all the fun programming comes out, in the dead hours when they think nobody is paying attention.

There's something to be said about crossing over to the twilight time, when you don't have to be active, but you choose to be. There's something about being able to concentrate on all the thoughts that never quite make it into the daylight. When all is dark and cold and austere, that's when you can let loose with the ideas that you might have hesitated to indulge before. At least for me, under the cover of that metaphysical winter is where I feel the most alive.

So it isn't a matter of not being able to sleep (though that happens sometimes); it's more of a matter of choosing not to sleep and waste away my best hours.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

There Was A Time You Let Me Know, What's Really Going On Below, But Now You Never Show It To Me, Do You?

--"Hallelujah (cover)", Ari Hest

When you're lost and alone things feel hopeless. You get that sense of helplessness that accompanies any unfamiliar situation. You start to believe that, as bad as the situation has turned out, it can go from bad to worse. Without somebody nearby to allay your fears you slip into that spiral of despair and continue slipping.

That's the thought that was going through my head as Toby and I pushed our way through the back country roads of Kentucky, looking for the Maker's Mark Distillery. I was thinking, thank the gods I had someone in the Charger with me, because as much as the crap had hit the fan (and they had really had hit the fan), my predicament would have been doubly daunting had I been all alone out there, wherever we were.

“You sure you don't recognize anything, Marion?” I asked for the fourth time that day, attempting to soften the annoyance by addressing her by her long-standing nickname. “Something's has got to look familiar.”

“Not at all.”

“Nothing?”

She drew in her breath.

“Gosh. I wish I could help. I'm not liking where this day is going, I can tell you that much.”

It wasn't her fault. She'd only been driving herself for the last six months. Besides that, she really hadn't had much inkling to go seek out where my favorite brand of bourbon was born herself. I could blame her as much for her unfamiliarity with the area as she could blame me were I to take her around the web of roads comprising the Hollywood Hills. Just because you live near an area doesn't mean you instantly are born with an innate knowledge of the area. Plus, I couldn't blame her for the weather either.

The lightning crashing twenty yards to either side of us every minute or so wasn't her doing.

Neither the great walls of water seemingly cascading from the sky nor the myriad of strewn tree branches across the highway were not summoned by her either.

It was random chance that we got caught out in the storm when we did. Well, not completely random. I'd made a remark when I had picked her up that the clouds were not looking fortuitous for our planned excursion. However, with a minimum of debate, we had decided that the previous three days had heralded somewhat reliable conditions. We chanced that the conditions would indeed hold out for another few days. So when we had set out and it started to mildly sprinkle, we thought we could handle it if that was as bad as it was going to get. Then, when matters hadn't escalated in the next hour, we thought we were in the clear. We thought we were going to get an overcast, depressing day and not the wrath of the gods raining down upon us like it ended up.

“Maybe make a right here,” she suggested.

“Do you recognize the route number?”

“Not particularly, but I figure if we keep heading west we'll run into something I do recognize.”

“Sounds like as much of a plan as I've got.”

I took her suggestion and took a right onto yet another diabolical set of three digits. That's what was hindering my finding our way out the most, the fact that every route just seemed to be a confusing set of numbers after another set of confusing set of numbers. Each of them said west or east or north or south. Yet without a reliable sense of how far away we were from everything we couldn't even begin to decipher which way we were supposed to be headed. I had never been a fan of GPS systems in cars. I prefer to think of myself as being someone with a good bump of direction, but at that very moment I was lamenting the fact that I didn't have at least the opportunity to “cheat” and look up the answer as to how to extricate us from possibly the worst case of being lost I had ever been in, including getting lost at Epcot.

“At least at Epcot I had the knowledge that my aunts would be looking for me,” I offered up to Toby. “At least there I knew that eventually somebody would find me. Here, it's like you're the only person I know that could look for me and you're sitting in the car with me.”

“There's always Faye...”

Faye is Toby's older sister and the one that suggested that Toby and I would have fun on the tour.

“Who's in Indiana—yeah, that's doable.”

“There's always my parents...”

“Who would love the fact that I was planning to take you on a tour of Maker's Mark. We're going to call that our 'break glass' plan, only to be used in the strictest of emergencies.”

