Month: July 2008
The Mystery of Bo Fontana
Everyone gets junk letters in the mail. They can be the local mass-advertising, they can be political campaigns, they might just be credit cards and pre-approved drivel… Maybe magazine subscriptions, renewal notices and the occasional national group trying to recruit members.
And for somewhere close to 10 years, through the ridiculousness and annoyance of it, I’ve learned an interesting fact that has been established by the US Mail and nothing else: I have a wayward brother and his name is Bo.
“Bo Fontana” has gotten college applications in the mail, he’s gotten credit cards offered to him. From time to time, he gets insurance offers sent his way, the US Military is after him, and today? The AARP.
I don’t know how the hell this has transpired, nor who signed up where which started the craze… But I’d like to officially say right now that there is no Bo Fontana! Not in my home, at least… Nor anyone in my immediate or extended family.
Now if I could tip off the powers that be to that fact…
What I've learned
You know, I wanted to write a long post about moving on from this ill-communication SNAFU that’s led to me drawing myself into a shell and feeling like someone died. Someone was snuffed out, and the person holding the gun simply said “oops” after the body hit the floor, hid it, and then announced to the world they used a glock pistol the first time.
Yes, I was going to tell everyone what I had learned from this, or had reinforced in me. Facts that apply to current and past malignant relations: Communications are vital in any friendship or relationship; that distance can and will kill (especially if you are half hearted on the communication front); that you make time for what’s important to you; if someone isn’t reaching back much when you reach out to them, they just aren’t that into you; that oftentimes we don’t want to see the obvious and want to imagine all is hunky-dory even though the painful truth is right in front of us.
But the two ultimate truths in this case at the top of my list
:
- I’m tired of being disrespected, or belittled in how someone deals with me. Not being honest or forthcoming while someone has the wrong idea and allowing them to go on is a huge disrespect to them.
- I hate being mad at the source of this disrespect
The problem here is, the first point trumps the second.
With my big heart, it’s too often I get disrespected or taken for granted. Willing to listen even if it hurts, to make time for someone even if I am busy, to reach out to even if it costs more than I have, to be understanding to a fault… I’ve lost other friends in the past because I allowed the disrespect to the point I was upset every time we talked.
Being big hearted makes my friends a priority and sadly, in this case, priority is the reason I know this entire situation won’t be settled any time soon. Because if I was a priority in simple friendship, none of this would have ever happened. I would have been down on myself a few days, but the 2nd of two “trump all” points would have ruled instead of the first.
Writing this won’t make things better, but it gets this stuff out of my head and out into the open for better or worse.
The low and high
it was Thursday night where I think I turned a corner on my funk. I am not in a good place still, but part of my turn for the better was finding a song that I identified with that wasn’t entirely a mope. It said exactly what I was feeling.
I’ve known it for years but with thanks to mumbled lyrics by Mick Jagger (a lot of spoken word recitation) and the dreariness of the tune itself, the epiphany of the lyrics just don’t come through as strongly as they should.
Indeed, it’s a gorgeous lyrics that I so identified with from the song Out of Tears.
It’s the second verse that captured me… That and of course the lyrics in general. It’s not because of the sadness, the personal loss that’s on display. It’s how that second verse ends…
I won’t drink
I won’t eat
I can’t hear
I won’t speak
Let it out
Let it in
All this pain
From within
And I just can’t pour my heart out
To another living thing
I’m a whisper
I’m a shadow
But I’m standing up to sing
In the face of all that despair and sadness, there is a defiance. I won’t keep suffering this, life goes on and I revel in that knowledge.
At least that’s what I take from it.
During the day Friday, just casually listening to my iPod… I had my moral rebound completed with a song that I should consider cliché in it’s uplifting message to me by now. Not uplifting per se but turning-the-corner… from what I took from the lyrics of Out of Tears, George Harrison and the Beatles Here Comes the Sun was the perfect compliment. Better times are ahead… The winter has passed.
It tells a tale
It was a couple of years ago that I was wondering just what Michael Stipe was singing about in the R.E.M. classic “Losing my Religion”. For the prudes or the ultra-religious, the title might suggest the song is about a conflict in faith of the Divine. It’s a crisis of faith, indeed, but it’s faith in ones own self and self confidence.
In simplicity, it’s about someone not able to work up the courage to talk to the object of their affection:
View to a mood
I haven’t blogged in a while as I have been busy with other faccets of my life…Â From politics to just internet de3ign and maintenance, I’ve been a busy little bee.
But due to recent circumstances — the other shoe falling — I’m back for the moment and maybe longer.Â
I read John Densmore’s Riders on the Storm a few years ago and heard about this song in an ancedote where Jim Morrison showed him the lyrics to this song while in the Hollywood hills. It had presented a new vulnerability aspect to Morrison and Densmore thought he was maturing as a songwriter… it fits my mood of coming to grips but celebration of what you are…
