Song of Cecilia Chapter Four

All original songs, writing and real-time performances

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

CLOSER TO NOW
“Underneath your outer form, you are connected with
something so vast,
so immeasurable and sacred, that it cannot be spoken of
-- yet I am speaking of it now. . ."
-- Eckhart Tolle

Every moment has led us together
Every word brings us closer to now. . . .
Every step that drew us together,
Every moment is . . . Closer to Now.
Closer to Now.

She came in through a storm of happenstance
Long flowing gown in an electrical dance
Under mystical skies and breaking branches
Released from lust and jealousy
and second chances
Jane of the universe, encircled and ever enchanted

Every moment has led us together
Every breath brings us closer to now. . . .
Closer to Now.

The fog parted in a blaze of illumination
Eyes of enlightenment stare in amazement
Under clearing skies and unclear arrangements
Bound by nothing at all but our own realizations

Jane of the universe, my mantra,
my muse, my maven

Every step has brought us together,
Every word brings us closer to now. . . .
Closer to Now.

She came in on a cloud of happenstance
Long Raven hair in an eclectic dance
Under hysterical moons and rising fantasies
Consumed by lust and luck
and all those last chances
Jane of the universe, unbound,
unaltered enchantress

Every second that brought us together,
Every moment is closer to now. . . .
Closer to Now.

The fog parted in a blaze of illumination
Eyes of enlightenment, shaped with amazement
Under parting skies and open arrangements,
Bound by philosophies, poetry and supplication . . .
Jane of the universe,
I surrender in resignation

Every step that brought us together,
every breath is closer to now.
Closer to Now . . . Closer to Now.

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.

Song of Cecilia:
Chapter Four

HOW DO I CHOOSE

From my world’s window view, time slips
Across my vision like the passing
Of the bus on the far side of the shore.
Like shifting clouds across the sky
My senses see time slipping by;
I wonder if love will.
For love turns me passive, content to watch
The day pass into night.

But still, I imagine my life by myself.
Sublimating my energy to some other work,
Some other purpose, turning my horrible
Want to art and instead having you care
For my desire in such a way, my days
Are nights spent loving you.

And so I sit at my window’s edge and
Wonder if love’s time leaves us useless
At the mercy of seasons.
Powerless to toss the frost from my hair,
The dusty leaves from my lap,
Impervious to the urges of spring.
Unknown to the fruits of summer’s warm air.

I could live, just looking at the far shore
With its floating movements,
The shadow of moments quickly spent,
Keeping close to shore, moored like luxury yachts
With thick ropes of heavy love.

Too precious to be allowed to float free,
Too valuable to be tossed away to the changing seas,
Stabled like a jewel in the dark confines
Of a locked vault, dry and safe.

-- Poem by Cecilia Angelique, written in 1976, given to Mario in 1988

“The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in a chord. Words. Was it their colours? He allowed them to
glow and fade, hue after hue: sunrise gold, the russet and green of apple orchards, azure of waves, the grey
fringed fleece of clouds. No, it was not their colours: it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then
love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations of legend and colour?”

-- James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”

                                   SONG OF CECILIA: The Artist as an Older Woman

Cecilia met Clay McFarley, her fifth husband-to-be, like she met Mario – floating along in life with celestial circumstance. After
making a black hole of her love with her broken-winged angel, Cecilia simply walked into her newest husband while attending
the funeral of her great aunt in Central Washington. Mr. Clay, as all his friends called him, sang in a church choir that
performed “Rock of Ages” and “Old Rugged Cross” during the service and he seemed to pursue her ring-less beauty from
the outset.