“So what do you want to do? Keep driving around in this mess and hope we get lucky?”

“Oh, I would love to do just that, Toby,” I said, sarcastically.

“Look at it out there. I think I just saw an ark floating by, Patrick.”

“Well, then the trip was well worth it, wasn't it?” I tried to joke.

The truth was I was scared as to how we were going to get out. We'd already been driving around for forty minutes without the faintest clue about where we were—this, after we had already driven close to an hour just to get as close as we did to finding Maker's Mark HQ. I checked the gas gauge. We weren't any danger of running out of fuel any time soon, but if this kept up I had the skulking suspicion we were going to be putting ourselves in real danger. If a lightning bold didn't hit us, I knew it was entirely likely that we could have a traffic accident—running into a tree branch or another car coming up over the hill on these slippery roads. I also knew it was very likely that something else could go wrong that had nothing to do with the car. I hadn't had much experience dealing with her when the chips were down. I was a little bit apprehensive that at any moment she could start freaking out on me and I wouldn't know what to do with her. I'm not the best person in a crisis face-to-face. Give me a phone, give me some distance, and I can usually suss out a solution. Place in the midst of hysterics, however, and I lose a ton of focus.

Part of the problem was I felt responsible for my young charge. Of the two of us, I was older than her by a good decade-and-a-half. I'd been driving longer. I had the experience of mucking it through bad weather. I knew that her only experience with being caught in inclement weather had only been with her parents. I also knew she was the type to worry when things weren't just so. I just didn't know if I was up to the challenge of being the one to calm her down, if the need arose.

I just didn't know if I wanted to be the leader on this little excursion.

I'd never been all that good at assuming command. I've always been better at being the power behind the throne—advising when necessary, pushing things one way or another if called upon. Being thrust into the whatever I say goes role has always ended one of two ways for me. Either I get blamed for becoming too unyielding or I eventually relinquish all control to somebody I feel can bear the mantle of leadership more eloquently than I could.

Yet there I was feeling like I was being called upon to make the right decisions. I didn't know what to do and I didn't feel right asking her to choose for me. I was behind the wheel, after all. It was only right that I should have been the one to put my foot down for the both of us and come up with clear-cut plan for making our way back to familiar ground. The trouble was that was the first time I had ever been in a situation where I was with somebody so willing to relinquish control. I was used to the notion that most people will fight you for dominance. I was used to being around stronger personalities. Breanne, DeAnn, Carly—they all share the common trait of being able to voice a definitive opinion when the circumstances warrant it. But Toby, Toby has always been of a similar mindset as myself. We're both Libras—born two days apart in the year—and we both have a firmer grasp of what we dislike than what we like. We're both more comfortable criticizing people's failures and coming up with a solution than creating those selfsame solutions for ourselves. We both like to think we're capable of making the right choices, but when it comes time to choose we're both easily swayed by what others have done in a similar situation.

When it came down to it. I wanted her to tell me how to make things right and she was thinking the same exact thing of me.

“I'm thinking this wasn't such a good idea,” she said, after we'd driven a little further up the twisty road.

“Coming out with me or coming out on this wild goose chase?” I asked.

“Both,” she started. “I wanted you to show me around after Faye and I showed you around on Monday, but I thought you'd have a better grasp of how to do all this.”

“How to do all what?”

“Plan this out and what to do in an emergency.”

“It's not my fault I'm not used to the weather out here.”

“It's not my fault either, but...”

“But what?”

“But I would have turned around the minute I saw it started to rain a little harder.”

“Hey, you wanted to go on just as much as I did.”

“But you should have known better. I let you talk me into continuing on when I knew better. I just knew better.”

A half-hour before that point she'd been just as keen on continuing as I had. In fact, she was the one that told me that she'd driven in much worse with her family and friends. She was the one who told me that she could tell when it was unsafe to continue. And she was the one that had hinted she'd be a little disappointed if we didn't, indeed, make it to our intended destination.

“That's not what you were saying a few minutes ago, Marion.”

“That's what I was thinking, I can tell you that much. I was just too polite to say so,” she replied. “And stop calling me that. It's a ridiculous nickname.”

