| All original songs, writing and real-time performances BY ANGELO M. BRUSCAS III Copyright 2009, Real News Network and AMBIII Publishing EAST OF EDEN She lives East of Eden, In a house where she stole my soul She lives East of Eden, With a face that never grows old It's where she left me bleeding, Shot me stone cold She lives East of Eden As the story unfolds She flees East of Eden, To take another fertile heart She flees East of Eden Where no one knows her scars It's what she's always needed Another new start She flees East of Eden To plant the poison dart “She stood at the altar, flowers in her hand Biding her time, arms open for her man Nightwalker, night stalker, priestess of vice A heart so empty, the flowers have all died.” She lives East of Eden Sons of love barred from her door She lives East of Eden Broken vows forever times four It's where she once needed Everything I had in store She lives East of Eden, To tempt fate once more. She sleeps East of Eden In a bed that bears no man She sleeps East of Eden Left me wounded at her hand It's where she's always reading About the life she could have had She sleeps East of Eden It's what she always planned “In love's death she is complete, white light, white heat Sacrificed for her father's sins, for her sons For her soul, the walls all soiled and stained The altar is empty, goddess, whore and saint.” She lives East of Eden, In a house where she stole my soul She lives East of Eden Shot me stone cold It's where she left me bleeding . . . Chorus from a poem by Cecilia Angelique |
| Song of Cecilia is a literary journey of love and a lyrical joyride into the triumphs and depths of marriage and divorce through these ever-shifting sands of economic, moral and social turmoil – a novel about the mythic and mystical music two lovers create when they begin to believe and then shatter the myths they adopt for their lives. The contemporary mystery-romance storyline of 112,000 words unwinds as a modern twist on “The Divine Comedy” with obvious similarities to “The Great Gatsby” -- told through the eyes of a writer in the maze of a major life transformation; the spiraling economy has put an end to his newspaper, sparking a renewed search for personal redemption and reconnection with the lost love and the lost music of his life. His lost love has taken on the myth of St. Cecilia, martyred for the love of God, sacrificed for the music of angels. The central theme is the universality of love, the endurance of the love of friends and family, even the love of God, through the love of writing or rediscovering the love songs within us all: That joyful noise of life. The story is highlighted by the “language of love” crafted by the central characters, Mario and Cecilia, in letters, songs, poetry, factual experience and fictional expression, assuming and then consuming their namesakes in the myth of an angel and the myth of the patron saint of music . |
Song of Cecilia
Chapter Two
Chapter Two
“The only joy he gave her was the knowledge that she was needed. He probably did not love her. Love, even hatred, did not have this closed face. But what was its face? They made love at night, without seeing each other, groping in the dark. Was there a love other than one in darkness, a love that would cry out in broad daylight?” -- Albert Camus, “The Adulterous Wife” SONG OF CECILIA: Crying out in Broad Daylight Cecilia had to keep Mario away from her new life no matter what the cost, especially in Central Washington, a region where they still prosecute women for bigamy and other assorted taboo innuendos or lifestyle choices. In fact, when Mario went to visit recently, he found great interest in a Yakima World article that told of a 32-year-old woman who was sentenced to 15 days in jail and fined $800 for marrying a man before she was divorced from another man. Two years later, she’s headed for jail and in debt and being hounded by her husband‘s family. No wonder Cecilia suddenly became so strident in seeking the final divorce settlement from him while already pursuing her new love, Mario mused. This was a town that didn’t take kindly to sex scandals and married women cavorting with newly divorced or barely separated extra-marital partners, especially if there was someone with a Hispanic or Latino surname involved. Mario took note of the final paragraph of the story that described how the woman’s new husband died a few months after they were married: “She withdrew about $17,000 from a checking account they shared and a memorial fund set up by her husband’s employer; she also received about $1,800 in life insurance benefits. That man’s children contacted police claiming her marriage to him was invalid and she was not entitled to the money.” The last thing Cecilia wanted would be to end up in the news or accused that way, Mario thought -- not to imply that there was anything similar going on in his story, but just to report objectively how things aren’t always as they seem in love, marriage and divorce, particularly with suspicious circumstances, inherited conflicts, potentially mortal possibilities and divided families involved. Back to The Real Story: So Cecilia did what she always does best -- quietly meld into other people’s lives. She helped out in a local breast cancer awareness project, stringing bras of all shapes and sizes, colors and cup contraptions, across the river-walk park to raise funds for cancer research. She settled in with a man active in the Christmas Festival of Trees, who sang in a local choir, who worked like clockwork on his orchard irrigation company started by his father and now owned in