Two of Us by The Beatles | Old Twogether

Companionship sits in the past or future of my mental time line. I reminisce about great former loves idealizing their at the time faulty partnership or I fall into my imagination and come up sitting on wooden rocking chair, the seat worn from years of rocking, my life mate by my side recounting the details of our global adventures as we look out in the same direction.

I love old people--the way they observe, their quiet intensity, how they smell, the way they move at a pace where rushing holds no value, watching them over think new products and try to dissect flashy advertising campaigns, their shared bits of wisdom and undying loyalty to "the way things were" in a decade I can only read about.

Now--old couples. Forget about it...melts any trace of ice in my heart.
Watching an elderly couple share their entire existence without having to exchange one word. Watching that makes me quiet; watching that makes me rethink my emotional walls.

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Heart Skipped a Beat by The xx | Been a while

Today the song can tell a story.
This one is beautiful.

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The Story I Heard by Blind Pilot | Setting the story free

If you know me you know this. I am an addict for stories. Read them to me, send them to me, write them for me--I'll adore you. Now, write one about me--well, if you do that, I'm pretty much yours. Which is the real reason, and start of a story about how I got involved with a terribly abusive and destructive man not too long ago. He wrote a story about me that was so detailed and lusciously imaginative--his words blinded me to all the other signs that pointed to "run the fuck away..and fast".

Instead I stayed, and wrote one to him.

Not the exact beginning but a beginning none the less, based loosely on how we came to be, I wrote him the story pasted below. Now I'd like to share it--so that it no longer belongs to him but to the world, to any set of eyes that look at this page--here I free the story.

________________________________________xx________________________________________


When most stories start, they start at the beginning. But if the beginning is unclear, or can not be agreed on by the characters involved, then the story should start with a tangible meeting somewhere in the middle of possible beginnings and the inevitable end. This meeting happened when Kate looked to the right and by no coincidence Dave looked to the left and as their eyes met, their minds met also, while their conscious simultaneously tried to configure where they had met before. And through all of these meetings, happening all at once, came to be the beginning of their story.

Dave talked and Kate listened, with such delight that her pupils began to expand--an expansion that invited illumination--an invitation to glimmer. The refraction of light from her eyes caught Dave’s attention, as did her unrepressed smile, like the sharp reflective bounce of sunlight off a metal hook, dropped below river water draws in a trout--with an instinctive invitation to swim closer, but no demand to bite the bait. A quiet cycle of quiet captivation began, during a quiet meeting, in a somewhat quiet dining room, in the lobby of a quiet hotel, closed off from the rest of the people by thin wooden doors that closed quietly at the hinges. Yet below all of this seeming surfaced quiet, a thunderous storm of subconscious thoughts began to brew and the psyche clouds filled fast with the water of possibility—so fast, the clouds threatened to burst at their silver-sewn seams, and before either Kate or David could grab an umbrella, a hard rain began to pour. A flood inducing downpour, unruly and unpredicted, capable of ravaging acres of Mississippi farmland overnight in one swift gush--or in Kate and Dave’s case, a rain that would drown the laws of attraction, submerge the social rules of timing, burying both below a wet grave. A quick and sudden death, that happened so quietly, they would ask once again, after she turned her head into shadow, and the light dimmed down, where in fact they knew each other from, where they had met before. And though they had not, they would ask again, anyway.

The energy at the table shifted, as did the peoples seats, and after getting up and returning, the only open chair for Kate to sit in was across and down the wide, heavy wooden table from Dave. She hesitated. How odd Kate thought, that she immediately noticed the distance from this man she had met, maybe, moments prior. But the opportunity to observe him from afar, folded her legs at the knees, and as she slid back into the chair, decided she was quite content with this new angle. As she could watch David clearly out of the corner of her eye, without completely turning her head, an open gesture that might seem too obvious in a room full of people, who for the most part, she did not even know the first names of. And while the echo of soft acoustic guitar and the melodic lullaby of cello, filled the dimly lit dining room, she watched him. Quietly. She noticed first that David’s hands were folded, fingers intertwined inches from his chest as he listened. She only noticed this first because her hands lay resting in the exact same position while she listened, looked—and most dangerous of all, began to long.

All eyes at the table were transfixed on the musicians, all but Kate who could not focus her sight away from the slight smile, subtly turning up at the corners of Dave’s mouth, which she noticed second. His smile was sincere, smug, sensitive, searing, surreal, sequestering. Yet with all the expressive adjectives Kate could think of, beginning with the letter s, to describe David’s smile or anything else for that matter, one word kept overshadowing them all, fading in and out of her mind like the flicker of a dying neon sign-—serendipity.

The scope of a week, the timeline of seven days blurred after Kate and Dave attended the funeral for timing—which so tragically drowned a wet death. Yet the blur was still warm, still vivid because it resembled a collage of images and audio.

Of sight—swirled pictures of scarves, luminescent reflections, dilated pupils, palms of hands unattached to arms, phases of smiles, black hats, high heels tapping softly down marble steps, stark desert shrubs, cotton balls or were they rabbit tails, wrought iron gates, ruby red wine, cigarette ash blowing across a wooden deck, urban landscapes dressed up in city lights, metallic airplanes, crisp snow-capped mountain peaks, native American replicas, ice cream, distorted squares of colored patterned wallpaper, and French film stars.

Of sound—unmixed clips of uncertain introductions, ice brushing against glass, rocks rolling across dry dirt, translated imagination, laughter both belted and contained, wind blowing against dead leaves and nothingness at the same time, instruction masked as request, the tone of curiosity, blues reinvented in the middle of nowhere, pain, the joy of release, the sexuality of reception, banana sizzling though brown sugar coated butter, a car radio scanning through stations, and the voice of configuration.

The collage blew though like a teasing breeze, and refused to come back to blow again, even though the rising sun warned of a hot day on the horizon. It was on this same day that Kate was dressed in black from head to toe except for the brown boots she had on, with brass buckles and questionable scuff marks. Dave’s jeans were folded at the bottom, the cuff of his polo style shirt turned up on one side at the tip from a crink from a wrinkle, and he was comfortable. They walked into a bookstore in the desert that reminded them both of a bookstore they had been to before, on another day, in another town of a different climate. Separately.

The art of perusal, digesting letters and graphics at the same time, Kate ran her fingers across the tops of books laid out on tables. She liked the way they felt. Piles of novels organized in some fashion, though she did not bother to look at the sign dictating the category. Maybe because the concept of “best seller” bothered her deeply, the same way tactless sharing of opinion did—as truth opposed to personal belief.

Focused on the books she didn’t notice at first that Dave was behind her. And when she sensed the proximity of his unquiet quiet she turned slightly to the right, positioning her back to the table and as her foot finished its pivot, Dave reached out, gently placing his hands on her hips and pushed her up against the wooden edge. Under the gentle execution of his touch slept a softly breathing giant of intimate force and sexual opportunity. Kate watched this giant exhale through the mouth of his cave and knew that she could scream a thousand screams and the giant still would not wake up, as the world of dreams is far more alluring than that of reality. Since timing was dead she didn’t know how long this interaction took to pan out, but she imagined it was a matter of seconds.

The feeling of angular literature pushing into her from behind and the tension of fingertips on her hips awoke a sensation of possibility she knew would not easily be put back down for a nap—no matter how exhausted it became in the waiting room of unmet needs. Dave turned and moved along a book aisle, thoughtlessly—just seemingly though, as she knew better then to ever use that adjective to describe anything he did. Kate watched him walk away and exhaled the surge that had just taken place inside her.

They stopped at the letter K. David reached for Kerouac’s “On the Road”, pulling it from the shelf. Turn to the last page he told Kate as he handed her the book, and began reciting what he thought was the last line. It was in fact not the final line, but close enough in paraphrase to a line just one paragraph up from it. Kate commented on the rough edges of the organic paper, a publisher somewhere in a building with limited windows had chosen to print on, because she liked the way it looked and made the pages turn. She also realized at that moment, that as much as David inherently wanted to remember and to know the last line, the last phrase, the last sentiment he could not—not even just to recite exactly what it said. Only for the reason that a force, far greater than David, had designed it that way. In a way that decided long ago that the stories end was not for him to always know.


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The Mess We're In by PJ Harvery & Thom Yorke | Conversation in Bed about Quantum Mechanics

Me: So what you're saying is that actual molecules have conciousness?
Boy: Yes!
Me: Wait...that completely changes EVERYTHING...
Boy: It changes EVERYthing.

Silence.

Boy: Do you want to have sex again?

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Hungerstrike by Temple of the Dog | A little Rain Man

I'm a little crazy. I joke about it. My family jokes about it. My boyfriends and best friends laugh lovingly when someone mentions how my mind functions in a 'unique way'. Unique being a nice sub-adjective for "weird", "different"...crazy.

I see the world from a 'unique' angle. I also have OCD tendencies--most mornings I need to re-enter my house after leaving to make sure the gas on the stove is turned off, even though I never used it. And sometimes I do that 3 times in a row. If I need to focus I tap my fingers to my thumb in order starting with my index finger, which always looks a little mentally handicapped. I also have no verbal edit button and sometimes fear I'm one 'F*@K-Sh**-F@#%K' away from Tourettes. To name a few...

My quirks--well they all work out for me, for the most part. And though I may be charmingly odd--I never thought of myself as autistic-ish. Until recently.

While on a date last week, sitting at a table having a conversation, I started--in mid-sentence (mine and/or his)--blurting out the title of every song that played in the background, the album name, year pubished if I knew it and my opinion on the particular version. When I think back now, it was very 'Rain Man' of me. My charming oddness turned borderline autistic. I must remember: Obsession with music must not translate to autistic tendencies in public. Repeat 3 times then wash hands. Just kidding.

Do I know a lot about music? Yes. Am I one of those obnoxious High Fidelity know-it-alls? Not at all. There is so much about music, bands, sound genres that I don't know. Love learning though--Open ears all the time.

Last week at the Pearl Jam concert (it was so ridiculously incredible it is beyond a blog) Chris Cornell joined Eddie on stage. They sang Hungerstrike. I didn't know it--had never heard it--nor did I know the band Temple of the Dog. Temple of the what? I asked my friend Annie. She was so into the song, so into the memories that were surging with each note, that she was smiling ear to ear. Power of sound. It's like a time machine.

This song is for Annie S. Who told me all about Temple of the Dog.
Now I can't stop listening. Better late then never.

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Penelope's Theme by Nathan Johnson | A war on words; A new collection

My blogs have been sparse recently for a few reasons. The main one being that I waged a war on words a couple weeks ago. I felt for the first time in my life, something I have never questioned before--my love of letters, turned to words, transformed to sentence--completely failed me. They turned their back on me, and this is what I told him:

"I'm being punished for my love affair with words. I love to write them and read them. Problem being... I cheated on the value of truth. Words are just words."

After that, in a rage of revenge I just decided to stop using them except out of complete necessity. Wringing the excess water, the droplets of literary lust, from the fabric of my day--leaving only the dampness of bare communication.

Today is Tuesday and it's hopeless. I feel like "that woman" in "that story", who sucumbs to charm, and who I invisibly roll my eyes at--she always returns to her lover even after countless episodes of unfaithfulness, or distrust or abuse because the innate longing to be near him, and the sparkle of purely joyful moments overrides and outshines every realm of sensibility. Like I said before, Words are my favorite lover. That Lover; The End. I realize now what the punishment of my reality feels like--but the beauty out runs the pain. And I come back again.

My quiet, being consumed by unshared inner dialogue, and the solitude of travels half-way down the globe and back again has drenched my story cloth. The fabric is sopping like the castle floor after the flood started by the magic mops in Fantasia--there is so much to spill.

First. I saw The Brothers Bloom on the airplane last night. I fell head over heels for the film--and equally in love with the soundtrack. Especially Penelope's theme. If I had a tangible collection at home, like college kids collect shot glasses or elderly women small glass cat figurines--I would collect soundtracks of women in cinema. I'd have shelves lined with their musical themes. Both fascinated and moved by how composers translate character into sound--it is to me the perfect love story. One you can watch with your eyes shut.

Nathan Johnson you blow my mind. Fantastic audio goodness.

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Change by Blind Melon | Conversation at a Wedding

In loose translation from Portuguese...
Me: I'm never getting married.
Boy: What do you mean??!? Of course you are.
Me: No. I don't believe in it.
Boy: In what?
Me: In the formality. Listen. When I decide to love somebody forever, he'll know it. I will know it. The only documention I'll ever need is in the heart. The dress, the party, the papers, the witness...it doesn't mean anything to me. I will love him forever and be his partner forever. Until forever ends.
Boy: I see your point. I completely agree. It is in the heart...when I got married it was for respect.
Me: Respect for who?
Boy: It was my way of declaring to everyone in our lives that from that day on she would come first. It was no longer about me. Now I put my wife first every day of my life.
Me: That's beautiful. And I respect you so much for believing that.

At the end of the day. At the end of another wedding. Here is what I really think--and I could say it in a hundred different ways. But a dear fried of mine said it best when she quoted to me the needle point that has been hanging in her mothers kitchen for over a decade. A simple memory of childhood that she recited in recollection--it has sat ever since in my present mind:

“Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” - ALbert Camus

At the end of the day don't say anything, don't invite anyone, don't think ahead and don't think behind--just hold my hand.

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