I looked into her laser blue eyes and her befreckled face. There was genuine concern on it. She wasn't so much frightened as confused. She's normally never been someone given into putting herself out on a limb, out in harm's way. To be trapped out in the middle of nowhere with no assurances that she was to ever get out must have been terrifying to her. I mean—I felt scared, only because I had never driven in weather so loud and dark and abundantly chaotic—but I still had that singeing notion that there was going to be a happy resolution to all this confusion. She didn't have such a luxury, I could see.

“As you wish.”

We drove for another four miles in silence before she piped up again.

“My parents once drove us out to Illinois once,” she began. “When we had left it had been late afternoon. My parents wanted to get into the hotel we would all be staying at as late as possible. They figured that if we got into the city late us girls would be so beat that all we would want to do is get to our hotel beds and knock out. For the most part they were right. I started to fall asleep well into the second hour on the road.

“When I woke up we were still an hour from our destination. Everything was dark. No one was talking. Faye and Nora were still up, but they were staring out the windows in their respective seats. My parents were probably listening to the music quietly in the front of the minivan. There I was, way in the back, by myself and I couldn't see anything.

“I wasn't scared, per se. But I was startled at how dark everything was. Maybe it was not being accustomed to the road we were on or maybe because I was too young to have remembered too many late night driving trips, but I started to tear up at the whole affair. I wasn't scared, I can tell you that much. But, gosh, was I uncomfortable. It was the weirdest feeling ever, to be that put off by what was going around you. To feel like everything is off-kilter somehow.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nora heard me crying and offered to sit next to me for the rest of the trip.”

“Is that how you feel now? Uncomfortable?”

She didn't answer me. I didn't much feel the need to repeat the question so I went to let it go.

I flipped through the stations on the radio, hoping to find something that would be soothing to both of us. I wanted to get our minds off of the length of time we had been driving without any idea if we were getting close to anything familiar. All I could find were stations playing seemingly Miley Cyrus' “The Climb” and All-American Rejects' “Gives You Hell”. If one station wasn't playing one, then there were playing the other. Finally, I gave up and just let the damn chorus of “Gives You Hell” reverberate within the Charger's confines.

I wished to myself that I had had some of my CD's from my car at home. At least then I could surround myself with music I actually liked. If anything, that was area I could control. The music I listened to was something that always seemed to help me feel more confidant about heading into unfamiliar territories. As it stood, I couldn't control the person in the car with me. I couldn't predict what she was going to say next or what she was going to expect of me. I couldn't guess where I should be headed next with her. In a sense, it was like being lost twice. At least with people I had years and years with I had familiar patterns. After knowing and talking to Breanne for the last fifteen years, for instance, I knew exactly the rapport necessary to get us out of uncomfortable silences. Or, after sharing even three rides with Carly, I had a sense of what to say and what was going to be said. But this, this was my first ride alone with the girl known as Toby Frisson. And it turned out to be the most stressful first car ride I've ever shared with someone. If maybe a volcano had suddenly opened up while I had been driving around with Breanne that day in December of 1994 or if on the way to the grocery store Jina and I had been attacked by a pack of wolves I might have had some preparation in dealing with lousy twists of fate on one's first journey with somebody else. But all I had was the notion that up until then dealing with Marion had been a truly painless affair.

What I was dealing with at that very moment was our first real glimpse of what the other was like in a crisis.

Being friends with someone is like dancing to music. It's instinctive, it has rhythm, and it's something that feels like you need to do. But it also has its complications. You can almost fall into too familiar of a pattern with someone. You can almost memorize how everything is supposed to happen. Those are the times when you have to ask yourself if you're dancing to the music because you want to or because that's what you've always done. Sometimes you have to see what it's like to dance without that particular song playing in the background.

“We'll look for the next gas station or store and ask for directions, okay?” I finally said after another five or six miles had come and gone. By then we had been on the road for close to two hours and we were not any closer to finding our way back.

“Fine by me,” she said quickly.

