Did this page end up framed? Click here to break out.


Hunting in the Jade Forest
Surrendering to the Roller Coaster
My Heart Impaled
Turning into a Shark
Riding on the Dreams of Others
A Hole in the Universe
A New Leg to Stand On
Yes, Santa Claus, there IS a Virginia
Walking on the Poseidon dis·tort Function: verb...
Touching the Spirit

Click to go to the most current Cliff Between the Lines
Life, viewed sideways. Emotions, amplified. Answers, questioned. Me, between the lines.




- A Wounded Heart, Who Can Bear?
- Drowning Under a Tidal Wave
- Clawing My Way to the Sunlight
- Yes, Santa Claus, There Is a Virginia
- Fugu
- Touching the Spirit
- A Hole in the Universe
- Riding on the Dreams of Others
- Turning Into a Shark
 - A Heart, Ripped Asunder
- Surrendering to the Roller Coaster
- Hunting in the Jade Forest
- Dodging the Shark
- Dancing With Invisible Partners
- The Captain and the Harliquin
- Courting the Devils
- The Captain Makes His Mark
- Mad Dog to the Rescue
- Innocent in the Big City
- Dropping the Ball Briefcase
- Scrambling Brains
- Cheating the Reaper, Again
- What If the Man Behind the Curtain Is No Wizard After All?
- All of Us Have a Soundtrack
- Working With Broken Machines
- Happy Anniversary, Baby
- Standing on Stars
- Running the Film Backwards
- Identity Crisis ("Who am I?")
- Can We Ever Really Admit the Desires of Our Heart?
- Forgiveness is a Rare Thing
- Having Your Heart Caressed By the Creator
- Working With Broken Machines
- A New Leg to Stand On
- The Real Spirit of Christmas
- Chatting With Infinity
- Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
- We All Have a Great Capacity for Loss
- Brushed Lightly By Might Have Beens
- We See the World Through Our Own Looking Glass
- Every Storm Passes Eventually
- Accidents Can Introduce Destiny Into Our Lives
- Freedom Depends on the Walls Around Us
- Pulling Aside the Velvet Curtain
- Riding the Razor's Edge
- Dying With Strangers
- In Your Face
- Between the Lines
- The Bobcat
- Angel With a Coffeecup
- Innocent in the Big City
- Chains of Gossamer
- Playing With Knives
- Stumbling Through Memories (Ooops)
- Picture This
- Running the Film Backwards
- Playing the Score, Tasting the Music
- Coins and Corals and Carved Coconuts
- My God, I Confess
- Exotic in Thin Air (Part 1, Speechless)
- Exotic in Thin Air (Part 2, Taxi)
- Exotic in Thin Air (Part 3, The Pan American)
- Exotic in Thin Air (Part 4, Guano)
- Exotic in Thin Air (Part 5, The Andes Express)



 
Blogroll Me!













Feed for RSS readers:
ATOM Site Feed


Enter your email address below to be notified daily in your email whenever this blog is updated, courtesy of Bloglet:


powered by Bloglet



"This is True" is now located at the bottom of this page.






My Blogger Profile

More About Cliff Hursey

Email me



"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."

Walt Whitman (1819-92)




"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."

Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)











And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:

The WeatherPixie








Monday, December 15, 2003
 

Dancing with Invisible Partners

con-se-quence
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 : something produced from a cause or necessarily following from a set of conditions.
2 : something that people do not think exists in a resort town...

...And that was fine with me.

When people arrive in a resort area for a vacation, whether it is Las Vegas, the Bahamas, or Myrtle Beach, a lot of them throw their inhibitions to the wind and do things they would never do at home. We used to say that people thought they were invisible at the beach.

Usually, they were.

At Myrtle Beach in 1977, particularly in the campground where I lived for the summer, there was an endless string of young girls who wanted a summer romance they could go home and tell their friends about, and my best friend John and I were all too happy to oblige. Imagine an animal that wanted to throw itself in the lion's jaws. That is how it was, and like good little predators we just sat there with our mouths open.

Sometimes we would take out two or three girls in a single night. It was a joke between us that we could do that.

I do not even remember most of the girls.

I found a basket of letters in my attic a couple of years ago that I had carefully stowed away in a trunk. I looked through them, and there were letters in there from lots and lots of girls, sometimes with pictures. Sometimes the pictures had me in them, and I would not remember who the girl was at all.

There was one girl who had written over and over to me. Apparently I had written back, because she referred to my letters in her letters. I had only a vague recollection of her, but she always referred to me as the "Captain."

I think that's when the Captain was born. He is going to play a big ugly part in all of this shortly. Actually, it's been him holding the steering wheel quite a bit already.


I unwrapped packet after packet of letters. Some were scented. Some were on special stationary. Some were hastily scrawled on notebook paper. And so many that were now, through the mist of time, strangers to me.

I do remember a lot of the girls, though. I remember the girl model, the Vogue cover, georgeous but way too comfortable with her body in public. She kept losing her swimsuit top in the pool at the campground and not caring, which embarrassed me. I remember girls from the Carolinas and Virginia, with their wholesome good looks and wonderful accents. I remember a girl from a church group that I took advantage of very badly, and I am sure I broke her heart, and she did not deserve that at all.

I remember two girls from Canada who had never set off fireworks, so I went and bought them a huge box and watched them light them all off one by one on the beach for hours. They paid me back with an incredible home cooked spaghetti dinner that has yet to be matched in my life.

There were so many, and for each of them I was an intentional and willing playtoy, becoming whatever they wanted to have fun with on their vacation, dancing whatever dance they most liked, saying whatever they most wanted to hear.

That was, after all, how it worked. I was a human pitcher plant, capturing my prey with honey. I was an angler fish, dangling my flourescent light enticingly to bring prey into my reach.

My life became nothing but an elaborate lie, which I embraced and fed. I was far away from who I was and who I had been, and before long I lost me all together and all that was left was the stage show.

Dance,
dance,
dance and bow and caper and prance,
dance till it hurts but don't miss a chance...



And so I danced.

Entralled by the song, captive of the very lie I had fashioned around myself, I danced for all I was worth and killed every last vestige of myself that I could remember. Like a crazed harliquin I danced and danced and danced and danced...

By the end of the summer of 1977, I had mastered it. I had learned the dance. I was now off to college.

And the Captain and the Harliquin had been born, and packed themselves in my suitcase.

Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you've got an audience.
Diogenes


Permalink: 12/15/2003 02:48:00 PM |
EMail this post to a friend:


Creative Commons License\__Cliff Between the Lines__/ is licensed
under a Creative Commons License.

Visit The Weblog Review

All Definitions featured in this blog are modified from the Webster Dictionary website.

Many quotations in this blog come from the Quotations Page.

This page is powered by Blogger. Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com Blogarama - The Blog Directory


Google
WWW \__Cliff Between the Lines__/