partnership with his brother. He was a cross-country skier, hardy, consistent, a known quantity, predictable. His roots ran as deep as his first name – Clay, or Mr. Clay to his friends and neighbors. A true man of the earth in Cecilia’s frame of mind. Sure, he had an ex-wife and a couple of kids already grown to cast suspicious aspersions, but Cecilia was good at assimilation and could quietly endure the initial stares and hesitant inquiries to prove her staying power. She was always quiet and demure, but thoroughly engaging when engaged. How could she still see or talk to Mario in her new life circumstances? He wouldn’t understand. He might even mock the entire affair. He might walk right in and spoil the entire apple cart in Apple Valley, take a bite out her new life and leave a worm-trail of words to infect the rest of her surroundings. She just wanted a man who wouldn’t question her or anyone or anything anymore. Heck, if her new love really started asking questions, what could she tell him about her past loves and her past life? She had told Mario everything and look where that had left her -- in a house that wasn’t even hers, surrounded by people she barely knew, in a valley town she once told others how much she despised. “Now those memories come back to haunt you, they haunt you like a curse. Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true? Or is it something worse?” -- Bruce Springsteen, “The River” “I distinctly remember when we stayed over in Yakima, dancing the night away, after the Neil Young concert at the Gorge, and Cecilia kept saying how much she couldn’t stand the place,” Mario’s friend Tommy M. told him after he returned from his fact-finding mission to the “other side“ of the great Cascade mountain range. Tommy kept nodding his head assuredly. “She said it more than once.” “Times change, I guess,” Mario shrugged. “I don’t think she moved there for the scenery or because she particularly likes the place.” “Why would anyone move to Yakima; it‘s like moving to Othello or Richland, or Moses Lake? All the people are all the same.” “I suppose you could say that about Ocean Shores, where most of the people can seem either old or fat or tourists who trash the place. But I figure she moved there to get away -- mostly from me. Fewer old friends and traces of our love and our life, new environment, more space, more freedom, new possibilities, but mostly a new man to love and to help take care of her as she goes into her elderly years.” “I understand moving to the ocean, especially for you,” Tommy said. “But Yakima? Come on. She could have done better than that! Why not some rich widowed doctor or lawyer on San Juan Island if she just wanted to get away from you?” “Hey now, don’t be giving that girl any new thoughts. She’s got enough to deal with in Yakima.” Mario certainly didn’t expect Tommy to understand, even though he completely comprehended Mario’s move to the ocean and his new dedication to the craft of writing above all else. Just like Cecilia probably figured her new love wouldn’t understand Mario at all. Mario himself unquestionably moved to get away from the death of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, to divorce himself from the newspaper culture he had wasted the past 25 years of his life on while chasing daily stories of little consequence. He should have stopped years ago, he thought, to write more letters of love to Cecilia and this great novel they always dreamed about, wrote each other about in the early days, the days when love had no questions and the writing soared with sensuality and mythology and wisdom and poetic grace. I know my parents are going to adore you and think -- finally that girl has got it right! It only makes sense that two people with such exotic names should be together. The patron saint of music should be heaven bound to the playground of angels. Whatever could be more right? And now it's time for that goodnight kiss, your warm heart mingling with mine, bringing down the night, the cold moon and distant stars, a multitude of galaxies, so much eternity, white heat to daylight, Love again, Cecilia -- A 1988 letter from Cecilia to Mario It might have saved their marriage had they continued to write to each other like that, Mario now thought. Once, words had made their marriage. And now again they certainly had helped to save his soul and spirit. He, too, had moved to the ocean in many ways to get away from Cecilia, which seemed ironic in light of what he chose to write about now that he was free to write about anything that crossed his fertile mind. He wanted no temptations, no traces of his past life bothering his new daily routine, no more bumping into friends who wondered what had happened to the love of his life, no more questions about how her health was, no more urges to drive by their old home and weep for the love that was left on the table or the garden in full bloom that he once worked so hard to plant and tend for her. He needed a garden of his own, a home of his own, an ocean of his own that no one save God could take from his soul. Talking to Tommy actually made Mario appreciate Cecilia’s move more than ever in light of his own circumstances. For each of them, it was a new beginning, and new beginnings are always an integral part of The Real Story. The difference was that he had moved to the ocean to have a home of his own, while she had moved to Yakima to assume someone else’s; he was moving to where he would not be tempted by another love except his love for the ocean and for nature and for writing; she was fleeing just about everything she had ever loved