Toby has a way of holding her lips like they're clasped together that I've noticed she tends to do when she gets irritated. It's about the only clear-cut signs she's even bothered when she's trying hard to remain stoic. I've seen her upset. I've seen her sad. However, if she isn't prepared to let on how she's feeling, she's very quick to hide everything behind that bright smile of hers. She isn't like some people I know who can tell you everything they're feeling at a moment's notice; she's more of the keep it to myself and don't let anyone know type of person. She's like the Mona Lisa in that regard; they're can be a whole palette of emotions going on behind that smile.

“I'm sorry I got us lost. It's not what I wanted, by any stretch,” I offered.

“I know.”

I patted her hand, fingernails painted the lightest shade of blue I had ever seen fingernails painted. I was trying to be as reassuring as I could be. She slowly moved it away from me and placed it on the side of her face, propping up her head with her elbow on the arm rest in the center of the Charger.

“We're going to get out of this and we're still going to salvage this day, I swear.”

Another veiled smile.

I leaned back in the driver's seat and sighed. It was going to take a lot to break through that thick veneer she had around herself. I couldn't even begin to imagine what was going on in that head of hers. The insecurities, the doubts were probably doing the back stroke through an already fragile state of mind. When it comes to mental fortitude, Toby was never blessed with a sizable chunk of it. Her blessings have always laid elsewhere. It was difficult trying to put myself in a position of working around that. I've always dealt with individuals who had more fight in their spirit, some chutzpah in their character. Miss Frisson was a different beast altogether. She's always been more soft on the outside and soft on the inside kind of gal. In many respects it was kind of nice being around someone that doesn't always put you on your guard, but times like that one made me realize how difficult it sometimes is when you have hold someone's hand more than you would like.

“Did I ever tell you of the time Bree and I almost crashed her daddy's truck down the mountain, Toby?” I asked after a beat.

“No, I don't believe so.”

“We had parked it at the top of this hill or mountain or whatever. We were just watching the landscape below us, all the trees and birds and stuff. It was really peaceful. It was really nice being there with her.

“Then, for whatever reason, the truck starts sliding forward on the loose dirt. It's a good thing I was paying attention because if I hadn't been able to start the truck when I did there's a good shot that we could have slid pretty far down. Or, worse yet, we could have slid right into a tree or something.

“It wasn't something I had planned to do. It wasn't something I could have foreseen. It just happened, you know?”

I looked over to my young companion to see if she was still paying attention. She continued staring straight ahead of her. Yet out of the corner of her eye I caught a glimmer of recognition.

“And there Breanne was, probably the bravest person I know when it comes to getting in or out of scrapes, and she was clutching the sleeve of my shirt as if we'd slid a hundred yards or so. We'd maybe moved a foot or two in reality, but she was digging her nails into my arm as if we were about to fall off a cliff.

“If I hadn't caught it myself I might have been scared like her, but the danger passed so quickly that I really didn't have time to think about how awful the consequences could have been.

“But that's just me. When something bad happens I try not to think about it right afterwards. It's only after a few minutes or sometimes a few years that I can fully appreciate the gravity of what happened to me.

“B. still teases me that I was teasing God that day by playing it off like nothing happened.”

I looked over again. She still hadn't adjusted the way her face had been positioned. She did finally speak, though.

“I think if we ever get through this—when--we finally get through this I might want some Chinese food. Gosh, I'm tired of eating at BBQ joints with you. We've hit them all.”

“Do you have any Mongolian BBQ places? We could do one of those. It would kind of be like a compromise since it's the next best thing to Chinese and BBQ mixed together.”

“There's one over in Lexington, in the mall over there.”

“Can we make it there today?”

“If we get out and if we hurry.”

I nodded my head in agreement.

Sometimes we pick friends based on them possessing the qualities we lack. If we're introverted, then we like to surround ourselves with people that can bring us out of our shells. If we're into physical types of activities, then we like to surround ourselves with a few people that are into more academic pursuits. This isn't to say we pick people who are the complete opposites of us; we do like to make sure that there are a few interests that are held in common. But we also like having people in our lives that have something new to bring to the table; that can provide us with pathways to places we never thought of going ourselves.

