When You're Strange, Faces Come Out Of The Rain, When You're Strange, No One Remembers Your Name

--"People Are Strange", The Doors

I've always known I was a little off. From a young age I developed habits and rituals that other people never seemed to understand. As I've matured I stopped calling them rituals and habits. Slowly but surely they morphed into my so-called "rules". Whatever, they're called they still rarely fall into the category of normal behavior. And over the years they still have drawn a curious, sometimes suspicious, eye.

It wasn't like I was completely clueless that such behavior would set me apart from the rest of the crowd. Indeed, there were times where I invited the singling out. However, most of the time, I wished I was better suited to fitting in, that I wasn't such a slave to my proclivities. Sure, I remembered having the realization that I was weird and from that point on just going with it. What never happened was my waking up one day and just deciding to gain such a reputation. It's my belief that it was a part of my character from day one; that I was born to the life as soon as my parents had me.

And it wasn't like it was always such a bad thing. On more than one occasion my tendency to forsake common sense or reason itself has provided a wonderful excuse for otherwise inexcusable behavior. When people expect you to act in an independent fashion you're free to act independently most of the time.

What it had been for a long time was a lonely state of being. When you set yourself apart, it's hard to all of sudden admit to others that you now want to be a part of something--even if it's only temporarily.

----

All that changed when I basically got to La Salle. I mean--it's all well and good to call Tommy, John, Paul, and Phillip; my friends from St. Rita's; my "friends," but at the time I thought I knew what the word meant. Up until that point I thought the main point of friendship was the idea of companionship and loyalty. Indeed, they are strong components, but it wasn't until I matriculated from junior high that I began to understand what getting to know someone well and becoming friends actually meant. People like Dan, Peter, Chris, and Omar I believe I got to know really well. More to the point I got to know their idiosyncrasies really well also. They were never something consciously given away; they were more byproducts of fate. If one spends enough time in the presence of someone else, the tiny secrets one keeps have a tendency to dribble out like so much drool. It's not something we choose; it's something chosen for us. It's my belief that who we are is a lot easier to reveal than it is to hide. It takes effort to mask or screen our character. It doesn't take any effort at all just to be ourselves.

That's what I think went on in high school. Once I was there it wasn't such a big deal that I was an oddity--at least not as much as it was during my time at St. Rita's. Once I was in high school I grew into my skin, so to speak.

That same rationale became even more pronounced once I met Lucy. Once you get to know someone as well as I know her, it's second nature to pick up on all the rituals and habits she thinks are okay but honestly surprise the hell out of most people. For instance, I learned early on in our friendship that she has a special relationship with the color orange. She takes her devotion to the color orange as seriously or more seriously as I take my devotion to the number eight. Visiting her parents' house and seeing her room and her bathroom--it's everywhere. Okay, it's nothing as ridiculous as her having her entire room covered in orange, but when the walls, the bedspread, and even the window frames are that particular hue you know there was deliberation somewhere.

Also, I know it doesn't seem so weird now, but it really weirded me out that she has an official nap day. It's just odd to me that someone can set aside one day a week for thirteen straight years to take a four or five hour nap in the middle of the day. I mean--I love naps, but I can only take them here or there. To devote fifty-days out of the year to the activity is, yes, admirable, but there is a hint of zealotry there too.

And don't even get me started on Toby. The hands thing, where her hands have to be pristine twenty-four hours a day, was quite a shocker to me. Coupled with her Monk-like obsession with cleaning her bathroom two or three times a week, and she's the closest I've come to meeting someone with OCD.

It's took awhile to accept these revelations as fact, as I'm sure it took both of them some time to come to grips with the strange obsessions I seem to have. Yet over time it's become like second nature to hear Breanne go on about some new orange serving dish she got or go on about how she broke her record for longest nap. It's become barely a blip on the radar hearing Marion cleaning her bathroom (again) while she's on the phone with me. It's the nature of the beast. When you accept a person truly into your life as something more than an acquaintance, you accept all of them. It's like Breanne says, "you can't unbake a cake." You can't separate what you like about a person from what you find odd about them; they come packaged together through and through.

And what's more, I used to think I was alone in feeling isolated. I thought I was the only one who had habits they just couldn't explain. But ever since knowing the girls, ever since getting to high school and beyond, it's gotten easier for me to see that all people are strange in their own ways. More than that, I've gotten to the point where most people's passions stop seeming all that inexplicable to me. I tend to roll more with the punches now when people reveal their likes and dislikes to me. It's becoming more and more where I'm understanding that it takes different strokes to move the world.

