Song of Cecilia -- The rock-novel begins

All original songs, writing and real-time performances

BY ANGELO M. BRUSCAS III
Copyright 2009, Real News Network and AMBIII Publishing

STILL RUNNING
I’ve run down from the mountains, until they meet with
the sea.
I’ve run all the long races, I run to be free.
I’ve run the Pacific coastline, across Washington, D. C.
I’ve run with Congressmen and Communists, yet never
known
Any peace
Running farther on.
You run, run, run, run and you’re gone.
I run to this beat of my heart, blood flows through these
pores.
I’ve run from my home and my family, until I could crawl
no more.
I’ve run naked on the city streets, along this kingdom’s
floor.
I’ve run from cops and from criminals; it’s my running
they deplore.
Running to stay strong.
You run, run, run, run and you’re gone.
I’ve run onto fields of glory, where games of Gods are
waged.
I’ve run from rocks, from dogs and from fathers; I’ve run
to dull the pain.
I run to escape the rest of my life; I run at work or at play.
With time passing me by each day, I rise to run again.

Running into the dawn
You run, run, run, run and you’re gone.

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 Eleven

This is our own peculiar obsession – the blending of words, music, emotion, color, light, the outside with the
inside. Ambiguous stuff, not at all concrete but with elements that can be named if not known. Elusive –
illusory. This common language as I call it is, I think, the source for completeness, the wholeness. The Tower
of Babel tumbled into dust when we met. The curse was lifted and we spoke and we listened and we hear. It’s
more than what I’ve described, but I think it’s what made it possible to experience a friendship so rich and so
satisfying and unique. It explains how I feel healed by your presence and adds clarity to everything that
follows. Love, Cecilia.

-- Cecilia in a 1989 letter to Marlo



                                SONG OF CECILIA: Toppling Tower of Babel

Virgo Horoscope for week of June 25, 2009:
There's a better than even chance that you're about to embark on a Summer of Love. To improve your odds even
more, meditate on the following questions. 1. What qualities do you look for in a lover that you would benefit from
developing more fully in yourself? 2. What do you think are your two biggest delusions about the way love works? 3.
Is there anything you can do to make yourself more lovable? 4. Is there anything you can do to be more loving? 5.
Are you willing to deal with the fact that any intimate relationship worth pursuing will inevitably evoke the most
negative aspects of both partners -- and require both partners to heal their oldest wounds?

Taurus Horoscope for week of June 25, 2009:
Do you have a subconscious urge to escape the constraints of your customary behavior? Have you ever wished you
could be someone else for a while? If so, this is your lucky week, Taurus. The cosmos is granting you a temporary
exemption from acting and feeling like your same old self. From now until July 2, you have permission to walk like,
talk like, think like, and even make love like a Pisces or Virgo or Gemini -- or any sign, for that matter, except
Scorpio or Aquarius. You might enjoy checking out my complete love horoscopes for the other signs, and following
the advice that sounds most fun.

Dear Cecilia,

Following this Free Will Astrology advice, being the bullheaded, bullshitting Taurus writer that I am, I will of course
choose to become a Virgo like you this week to see if we might together “embark on this summer of love” he has
forecast for you Virgos of the universe. I also will attempt to answer the questions he poses in due time, but first I want
to give you a little taste of what my summer of love already looks like, taking you along in real time as I make my
morning run to the beach and back.

Out the door, up with the sun, the air as we head west toward the beach is sweeter than sugar, with the roses and the
strawberries, salmon berries, scotch broom and beach pine all intermingling in the gentle, shining sea breeze to give
off a fragrance that is simply unique to this world. I put on the iPod to “shuffle” mode for the half-mile jaunt down the
backroads to the sand dunes and U2 miraculously comes on with the very song-thought quotes where my writing to you
last departed:

You're taking steps that make you feel dizzy
Then you learn to like the way it feels
You hurt yourself, you hurt your lover
Then you discover
What you thought was freedom is just greed
Goodbye...
And it's emotional; Good night...
I'll be up with the sun
You're still holding on
I'm not coming down
I'm not coming down
I'm not coming down

-- U2 “Gone”

The run takes Babe and I past Ocean Shores City Hall, across the main boulevards along the strip-city tourist part of
town, and then onto the main beaches through a series of maze-like trails across the sand dunes. Babe knows the way
like a champ now, weaving our way through the scrub oaks, huckleberry and beach grass in the fading shadows of the
Shilo and Sands and other hotels that give way to the brilliant sun rising from the east. I notice how the sugary smell
inland has now turned into a saltier air, something like say a candy-covered pretzel or salt-water taffy being made in the
morning on the docks as the first crab and halibut catches arrive on ice.

