a_letter_to_elise birdmad song came out almost directly in between the last two times i saw her the best friend with whom i emerged from the last vestiges of childhood, joined at the hip practically. one night, many long years ago, we were coming back from a school trip and late in the evening and we both fell asleep in the deep seats of a chartered bus...her hand was on mine and her head was on my shoulder, my heart was racing and i did not know what to say, so i remained silent more time passed and any number of other little things, trivialities and whatnot, endeared her to me even more and i could only sit and furtively hope that maybe i was having the same effect oh boy was i ever wrong... when i had finally worked up the courage to say something i was too late and had tied myself into so many knots over the right time and place and way to say what was in my heart and in my head that i made a damned fool of myself sank into the most abject despair, took crazy chances on the off chance that it might either kill me or at least get me noticed by somebody if it wasn't for that impulse, that foolish set of reactions, i might never have done any of the things i've done that led me here, that shaped the outcome of who i am at this very moment i spoke to her one more time when we started college and had the sort of afternoon with her that we had had only a few years before...two old friends having some goofy quasi-picnic on the courtyard grass, laughing like kids then we lost touch again, i was in no hurry to risk allowing myself to fall for her again. especially as she was never all that likely to reciprocate Her mother and my mother had been friends, so six years after high-school when we were in our mid 20's she and her mom showed up at my mother's memorial service along with another old friend and we made plans to catch up on old times at the State Fair which was slated to begin in a couple of weeks our other friend bailed on us at the last minute and so we met on the midway and although it made me happy for her on one hand, i could not help and had to hide that i found myself a little bit bitter and crestfallen to be introduced to her husband but between then and the last time i had seen her, i had gotten myself into any number of stupid or dangerous situations where i had to play my cards close to the vest and not show fear or uncertainty and, with any luck, she never saw the dark thing that had replaced the goofy, timid boy that had been her friend up until that one ill-timed moment i never saw her again after that, i had been content to let her be a mostly warm. but distant memory in the back of my heart, but i never really forgot her or got over her because almost every time i ran off and got my heart broken again, there was something about it to remind me of that first break Saturday night at my oldest nephew's wedding reception, my nieces tell me that she sends her daughter to the same school as they send their kids and that they see her pretty often they said she asks about me sometimes. it sent a warm shiver through me to hear her name, to know that she cares, but that warm shiver has a sharp back-end to it, like tearing a suture god, i am such a joke sometimes 081216 ... Bespeckled Your heart always clamors for your last best thing. There is a next - and lasting - best thing. 081216 ... birdmad i've been taught by others since her that i'm not really meant for anything lasting, i content myself (most of the time) with the fleeting...the ephemeral...moments which burn brightly if briefly 081217 ... Bespeckled I cannot believe that. Maybe everything else is ephemeral because you won't let go. How can it be possibly to devote mind, body and soul to something permanent if a percentage is listlessly gazing backward? 081217 ... self-dissecting bird i file these things away as best i can, but the same memetics that allow me to memorize and recall large chunks of legal language from my current job, technical specs from my previous job, the sound of machinery and the smell of vegetable matter from my first job, song lyrics, dramatic dialogue and all of the sounds and imagery that populate my head all at the drop of a hat also makes it easy for me to fall into these nasty recursive loops when i've not got something to keep me focused. when someone has my attention, they have it undivided...i try to avoid drawing any parallels to past displeasure until some degree of deterioration sets in and things begin to fall apart, but i mostly try to keep that under my hat unless it becomes a dam-break and then i get all mopey and such When i first came to blather, the name that i was trying to wash out of my head with copious amounts of Southern Comfort was Samantha, but slowly forgetting her and letting that angst over her recede has been easier in that her silence was infinitely colder. The cleanest break i've had from a would-be love interest was something where both she and i came into it with a lot of emotional baggage and quickly began setting it on fire and lobbing it at each other...it was among the most genuinely pathological experiences of my life, but coming out of it, i was mostly able to re-center myself quite a bit (though i prefer to retain - even at my age - a fair bit of crazy) 081217 what's it to you? who go blather from