Sometimes too what I once thought was foreign and unexplainable starts to make sense to me the longer I'm around the influence. For instance, ever since I've gotten to know Toby and her statistics about just how many germs live on how many surfaces in a typical household, you can bet I too wash my hands in hot, not warm, water. As she says, it's the only way to be sure along with soap that your hands are germ-free. Or, even more succinctly, I've taken up a lot of Breanne's suggestions which stem from her minor weird habits. When I need to soften up ice cream I now stick it in the microwave for ten or fifteen seconds like she does. Or when I need to cool off a dinner plate that's fresh from the oven or frying pan I stick it in the freezer for a minute or two like she does.

The gods help me--after being around Breanne, those two habits just make sense to me, even though at the outset of our friendship they seemed particularly peculiar.

The point is, yes, I'm weird. But so is everyone else. And rather than trying to rid myself of my odd habits and even odder rituals, I guess I've embraced my outcast status to the point where it seems I'm adopting other people's odd habits and even odder rituals.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Girlfriend, Oh, Your Girlfriend Is Drifting Away, Past And Present, 1855, 1901, Watch Them Build Up A Meteor Tower, Think It's Not Gonna Stay Anyway

--"1901", Phoenix

Sometimes it's rather easy to get fooled into believing I'm the only one writing a blog. I write these stories that involve all these people I know and posit that my account is the only account of the events as they occurred. I'm not saying I don't know I'm biased, but it's rather easy to forget objectivity when all I ever get to read and reminisce about is the movie reel of my memories. I know I'm biased. I know that I forget certain key aspects of the milestones I've been through. All I can say is that everything I write here is represented as an anecdote, sometimes dressed up for dramatic purposes and sometimes incomplete due to my shoddy memory.

Lately it's been called into question whether or not the other participants of my stories would see things quite the same way. Well, I'm happy to report that, should any of you have lingering concerns, I'm no longer the be-all, end-all when it comes to sources of information concerning that period in my life. Almost everyone I know has some web presence. As you know, you can always contact Lucy and Marion here or at their Twitter accounts. However, I'm here to let you know that there are other sources you can ask.

----

Tara, the girl I once forgot how she looked like, I recently discovered is writing her own blog. It's entitled The Guerra Girls and mostly concerns her two young daughters. She doesn't list an e-mail address, but it would be quick work to discover one linking from this site.

And DeAnn, my most recent girlfriend and the only girl I ever lived with, had a blog too, but I think it's recently been abandoned. However, if one is truly insistent about gathering her take on me, our history, or anything else under the sun, she does list her Facebook account publicly--DeAnn.

----

A caveat here--I don't actually keep in contact with either Tara or DeAnn. I believe the last time I spoke to Tara was a month after I started dating DeAnn. And I believe the last time DeAnn and I exchanged letters was a few years back. Therefore, I'm not telling you to rush right out and bother either of them. I don't know--I just kind of wanted it out there that the people in my life have their viewpoints too and that their lives continued to flourish and change after knowing me. It's a little easy for me to forget that simply because I stopped talking to them or living with them that their lives don't just suddenly end. When I write these pieces about them here, sometimes it sounds like they're merely characters in my biography, that all they ever are to me are secondary personalities whose only purpose is to reflect back upon me.

It just isn't true.

Every story I relate here is just that, a story. They're almost always taken out of context. They're almost always tailored to illustrate a message. But what they aren't are finite things. Most of them do not have a recognizable beginning, middle, and end. Indeed, most of the dust-ups, meaningful conversations, or important events are almost always precipitated by months and months of build-up and are almost always followed by months and months of fallout. It simply wouldn't be manageable to put every little detail involving these steps into my post here. It would just be impractical.

It's also important to me that you readers know that most times the people who know me reflect very little about our time together, whereas I tend to obsess. I'm equal parts happy for DeAnn and Tara for moving on and sad at the ease with which they did it. I glance through their pictures. I read through their posts. All I'm left is with the idea that they've moved on and the notion that in grand scheme of things I was but a momentary blip on their radars, barely worth mentioning.

So, yeah, sometimes it makes me feel awkward that I spend so much time spilling stories here about two young woman that I saw for a time and most times they spend very little time talking about me. Yet it's no more awkward than it needs to be. I'm not trying to hide anything here. I'm not trying to fabricate stories about them that casts them in an evil light. And it's all because I know that were I to say anything malicious or ill-conceived they're swimming around in the same waters as I do. I also know that if they ever get a hankering to come looking me up it would be an easy task to come find me here as it was an easy task for me to come find them at those two places.

If ever something I say comes into question concerning them, now you can go right to the source and ask them if my memory is their memory. Accountability is very important to me, especially when it comes to the facts of the matter. I mean--if this blog was mostly opinion after opinion as most blogs are then, yeah, it wouldn't matter so much if you could verify my sources. But because this blog is more or less about the story of my life, it should be reassuring to know that there are other witnesses that can be called into testify. That way I can rest assured that the truth will get out, whether or not it has been lost to me along the way.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

She Don't Put On A Show, For Nobody, Not Even You, She's Gonna Sit Alone, Why Would You Ever Make Her Feel So Small She'd Just Disappear?

--"Little Rosa", Letters to Cleo

I recently purchase Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games and read it the same day. I had been getting recommendations over the last few months from various acquaintances, but didn't believe it was going to be something I would enjoy.

Was I ever wrong.

For those of you who don't know The Hunger Games is:

a young-adult science fiction novel written by Suzanne Collins.... It introduces sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where North America once stood. This is where a powerful government working in a central city called the Capitol holds power. In the book, the Hunger Games are an annual televised event where the Capitol chooses one boy and one girl from each district to fight to the death. The Hunger Games exist to demonstrate not even children are above the Capitol's power.

The entire novel is violent, disturbing, and quite often shocking in its brutality. I mean--I wouldn't blink an eye if the same plot elements concerned adults, but the fact that the violence described often involves children as young as twelve it really made an impression on me. Like Lord of the Flies before it, there's something truly fascinating about stories concerning what happens when children are left in an environment where there are no consequences; where, indeed, violence is not only okay, but encouraged. It gives you an idea what society would be like if a semblance of order were not maintained.

Various critics have flocked to the novel's anti-war and anti-government bent, but for me I came from the novel that it was more speaking out against any situation where the strong oppress the weak. Granted, that's a huge spectrum of society to be criticizing, yet the author does a great job of personalizing the theme. When you read about the stronger districts' candidates banding together to deny the weaker districts' candidates food, tools, and much-needed medical supplies simply because they can you feel the injustice in a system where inequality is the law of the land, even if it is only in a game show/reality show packaging. When you read about how some kids due to their personality and social connections are granted boons like water and shelter from generous sponsors during the games, and how other kids hailing from the poorer districts receive no such gifts, it make you want to scream out in frustration at a system that is rigged to make the supposed rich get richer and the poor even poorer.

But I think the gravest message the novel gets across is the strong will always dominate the weak simply because they can. When twelve-year-old Rue, the youngest of competitors, is run through with a spear by one of the stronger competitors, you don't feel sad because she deserved to die any less than any of the competitors. You feel sad because she is described as the smallest competitor, as the youngest competitor. You feel sad because there was that skulking suspicion that she never had a prayer from the very beginning. You feel sad because you feel the inevitably of her demise strictly due to her physical stature and experience.

We've all been bullied before. We know how the drill works. However, that doesn't change the fact it feels amoral in some way. Personally, I know what it's like to feel that feeling of helplessness when somebody more aggressive or more willing to push their agenda upon you decides to torment you. More importantly, I know what it's like to impose my will on somebody weaker-willed than myself. In either case it's always the same; you're either the guy climbing over somebody to stay on top or you're the guy being climbed over. At that age there is no such arrangement that a stronger individual will assist a weaker individual if the two of them aren't already friends. In high school the order of the day is to constantly assert your authority by showcasing your competitiveness and your willingness to belittle someone.

However, I believe the book would lose a little something if the characters were merely a few years older. Bullying still happens once you reach your twenties, but I think it's less prevalent. People at that age learn to assert their authority in other ways. In most cases it isn't as important to raise yourself up by putting others down. More often than not it's more of achievement to raise yourself up without limiting someone else. I think that takes real strength.

That's why I think the book's great for its intended audience. It really captures what it's like to want power, to use power without a thought to anyone else, and what it's like to be powerless--three conditions that every teenager goes through.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Sometimes In The Midst Of My Worries, I Feel The Need, But It's Painful To Me To Look, I Look Out The Back Window, And Watch You, I See You Disappear

--"About The Picture", Smoosh

Speaking of Little Manhattan, I was watching it again tonight. I'm telling you I feel like watching that movie every single time the McRib commercial comes on. My response is almost Pavlovian--it's that consistent.