In other cases, with people like Toby, we like to surround ourselves with people who we think we can better, that we can mentor in a way. I wouldn't go so far as saying that I think of our friendship as a mentor/student, but I kind of look upon Toby as the person I could have been if I hadn't been pushed into so many groups by my parents. Boy scouts, soccer, piano, and academic clubs—none of them were my idea (except maybe for Boy Scouts). But my parents had wanted me to get at least some exposure to being around people of my own age outside of my friends. Maybe if I'd been left alone like I wanted to be, I could have ended up much like her. Or maybe if I'd grown up with an older sister or brother who always seemed to get the hog's share of the attention, I could have turned out like her.

Ever since I've known her, I've taken it as my unspoken duty to get her acclimated to volunteering to go out with people she might not know everything about. I've tried to get her to take a chance on spontaneity.

It's just when things turn out like that day, when Faye and I finally convinced her to head off for a few hours without the benefit of somebody she completely trusts there, and all hell breaks loose, she loses all confidence in taking a calculated risk again.

“Yeah, I don't think you'll ever catch me coming out here on Ilsa,” referring to her midnight black Vespa.

“It's far too dangerous on these roads on a scooter anyway,” I agreed.

“It's not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don't have any interest in being out here is all.”

I couldn't argue with her. She really had no business being out here at all. For me it was just going to see where they made my favorite brand of bourbon. I went totally on a lark. For her, it was just doing me a favor. Once that obligation ended, she would go back to going to only those places she had to be—Jack's house, Francoise's house, school, home. But that was the trouble. She needed to go to more places she didn't really fit in or belong. She really needed to go to places just for the hell of it.

It's good for the soul.

I looked at her again or, more precisely, I caught her looking at me just then. She wasn't really staring at me, but more through me. It was like she was trying to see what was on the other side of me without averting her gaze. I doubted if she ever saw me at all. There I was, lamenting my poor friend who never took any chances in this world and now the world was on the brink of literally scaring her to death. I thought I had the reasons why she was so upset all figured out. I thought I had the bulk of her all figured out.

That's the danger in dealing with people younger than you. You think there's nothing they've been through that you haven't. You think that there isn't anything new under the sun that they can tell you that will surprise you. You sit there, behind the wheel, smug in your understanding of the universe and contempt of anything the child next to you might have to say. And it isn't because you have no respect for them and it isn't because you fault their intelligence or understanding, you just think that they haven't been alive long enough to know what's what. You fault them for their lack of years, if anything.

But that's when you miss out on what going down whatever road they've gone done has allowed them to see.

“There was another time,” she suddenly burst the silence with, “another time where I didn't feel scared, but I did feel something wasn't right. There was another time I was driving with someone and it ended up being not what I thought it was going to be.

“Can we pull over for a second, Patrick?”

“Why?”

“Give me a few seconds.”

She indicated with her hands a spot where it would be safe to pull over next to the wet lawns of a house. I can still hear the syncopated rhythm of the wiper blades on the windshield, the steady fall of raindrops, punctuated only be the sharp peals of thunder and lightning.

This time I felt her grab my hand for support.

“We'd been fighting, as usual. I didn't know where he was taking me, but I knew it wasn't to anywhere I recognized. That's when he started yelling that if I didn't agree with him on whatever the fight was about—spending my time after school with him, sneaking out of the house, whatever—he was going to just keep on driving and not let me out. Gosh. It was strange. He wasn't threatening to hurt me. He wasn't even laying a finger—because he'd done that before. No, all he was saying was that he was going to keep on driving and never let me go.

“I should have been more scared, I guess. That would have been the appropriate response. That's what I should have been feeling.

“All I could think was that I wasn't supposed to be there that day. I hadn't even wanted to go with him anyway. I'd wanted to stay home and catch up on some communications project that I had fallen behind on. But he had insisted and we were dating at the time, so I relented. There I was, sitting in his car, with my seatbelt around me protecting me from a car accident. But I kept thinking that it's going to take an accident for anyone to find me. If nothing big like that ever happened, he could have driven me straight to Canada without anyone finding out.

“And there were all these roads that I didn't know.

“And the whole world seemed dark outside.

“I just felt uncomfortable the whole time. I felt wrong—not scared, wrong. I had one of those moments where I felt I was outside of my body and I couldn't do anything to take my body away with me. My mind was a million miles away, but I couldn't get my body to come with.

“He kept driving. We drove for hours. I didn't recognize any of it. I didn't recognize one road, not one stretch of forest or grass or exit. He kept driving us farther away from anything I might have recognized. And I couldn't do anything to change it. I had to wait for him to change his mind.”

She let go of my hand and motioned for me to start the car again.

“That's what this feels like. That's what I feel like right now. It isn't your fault and I know there's nothing you can do about it, but all of this is eerily familiar.”

----

I was wrong.

You can feel hopeless and alone even when you're with someone. I was also wrong regarding Toby. She already knew what it was like to find yourself trying something just for the fuck of it and having it turn out all wrong. She had already tried dancing without the music and found it not to her liking. My quest was never about getting her to open up. My quest, as it stands now, is going to be about getting to her open up again.

I Never Meant To Cause You Any Sorrow, I Never Meant To Cause You Any Pain, I Only Wanted To See You Laughing

--"Purple Rain (Cover)", Kate Nash

It was Toby that pointed it out. The second season of Everwood should be out in stores this week, she had told me while I was visiting. I couldn't not have been more surprised if you'd have slipped ice down the back of my shirt.

I had absolutely no idea they were even releasing the second season. I mean--the first season came out in DVD in 2004 and here they are releasing the second season in 2009? It doesn't make any sense to me. Ask anyone. I was bitching and complaining that one of my all-time favorite shows, the only show next to Avonlea that I would gladly purchase the entire box set for all five seasons if only they would get off their asses and actually release it as such. But eventually my fervor died down. I came to accept that I would never get to see the episodes I had missed in its original release, having only caught on to the show about halfway through the second season. I just thought I'd have to content myself with season one for the rest of my life (even though I thought the show hit its stride in season two and three). Yet once more the studio gods would have conspired to cause another tragedy in my viewing patterns.

It's a weird feeling I possess now that I can purchase it again. I'm starting to remember all the old reasons why I loved it. I'm starting to remember more and more of the secondary characters that made it such a joy to watch. I'm starting to remember more of the compelling plot lines that had me going "Oh lordy, what is it this week." I think that's one of the main reasons why I relished the show so much. It was just so much drama. I mean--yeah, it was kind of unrealistic just how screwed up everyones' lives became over the course over four short seasons, but somehow they managed to keep up the suspension of disbelief just enough for me to come back to it week after week. Silly or not, the writers knew how to string out an overarching storyline for the entire season. Soap opera writers didn't have anything on them in terms of wringing every last bit of tension from a scenario over ten, even fifteen episodes. From Colin's accident and subsequent brain surgery to the whole subplot about Nina and Andy eventually ending up together--Everwood had the hook of deeply moving plots that weren't solved in the course of a single episode or even a single season. Of almost any show I know, it had the greatest sense of continuity regarding itself.

Yet even that's not the reason I kept on watching. More than any other show, even Avonlea, Everwood was the greatest exploration of romantic love in all its triumphs and tragedies, its mundane details and eccentric nuances, and its almost disheartening complexity. Avonlea had the concepts of community and family down, but for matters of the heart between a man and a woman--young and old, white and black and all the other colors of the rainbow, healthy and sick, and every other way two people can meet and fall in love--you had to turn to this show. I had to turn to this show. Perhaps it's merely because I started watching this show after I had just ended things with DeAnn for good (as friends as well as more) or that my watching it coincided with Lucy getting married and no longer having as much time for her old friend, but the show filled a vacancy in my life that it's hard to put into words. Basically, without a girlfriend and without someone readily available to bounce off my ideas, the show became my primary source of rumination on the great mystery of human connection. It was in one my fallow periods regarding making new friends or acquaintances so I was having a hard time ingesting new thoughts about the matter. Pretty much any new take I had on the matter came from this show. It's a strange thing to say, but it's true.