before, tempting fate a fifth time when all had failed before. For the first time in his life, Mario found happiness in living alone. For the fifth time in her life, Cecilia found herself with another man. Mario was so happy in his new home, in fact, that he just couldn’t hold back the desire to share his good fortune with Cecilia, if only he could find her. And so the letters began anew almost as soon as he used his journalism skills to unearth her new address after the move to the beach was made complete. The two trails were converging and Mario was running and writing stronger now than ever before with the ocean air filling his lungs and nature enrapturing his entire existence, morning, noon and night. Dear Cecilia, (From the beach, April 2009) Finally, after several weeks of planning, packing, moving and then doing it all again and again, I have finished settling in to my new home at Ocean Shores. That I could buy a house at all is simply mind-numbing when I begin to think of all the small steps that have enabled me to get to this point. And it is simply a wonderful house and a happy, warm home!!! For the first time in my life, I have a fridge with an icemaker, a dishwasher, pantry, garbage disposal, fireplace, vaulted ceilings, open dining room, a built-in display cabinet and bookshelf, and a view of the eastern sunrise from the rear of the home and the western sunset from the front. There’s a huge fishpond in back with the biggest goldfish and carp you have ever seen, wild strawberries ringing the place, and deer that wander through to chase off when they get too close to the blueberry bush and flower garden. My office that I am writing from now is at the southern end of my house and looks out into a forest glen where you can see the eagles, gulls, herons and assorted waterfowl parade by in the wind, and it is with true joy in my heart and soul, bones and muscles, mind and spirit, that I write to you to invite you to come out and rest your soul, too. I have a great guest room at the opposite end from my bedroom so you don’t have to hear me snore, or you could get a place in town to stay, with hotels as cheap as $49 during the week. Heck, bring along whomever you like, too, even if it’s your new husband/lover/soul mate, etc. I was listening to Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks doing “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” the other day and I realized that was, and is, exactly what I had been doing to you the past few years. Dragging around a heart that only wanted to be free. I think it was my heart, too, and I am here to witness that freedom feels as wonderful as anything I have ever experienced -- the freedom to live exactly how I should, open, at the beach, at one with nature and my surroundings, a place where every night brings peace and every morning presents new possibility. I know now, for example, what Eckhart Tolle was talking about in reaching his state where he just became part of the NOW, at one with sitting and watching and being. Like the other day, I was getting frustrated because my wireless router wasn’t working and I had lost my Internet connection, so I just headed to the Point Damon beach and walked/ran two miles to the point with Babe. When I got there, the sun was so warm over a windbreak in the dunes, I built up a wall and made myself a little private sun beach with driftwood and flotsam. You can lay out naked to the east and see a vast vista of the state, from Mount Rainier to the south and the entire Olympics to the north, or you can lay out to the West and see the harbor open up to the mighty Pacific. It is truly one of the most marvelous beaches in the entire region and I now have my own fort there, like a child romping in the summer again. I took the Toms out there last weekend when they came down for a couple of days, and the fort is now improved with a fire pit and even a little makeshift table. No cars. No people. No distractions. Nothing but luxurious peace and infinite tranquility. I even walked out there yesterday in 50-mph winds, which produced waves so mighty that the foam lingered on the beach like overflowing beer. It was funny to watch Babe try to chase the big globs as they were blown away by the mighty gusts. It is revelations like that, experiences I could not have otherwise, that convince me I have indeed reached my karmic state at one with the universe and have finally merged dreams with reality. For another example, you know I have always dreamed of living at the beach again, that it is part of the myth I keep in my soul. That is now a reality. Kind of like Henry Miller in “Tropic of Cancer” when he muses that he no longer dreams about being an artist or tries to be one, he simply is one. Like a beach, I am now shaped by the forces of the elements day to day, rising by daybreak, caressed by the currents and the waves and the tides; time is marked by grains of sand and my thoughts are shaped by the landscape before me, the wind and the sky and the rain and the sun. Powerful stuff, when you realize the majesty of all there is to this world and see your rightful place in it. So this just feels right for me, and I hope you find yourself as happy as I am these days. I never realized I could ever be this happy and satisfied truly being on my own and fully free at the beach. I wish we could have done this together years ago because it just might have saved us from inflicting so much pain and sorrow on each other. Please pass on my address to your sons and I would hope they could come down, too, when my kids are out this way. There’s great fishing down here, both in the rivers, lakes and bay, and I might even have to take up a pole (kind of a pun) again, too, in my semi-retired state of mind. It also feels like I can truly write here. Open, bold, thoughtful, peaceful. No anger. No regrets. No boundaries. No borders. Unbound. With true and unmitigated love, Mario “She too, after all, needed him, his strength, his little eccentricities, she too was afraid of dying. ‘If I could overcome this fear, I’d be happy . . .’ Very soon, a nameless anguish invaded her. She detached herself from Marcel. No, she could overcome nothing, she was not happy, she was going to die, in fact, without being delivered.” -- Camus, “The Adulterous Wife POSTSCRIPT TO THE POSTLUDE AND PRELUDE, TOO: The first book I began reading on the Damon Point beach is Albert Camus’ collection of short stories, “Exile and the Kingdom.” I wanted to read something distinctly not American fiction but contemporary literature and something short, almost compact in the writing but lyrical and poetic in the craft of telling a story that may not be a story at all in the traditional sense. Of course, Camus has been perfect for inspiration, and I can only dream that my grasp of language is one fraction as beautiful as his. The heart of the story in the “Adulterous Wife” is about a woman traveling with her husband in the Middle East where she experiences all the Arab men lusting after her everywhere she goes. She is married to a simple man who is driven by his work and his routine habits, which have started to annoy and dull the senses of his wife, who still dreams of more from love and life. One night when he falls asleep and she can’t, she sneaks out of the hotel room while he’s still snoring and runs off into forbidden territory for a woman, not even sure where she’s headed or where her passion will take her. She ends up embracing the earth and the heavens, immersed in the starlit sky, making infinite peace and ecstatic love with the night: “The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill Janine, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the dark center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth.” The story ends when she slips back into bed with her husband, who wakes up completely unaware she had ever been gone. Of course, the central irony of the story is that she never truly is adulterous at all, unless you consider making love to the God of nature as being some sort of cardinal sin. I know you see my point here; it just comes naturally, I’m sure. So if I might be so bold, let me slip back into bed with you and give you a glimpse of my world now. Just pretend you’ve been in a deep, deep sleep and have awakened at the ocean of our love, our Garden of Eden, and here’s the naked day ahead: Dear Cecilia, an addition to the above letter, a few more thoughts on a new day: It is another beautiful morning on the beach, with my pockets full of sand dollars and my back roasted red from running nearly naked in the sun. I figure if these letters ever truly make it to you they must look like notes put in bottles and tossed out to the sea of luck and happenstance. Until I settled in here, I only had a glimpse now and then, a notion at the ocean, of the sort of perfect peace that comes to my soul when it returns to a place like this. The sea of possibility and the sands of timelessness, a state where elemental and celestial and biological, natural existence comes in waves and tides and on the wind or through the fog and rain. Birds create a symphony surrounding my house. Deer graze and laze without a care in the world at my doorstep. Frogs sing out into the night. Fish rise up and keep the mosquitoes from buzzing too loud. The sun rises into my kitchen at the crack of dawn and sets late into the streaking magenta sky from my living room. Instead of planes buzzing over my roof, I now hear the honks of Canada geese incoming to the lake that is a block behind the property. Instead of the constant sound of traffic, there is the gentle chime of the wind through the salmon berries or the scuttling of raccoon feet fleeing my sudden appearance on the back deck. I have my Walden pond, I have my Tolle bench, my Steinbeck writing studio, my Henry Miller, Big Sur mindset. I so wish I had you. But, then again, I do!!! I have you to thank for all the great creativity I was able to accomplish in your home under far more trying circumstances and restless, endless turmoil and conflict that never needed to be part of our lives to begin with. I see that now, I feel the difference and know the truth. Peace and tranquility is what you needed most, not remorse or anger or pain and sorrow, guilt and jealousy. Sometimes, it takes going back to your roots to find it. Sometimes, maybe people never find it at all. It is hard these days to reconcile the truth -- that I have finally reached my dream in life and am now here totally alone with only the dog and my occasional friends to enjoy it with. I try to tell myself that it is best this way -- that I achieved it on my own and I don’t need a wife to support me or inspire me or guide me, even love me. But then the only reason I really ever wanted this was to reach the dream you and I once shared -- so you and I could have peace and love and nature and space and a garden and wildlife and beauty all around us for the rest of life to come. The idea was to find a perfect place to live the rest of our days and sleep peacefully the rest of our nights: a place to write and read and walk and run, to be healthy and to weather the storms, to live simply, smartly, wholly, spiritually, creatively, happily ever