I think I've arrived:):):)...

...happiness...

...with Anthony Rapp and the Gang:):):)...You're a Good Man Charlie Brown...

Saying Goodbye...

This morning I listened to Damien Rice, again...

As I have every day since late last week when Melissa downloaded The Blower's Daughter onto our Windows Media Player...

And you know what's amazing?...

The song is beginning to sound a little more nostalgic to me...

Meaning...

It doesn't have quite the same tragic, romantic pull on me that it did the first time I heard it...and certainly the first time I heard it again...

...when I balled my eyes out for a night of grieving and reminiscing (and then another night of flooded emotions out of the blue) over especially the early years of my last most powerful relationship and connected friendship in my life...

It felt like a really beautiful song (which it is)...that reminded me of a time that I once felt similarly...

I still have vague feelings that are similar...but it's been a long time since I've felt them as strongly as I felt them like this guy sounds like he feels them in this song...

It's great to feel those feelings...

That kind of love is one of the most powerful things in the world...

The kind of love that un-self-consciously opens you up to the world...and all its limitless possibilities...

A world that begins to express your greatest hopes of what a decent and good world could look like...

And a world shared with one person, in particular...because their presence and living, active love...and sense of wonder and compassion makes it all so possible...

I think...more than anything...that's why I felt so overwhelmed with emotion like I did on Saturday night (you'd have to ask Melissa to get a more realistic picture of just how overwhelmed with grief -- out of the blue -- I found myself, Saturday night, as she watched me ball my eyes out:)...

And...this morning...

I found some peace with all that still remaining pain in my heart...

Nice, huh?:):):)...

And thanks to my very good friend, Kenny:):):)...the best lead load this side of the Lawrence:):):)...

Kenny's Maze...

I do not have Damien Rice and the remaining pain from my break-up/relationship with Brandi in my heart and swimming around my head, quite as much, this morning (though I have listened to The Blower's Daughter like 100 times, this morning:):):)...

I have Willie Nelson, The Mob Goes Wild, Mercury, Regulator, Frankenstein, Come on Motherfucker, Careful with that Microphone, 10001110101, and other songs from one of my favorite new musical finds this morning:):):)...Clutch:):):)...

It's a nice change of pace, I have to tell you:):):)...

Grieving is important...I definitely believe in the benefits of grieving:):)...and working through/with whatever painful feelings that we need to work through/with:):):)...

But...sometimes...especially when you've been doing it for more than 4 years, as I have, in this situation:):):)...

It gets a little old:):):)...

So it's nice to feel like I am somewhere near closure with some of these feelings, at this point:):):)...

Though it also feels good to remember just how great it is to feel so in love...and all the special memories that go with my most real, most honest experience of such profound love for/with someone...I miss it...

"I can't take my mind off of you...I can't take my mind off of you...I can't take my mind off of you...I can't my mind off of you"...

And seeing as how I rarely see or talk or even email with Ms. Fisher, these days...

This is essentially my goodbye with her, right now...

She's still alive...somewhere...

I hope I'll still see her...someday...

But for now...

It's goodbye...

Somehow I doubt I'll stop thinking...or talking...or writing about her, though...

I've thought about Brandi literally every day since we first became close friends, the day after her 22nd birthday...June 1996...

Brandi came by Sears shoes...where I was working at the time (one of the worst jobs of my life)...

And invited me to a birthday party she was throwing for herself...

I told her that my birthday was also coming up...

Her's was June 16th...

Mine was June 14th...

And she said that we could celebrate my birthday then too...

The party was themed around the 1996 Russian Presidential elections, to be held on June 16th of that year...Brandi invited me and a small crowd of friends for a celebration of the Russian elections...

The 1996 Russian elections...

We made white Russians...black Russians...a terribly botched effort at borscht...

I brought a recording of an American news report of Sputnik being launched in 1957...

The launching of Sputnik...

We watched Harold and Maude...significant to me because it was the favorite movie of my former girlfriend, Jenny Burrington...who I was still mourning, at that point...since she had broken up with me 6 months earlier, right after introducing me to the really pretty decent party boy who she would later leave me for...

Harold and Maude...

And I slept on the floor of Brandi's bedroom that night...and she and I hung out the next day (as I remember it)...

And...sitting on the wooden second-story porch of her Wichita apartment...

She became the very first person...after my break-up with Jenny...

To just listen to me...

To not tell me to just get over it...to not tell me she didn't want to hear it anymore...to not put me off...

But to just listen...to how heartbroken I was...

And it was one of the best birthday gifts I've gotten in my life (other than the very nice birthday party that Brandi threw for the me the very next year...with all our friends from the Honors Department...and our all of new friends at the Kansas Regents' Honors Academy that Wichita State University hosted the next year...and that Brandi and I worked together...and where we finally began our too brief love affair)...

And ever since that night...

Brandi has been on mind and heart...literally ever day...

For more than 9 years, now...

The last four years being a lot of pain to accompany a lot of really powerful, sweet memories...some not so great memories, as well...but mostly...some really great ones:):)...

"I can't take my mind off of you...I can't take my mind off of you...I can't take my mind off of you...I can't take my mind off of you"...

Have you ever felt a love so powerful for someone...

That it haunts you...not in creepy or dark way...in a really vulnerable way...very much like how Damien Rice sings in this song...

I've hoped, up to this point...

That the next chapter in Fisher's and my relationship would be friendship...

But Brandi -- for whatever reasons -- has decided...largely...that she just can't bear that...

So...

Now...I have a whole truckload of really great memories:):):)...

An unplanned trip to visit one of Brandi's best friends, Shelly, in St. Louis...because Brandi's car stalled:):)...and got broken into in East St. Louis:):)...while we were braving the cold to call a mechanic:):)...

A really great trip to the island of Chincoteague, off the coast of mainland Virginia...

The island of Chincoteague...

...to see the wild ponies that run free there:):):)...to visit the beach and the sand:):):)...to have a big blow-out and a big make-up with Brandi's best friend and our roommate, that summer, Wendy Werner:):):)...

The Dar Williams concert Brandi and Wendy and Pam and Iftakar and I all went to in Virginia...where Wendy raised her hands and looked more alive actively listening to Dar's Iowa than any other time I had ever seen her before:):):)...

The trip to New York:):):)...looking all day for parking:):):)...seeing "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown":):):)...fighting on the way to find the crappy little SoHo Hotel, where Brandi had booked our reservation:):)...

Getting caught TWICE by her mother in the middle of some sexual activity:):):)...once in her mom's basement:):):)...and another time in a hotel room in Manhattan?...Marni and David were both there:):):)...laughing their asses off at Brandi and I who got COMPLETELY BUSTED by all three of them, when they beat our estimated return time and found us together naked under bed comforters...

A visit by Brandi to Lawrence...and a never-to-be-forgotten trip up to Wells Overlook, that morning...

Wells Overlook...

...at about 5 or 6AM...with a picnic basket of goodies:):)...and a newly purchased When Harry Met Sally soundtrack...to make love at the top of Wells Overlook...after a night of lovemaking at my place the night before:):):)...

A Jewish/African-American seder in Washington, D.C.:):):)...and picking up challah at the Jewish Community Center there in D.C.:):)...

A night out in gorgeous Charlotte, North Carolina:):):)...when Brandi came down from D.C. to visit me at a conference for the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, which I worked with during my first years in grad school:)...and an amazing dinner we had at the little 40's themed Italian restaurant (Frankie's Italian Grille...I think:):):)...with the really terrific waiter:):):)...who put our doggy bag behind our seat:):):)...

A great little trip to Seattle to see Marni and Mike and Max:):):)...and to take in the awesome Seattle market by the shore:):):)...and the gorgeous mountains and ocean scenery, all in one landscape:):):)...

Opening 40 little individual gifts before Brandi took off for Washington, D.C.:):):)...and Brandi's stuffed dog, Woofy:):):)...which she HATED (or at least she hated the idea of receiving dog-themed gifts, including this really adorable puppy calendar I gave her that year, so much did she hate dogs, at the time:):):) when I first gave it to her for Christmas one year back in Wichita before returning to D.C.:):):)...and which she slept with, subsequently, almost every night...at least until we broke up:):):)...

But mostly just the day to day memories...

The talks...

The walks...

The fights...

The making up...

The smiles...

The really adorable sense of public vulnerability that Brandi carried around with her:):):)...and that she taught me to embrace:):):)...

The being together:):):)...

Some great memories to visit every once in awhile:):):)...

...until another day...

This is my goodbye...

Auf Wiedersehen, liebe...

Love,
Ben