I still remember the one scene where Madison, college-age love of Ephram, is telling him how to get through the next few minutes of their break-up. She tells him to give her one good kiss, turn around, and walk to his car without looking back. Of course, he follows her every instruction, turning around and walking to his car. Then, just after he's gotten in and started the car he breaks his promise and looks to the door. There, standing more radiant than ever to him, is Madison, breaking her own promise to not be in the doorway when he leaves.

It wasn't just because it reminded me of my own situation of two people being in love who can't be together for outside reasons. It was because I honestly believed those two characters had it rougher than me that I teared up. Never mind how it reflected my own life. That's only the bait on the hook. The real selling point of how much they got characters and how much they got what it's like to have and lose love is that I actually found myself saying, "I'm glad I never went through something like that," when most of the time everything I see is something I can point to a corollary in my own life for.


I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain

That's why I liked the show--because it showed me the laughter and the tears of what it's like to be in love and out of love in ways I had never seen before in other shows. It had characters that I couldn't say "oh, he's like so-and-so" or "she reminds me of what's-her-face."

That's why I've already ordered the second season tonight.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Time's Running Faster, Please Let Us Through, Going In Any Direction Will Do, And You Said To Me, You Said What It Was All About, And I Said No

--"Kate", Sambassadeur

Currently my brother Francis is engaged in a cross-country bicycle ride he and his friend have dubbed Donuts Across America. It's one of the most ambitious endeavors I've ever heard my brother take on just for fun. I mean--yeah, he's done some amazing things as part of his job or as part of some greater effort. However, as far as something that serves no other purpose, but to do it, Donuts Across America is right up there as so crazy it's fucking cool.

In that respect Francis and I are very much alike. We both do stuff on a whim and are kind of both impulsive when it comes to certain decisions. Where we differ is that he's much more inclined to make these decisions from a personal growth perspective and I'm more keen on making decisions on a short-term joy perspective. I don't need everything I do to benefit me in the long run. I'm not looking to make myself over into the best possible me every time I make a conscious effort to do something. Sometimes--actually, very often--I'll do things just for the fuck of it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the less it benefits me in the long run, the more I'm apt to do it. Yeah, his bike ride is a lot of fun, but the way I think he looks at it, it's one of those undertakings that he can look back upon and say provided him with an experience that was indelible. He's always been one of those rare souls that can balance physical challenges, mental challenges, and social challenges without a sense of hesitation. If it makes him a better person--smarter, stronger, more intelligent, &c...--then he wants to do it.

Another area we differ is that he's more social conscious than I am. The whole reason he can bike across the country is that he bikes everywhere. He believes in preserving in the environment and leaving as little of a ecological footprint as possible. He recycles, he reads up on the latest environmental efforts being made, and he's just a much more well-rounded person when it comes to global and social issues.

Me? I'm kind of xenophobic and I'm very anti-ecological. I haven't left the country since I was one and I'm terribly wasteful on purpose. As anyone who has ever ate with me before at a fast food place, I can go through a dozen to two dozen napkins easily. I also tend to hoard utensils and napkins. And I never recycle. Scratch that--I purposefully avoid recycling by throwing recyclables away even if the two containers for trash and recyclables are side by side. I have it in my head--that we're the yin yang of the environment. I make the mess that my brother is trying to clean up or, as I see it, I'm the chaos to his order.

In a lot of ways, Francis and I have always been radically different to one another. I know that gets said by a lot of siblings, but I don't know any two people who have more diametrically opposed approaches to life than the two of us. One of the things that Toby and I talk about is what it's like to be the so-called disappointment of the family. She's always felt the pressure to measure up and I kind of relate to her in that fashion. At least she has the excuse of being the youngest. In a lot of ways I've always been the lesser of my parents' two sons. I might be the eldest and I might not be this huge failure, but Francis has just done everything right compared to me.

He never went bankrupt.

He never got arrested for hit and run or almost arrested for assault.

He never totaled his car.

Like I said, I don't think I've failed at life but I do think that he's never screwed up big-time like I have at certain things.

