Stunned and Speechless

Monday 11/28/2005 11:55 PM

I'm sure most of you have a hard time believing much of anything could render me incapable of speech, but my dear friend, Julie, did that this evening when I opened an innocuous little e-mail message from her with the subject line “do you recall?”

Some people would say that the connotation "friend" is a bit of an overstatement when I refer to Jules, while others would argue for the opposite — that "friend" doesn't even begin to cover it. I would plead with them all and defer to her (hopeful and prayed for) blessing of that simple term.

It's important to remember that sometimes words fail us and, so, here we are, Jules, watching the letters separating and re-combining in the air around us and nothing seems to fit just right. Or at all.

So, with your silent agreement, friends it is and so we here are.

This image surprised me in many ways, most of which I am only able to hint and scratch at this evening as my comfortable bed is drawing me and one or two prescription pharmaceuticals are pushing me in that general direction.

Candy said I looked I sad in this picture of old, and I agreed with her and replied, "I was sad." I made that statement with such confidence that I knew it was true. Not that I was sad at the moment the image was snapped, but rather life was confusing and I was finding myself twisted in knots over and over as I failed miserably in my attempt to navigate my way through my late teens with raging hormones, pending college, a single parent family and severe mental breakdown on the horizon (not mine, but it may as well have been).

Most of all, the picture reminds me the things that I know now that I wish I knew then and different decisions I would have made. But sure, everybody does that. There's more though. Much.

“If I knew now what I knew then...”

That's a line a character in one of my stories has yet to speak, but shall, at just the right time. To most, I suspect it comes across some type of cutesy, paradoxical post-modern bit, but it's just supposed to be the truth.

I look at the man in that picture on the boat and there I things I want from him. I have no doubt that from his perspective looking out, there are things he wants from me. He can speak for himself in his own time, but I want to snatch the years ahead, his lithe frame, his endangered innocence, his enthusiasm masquerading as lacadaisical boredom, but smoldering deep under the pine needles, waiting for a spark.

I'm a bit sadder tonite. At first, I wasn't sure he was I and, you know, the other way as well. I once sat in my crappy little bathroom in that doublewide trailer staring at myself in the mirror. It could have been 4 in the afternoon or 4 in the morning — I don't remember, but I do remember precisely the face that looked back at me. And here it is again tonight, but reversed from how I am used to seeing, sitting in my inbox as a dual challenge. First, to judge him, that man from so long ago that is somehow a part of me. Second, to remember and let him into me now to judge myself.

On some levels of my mind, seeing this image is not much different from having shotgun pointed in my face.

For years, at different times, these lyrics have come back to me and there I am singing them at sometimes the most awkward of moments:

Outside the thoughts coming flooding back now
I just try to forget you

Whenever I've chanted these words to myself, I've directed them (in my mind) at the external, but now I wonder if all along, I've been singing them to myself:

So soon just after you’ve gone
My senses sharpen
But it always takes so damn long
Before I feel how much my eyes have darkened

Fear hangs in a plane of gunsmoke
Drifting in our room
So easy to disturb, with a thought, with a whisper
With a careless memory, with a careless memory

On the table, signs of love lies scattered
And the walls break, with a crashing within
It’s not as though you really mattered to me
But being close, how could I let you go
Without some feeling, some precious sympathy following

Fear hangs in a plane of gunsmoke
Drifting in our room
So easy to disturb with a thought with a whisper
With a careless memory, with a careless memory

I walk out into the sun, try to find a new day
But the whole place just screams in my eyes
Where are you now ’cause I don’t want to meet you
I think I’d die, I think I’d laugh at you
I know I’d cry, what am I supposed to do follow you

Outside the thoughts coming flooding back now
I just try to forget you

So easy to disturb with a thought with a whisper
With a careless memory, with a careless memory
With a careless memory, look out
Look out
Look out
Look out

Lots to think about. And I thank you, Jules.

g/nite

File Under: Jules; Me; Song Lyrics
Music: Everything but the Girl "Baby, the Stars Shine Bright"

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