2:07 pm - Sun 11/25/07
Dwelling On The Past

I wanted to comment on some of the comments I've gotten recently...

Tim R: Thanks for the YouTube "Harmonica Hero" link. That was pretty funny (For everyone else - Since I seem to have forgotten the proper html for links, if you want to see what I'm talking about, you can just go to YouTube and put in "Harmonica Hero". It's a parody of the "Guitar Hero" game, and I got a good laugh out of it).

Jane and Addiann: I really appreciate the supportive, congratulatory comments regarding my weight loss (19.8 lbs as of my last weigh-in). It's definitely motivating to have people be so supportive.

(It's also motivating to not be busting out of my "Fat Boy Pants"...!)

Cate: Thank you for giving me closure on an episode I've been ashamed of for many years (And for the record? I'm not "smokin' hot" on harmonica just yet...but I'm getting there).

Seems like a "lose-lose" proposition.

But something happened recently, while I was busy "dwelling on the past", that may have been an honest-to-goodness, this-never-happens-to-me, "growth experience".

It happened a week ago Monday, as I was getting ready to go to the "Blues Jam" at M'Dears.

I was looking for something big enough to carry both my harmonica case and my microphone, and found an old, beat-up attache case (I don't remember how I got it, just that I've had it for years, and it was someone's cast-off).

Inside were some drawings, photos, college transcripts...and some rubber-banded stacks of 20-year-old love letters from Beth N.

I looked over what was inside, and then, against my better judgement, started reading the letters.

This woman was crazy about me. Absolutely adored me; I was smart, I was funny, I was kind, I was understanding, I was sexy (The best lover she'd ever had), I was her best friend, and I was the person she fully expected to happily spend the rest of her life with.

The love she felt for me still leaps off the page, twenty years after the fact.

And it's just the kind of thing I'm talking about - After I finished reading the letters, it was hard not to compare that period of time to now, when I can't even imagine anyone being that crazy in love with me; there hasn't been anyone in the past 16 years, and far as I can tell, there's no one anywhere on the horizon.

But then, in the middle of "PityFest 2007", something weird happened...

Instead of just feeling sorry for myself, I started to feel sorry for her.

She'd had two failed marriages, had suffered physical/emotional abuse and neglect, was having to raise two children essentially by herself...and there I was, seemingly the answer to everything her heart had been longing for - A friend, a lover, a partner, a soul-mate.

She'd found the love she'd always wanted.

Or so she thought.

How must it have felt, then, when her "soul-mate" fell apart under the pressure of a real-life, honest-to-God relationship? What must it have been like to realize, contrary to everything she thought, she'd once again made just another bad choice? What must have gone through her mind when, in the span of four short years, we went from "true love" to restraining orders and court dates?

I wish I'd done better for you Beth. I wish I'd been a stronger person. I wish I'd lived up to what you saw in me.

I wish I'd been your "happy ending".

But I hope, wherever you are now and whatever you're doing, that you've found that "happy ending".

There were music books, the embosser Jane gave me for a Xmas present one year, some loose photographs, eight photo albums...and ten videos (Two pornos, and eight videos of plays I did in Lansing).

The porn videos were fine (Talk Dirty To Me III and New Wave Hookers, if you're interested), but of the eight videos of plays, the sound was gone on six of them.

(Little Women, Lend Me A Tenor, Emma's Child, Man Of LaMancha, Lies and Legends, and the LCP production of Big River were now basically silent movies; Oliver and the Riverwalk Big River were still intact.)

This happened pretty much right after I'd told myself that dwelling on the past was a no-win proposition.

("Message from the Universe" or just a coincidence? You make the call...)

That said, I actually did watch a good chunk of "LaMancha".

Without the sound, I was more able, I think, to focus on my physical performance as "Don Quixote".

And unlike most other times I've seen myself on video, I actually liked what I saw; there was a relative precision to what I was doing that was almost always lacking in other things I've seen.

But anyway...

This has been fun, but my pre-work nap beckons...

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