after. I guess for me, the fairy tale did come true, only it was a split decision that didn’t all quite come together when the timing was just right. Like how perfectly we loved each other was always -- and will always be -- the one true love of my life. Like now this beach house I own is simply the happy home we always hoped to have at the ocean of our dreams, and the true home I always worked toward to play out my “retirement” years in harmony. Sorry that this letter is getting a bit long with a tinge of self-pity there. I was thinking this thought all day -- how can you be much different from me or the woman who was with me for so long, so fine, so smart, so caring and loyal and patient and loving? How can you not think of me at least once or twice every single day? I can’t spend a single day without thinking of you at some point, not in a longing way even, but in a way that reminds me of all the wonderful things about you. Like today, I rolled out of bed thinking how strange it is to still be sleeping in the bed we bought after being married and laughing at myself for still sleeping on the same side I always did when I slept with you. Then I started thinking if maybe I had done something medically or surgically to correct the snoring that maybe I wouldn’t have driven you out of the bed to begin with. So I crawled in the shower and tried to change my focus, and all I could think about was trying to remember what it was like trying to make love with you on that cliff overlooking the ocean at Oswald West. All I recalled was the sound of the creek, the stickers, the precarious perch and the sound of people coming down the trail. Okay, I am sure you get my point. Now I know those aren’t delusions. They are the tangible and real experiences that continue to reverberate through our lives and make us the truly unique and special people we are. Nothing or no one can change that or take it away or even destroy it as fact and reality. There is no deniability. There is no possible doubt of its existence and the importance we each have had on the experiences we even now face day after day, alone, apart or with others. I think I might truly be guilty of stealing those experiences for my own emotional sickness of the past and abusing them in such a way that you could feel far different about them than I do. Yet I venture to guess that you still think of me far more than you really want to whether I write to you or not, which of course, is very much the same way I still feel. The fact that you don’t write to me at all doesn’t make me think of you less or love you less. I fully see and understand the consequences of my actions, my words, my stubbornness, my bull-headed anger, and know there is nothing else now I can ever do but write to you here alone. There is no greater realization in all of my life, my love. It would truly be delusional to think I could change things or that writing this will even reach your eyes or anyone else’s eyes in the near future. But I will send it and continue forever like my message in a bottle theme of life. I may be stranded alone on this bulging, thriving peninsula of love, but I have a nice house with a wonderful view of the sunset tonight. It never gets too hot here. The beach is the most wonderful place to run every day on earth. I have all our music with us, our memories, our photos, the children who sometimes call or reappear, our bed, all the peace and clean air and natural beauty beyond compare. If you get the message, please understand that I really don’t want anyone to save me or rescue me at all. Just now, I can hear the frogs starting to bark out across the pond and a wave of 15-20 geese go flying by my open window in formation, making the sound of a turbo-prop plane as they honk by into the sunset and cut through the wind. The velocity they generate is amazing with a perfect V-formation that shifts as the head bird drops back and another takes its place, never missing a beat. The sky is a pale wash of pink and blue and it is going to be another beautiful day in paradise tomorrow. Should you want to experience the ocean with a true beach boy before the world ends, there’s plenty of room for you here, too. I recommend a few walks with the waves at your side and the tide as your guide to simply find the soul that always was there to begin with. Or you can always hurl a few messages into bottles and maybe find your true self come floating back with the tide. I love you like no other man has ever loved you. I miss you. And I know you would love it here, too. Mario CAPE ALAVA Down to the coastline, we rode with the ocean, To sleep by the seaside, dreaming in waves Consumed by the tide; unaware, the outgoing tide. Counting the starfish, the Indian carvings, Life in a poolside, naked on the beach, And scavenging the tide; awash, the incoming tide. Lost on an inlet, the collateral flotsam, Time in a bottle, she savored the scene, And bathed in the tide; alive, the giving tide. Time, drifts away with the sea Love sets sail on the breeze One moment away from freedom Our souls sleep there on the beach The eagle was silent, a fawn lay sleeping, Its mother came crashing, they ran to the trees And fled from the tide; aware, the foreboding tide. Skipping a flat rock, the fossilized creek bed, Tracks of a bear cub, where Gods made love To depart with the tide; endless, the turning tide. Oh, Cape Alava, the wooden path wanders, trailing the seashore, we embraced the storm, with the pulse of the tide. Immersed, the enveloping tide. |
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Song of Cecilia soundtrack downloads