He was married but separated and going through a long divorce with older children involved, and she was finally recovering
from the second round of cancer treatments, with a full head of hair again and with her natural sexuality still intact. She talked
exuberantly about the music, and impressed him recanting explorations in the lower Cascade wilderness and the Methow
Valley above Lake Chelan, or the Goat Rock Wilderness area, places Mr. Clay knew well as a rugged outdoorsman and life-
long resident of the landscape. He was so unlike Mario it made Cecilia fully relax for a change, and she began taking the
train across the Cascades to meet him for long walks in the wilderness areas she once traveled with other friends, other men
or women or even alone in times that felt more free in her imagination. She felt protected by a man again, wanted, desired,
sought after, sensual, alluring, like her beauty was no longer in vain. She went back to the only place she felt true love in her
shattered past -- the love of her grandmother on her mother’s side, the only true family love she had ever known outside of the
love she had taken from her steady string of husbands.

So what if No. 5 didn’t desire to be a great writer or an angel of song. So what if he had seen little of the world outside the
Yakima Valley. So what if running an orchard irrigation business was not exactly working to change the world in big or small
ways -- at least it was helping to grow apples and other needed fruit for the fruit-eating world; he helped spread joy in his own
small ways, like singing in a choir. So what if he didn’t inspire her to write poetry or mythology or letter upon letter of love,
even about the love of her other ex-husbands, like she used to write for Mario once upon a time:

     “Oh Mario, I miss you so terribly and I want to keep myself upbeat and amused, so here I’ve been thinking
about the nature of love and freedom and the question of not loving enough, too much and of loving freedom
more than anything. I decided the two Michaels did not love me enough to give me freedom, but instead made me
feel like I didn’t love them enough. Well, actually, the second part is true -- that my second son’s father always
made me feel like I failed him for lack of love when really I might have loved him too much -- at least from a totally
selfish point of view. The epiphany here is that I’ve always looked at myself critically and assumed that I’ve loved
too little.”

With Mr. Clay, Cecilia never really fell in love at all, even though she permitted him to fall for her like she was a waterfall with a
crystal clear and refreshing pool below. Little did he know there was what Cecilia once called her “marble-shaped Adonis” of
an Mario and her entire broken love life of the past lurking about the deep end, with Mario still flailing about for this thing she
thought of as freedom after taking the same plunge one too many times himself.

Certainly, she had to admit, Mario had given her the freedom to love and live as she choose, even reaffirming all the
concepts in love that she had laid out for him in her boundless letters that became the very real Siren song to lure Mario into
her home, into her heart, into her life. She would take vacations with her best friends and even alone, hiking and camping or
just car-tripping to feel free and reborn, and she always returned freely to Mario with a reaffirming spirit that just seemed to
soar with the words they wrote to each other. In 1990, she had gone across the North Cascade Highway into remote
wilderness and sent him a wonderful postcard from the view of Whistler Mountain.

      “We are alive, well and still don’t smell. We had rain coming across the North Cascades, and it has rained every
night. We’re established at Cougar Lake, an un-named lake on the map, in the Methow Wildlife area. Yesterday we
went to Tiffany Lake, Honeyman Pass (elevation 7,200;) and Roger Lake. At Winthrop and around the lake there
are crowds, but no one is in the backcountry. This is one of the views (in the postcard) we saw from the top of the
pass. We’re heading to the Salt Lakes, Palmer Lake and Nighthawk today; Love this country -- you’d really like it
here, and I’m willing to come back soon. Miss you and love you lots, Cecilia.”

Mario and Cecilia never did venture to that part of the state together, choosing instead to head west or south, north into
Canada, or across the country whenever they would adventure into the larger world of their love. In his first marriage, Mario
had worked as a newspaper reporter in the Yakima Valley and Central Washington, and he really had no desire to ever go
back to that part of the country unless he had to; he more naturally gravitated to the coast and the ocean of his childhood. He
didn’t care for the heat, the dust, the wildfires, the yellow jackets, the people or even the lack thereof. But he was happy to
give his wife the freedom to travel wherever she wanted to go, even if it took her back there to a man who would sweep her
up and take her in when she was nearly a ghost of her former self.

     “I know that if I hadn’t met you that someone less worthy, but interesting would have come along in some
eventuality and I would have followed along my curiosity, my desire to know, and I cannot see myself involved in a
series of lifelong affairs. Or maybe I can see myself there and that scares me even more so. I don’t ever want to
experience this again.
      "The internal triangle. I don’t want to be exacting retribution for the rest of my life because my father didn’t
love me enough. I have to ask myself lots of hard questions to be as sure as I can because that’s only right for
myself and for you.”

Mario began to believe that unless he could get her to see things differently, Cecilia would forever exact that retribution from
him for the rest of his life, all the while going on to another in a series of lifelong affairs with men “less worthy,” just as he was
beginning to understand his own internal triangle of love – that his love of and for Cecilia was the same love he had for his
mother and his grandmother, women who always loved him with pure heart, soul and spirit. He saw that she wasn’t so much
in love with a man this time, or even an angel, as she was in love with the romance of the country she once explored, just like
he was in love with romance of returning to his roots along the coast.

She was going back to where her grandmother and aunt and mother were born and raised, riding the train through the
mountains to meet her hardy and handy Mr. Clay, and she was in love with the idea of ending her days there until death would
send her body back to the ashes from which she believed she was born. Mr. Clay had a nice house, a home, and he never
disturbed her when she was reading or doing her Yoga or watching Oprah in the late afternoon. He cooked for her, just like
Mario. He could fix things and had a handsome, beaver-like smile and that Irish-American spirit of determination that made
up for the fact he really had little important to say about anything in life or in love outside of the well-contained and self-
maintained world around him. He had a good retirement plan, medical insurance, and he vowed to take care of her for life if
she would just choose him over Mario once and for all. He even bought her the biggest diamond ring of any of the five, so that
had to count for something.

Mario, meanwhile, was still struggling with Cecilia’s concepts about freedom in love, realizing he never had a single free
choice in the matter from the beginning, realizing how fractured her entire concept of love was from the start and how it still
bound him, still kept him chained and bound to this endless writing to this very day.

After their first adulterous adventures in their earliest days -- with both Cecilia and Mario still fully married at the time -- Mario
pulled away from the relationship and returned to his first wife, Lori. The action was a blow to Cecilia, who had come to fall so
in love with Mario it made every other man in her life seem immaterial. She also kept writing to him, even though he was
trying to reconcile his other marriage and keep his family intact.

     “I feel I have learned a little more about love just recently. With Lori coming by to see you and leaving a note,
and with Christmas and New Year’s with its tradition of resolution, I had to consider that you might be faced with
an offer for marital reconciliation. And Christ, I don’t want to put you in the position of saying, well, what is your
choice? I sure as hell don’t want to lose you.
     And I tell myself I wouldn’t be a loser because I learned that what I need, what I want, what my dreams are
made of, is really available to me. And it makes me cry every time.
     Back to what I’ve learned about love today. I’ve decided before today that love, if it means freedom, and it must
-- it means freedom from bondage. In my convoluted thinking today -- worrying that when I see you again that you’
ll have decided that your family comes first -- no matter what the price -- that I’ll have made some sort of foolish
gamble and there will be an irony to enjoy.
      No, because I know I could hold someone in bondage and frankly, that doesn’t make me feel real good. I
simply refuse to wield that kind of power.”

Ultimately, Cecilia would unwittingly and then diabolically wield that kind of power and hold Mario in the ultimate bondage
anyone had ever exacted on him in the name of love. It was a bondage, a chain, that kept him writing and writing into a spiral
that only got deeper and deeper as he began to unravel her words – words from her own hand that simply made no sense at
all in the truth that she refused to acknowledge. The ultimate irony, too, was that when Lori discovered the letters Cecilia had
been writing her then-separated husband once upon a time in the past, the passion and the depth of desire they expressed
for Mario, that was all she wrote for marriage No. 1, and there was no turning back on the freedom that became a curse
Cecilia could never take back, even in the face of God, just like the love of her own children.

    “I know my love can wield positive results. I look at my children and how they love me. You know, they love me
in their own freedom in a way I wish I could have loved my own mother. I don’t tell you how gratifying that is.”

What were those positive results? Why did she feel so unloved by her mother, and certainly her father? Why did her children
feel so disconnected from her for so long, literally leaving one to grow up in the custody of his father, only to truly become a
family when she married Mario and they all brought their children together for a decade of happy and joyous memories? Why
did she assume the freedom to choose to love him even if he chose to love another, but not offer him the freedom to choose
the same fate? And this is the same baggage she now brings into a fifth marriage. What positive results will come from
Cecilia’s love now?

For Mario, the only free choice he had left was to finish the book of love they once started to discover the outcome for himself.
There was the entire theme in the last letter he ever read to Cecilia on her answering machine in Seattle before she changed
the number and left him completely alone while she moved in with Mr. Clay on the other side of the mountains between them:
     “So now I am free me again, uncommitted me, unbound me, while you can only dream of freedom again. I am cocky
me again. I am righteous me. I am confident me.
      “Having ‘freedom’ of this nature, I vow to take our love, my love to the world, my dear, just like I once set it free into the
tides of life. Something this powerful, this magnificent, is not something you just keep to yourself. Like a burning bush, I
will keep the light of our love blazing in the forest of my mind, on the fingers of my hands that can communicate it so many
different ways, manifest it in all its forms, strum its chords and pluck its notes one by one. You can come with me if you
choose -- you are always free there -- but I am going now, and this is the foundation, this is the music, that will rock the
world one day, of that I promise you.
      “If you won’t come with me, I will come alone for all the world to see. I sat naked in my backyard yesterday reading this
latest letter to you, and I am free to be naked again in my own Garden of Eden -- and I don’t even need Eve to be there
with me to get tempted by another snake. The farther I go away from the possibility that our love can be revived, the better
and better I get at writing this entire story the way it should be told -- with total truth and in the present light of reality.
Hopefully, it might even make you stop and think about love again like you did when we first met, and maybe you might
consider why you always take love from people so freely and then feel like you can freely end it whenever you so choose.
Where is the freedom in that?
    “I wake with a vision of your face smiling at me across the universe, also feeling us both smile and shake our heads at
each other for the absolute silly irony of our love. Yes, there is irony and always was, almost devilish mirth in the forces
that aligned to first bring us to each other and then to bind us in such blinding, heavenly love. What we didn’t see were all
the temptations and tribulations that would drag us back down into the world of men, the world of children, the world of work,
the world of pain, the world of envy, the world of suffering, the world of false hopes and dreams, false gods even, false
notions of grandeur, false starts, false emotions, broken promises and vows not said with conviction.
     “I think only angels are allowed to go back and forth between heaven and earth like we did in love, experience the love
of the ages, the love of mythology, transported into the parallel universe where nature and philosophy, science and logic,
music, literature, poetry, exhilaration and understanding all merge into an all-knowing, all-encompassing realization that
can only be called true love – a love open to all possibilities and capable of opening all doors into the heavenly world of
God.
      “We both always knew, even if we had our doubts and feared tempting God, that our love was blessed by heavenly
spirits or it wouldn’t have been allowed to exist in the first place under the weight of the worlds and the mistakes and
failures of our past marriages that were dragging us down when we first met. How utterly ironic that we first met under the
weight of the Post-Intelligencer’s iconic Globe spinning above us. Somehow, my love, we were drawn together by that
world we were in, gravitating toward a path that would take us far, far, far beyond into our own sense of place, into what for a
time was a true heaven here on earth.
       “Now, I still have the weight of that same world always pulling me back with the undeniable weight of its gravity. It was a
gravity that pulled me away often from the heavenly love I know you still have in your soul, in your light, in your spirit.
       “To love you like a man, Cecilia, is not enough. One must love you like a god, and to do that, a man must first learn
how to accept God, to walk with God, talk with God, run with God, to stop denying God, even just to find God, ultimately to
live with God as the true guide in life and in love. Otherwise, a simple man is doomed to fall back through that portal of
love into the world of confused and conflicted men, like an angel cast from heaven. When the expectations and the bar is
set at total love, there is no other way to maintain that love but to ask for, and appeal to, and to honor God’s love, God’s
strength, God’s patience, God’s wisdom and guidance, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness – when there is no other choice in
life but to continue to exist in the world of men. To love you as a man is simply just not enough and doomed to fail every
time. I wish to God I had seen this all before you made a choice to turn your back on me. I hope you have not turned your
back on God, too.”

Mario concluded that massive letter on freedom with an examination of one of Cecilia’s own poems, titled “How do I
choose?” It was a poem she had written years before meeting Mario when she was in the midst of an affair with another
married man named David. Of course, Cecilia at that time was married to Michael No. 2, the man she professed to Mario
that she might have loved “too much.” She was living on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle with a view that looked onto the boats
moored in Lake Union, and the poem is a Gatsby-like longing for love that really has no choice at all. That she gave the poem
to Mario as a way to entice his choice of falling for her love said more than he could ever reply in the final paragraph of his
fleeting response 15 years later:

     “You locked the vault on the freedom of our love when you closed the door on me, but I’m back to reclaim it all -- even
if I have to carry the entire safe with me on my back and break the steel with my own hands. Now I toss my jewels from that
love to the changing seas without you, to sink or float forever from the dark confines of your freedom to the waves of light
where the whole world and the universe beyond can see what true love, what my free love, is really made of.
      “You have always been free to make of it what you will, or take whatever you ever needed or wanted -- and you took
plenty over time, more than you will ever admit to anyone, I’m sure. Even God. You are free to do so now and always will
be. Was it you who set me free, or was it the other way around? I guess we’ll just have to let the readers decide from here
on out.”

"Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes
had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild
angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw
open the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!"

-- James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” from the subtitled chapter, “A Walk on the Shore”

Dear Cecilia,

Back in the present, somewhere later down the road on the shore of my “wild angel” dreams:

Realizing that each new letter I send pounds another nail in the coffin of what was our love and runs the risk of further legal
action on your part to stop the writing, I simply have no other choice but to write on.

The morning is cool and the sun is brilliant and the sky is as blue as the jays that cackle at the four deer prowling through my
backyard. No record heat here. No wildfires. No lightning strikes. No polluted air. No endless haze on the horizon. No noise of
traffic. It is the perfect place for me to write, a home for my soul, a natural habitat for my spirit, a landscape that comes alive
with the music in my heart, a destination for the soles of my feet.

Sensing I am truly close to the completion of “Song of Cecilia,” I sat out in the sun yesterday and emptied the last box of
letters and cards I had saved from the past 20 years. Aside from all those I have already returned to you or have written about
to start this chapter of the book, including most of our photos from that period, I was surprised how many I still had tucked
away, and how they sort of spilled out intermingled with letters my Grandma Copsey also sent to me and our family over the
years. The most amazing find was the actual notes I made on the plane flying down to her funeral in Pacific Grove, exactly a
year after we had spent our final Valentine’s Day together. The funeral was held in the church our family revolved around in
our earliest days, Mayflower Church, just a block up from the beach where I’m sure my soul was truly born.

      “Meditating on what I would say here today to honor my grandmother, I turned to the Bible that was awarded to me
here in this very sanctuary when I was 11 years old. It was a prize for memorizing a certain number of verses that Grandma
Copsey would dutifully help me with each night after we finished dinner. As kids, we would race across the patio and sit with
Grandma as she watched her favorite TV shows -- usually it was Perry Mason or Ironsides (outside of the Lord and the
memory of her departed husband, Ken Copsey Sr., she just loved that Raymond Burr). After the shows ended, Grandma
would work with us kids on Bible verses or let us play with all her school teaching aides -- her cut-out felt Bible characters,
the flash card learning tools, her hand puppets, her picture books.
       “In revisiting the memory of those days, I turned to this well-worn Bible from that time and just opened it haphazardly
to Galatians, where the verses at the end of the fifth chapter were all underlined:
     ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance:
against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh from affections and lusts. If we live in the
Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.’
     “I ran along the ocean this morning at sunrise in the Spirit of my grandmother, and I stand here today, one of the many
fruits of the spirit of Marna Frances Copsey, but I never called her anything but Grandma. She embodied all those ripe
fruits and never failed to leave all she touched just a little sweeter and more nourished just for the grace in being in her
true spirit, too.
     “In her final days, Grandma could recall very little of what was happening in life day to day in the present, but she could
recall every little detail of what she had witnessed in the past. When I was 15, for example, Grandma would let me drive all
over California with her after I passed my learner’s permit in summer school. In late July that year, 1969, we set out in her
Dodge Valiant for Aunt Carol’s house near Fresno, having to drive over the Pacheco Pass from the ocean into the stifling
100-degree heat of the valley. I started telling the story of how we pulled over at a fruit stand on the pass -- her favorite
stopping point -- and she bought a big bag of cherries, letting me take over the wheel at that point for the remainder of the
150-mile drive. Grandma just picked up the story, telling everyone how much fun she had being driven around California
by her grandson as she nearly ate the whole bag of cherries along the merry way, spitting the pits out the open window.
Then she recalled how on the return trip, we stopped at Aunt Martha’s near the small valley town of Firebaugh, where there
was a cantaloupe farm in the midst of harvesting a field of melons. Aunt Martha took us down to the conveyor belt where
they separated the fruit that already was too ripe for market -- melons free for the taking -- and we loaded the entire trunk of
the Valiant with at least 400 pounds of fresh cantaloupe. Of course, in the heat, the fruit just continued to ripen all the way
back into Monterey, where we trailed melon juice out the back of the trunk as Grandma had me make at least four stops to
happily bless all her friends with fresh fruit. ‘It was the best cantaloupe I think I ever tasted,’ she recalled vividly with
delight, even 30 years removed from that day.
     “As her first-born grandchild and someone who truly was raised by Grandma as much as my mother and father raised
me, too, I can honestly say I never saw her angry, never once recall her ever being impolite, impatient (unless it was for a
piece of her hidden candy), never can remember her being unhappy, bitter, hostile, fearful of anything or anyone.
    “I recall coming into church here as a kid -- usually late -- and I could always find my family during the opening hymn
just by listening to my Grandmother’s voice, always ringing out so distinctively resonant above the congregation with her
opera-trained alto, always in the right key, with the perfect pitch and enunciation.
    “She gave so many, many gifts, so much fruit, to her children and grandchildren, so many simple lessons in life, so
many major acts of love that I can never possibly do justice to them here in my lifetime. Coming home from church as
children, we would always ride home with Grandma, taking the long way back along Asilomar, stopping to marvel at the
crashing waves on the rocks at Lover’s Point, feeding bread crumbs to the seagulls, or checking out the otters eating
shellfish floating on their backs, or the seals sunning themselves and barking at all the tourists, or the painters working
their canvases to the colors that were truly the colors of Grandma’s entire life. She used to say she had come here to
Pacific Grove for “one year, and one year only” and she stayed a lifetime. From this simple, quiet home, Grandma
bonded this family together -- my entire world -- like no other person I’ve ever known in 50 years of life. She blessed us
and everyone she touched forever with the pure and lasting fruits of her love, and I know inside of me and within everyone
here in this room today, Marna Copsey is exactly in the place she always wanted to be -- with a trunk load of melons and a
bag of cherries and that hidden bag of candy waiting for us all to arrive again one day into the true glory of her ever-lasting
love.”

Without getting more emotional here than the writing needs to be, Cecilia, that tribute I gave to my grandmother shortly after
our terrible divorce marked a true turning point in my life and in my approach to loving you and living in general. It was at that
time when I realized that all I had been writing to you was like the end of that passage from Galatians -- the part that I didn’t
include in the memorial I gave in the church that day:

    “Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.”

Mixed in with the writing from before by grandmother’s funeral was one of the letters I had included from you as the ending to
my facetious and disastrous “Bible of Love -- The Real Story.” It’s one I am not even sure I actually published on my Internet
site, but one I must have communicated to you in a way that still reverberates to this day, with both of us wondering when I will
ever write a new ending or a new beginning or a new story entirely. It is when I began to realize all I had been writing to you
and about you was doomed to utter failure and I vowed to find a way out of the malaise. The path became clear when I started
weaving our writing together, fusing the past current with the present just the way we used to do so amazingly well, so
uniquely free in the writing, when we were as much in love as any couple on earth. It began with this quote from you:

    "I hope you never regret the words you’ve written me, that truly you want to be a father to my children, a
husband to my wife. I’m choosing to believe you really mean these things.
    I just reread your letters -- how many there are!
    I can see only you everywhere in my life -- we have whatever it takes to succeed, to make love grow, a fairy tale
come to life."

And it ended with this ironic reply from me 15 years after the “real story” truly began

      “What kind of fairy tale is it when the man who worked so hard to make that all come true cannot even love the one he
lived it with in the first place? Who’s living a fairy tale now? My story doesn’t look like that at all anymore, and it is so, so,
so tragically sad. When you banished me from the dream we created together, when you turned your back on our life, your
eyes and ears and body from my touch, your kiss from my lips, I was left with nothing but the reality of the words I write now
and the wonderful words of a fairy tale love you created for me. I don’t believe in fairy tale love anymore, Cecilia, while you
run off on another fairy tale adventure, one after the other.
      “I chose to believe YOU REALLY MEANT THOSE WORDS you wrote, and I choose to believe you really mean them
still, whether you actually own up to them -- or not. Maybe you’re not brave enough to live up to them any longer, or bold
enough to even make a feint-hearted attempt. It was REALITY, and I’m not surrendering it to anyone but you ever again
on the path I choose alone. I have a family who still loves me despite how much I screw up my life; they never turn their
backs on anyone who makes mistakes in love, even you. I don’t need to always be seeking or finding a love I gave up; or
denying my love for anyone, certainly not for you, just like I can’t deny the true love of God or the love I have been
blessed with from my grandmother. I don’t need to be running after another’s love at the expense of another love, and I
would never abandon the love that I have accepted or have been given, even if it should by an act of God appear to
abandon me. In my love, a child of God’s love, I have learned it’s certainly better in the long run -- even if far more difficult
-- to stick things out, especially when love might change its face to turn ugly and distorted or becomes fat and lazy, or gets
so wracked with hormone imbalances it winds up bloated and sick. In my world, which once seemed like a fairy tale come
true for you, that’s what makes love special, what turns frogs into princes and princes into angels. Lasting love.
Vanquishing love. True love. Tolerance. Understanding. Forgiveness. Communication. Compassion. Giving. Accepting.
      “I can’t stop loving people I love even if they stop loving me. I hope you realize that is what the fairy tale was all about
in the first place. That‘s the true irony everyone gets to enjoy, as you would have it, at the expense of all my love, all our
love now.”

POSTSCRIPT: I am sending you this full chapter today with the letters, the postcard and the poems that it is based upon so
you will have a clear idea of where this all fits in with the other writing you already have received this past month, even if you
don’t want to read any more about the past. (The check is for any past postage due that you had to pay or any legal fees you
feel you have to incur in the future, or it can be used as return postage, or to buy yourself some wonderful flowers, or for gas
money for a trip out to the coast to visit our dream realized.)

This really is about the present, how I have come to a point in the book where I begin to see your love and my grandmother’s
love as the same love -- the love that God blessed us with from the beginning of time. It might be fractured or erode or evolve
or change or even float free to be “tossed away to the changing seas,” but it always comes back to the place where it began.
That’s why I return it now to you. You once gave it to me freely; you wrote these amazing words of love and longing, and they
are yours again to give to whomever you choose. I presume I am free to draw my own conclusions, as is anyone else who
reads them from now on out. They do have a true poetry to them, a romance, a Siren call that was oh so real and oh so
relevant to your life and my life, even today; even if we cover our ears or deny the music or fail to see all the colors through the
fog. On and on and on and on. That is truly the only choice I have left. To live on. To love on. To sing on. To write on.

And so I write and I leave you lastly with this vision from your hand, the dream I have now fully realized in my new home at the
ocean, right down to the windows and the shade and the deck facing the sea; only now you sleep with a different dream, only
to exist as a piece of literature in this house full of friends and kids and great music and a book that I believe shall stand the
test of time -- all the time we ever had together and all time yet to come.

What happened to such a bold dream and the woman who was “planning to be so bold,” my love? What does it take to be
alive now? Heat? Dust? Smoke? Ice-cold winters? Sweltering summers? Windows that look into insurmountable mountains
or onto endless planes of plainness? Friends that have vanished and the kids, too? Senses that have been dulled by
silence? Nervous exhaustion that has taken its toll, finally succumbing to the numbing infection of love that “turns me passive,
content to watch the day pass into night.”

You no longer have to use your imagination. There is nothing to fear. The dream is real. The house by the sea is here, and I
am alone, patiently waiting with friends and family who visit often and find great joy in discovering the beaches and the natural
wonders that abound. I am making some great music of my own, turning all the songs from the book into an actual soundtrack
that can play along with the story as it develops. This weekend, BigCity Mike and his family are coming down to beat the heat
with his 12-string, and we are going to re-record “Song of Cecilia” using the backing tracks that already are on the old analog
version -- joyfully bringing the song into a new digital format that hopefully enhances my vocals and the acoustic guitar sounds
to give the whole piece its true soul. I just wish it were that easy re-writing the bulk of our life and our love, because I’m not
sure when that project will ever be complete, even if I have realized the fullest potential of all you ever used to dream and write
about. Like I said, on and on and on ago, I give it all back to you now and to anyone else who shall hear these songs, these
true letters from me and from you:

    “Sometimes Mario I’ve thought if you were to go away, for whatever reason – if you were no longer available to
me – would I think this was all a dream, forget and relapse into God knows what?
    Sometimes, I think maybe yes, I would, and other times I’d say never. Part of me tells me that I’d always hold
out and believe it happened once, it could happen again. But you know, I’ve known women who loved so deeply
and completely that nothing could replace that for them.
    I want to think it was a matter of not loving life enough, of being too old and refusing to believe in possibilities,
that age robs you of courage as a matter of course, a part of the process. I’m not so sure any more. I see it
differently.
    It’s not a matter of losing heart at all. They were lucky to have experienced what they did; it sets them apart.
And the rest of us dare to sit in judgment because we’ve never been where their hearts are.”

TO THE KING OF MY HEART

(a letter, a dream, a song from Cecilia to Mario)

“I have to work hard to try to stay in this world,
when all I want to do is
dream on and on.

In part, I’m fighting off nervous exhaustion,
the wishes of my body
to succumb to a cold
or other mundane infection.
Mostly, I am so engrossed by you and the possibilities
that I could
meditate . . . for hours.

If I were to take the thought of the house by the sea, with lots of windows,
I could expand it room by room,
shade it with morning light,
cast the afternoon shadows;
Whisper dusk into the corners and bring down the night.

I could stand against its exterior and feel the sun
penetrate and radiate,
or look for shade under its eaves
as a respite from the heat.
I can imagine standing on its deck facing the sea
and marveling
at how hard the rain can fall. And that’s only a small thought.

I imagine the house, our house -- if I might be so bold and surely
I’m planning to be so bold -- full of friends -- your friends,
my friends, kids’ friends -- good music, good literature,
and bad too!
And the smells of wonderful things cooking and smoking -- feeding our
souls and senses
with all the things it really takes to be . . .
Alive.”