And yet, as siblings go, I think we get along great when we see each other. Yes, we fight, but it's never the big, huge blow-ups we used to have as kids. I think we got all our disagreeing out of the way when we were young. Also, I never make a huge deal about how he's so health conscious and self-controlled (he's lived most of his adult life without owning a tv for chrissakes) and he, for the most part, lets me be as wasteful and kooky as I want to be. The more I think about it, especially now that he's embarking on this huge trip, we've always been going in separate directions as far as leading our lives. He's always had this goal in mind that has never quite measure up to my own. And, yeah, it takes us far away from one another since his circles could never be mistaken for the circles I tend to hang around in.

It just seems the farther we travel, though, we always end up meeting somewhere down the line again and again. I've never been this huge proponent of close-knit families. But, as different as he and I might be, he's one of the few family members that I could say I give a damn about. I've never believed in "loving" your family just because they're blood, but my brother is one of the few members of my family that I kind of respect... both because of his beliefs and despite them.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Brits Have Got The Monarchy, The U.S. Has The Money, But I Know That You Want To Be Canadian

--"Canadian, Please", Gunnarolla

Anyone who knows me knows I have this weird fetish for all things Canadian. It started with Avonlea, but it didn't end there--not by half. Be it Degrassi, Maclean's, or something as silly as Canadian bacon--just associating anything with the country of Canada is enough to raise its cache. Be it band or actress, novel or movie, if it involves Canada somehow I want to know about it.

That's why I find odd what my mom said to me yesterday. We had been arguing over why I still haven't renewed my passport. I told her that I didn't really feel like leaving the country ever, but the real reason was that nobody could force me to visit the old country if it was literally illegal for me to leave our borders. She came back with how I wanted to travel when I was younger and how I wanted to live on Prince Edward Island. My first instinct was to laugh because she remembered something that I hadn't really dwelled on in almost ten years. That was soon followed by the realization that, rather than being overly dramatic just to win the argument, she was being serious that I, in fact, had once upon a time wanted to live across the border. It wasn't just something I said. There was a strong part of me that really wanted to move there.

Yes, it was based on the ill-conceived notion that the entire country resembled something out of a L.M. Montgomery novel--sandstone beaches, high grassy plains, and lots and lots of long dresses, tams, and vests. I guess you could say I didn't want to move to Canada; I wanted to move to turn-of-the-century Canada. That still doesn't change the fact that for a few years there I had a plan in place to take up residence in a country I had never ever visited before but had read stacks of literature and other books about, had seen countless films and documentaries about, and had discussed in length with everyone I knew that hailed or once hailed from our neighbors to the north. For a short span there I had it in my head that it was somehow my destiny to end up in Canada, to be a Canadian, and to do all things Canadian. To me it wasn't some silly daydream that had somehow taken hold of my thoughts; it was an obsession. I wanted to belong there, fit in there, because every fiber of my being had told me that it was more my speed, I guess, and that I would end up preferring it there for good than living down here.

I honestly don't know what changed in ten years.

I still have an overbearing sense of infatuation with the country. I still think every Canadian (or half-Canadian... LOL) I've ever met has been all the more charismatic from the simple fact of their citizenship. And I still think that there are a lot of practices done over there that the U.S. could stand to learn from.

And yet I no longer have the overwhelming desire to live there.

I kind of look back on those years I wanted to live in Canada as something that was silly, something done in the folly of youth. But maybe it's the person I am now that's living in the dream. I used to think moving to PEI would be special and that I was truly born in the wrong era and location. Eventually, after it stopped being in the forefront of my mind, I thought how ridiculous that plan seemed. But maybe it's even more ridiculous to be the kind of person who quashes his own dreams, however grandiose they may be, and huddles under the covers of a place stagnant, yet safe.

I think it's the very nature of people to be yearning for something more, something bigger, something brighter, or even just something else. Once you're perfectly okay with keeping everything the same, staying rooted in the middle of the muck that is your life, then you've got no direction in life. You need something pushing you onward and upward, you need something pulling you out of the mire and towards something cleaner. When you lose that drive, you lose something more than a dream. You lose the hope that gives hope to your dreams. When you lose that incentive, you've got nothing to hold onto except the memories of somebody who used to believe in something and now believes in nothing at all.

I used to be a man who dreamed of living in Canada. Without that, now who am I?

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers