The Mouse is a Mime

A good deal of what you are about to read was written in the head of a girl feeling the full weight of her relatively few years, shifting a standard transmission through the rain down Interstate 10/12 in Baton Rouge, LA. It may seem odd to you that at 26 someone could feel so close to dying for no good reason, especially this girl who is not at all apologetic about having walked through life in a bubble of protection granted by family members, enviable luck, and a touch of genius. To the outside I imagine she looks like Midas himself.

She appreciates all she’s been given, and not in the way that might inspire one to obtain a license plate reading "Thanks Dad", but in the only way she knows to appreciate gifts of nature; feeling bound by duty to be worthy of them, although in truth she rarely is.

But this story is not solely about her. The story I want to tell you is about a powerful love in her life and the augmentation of it as she’s grown. I will have to give a bit of background in order to effectively offer full power to the story I intend to tell. Time and circumstance taught our lover to make noise, some might even say required that she do so, but at heart she’s a quiet girl. She’s a corner dweller; not often overlooked, but almost never really seen.

She was 15 when what would prove to be an enduring affection was introduced to her life, by her father. He’d been in the United Kingdom and returned with music wishing her to listen. Obedient in the way only known to those who reasonably fear not being, she listened fully intending to dislike whatever she heard.

Delusion to the extent she has proven able must be revered as talent. While she was unable to deny the beauty of the sounds that came to surround her, she found the strength to be enraged with the musician for having altered her sense that the world was unfit for habitation. She insulted him regularly, questioned his integrity, and discounted all he sang on only the basis that he sang it, but was not able to be without the music. She found herself with many copies as insurance that she would not face losing it to anything short of nuclear war.

Over time our lover realized her ability to feel was one she’d removed as a tool of survival, and even this great hatred was preferable to the emptiness screaming almost silently that at one time it hurt. It did her little good as at that time honest emotion was something not only foreign, but unaffordable to her.

She continued to listen clandestinely to the music she’d come to feel was ‘hers’ due to less than enthusiastic reactions from anyone for whom she played it, and a strong desire not to share it with those for whom it could be only passing.

She didn’t attend her high school graduation ceremony, choosing instead to spend the time lying on the ground in the curve of her horse’s neck asking the animal to protect her and recognize the beauty of a song she had set to repeat. A song about a strong woman, seen in good light for the wrong reasons. The woman’s story moved her, as one would expect such a story to move a young girl who was universally seen for being something she not only wasn’t, but found wholly unappealing. This woman and her preservation of a life unworthy of the time it took to save was not what truly touched our lover. What began as powerful hatred had developed into honest and friendly affection for a man who would see and feel beyond the well lamented of a person nearing 200 years dead.

She’d been supposed to accompany a friend to Thailand the summer after high school, but decided instead to go to Scotland, where the music had originated. There was the chance of finding him in a pub somewhere the way her father had, but more than that she wanted to be close. What she craved was not known to her, but she knew Scotland was closer than she had been. Her friend, Mikel, was intuitive enough to realize that arguing would not regain her Thailand companion, and agreed to the change in destination.

They arrived at Glasgow International Airport tired and stiff from 16 ½ hours traveling, checked into their hotel, and set directly about determining how long a stay would be required in order to see the musician play. In the end it wasn’t their effort that led them to the information, but our lover’s father who called saying the musician was to be at a pub in Edinburgh that evening. Newly invigorated with fear of which the origin was unknown, our lover contacted a taxi service willing to take two young girls nearly 50 miles to a pub they were not of age to enter (Time and a few more trips to Scotland have taught our lover that the train would have been a speedier transport to their destination).

They’d not planned, for lack of ability to carry out any plan, what to say if asked for proof of their age, but they weren’t asked and they seated themselves as far from the musician as possible. Our lover had suggested before entering that they speak only when necessary in order to avoid attention not sensibly anticipated by two young girls at a somewhat dingy pub inhabited mostly by people nicely senior to them. Mikel was tolerant of the music, finding some interest but mostly observing the man she’d been dragged across an ocean to find. Our lover, being a creature of intellectual pursuit, spent half of the time taking in every detail about the musician, and the other half soaking in the sounds she’d come to associate with her moments of freedom.

He is a brilliant violinist and lyricist among other things. There is respect seasoned with admiration for that in the lover, but his eyes are what she’d come to see. And she watched them.

The music ended and the musician was speaking to people gathered around a table. Her friend urged our lover to approach and talk to the man she’d essentially stalked across the Atlantic, but they both knew this had been a trip that would end in the lover walking away from any chance to speak. She simply lacked courage to risk the musician being anything other than what her mind had made of him. And to be brushed off by what had become her saving grace would have done damage beyond any good that could have come of interaction.

For all the data that can be accumulated about someone by a powerful mind given time to observe, the only thing our lover left remembering was that he had eyes of trampled ice rimmed with the spark of a man on fire. She kept the memory of those eyes; they were comfort, and company.

She was home only 2 months after returning from overseas before moving to another state for college, and so the nighttime visits were limited. Just as she’d not allowed the music, she didn’t allow the eyes to ease her during the progression of sexual violence. She preferred their comfort while deciding which wounds she could hide and how, and what story she would tell of the ones too prominent to be covered by either make-up or clothing. Much to this writer’s displeasure, it must be admitted that our lover often stood alone requesting advice of the eyes she’d protected in her memory as to which story might work again, and which joke was likely to cover the shame she felt when people asked of her wounds. He never answered, as our lover remained at least mildly sane, but she attributes her ability to keep moving on certain days to easy sanctuary provided by the idea that such a man existed.

1996 she married. At her wedding reception she made the obligatory greetings and left her guests congratulating her husband for the safety of an unused room and a portable CD player. She sat in the empty room, in her wedding dress, with what she’d chosen to be her family; a man she’d created on the strength of a pair of eyes, her imagination, and limited insight to his.

Between the end of her freshman year in college and the late fall/early spring of 2001 our lover saw the musician at least once a year, always hiding in the back of whatever room held him, and never speaking.

I can only tell you that she was frightened by people. She’s not been mishandled since leaving her home when she was 16, but her fear was not of violence. Her fear, as she came to understand far too late, was of life in general, feeling, seeing or being seen. There are many psychological explanations of this, but I will suffice to say that she had her reasons, and has recognized the flaws of logic that formed them.

In May of 2001 she was accompanied on a trip to TX by the only person she’d met to know the music independent of her. She hid in the back of the room attempting to discover something worthy of saying to him as she knew her company this time would place her in a position of being required to speak. She’d worked out a passable greeting, but upon opening her mouth it refused to be said and left her with none but the options of either coming up with something quickly or hoping her friend would forego alerting the musician that she was not, in fact, a deaf-mute. She chose the former praying to a God she did not accept the existence of that she could offer a simple hello and retreat to the nearest restroom, the location of which she’d determined while deciding between the courses of action that remained available to her.

What exited her mouth was "You’ve beautiful hands". It was certainly truth; they were beautiful in appearance and ability, but hardly the comment with which to make someone’s acquaintance. After hastily removing herself from the company of the musician she berated her mind for the stupidity of her statement and the familiarity of a contraction used in greeting someone one does not know well.

She fought as she was able at the time, but in the end her deluded fear won. She decided that she would find, somehow, the ability to tell him that he’d been a driving force in her life, and she’d never be in the same room with him again. Once more, to this writer’s dismay, it must be admitted that our lover chose a cowards communication. On the back of an arbitrary receipt she wrote, "Your music is the only thing that makes me feel" and asked her friend to be sure the musician received it. She wasn’t able to find all the words for what she would have had him hear, so she rested on hope that from one sentence he would read "You’ll never be able to understand all the nights the thought of you made me able to sew a cut or lie still and not give him the pleasure of knowing how much it hurt" and the one she most wished him to hear from her note "Had it not been for your music, and then your eyes, I would have died or let myself slip into the cold comfort of insanity, and that makes anything I may have offered or have to offer this world a gift you’ve given. And I will be a great contribution."

She was not true to her decision not to find and observe, nor was she true to her decision not to speak, although she did so electronically. She did, however, keep herself from the thing that truly frightened her, the dreaded vocal conversation. She watched from the backs of rooms and the edges of tents, but never approached him, telling herself that she’d said all she could, and this man would have no interest in the only thing she could offer him; her friendship. He’d been more than kind to her, but her delusions were not such that discounted the distinction between civility and friendship.



In 2003, after her divorce, she spoke to our lovely musician again, in all but the right ways. She’d become something she thought was a strong person; unbending and harsh; residing in what was only another place to hide. She found that she was losing sight of her accomplishments because she’d outgrown sharing them so childishly with the character she’d based on him. She wanted him to see her, and she wanted to touch him, so she offered him her body. He politely declined the offer of sex, but allowed her request of a kiss. "The kiss by which all others in her life are still measured"; for no reason other than it shared the moment she had his complete attention.

Shortly after that she made plans to see him perform in CA only to be threatened with the loss of his friendship should she attend, and made aware that he would hear nothing further of the subject. She attempted being angry with him, reminding herself that no one talks to her that way (which is true enough, there’s maybe one other person who would be allowed), but anger was not at all what she felt.

A moment of rare candor saw her sit in the room that served as her library/music room and cry for a very long time. There was a lifetime of emotion released into those walls, but the overwhelming one of them was fear. She feared never again having the opportunity to pull this beautiful musician’s mouth to hers and feel as though she’d been something beyond a face in the crowd.

In time she has come to see life more clearly and developed an understanding that it’s not an ugly thing to be endured. She’s found the passions lost to a time when they could only drive her mad, although she’s not entirely sure yet how to express them well. She is gaining the confidence to speak without orchestration. It’s proving a slow process; learning to speak to him without the question of his reaction, but she realizes that she’d been approaching the situation assuming that he dislikes her, and that proved untrue.

She will never outgrow the debt of gratitude she owes him for being the peaceful, sanity protecting thing in her life through quite a few years, but she’s come to know that he is not the man she made of him. To our lover’s great delight she’s found the man he shows himself to be is worth knowing, and she greatly wishes to know him for reasons beyond nostalgia and weakness or a wish to be separated from the crowd.

She has seen her daughter dance to his music, and she’s regained the nod of appreciated accomplishment one can only give themselves. Her reactions to the world are still extreme, as I imagine they always will be, but they no longer frighten her. Sometimes they hurt, but it’s a splendid pain, because it’s honest and it’s hers, and she’s paid for it. She’s finally realized that true levity comes only with self-acknowledged merit, and anything less is a fool’s escape. She offers thanks to the other person she’s been lucky enough to have close for most of these realizations.

I wished to convey to you the story of a girl who has loved without expectation or need of understanding through what can be appropriately described as unusual situations. I hope that you too will come away from hearing it with the feeling that love is something with many expressions, formed by intensity, commitment (to oneself rather than the object of ones affection) and honest internal emotion rather than another’s acceptance or even knowledge.

Our lover sits, somewhat dizzy, at 2:21am on a computer typing a story about herself and her attachment to a beautiful person, experiencing a pang of lonelines that she will probably relieve with sleep before much longer. But before she leaves she has one more thing to say;

She is scared and unsure in a way she’d all but forgotten, but she’s coming.