Normally, I run without music when I hit the dunes, but the music today is out-of-this-world perfect for the state of mind
and state of nature. After U2, the next song is “Purple Rain” by Prince, a song that I’m sure neither one of us can listen
to without thinking of each other and the concert we went to together and the love that began back in that day. “I only
want to see you bathing in the Purple Rain. . . .” Then Dylan’s great ode to late-in-life fleeting love, “I Fell in Love With
You,” follows: “I was all right ‘till I fell in love with you.” By that time, I am just into the dune trail when your favorite of all,
Bob Marley, comes on randomly with two songs, back to back: “Exodus” and the song that truly marked our love
forever, “Could You Be Loved.”

Dont let them change ya, oh! -

Or even rearrange ya! oh, no!

We’ve got a life to live.

They say: only - only -

Only the fittest of the fittest shall survive -

Stay alive!

Could you be loved and be loved?

Could you be loved, wo now!

- and be loved?

I love the end of the song when Marley keeps repeating over and over and over: “Say something . . . Say something . .
. Say something.” Okay, so you get the picture of the groove I’m in and the thoughts I’m thinking, wondering if you will
ever say something ever again to the man who could answer that question for you unquestionably, the man who is the
fittest of the fittest, and the man you know is so, so alive.

Out onto the beach, I marvel that the tide is the lowest I have seen all summer thus far, with the wave line rolled back at
least a quarter mile or more, unveiling new beaches I have never run across before. I love to read beaches now like you
love to read travel books. There are little inlets and underwater gullies of sand and tide pools teeming with crabs and
anemones and seagulls feasting on a full and laden table.

At this point, Babe runs free and splashes about to chase the gulls away, and I strip off my shirt, adjust the headphones
and run nearly naked to the morning sun for the next three miles along this rare uncharted territory. No one else is on the
beach and our footprints are the first to make a mark in the sand. The next song playing in my head is M Ward’s little
gem of wisdom, “Today’s Understanding,” which Mike my son turned me onto when he gave me the iPod for Christmas.

What a gift, just like yours, the gift of music. It leads to miraculous, lyrical, angelic revelations:

Do you see the way that tree bends?
does it inspire?
leaning out to catch the sun's rays
a lesson to be applied
are you getting something
0ut of this all encompassing trip?
You can spend your time alone, r
e-digesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one
who can't forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense . . .
to live in the present tense.

Have you ideas on how this life ends?
checked your hands and studied the lines
have you the belief that the road ahead
ascends off into the light?
seems that needlessly it's getting harder
to find an approach and a way to live
are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?
You can spend your time alone re-digesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who cannot forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense

-- Pearl Jam, “Present Tense”

When that song came on, I fell to my knees at the edge of ocean and cried out with a pure knowing that “this all-
encompassing” trip, this run of evolutionary nature, life and light, was a sign from God that my love for you is as real and
as pure the day before me. That song pretty much is the entire point of everything I do in the present tense, all that I
write, and I realized that one of the biggest issues I will never be able to circumvent alone is the inability to forgive
myself for this barrier of impossibility between us that I just cannot remove no matter how hard I try or how well I write.
Now, in the very real present tense with the sea-sweet morning air sifting through my open office window as I write into
the view of the pines and the alder and the berry bushes, it occurs to me that the Pearl Jam song was like finding a
pearl of wisdom on the beach at low tide, like an agate made clear by the sea. And it is something found for me and for
you, applying equally to us both. Maybe that’s Virgo thinking for a change, that the world doesn’t just revolve around us
Taurus terrors. Maybe you have just as must difficulty forgiving yourself as I do. Maybe that’s why you are where you are:
because you, too, found “that needlessly it's getting harder to find an approach and a way to live” under the destruction
of our marriage and our life together. You had to move on toward your “belief that the road ahead ascends off into the
light.”

Such questions must still linger for both of us: How can I feel that I can ever forgive myself for what I have written and
said and done in the past, when these words are never worthy enough of your forgiveness, or might even make such
true forgiveness ever more impossible to achieve? How can you ever feel forgiven if I keep reminding you of all the
mistakes we ever made? How can I find an ending to this “re-digesting past regrets” when I can “never come to terms
and realize” the pure peace of forgiveness in my own heart and soul, even if I believe truly that God is a forgiving God?
How can you ever make peace with God when I seem never to give you a moment of peace to simply make peace with
yourself, much less with me?

I would like to break from that run now and go back to the questions posed in our Virgo horoscope, which might be
easier to answer for the week and the summer of love ahead. Those questions seem just as valid as the ones I just laid
out, which I truly cannot answer in the present tense.

First up, what qualities do I look for in a lover that I would benefit from developing more fully myself? Forgiveness,
patience, acceptance and empathy. Obviously, the ability to be more forgiving would be the highest on that list in my
present state of mind. To be more patient, to look more closely at how my actions affect others. To be more accepting.
To be more thoughtful of others.

Next, what are my two biggest delusions about the way love works? Of course, that love has no ending, since I can’t
seem to find one in my love for you; that love doesn’t have to be reciprocated to exist. Or that love is the key to the
universe; or that the same love I have for you is the same love I have for God. There are just too many delusions I
maintain about love that I just am deluded totally into thinking are real and true, and not delusional at all!!!

Third question: Is there anything you can do to make yourself more loveable? That’s a funny question. I am now a
magnificent specimen of myself, at 210 and tan and strong and healthy and handsome as I have ever been. I play better
guitar and sing better than ever. I write voraciously, never chase other women or even let them chase me, preferring to
run with nature and Babe and be at one with the universe around me. I guess I could make myself more accessible to
love, but I see no purpose in that when I have all the love I ever want or desire right here at my hands and in my heart. I
don’t ever drink to excess, smoke only occasionally on the right occasions, believe in God and salvation and hope and
joy and realization and creativity. I can fix most things, am not needy or demanding, don’t need someone to pick up
after me and can cook with the best men I know. I could search out love more actively, but I am actively seeking love in
just about everything I do, from sunrise to sunset. I guess the answer to the question is that I think I am as loveable as I
am ever going to get at this age and stage of my life.

Fourth: Is there anything you can do to be more loving? Sure, that’s easy: actually be able to physically touch and talk
and truly love the woman I truly love. If I could do that, God permitting, I know I could and would be the most loving man in
the universe and never have any questions about love again for the rest of time to come.

Finally, the most important part of our Virgo astrological omen of the week: Are you willing to deal with the fact that any
intimate relationship worth pursuing will inevitably evoke the most negative aspects of both partners -- and require both
partners to heal their oldest wounds?

Our wounds are obvious and they are deep and they are old now. This is the only intimate relationship I am pursuing
and I know how it still evokes the most negatives aspects of both of our failures in the past. I know those wounds can
only be healed through love, the love of God, of joy, hope, faith, trust, peace, forgiveness, communication,
understanding, wisdom; love with eternal life not eternal sorrow; love without regret, love without guilt, love that is here
and love that is now and love that is with me in the present tense. Neither you nor I can heal our wounds alone, I know
that for certain now. I can cover them up with my tan and I can surround them in new surroundings, I can even pursue a
new relationship to avoid evoking the most negative aspects of my life -- how I lost your love and how I can never find it
now no matter how hard I try.

So, I guess my answer is a total “yes” to the question of whether I’m prepared to deal with the fact that to love in this
summer of love will require both of us to heal our oldest wounds. And yes, I’m even prepared to deal with the fact that
this might not be possible unless both of us want to heal ourselves at this level at all. You might feel already healed, and
in this case, I am ready to deal with the fact that it might require a different form of healing on my part. I would like to
think this is part of the process, or the only way I truly can help heal myself, but I know in my heart that pure healing can
only be accomplished with time and hope and faith and strength and patience and love.
So in waiting for your love, ready to accept the healing at the highest levels of love, I run on, turning back on the beach to
retrace my steps home:

Returning the headphones to my ears and slipping back into that wonderfully durable black sleeveless micro-fiber tank-
top you once gave me for my birthday, Babe and I parade home triumphantly with a few sand dollars and our free-form
joyous thoughts to the music of random amazement: “Wild, Wild Life” by Talking Heads runs into “Crosstown Traffic” by
Hendrix, then “Baby Please Don’t Go” by Van Morrison and Them merges with “Hey Hey, My, My” by Neil Young, and
then Patti Smith’s great ode to “Dancing Barefoot” simply convinces me that God, certainly not me, is controlling this
run of my life and that you are somehow in full control of the music of my soul.

In the song, Patti wanders off into a stream of consciousness poem, much like wandering off with your thoughts while
running barefoot along a beach with no other footprints in the sand:

The plot of our life sweats in the dark like a face
The mystery of childbirth, of childhood itself
Grave visitations
What is it that calls to us?
Why must we pray screaming?
Why must not death be redefined?
We shut our eyes we stretch out our arms
And whirl on a pane of glass
An affixiation, a fix on anything the line of life, the limb of a tree
The hands of he and the promise that she is blessed among women.

The song ends with Patti moaning over and over: Oh God I fell for you ... Oh god I fell for you.
I rarely fall or trip on my runs any longer, preferring to run at a much slower and deliberate pace. I realize fully that should
I fall and hurt myself, no one will be home to help pick me up or bandage my wounds or take me to the doctor or help
me heal.

The remaining songs on the last leg home continue randomly with Neil Young’s “The Way,” a song I normally would
never play on my own but one that was just perfect in the context, with Neil and a choir of children singing about finding
their way home to love. That was followed by Elvis Costello’s rocking “Hi Fidelity,” and then Ryan Adams’ appropriately
titled “Love is Hell.” Finally, as I rounded the corner to my quiet little block of paradise, the run was brought full circle with
U2 again. It was a song from the days we first fell in love, live off “Rattle and Hum,” and I will leave you the lyrics just like
my run ended stretching out on the wonderfully inviting porch of my new home:

You say you want diamonds on a ring of gold
You say you want your story to remain untold
But all the promises we make, from the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you . . .
You say you'll give me a highway with no one on it
A treasure just to look upon it, all the riches in the night
You say you'll give me
Eyes in a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbor in the tempest
But all the promises we made
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
You say you want
Your love to work out right
To last with you through the night
You say you want
Diamonds on a ring of gold
Your story to remain untold
Your love not to grow cold
All the promises we break
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
You...all I want is...
You...all I want is...
You...all I want is...
You...

Here’s to you and me and our Virgo forecast in this new summer of love. Hope you enjoyed our run together. It fills me
with love and happiness, wisdom and understanding, faith and patience, pure tears of joy and endless paths of wisdom
-- and I think gets me just a little closer to healing with the pure love of God and the music of our lives to guide me.

Running toward love not away from it any longer,

Mario

POSTSCRIPT: For the first time in maybe 30 days, the rain falls in waves and I may end my streak of runs on the beach
to stay home and package up the writing up to now. I have started to sketch out a fictional ending that I’m not sure
makes any sense at all unless it makes sense to you. The ending is just like the beginning -- we learn to heal and to love
and live a life of enlightened oneness with all we have been blessed with and all that is yet to come. The trouble is,
given the plot so far, I’m just not sure how to get there from here. Maybe you have a few suggestions. Or maybe you
think I have written enough already. If only you would kindly let me know.

Here’s a new ending I might suggest for starters: We agree to meet on July 3, our old anniversary, to spend the day
talking and walking and enjoying our company in total peace without expectations or agendas and without talking about
the past or the future. We share a fine meal, wander the beach looking for gemstones and shells and eagle feathers,
play with the dog, play some music, and simply play with each other in the way we always played like we were playing
with the Gods. Now this doesn’t mean in any sexual or sensual way, other than in the perfect pairing of a man and a
woman that we are and always will be. We end the day at sunset with a fire on the beach, burning these words forever,
page by page, releasing the ashes into the sky and the sand and the sea of infinite design and ultimate destination.
We can even visit your favorite place on earth, the Olympic Peninsula, only a short drive and another peninsula away
from my true Garden of Eden. And there are does and fawns and bucks that come right up to my door, so your place
“that you match” is right here whenever you can come. I can only dream these words you wrote in the past are still true
to this day:

The first time I went to the Peninsula was with my mother and Tom as a celebration for my high school
graduation in 1969. It would also be their last trip there as state residents; they knew they were moving to
Southern California in six weeks or so.

We camped at the Elwha River and everyone cracked a beer first thing. I took off for a hike and started up the
road to the hot springs. The road was closed that year and barricaded. I had a few joints or a lid with me, I
don’t remember, and I wanted to smoke a little. I walked up the road for awhile and then crashed through the
woods to the river. I sat there and wrote a poem about the river and with its passage, the transition to
adulthood – symbolic adulthood, anyway.

A doe came through the woods while I was sitting there writing. I felt I’d found a place I matched!
As it turned out, I made a few more trips that summer. That was one of the best things about being
emancipated, the ability to decide how to use your time and take off to new places.

My childhood absolutely pales to everything that’s happened after age 16, and definitely at 17. Going to the
Peninsula that Memorial Weekend (19 years ago) is like the gate to my life. I’ve been to the Peninsula with
every important person in my life. I couldn’t say the same about any other place. It does inspire poetry.

I find loving you is like being in that same environment; that same sense of being in harmony, the rightness
of it all. It’s finding the horizon open and new things to discover at every turn. It’s beauty at its most sublime
and the opening of a whole new world. It’s poetry.

The sun is setting. In the darkness I wish you beautiful images so you’ll never feel lonely – colors and life
and more. For me, I can dream of what it’s like to fall asleep in your arms and wake up happy.

Love, Cecilia.

TOWERING BABBLE
I walk the highest beam on this skyscraper of life,
Hanging in the balance, Stepping over the line
I build the tower to reach through the skies
I talk to the Gods, who hear my lies

I skirt the edge above the sidewalk of time,
Skipping over hurdles, the pace is mine
I run the race without even trying
I walk with the Gods and dream of flying

Tower of Babel, wall of despair
To be like Samson, cut free of his hair
Or caged with Daniel in the lion’s lair,
Climbing Jacob’s ladder on a wing and a prayer

I see the beam through the blinding light
Shielding my eyes, and trembling white fright
I call to the Gods in the darkest of night
I drank the wine, accepting my plight

Tower of Babel, rubble of my days
Tower of tears, tower of decay
Tower of words, to lead us all astray
Tower of Babel, tower of pain

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