I found myself watching the sequence in which Gabe and Rosemary go to visit the prospective apartment in the Village. Basically, they sneak out of their respective households during a summer day without telling their parent where they're going and what they'll be doing. They spend the day riding the subway farther than either have been by themselves to go visit a promising new apartment for Gabe's dad. After that they ride his scooter all the way along the Hudson till they get home. Not only is it a charming scene of a burgeoning couple just finding their feet, but it's a sequence that I've always appreciated for its simplicity. It isn't like they run away or the end up going somewhere impressively far. They manage to stay in the city and probably are only gone for six hours.

It's the idea of getting away that ties it altogether and makes it one of my favorite parts of the movie. It's the picture I have in my head of what first love is supposed to look like. Doing all these small things together that from the outside seem rather plain, but to the people involved end up being a lifetime memory. It's one of those moments that make you feel confused and wonderful and happy all at the same time. Indeed, I'd put the experience up as one of those moments that everyone should have the pleasure of going through.

----

As some of you may know, I never had one of those moments. I'm what some call a late bloomer. I never even started seriously going out with anyone until I was well into college. As a result I missed out on all the confusing, maddening experience of imbuing all those tiny moments with significance. For me, the first moments going out with Lucy or Tara were pre-planned moments where I was already driving and able to make reservations at places to eat. They certainly weren't the organic surprises of fate that childhood romances seem chock full of. They certainly weren't anything I would call a "you had to be there" moments in my life.

This isn't to say that my moment were any less significant to me, just that what should have been a phase I grew into was instead the phase I started with. Whereas everyone got to see this film we call love from the beginning, it's rather like I walked in somewhere in the middle.

And I would have to say that I've always felt the absence somewhat. Indeed, that's why Brandy thinks I'm so many of my favorite themes in music, movies, and plain stories revolve around the themes of coming of age and/or first love; because I feel the emptiness so thoroughly in my own life. She believes that every time I grow enamored with a movie like Little Manhattan it's because I'm trying to live vicariously through them to fill in the holes of my own lack of childhood flirtations and puppy love. For the most part I would have to agree with her.

Falling in love when you're already in your twenties just isn't the same as falling in love when you're ten or eleven or twelve. That's the age it's supposed to hit you like a freight train. That particular train just never came for me, I guess. When I write a story like The Carisa Meridian, with the eleven-year-old protagonist falling in love with the ten-year-old girl down the block it's because I want that life. A lot of my stories end up being like that--adolescent and young adult individuals all reminiscing Wonder Years style about growing up emotionally as well as physically.

It's also why Epcot believes I get so fixated on befriending people around the fourteen-fifteen mark because it's the age where I believe that I wanted to be in love so badly and it just never happened. I mean--the evidence speaks for itself. Going in order--I met Jina when she was twelve but I didn't start having feelings for her until I went to go meet her on her fifteen birthday. The same for Breanne--I met her when she was thirteen, but I didn't allow myself to feel anything for her until she was well fourteen. Tara--sixteen and I was madly in love with her right away. Even DeAnn, as the oldest, was only nineteen when I met her and we started going out.

And that's only the people I actually started liking. If you go through the list of friends I made in the last few years the same pattern emerges. Carly? I met her when she was fifteen. The same thing with Toby. There's something about that age that just draws me as well as appearances might draw something.

Somewhere along the way I just equated making a new connection with folks of that age. And since I can't go back to being fifteen, I do the next best thing and ostensibly only let new people into my life who are of that age.


to myself I know
it's all about the picture

I know it's a silly criteria to fixate on, but it's kind of my version of a mid-life crisis. However, instead of hitting me all at once once I got into my thirties it's a condition I've had most of my adult life. One part of my mind knows I missed my opportunity to fall in love that first time when I was that age, but another part of my brain keeps trying to get a second chance at it. That's why I keep flying out to all these places to "hang out" with girls half my age. That's why I keep trying to keep in touch with my friends here who fall into the demographic--not because I'm solely into them for them, but because I'm into what they represent. I want that second chance and that's the only manner in which I know how to get it.

Hell, the closest I ever came to having a whole day with a girl when I was the appropriate age was the day I got lost at Epcot with, ironically, Epcot. The day back in 2001 when Brandy and I scampered around that particular Disneyworld park is as close to having those tiny moments when I was fifteen with a female human being. The only problem was I wasn't in like, let alone love, with her. I'd only met her that day so, as special and as memorable as that day was, it hardly qualifies as one of those sweaty palms "I'm all confused" type of experiences everybody else can relate to.

Nope, I was robbed of that forever. My feeble attempts to get them back can do nothing substantial to change that. Having a Toby or a Carly in my life now, while good, just isn't a replacement for what I imagine the experience would have been if I had had it then.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Wake Up The Dawn And Ask Her Why, A Dreamer Dreams, She Never Dies, Wipe That Tear Away Now From Your Eye

--"Champagne Supernova", Oasis

SUNRISE ALONG SHORE
by E. Patrick Taroc

Fair heart, another amber Sun
And another day without you
At that hour alighted anew,
At that moment made its coming.
Saddened, this letter I begun
That I might allay this numbing
At having none to share that scene
Except she my mirror can glean.
And so penned these words of woe
That, by chance, my own might wane--
Far too long they within remain
If left tacit beneath my tears.
My sorrow I felt forced to show
To you, who still now quells my fears
By reading these unsteady lines,
And myself, who for you now pines.

I would like to hear you once more,
But an ocean severs us two;
To journey those paths we once knew,
But no common road spans the break.
Yet these phrases shall reach your shore
And their message you shall not mistake:
One shared sunrise I left you then
And one sunrise I'll share again.

(11/27/94) Copyright 1994, 2010 E. Patrick Taroc

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

And Love, Such A Silly Game We Play, Oh, Like A Summer's Day In May, What Is Love, What Is Love? I Just Want It To Be Love

--"Love", Matt White

The first time I heard Matt White's "Love" was in the film Little Manhattan. As soon as I heard it I knew I liked it. It had this light jazzy sound to it that complimented the movie well. Plus, the lyrics with their focus on how love is this indefinable quality that's filled with joy paralleled my own viewpoint on the subject. I made it a point to track down the title and artist of the track so that I might place in regular rotation on my playlists.

But the biggest selling point of the track was the movie itself. It went so well with the film that I just associated it as the main musical theme of the story even though on the soundtrack it isn't listed as such. I mean--they never exactly play it repeatedly throughout the film and it doesn't provide a key turning point in the plot. It's just a pleasant sounding song that really caught my ear upon my first listen. And, since I really am still enamored of the film, I continue to be enamored of the track it spawned for me. For me this song is part and parcel of the larger film it came from.


who can tell me? I am lost.
I just think that I am strong.

You can thus imagine my surprise when I heard McDonald's recent use of the song to advertise their McRib sandwich. Now I'm a huge proponent of the delectable offering, but it honestly irks me that they have appropriated this particular song for their own devices. Normally I don't mind so much the relative ease with which one song can be used for multiple purposes. I myself am tickled most of the time when I hear a song I haven't heard in a while pop up in a newer advertisement. It's also kind of cool when a song that was made popular from a movie in my youth gets recycled in a newer movie. I always think how it's wonderful that it gets exposure to a younger generation than the one I hail from--kind of like passing the torch of classic ditties down.

But damn it all, "Love" is and always should be Little Manhattan's and Little Manhattan's alone. They are just some songs that are synonymous with one particular place, one particular moment in time, or one particular element of one's life that it's rather sacrilegious to ever think of them linked to something else entirely.

I wouldn't say it spoils the song for me, but it definitely calls undue attention away from where people should first encounter in. Admittedly, it isn't misused entirely in the McDonald's ad, but it definitely lacks the "awwwWWWwww" moment it has when it's first heard in the film. I believe that's what annoys me, that people's first impression of this song is going to be from some food advert instead of in its proper context of as the backdrop to an excellent coming-of-age/love story. For an entire group of people it's going to be a song that's dismissed because of its commercial use instead of being something to be cherished like it is for me.

I don't know--I know it's just a song. But when a song takes on meaning greater than itself the way this song has it's almost like losing a bit of the magic when you know other people are experiencing it the wrong way. For me it's like seeing the ocean at night driving by in a car when you're half-tired instead of in its full glory, standing on the shore under the noontime sun. It's like having a steak cooked by Applebee's instead of a steak cooked at a proper steakhouse. It's taking a plane trip to the city ten miles away from you instead of the other side of the country.

Sure, they're both the same song, but the context in which it's heard is the thin line between making a memory that will last a lifetime and a memory that lasts only minutes.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers