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

CAPE FLATTERY
I bowed down at the edge of reason,
I bowed down and kissed the sea,
I bowed down to the changing seasons,
I bowed down with the waves on the beach.
She couldn’t swim, though she could float,
She left me there, an anchorless boat.
I bowed down at the edge of reason,
I bowed down to the crashing sea.

We live our lives so lost and lonely, we drift through time
for all to see,
We drown in love for that one and only, we wait for
something real to believe. . . We live for love to set us free

I rose up on the path of freedom, I rose up beyond belief,
I rose up, such a peaceful feeling, I rose up from the
depths of the sea
She couldn’t rise, though she could float. She left me
there and unleashed my soul.
I bowed down like a wave released,
I rose up like the tide on the beach.

We live our lives so lost and lonely, we drift through life
for all to see,
We drown in love looking for that one and only, we wait
for something real to believe. . . We live for love to set us
free

I bowed down into the setting sun, I bowed down to life on
the run,
I rose up with a pure understanding, I rose up to see all
God has done
She couldn’t fly, though she could float; left me there in a
haze of smoke.
I bowed down, a wave released, I rose up from the depths
of the sea

We swim through life, it’s the same sad story.
We drift with the tide and out to sea,
We drown in love, others in glory,
We wait for something real to believe,
We live for time to set us free.
I bowed down . . . I rose up . . .
From the depths of the sea

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 Seven

Maybe it’s just conceit, but I believe my experiences are way more than just ordinary. They have spawned
poetry and memories that give birth to greater glory. I’ve made love in a canoe at the Arboretum, on a
mountain side in deep snow, at Gold Beach, Oregon in the afternoon, with cars whizzing by on the Coast
Highway, in the woods, at the river’s edge during hunting season with hunters’ bullets flying overhead, in a
boat on the reservoir for the Everett watershed, on a bluff overlooking the Snoqualmie Valley. You might be
thinking, what’s the point of telling you all this? The point is that you can ask anything of me. I hope you do.
And if you don’t, or can’t, I’ll stretch your comfort zone to take more in. I’m not sorry to tell you that making
love in the dark bed is not the only place where it’s at, and I’m gratified to catch a glimpse that you’re beyond
that stereotype, too. My hunger for you is huge and if I can’t arouse your imagination and raise your manhood
with a single image or a soft sigh, then I’ve failed to set us free in the larger landscape. Here’s to Lewis & Clark
and two explorers of the Pacific Trail. Love, Cecilia.

-- Letter from Cecilia to Mario, 1988



                                   SONG OF CECILIA: Mario Eden Reborn

Dear Cecilia,

On my personal soul journey of life, one true and real accomplishment that stands out above all the rest was completing
the Big Sur Marathon with you as my lover and my guide. It was, for me, the ultimate test of personal dedication,
commitment to endurance, the expression of all that is my spirit and conscious being, the culmination of years and years
of athletic endeavor, the perfection of all that I am, all that I was, and all that I ever will be. And I never in my life could have
done it without you every step of the way.

I woke up this morning remembering our tent up on the hill camping above the Valley of the Moon two days after the
marathon, me still hobbled by blisters, you enduring my fitful sleep and bull-like temperament, and how I had to crawl out
to piss after drinking too much wine, with dew and mist covering the early morning. As I was awakening, I realized I was
being stared at by some deer that had come down almost right to our tent to graze on the lush grass that had turned the
hills Irish green. I remember looking into the deer’s eyes and seeing a peace and confidence that I knew we shared,
animal to animal, and I remember how happy I was to crawl back into the tent with you curled up on the air mattress,
kissing you awake with my cold lips and Layla starting to get restless at your feet. I was amazed the deer were so quiet
they could come down without spooking the dog. I wish it were a feat I could accomplish with you, but I think my footsteps
are too heavy these days.

"His gaze wandered often toward her lips, and he yearned for them hungrily. But there was nothing gross or earthly
about this yearning. It gave him exquisite delight to watch every movement and play of those lips as they enunciated
the words she spoke; yet they were not ordinary lips such as all men and women had. Their substance was not mere
human clay. They were lips of pure spirit, and his desire for them seemed absolutely different from the desire that had
led him to other women’s lips. He could kiss her lips, rest his own physical lips upon them, but it would be with the lofty
and awful fervor with which one would kiss the robe of God."

-- Jack London from “Martin Eden”

Waking in this sort of dream state today, I think of Jack London and how I have always been sort of driven by his mark
that he set for himself of producing 20,000 words a day before he even began to face the day on a personal level. I
realize that I have slipped into the same dream that he had: of writing daily no matter what the circumstances, letting the
writing take its course, usually always starting with writing to the love of his life, Charmian. Millions upon millions of words
later, everything else followed naturally and freely.

Sincerely, Cecilia, I do not expect you to make a choice. I am not asking you to “choose me” over something or someone
or even over the past, present or future.

For me, writing to you is not a choice. It just happens, like inspiration, for anything, from something deep within my soul. I
feel you there still deep within my soul, too, therefore I have no choice but to hold true to the one who was with me on the
greatest journey of my life. I know the endurance it took for you, too, to accompany me on that journey, the patience, the
dedication, the love, even the physical toll it also took on you. All of that was shared, even my anger and frustration,
something that surely was soothed by your soul and spirit, too.

I made my choices already in life and I can only stand by them now and continue on with what I know to be true and real
and valid. I believe I have some real truths to stand on, some real accomplishments to draw from; the choices I know are
right and honest and have substance and form and focus.

As I write to you daily, I do begin to see something new emerge: total love. Not just love of you, or me, or us together, but
love at its very free and fabulous root core, which expands out and blossoms into everything beautiful and life-sustaining
in this universe. The love of writing, of living, of loving, of playing, of singing, of running, of traveling, of exploring, of
reading, dreaming, being, doing, hoping, creating, seeing, breathing, smiling, all coming from the same source, the same
host, the same concept in life, the one concept that continues to sustain life in all its forms and permutations.

If you love me, it will not be a choice or by choice, I know that now.

In fact, that may be the true epiphany of all: love chooses you, you don’t choose it. Then you spend your whole life learning
to accept it and figure it out, even maybe trying to discard or destroy it, when it is something you will carry with you for life
no matter what you try to do otherwise. Everyone and everything is driven or motivated by love and the struggle to find it,
maintain it, keep it, sustain it, develop it, even fight for it for those deprived of it, possibly even buy it or entice it, steal it
and abuse it.

You really have no choice over who you love, especially when it is also their love that chooses you. In most cases, I have
found those who have chosen to love me have enriched my life with abundance; I have had love of the highest forms
surrounding me all my life and I have been blessed by the women who have all helped to make me the wondrous man I
am. Likewise, I have no choice but to respect and honor and stand by the love that they have given me, to live up to its
purity, to abide by its trust, to make that love the central focus of my life and all that I am and all that I ever will accomplish.

I have no choice but to share love because that was how I came to have love at all.

One final thought for Good Friday: I was raised to believe that love never ends, in a family way, in a religious way, in a life-
and-death way. Maybe that’s the true trinity of the love I believe in. I know we grew up in different circumstances and we
never totally reconciled that with our views and goals in our marriage, but we truly did have love between us that was
more true and pure and passionate and wonderful and happy and marvelous and magnificent and peaceful and healthy
and enduring and wise and patient and tasteful and grateful and musical and magical and beautiful, worth crying about
right now for all the joy, all the time, all the memory, all the wine, the songs, the friends, the family moments, the beaches,
the earthquake, the plane trips, the lost trails, the sleepless nights, the barbecues in the backyard, the trips to the lake
with Layla, the concerts, the anniversaries, the times we would shower together, the time you called my name to the Gods.

What choice do I have but to love like I do?

Love, Mario

EDITOR’S NOTE: Upon their divorce and fall from grace, Mario did what all true angels do – write and play and sing
songs of love to the heavenly stars above. He even learned how to play several new instruments, record his music, and
began working regularly over two years with a band of journalists producing original blues-based compositions – all
about and with total love.

Like the stars at night from what would become his new home at the ocean, the songs shimmered in brilliance from a
distance, and he shelved the novels and fiction he’d been writing while married to follow this music muse as far as she
would take him.

When his newspaper abruptly folded, however, that effectively broke up the band and Mario was free to go solo, finding a
new home for his writing as well as his soul. And he began to rewrite The Real Story of Mario and Cecilia all over again . .
. This time, with its lyrical melodies already playing in his head, he began to see something sanctioned by God and not
just a love consummated in nature or in the physical pride that making love to Cecilia entailed. It took a Godlike man to
be her lover now.

Dear Cecilia,                                                                                                        Easter Sunday

For both of us, there truly are forces at work in our lives that I am quite sure neither of us understand.

The transformation if we recognize it, I believe, can be exciting and full of possibility if we just cut through the chaos and
confusion and realize what an amazing understanding can and does exist between the two of us.

I know we are just one step, one word, one moment, one heartbeat away from something good for both of us so that I just
hope and pray every day that you will see it too, like the time we ended up at low tide on the wild and windswept coast off
Cape Alava only to find the Wedding Rocks native carvings as if the Gods just opened a portal and allowed us to see
their handiwork.

I would like to spend the rest of my life knowing you and going to my next life at peace with the love I have for you – a love
that now and forever is like no other love I have for anyone or anything except maybe the love and respect I have for
myself and the love I have for my children and family. I respect my love and treat it as well as humanly possible.

I respect your love, too, even the respect that I always gave others you loved in the past, and trying hard (I know you might
think that a pun or a joke, but truly) to respect your love of someone or something else in the present. I have respect for
your home, your gifts of love to me, the time you have left on this earth, the time we have spent together forging a spirit
that will never leave my soul.

I have tried not to disrespect your actions in cutting me from your life. I can’t imagine you would even kill someone if they
threatened your life, much less why you would leave me as if dead in your present state of awareness -- someone with
whom you sustained life and love of magnificence and pleasure, someone with whom you raised a home and lived with
time and time again through life’s major trials and tribulations.

I made mistakes in anger, you made mistakes in retribution, we both didn’t always think clearly, we both wanted to punish
or prove something to each other, we both were tired of each other, we both saw through each other, we both did things
to hurt each other.

I miss you, always. Every single day, every moment I have left in my life, and that is a terrible price to pay for love. No one
else you have ever loved will ever love you like I will forever love you and to not have your love back is a curse far, far, far
worse than death.

That said, I realize I just have to live with it. Like you taught me oh so well: There is not good karma or bad karma, there is
only karma. I once fed you and your son, your soul and spirit, and now you simply leave me starving. That is my karma.
So, back to those forces I was talking about at the beginning of this letter.

I believe that together we have the ability to be a healing force in this universe, far, far, far greater than any force we can
muster or conjure or conceive on our own or with anyone else. Just being together at any time would be a healing
experience of utter magnificence for me and I think it would equally be one for you. I can’t imagine it feels very healthy
carrying around such a major grudge against me the rest of your life and turning me into some evil monster that bears no
real resemblance to the man who will love you longer and more complete than anyone ever in your entire existence.
Truly, my love has no demands. It wants nothing more than it already has. It is fully intact, unwavering, understanding,
happy, engaging, warm, hearty, poetic, experienced, unbounded, fearless, free. It costs nothing, it exists whether I am
there with you or not, it will always be, and I am always within you to the very core and foundation of your soul and spirit.
You know that, too, I know, I know.

So why in the name of God are you still persecuting me or denying me or pretending to live in fear of me?
I know you don’t stop loving something you loved so much. You know as well as me you can’t sacrifice love for love,
especially when it is true love and you try to love again under somewhat false pretenses. God only knows how I have
learned that lesson the hard way in the past few years of trying to love again myself.

Maybe you are just luckier in love than I am – after all, you got me to fall head over heels in love with you and I would have
to say that was pretty damn lucky for someone. I’m still not sure for whom, but I would like to believe for both of us.
I promised you I would never stop writing to you, never stop trying to communicate to you, never stop trying to learn to love
you better and more fully and completely as time goes forward. I believe the forces have come together as proof of that
vow kept and not broken. I remember you told me you always kept your vows to me and now is the time to prove that was
true and not just a fabrication of your own imagination.

I believe this time apart has left me stronger, more talented, more balanced, financially better off, not too much balder or
fatter, wiser, more patient, certainly more loving and forgiving, totally complete with only one major exception -- I know I
will never again experience the feeling of pure joy until the day I get to hold your hand or kiss your lips again.
Nothing else in this world has ever brought me such peace and happiness as the times I spent connected with you, hand
in hand, body to body, mouth to mouth. I could see all the universe as right and the paths before us seemed all to be open
and available, as they would be and will be to this very day, this moment, just a breath and a touch away from the peace
that passes all understanding.

Mario

“Why do you always look at things with such dreadfully practical eyes?” she interrupted.
“Because I’ve been studying evolution, I guess. It’s only recently that I got my eyesight, if the truth were told.”
“But it seems to me you lose sight of beauty by being so practical, that you destroy beauty like the boys who catch
butterflies and rub the down off their beautiful wings.”

-- Jack London from “Martin Eden”

Happy Mother’s Day, Cecilia:

Before heading down to be with my mom and family today -- where your presence also still exists there in the family
photograph of all the children and grandchildren -- I wanted to sit here in peace and reverence for the time I helped you be
a wonderful mother to your children and all the times you were such a wonderful mother to my children as well.
You accepted my children as a mother and I could never have raised them to be the successful young adults they are
without your love and assistance, patience, guidance, advice, support and understanding over all the years of their youth.
You did far more than I ever acknowledged during the time we were all growing up, and I thank you from the base of my
soul for the love we shared, the love we forged, as a family of our own. From my mother, I always received such
unconditional love and support that it made me feel like I could accomplish anything, anything at all, that I set my mind to
accomplish. I am so fortunate to have such love, to be able to still see my mother on this Mother’s Day and experience
that love in the flesh and in the moment, to carry it on and share that love with family, to just be able to simply bask in that
love and know that life’s essential emotion springs from the heart my mother has given to us all.

I never really ever experienced the sort of abandonment of love that you must have faced so early in your childhood, with
first your father, and then in a way, your mother, too. I always had so much love, my grandmothers, my aunts and cousins,
all the extended family, around all the time, with brothers and sisters and the whole family unit staying fully intact for the
entirety of our lives. It’s no wonder we ended up seeing the end of our marriage so differently as a result -- with me fully
believing that love never ends no matter what the circumstances, and you believing that you fully have to abandon your
thoughts of love for me, even as a friend to me, for you to sustain life and go on.

What can I do but continue to love you anyhow, and what can you do but fail to respond to me in any way? I don’t know,
but I will continue to send you words, bring you flowers, open my door and heart to you, appeal to your love and wisdom,
until the day I die. You are part of my heart, like I am part of my mother’s heart, and a half of my soul -- some might say the
better half, for better or for worse.

You changed me and your love shaped me and forged me just as much as my mother’s love over the past 20 years of my
life, as much as the time I spent in the love of my mother as a child. I came to you as a child, like a child, and you helped
make me a much better, far greater, peaceful, joyous, confident, happy man. Really, I thought I was giving you all the love
you ever desired or wanted or needed, in return, even in my often-impatient, imperfect, stumbling, bumbling way. I was
always totally grateful, totally in love with you, through thick or thin or whatever it took. My vanity might have taken over now
and then, we both got irritated with each other from time to time, we started acting like brothers and sisters who had been
cooped up in a car for too long on occasion, but we loved each other heart and soul like family right up to the end, without
question.

I could sit and smile, laugh and cry, be totally honest and open with you and you with me; and we were one, absolutely
one, one love, one heart, one mind, one whole body when we combined. “One love, we get to share it. It leaves you baby,
if you don’t care for it.” Well, I have never stopped caring for your love, and you can share it anytime you like in this life or
the next. The beauty of working solely on songs these days is that I sort of really do find a connection to something
angelic in nature here in the fingers that now type these very words to you. It must be the same feeling Bono has when he
writes a song like “One” and it touches humans to their very core -- like how the song touched you and me in the prime of
our love.

The richness of our love now exists, I believe, in the songs I have dedicated my life to in the absence of your love in the
present tense. The songs remind me of the efforts I kept making to improve the garden in your yard -- halting and
haphazard at first, then finally winning over the battle against the weeds and bringing some order and restoration, sun and
soil, seed and water, beauty and peace and finally pure joy to the entire experience. I received total joy from working in
your yard to make it a better place of peace and joy for you, just like I receive total joy in working on the music.

Well, not really total joy -- since that will never come until the day I can be with you again -- but as much as one can have in
the abandonment of his true love. Maybe that is why you turn so inwardly even in the face of pure, honest, real love -- a
way of protecting your love from its fear of being abandoned once again. I think what you feared most was that I would
abandon you, or worse, try to take what little you had been able to hold on to, and leave you in your time of greatest need
-- especially given what I said to you in anger in such a threatening way.

I am so sorry for that day, for what followed, and for my lack of understanding and ability to act differently at the time.
I know you understand that, just like I totally forgive you for how you acted, too. We were so out of character it was like
nothing at all was real.

So with real reverence and resonance, I will sing our love this morning, and leave you my love on the winds of this
electronic universe where the Gods do indeed fill my heart and soul today for the family of love that still encompasses all
the directions we now take in life. We once traveled so well in love with each other, and I know your love for me and mine
for you is no different from the love I share with my mother or the love we shared as a family. Big love. Big destinations,
like New York or Los Angeles, or Big Sur, the Valley of the Moon, Heaven on Earth. I still think you and I had -- no have --
the biggest love of all. And for that, I really think I have to thank my mom and my grandmother. I know you experienced
their love, and mine, too, and know exactly what I mean.

For them and for you, I celebrate this day, come what may.

Love: Always: Mario

“He was too deep down. They could never bring him to the surface. He seemed floating languidly in a sea of dreamy
vision. Colors and radiances surrounded him and bathed him and pervaded him. What was that? It seemed a
lighthouse; but it was inside his brain – a flashing, bright white light. It flashed swifter and swifter. There was a long
rumble of sound, and it seemed to him that he was falling down a vast and interminable stairway. And somewhere at
the bottom he fell into darkness. That much he knew. He had fallen into darkness. And at the instant he knew, he
ceased to know.”

-- Final scene from Jack London’s “Martin Eden”

RAINBOW GIRL
In the days we were so green,
she offered love unforeseen.
Long as she was lean,
in the days we were so green.
When the spinning skies turn blue,
to be among the chosen few.
Reflecting her every move,
when the spinning skies turn blue.

She’s a rainbow girl, lets the sun shine in.
She a rainbow girl, through this prism.
This prism of love.

In the redness of her face,
the winter’s cold embrace
I follow her every trace,
in the redness of her face.
When her shining hair hangs down,
and her thighs turn golden brown
She glows without a sound,
when her shining hair hangs down.
She’s a rainbow girl, and the storm fades behind.
She’s a rainbow girl, and the sun comes to shine.
To shine with love.

In the purple days of rain, she acted unafraid
“It’s all part of the play,” she’d say,
in the purple days of rain
When violet skies turn gray, she calls the sun to stay,
Coloring the day, when violet skies turn gray
She’s a rainbow girl, gold is what find
She’s a rainbow girl, she comes to shine. To shine her love

In the days we were so green . . . when spinning skies turn
blue . . . in the redness of her face . . . when her raven
hair hangs down, and her thighs turn golden brown . . . in
the purple days of rain . . . when violet skies turn gray.
She’s a rainbow girl, gold is what you find.
She’s a rainbow girl, she comes to shine.
Shine her light.
Shine her love.

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