Another Life

A long time ago, in another life, I knew a boy. He made me happy, he made me mad, he made me obsessive, he made me calm, he affected me on just about every level a human can be affected. I loved him. I hated him. I made strange decisions because of the way that I felt about him. I hurt other people and I didn't care. I hurt myself. I let him too close. I pushed him away. I gave him things that were not mine to give. I felt inexplicably connected to him. I idolized him in a way, I suppose. And then one day, he broke my heart. He cracked it right in two with one phrase. I could tell you what that phrase was, I could repeat it word for word exactly as he said it, but it would be useless. I could never communicate the way that it hit me, like a bullet ripping through my chest. How one minute, everything was fine and normal and the next minute everything was different. Everything was so so bad.

We were two lost souls back then. I was a shadow of the person that I am now. I tried for a while to make things better. To fix things, as I'm prone to try to do. We shared a friend in common and the three of us had all been close at one time. But after a while there was no fixing in the place that we were in. The mutual friend moved away and I let go. We lost touch, we went in different directions, neither of them particularly good, but his was more physically dangerous.

Years later I got a call from the mutual friend to say that he'd gotten married and his first child was on the way. We met and laughed and reminisced. He asked me about the boy from a life time ago and I was surprised. They had been much closer and longer term friends with each other than either of them had been with me. The mutual friend had been looking for the boy, but had not found any trace of him. We both searched harder. We came up empty handed. We tried to contact family members with no luck, we tried every method we could think of. After a year, we feared the worst. The last that either of us had seen him, hard drugs were a steady part of his diet. I assumed that I would never see him again. I assumed that it was no longer a possibility. I was sad that things had ended the way that they had, but I closed the book. I kissed that part of my past goodbye.

So, imagine my surprise when I'm watching a random video from a local two months ago and he is merrily playing bass, alive and well, two years after we stopped looking for him. Click the link. Yes, there he is. Bass player. Band from a nearby town. No specific contact information for him but they are playing a gig, here, in the city I live in on July 1st. No fucking way. It can't be. I watch the video over and over again. I'm mesmerized. This person that I had already buried. It's been 8 years since I've seen him and I can walk downtown on July 1st (tomorrow) and speak to him face to face. This is what I decide to do. If, after all this time, there is nothing to be fixed, then closure awaits in its place. And I can replace this sad, final ending that lives in my heart with a different one. And if nothing else, I can reunite him with his best friend from kindergarden.

For the last 2 months, my anticipation has grown. What will I say? What will he say? How will it feel? I've rewritten my script a hundred times and I've grown excited at the idea of seeing someone who was so influential in my old life. Someone that I loved once. Someone that made me feel alive, whether that was good or bad, someone who made me feel so vivid.

So, I go back on the myspace for the band he's with today, to check the time of the concert... and he's no longer listed. He's left the band. He's not there. He's not in the video of their last show.

He's gone.

Again.

Fuck.

The Love Vigilantes

We've found a new activity, the boy of complex description and I. First introduced to me a long time ago by the clients I took on long canoe adventures in the northern wilderness and then reintroduced to me by my brother a few short weeks ago. Geocaching. Modern day treasure hunting with a gps and a laptop. But, yes friends who don't know, it does actually involve wilderness a lot of the time. Like when the bocd had to climb all over that tree to find the cache that didn't turn out to be there or when I cursed the fact that I'd worn shorts and sandals and then found myself knee high in a wild raspberry patch (which, btw, I'm going back to pick next week).

It's a family event too, Sam running around us, dragging his leash in and out of puddles, sniffing out bunnies - really not interested in treasure at all. His treasure is the smelly liquids left by other animals... ewwww.

It's the finding and the opening that gets me so excited. And the fact that there's been a treasure in a place I've passed so many times, and not known. Just waiting to be discovered. Just waiting to be read and pawed through. And the community. All these treasure hunters, doing their thing, expressing themselves in their own small way. Leaving love letters for strangers.

And because we can't do anything simply, the bocd and I, we've chosen a name and made logos - stickers and tags. And we are designing our own caches to delight the members of the geocaching community. Why the love vigilantes? Well, it's our mantra, I suppose. To love and in turn to appreciate and respect. And even if you think that we are foolish romantics, you'll still smile when you find our love letters, I'm sure of it.

xo

Holly Hobbie

This is Holly Hobbie. At the age when other little girls were wearing plastic barbie heals and clip on plastic earrings, I was emulating Holly Hobbie. In drawings of her, her look changes - you can't peg her as an age, you can't really get a sense of what she's about. She's patchwork through and through and I can empathize.