Signed Sealed Delivered

Before I dive into it, reader, I want you to know how it happened. I want you to know how my dearest wish did come true--just in its own time.

I had several opportunities to get Jason Mraz's autograph this year. Had the stars aligned right I guarantee it would have happened, and it was going to happen, just not the way I expected.

It started in January 2012. Jason Mraz posted an Instagram contest, where you were to talk a picture of what I Won't Give Up meant to you and hash-tag it #IWon'tGiveUp. He would pick 25 winners who would then be featured in an art gallery in New York with their photos printed on canvas and signed by Jason Mraz who would also attend the gallery. I entered the contest with the help of Emily and Erin, Emily because Instagram was not available for Android phones at the time, and Erin because I needed someone to be Cinderella.

I should have realized our Earth-friendly friend wouldn't be won by the commercialism of glass slippers.

In March, I was in my theatre management class when I got an email saying the album was finally available for preorder, and that the first 150 people to order a physical album would be signed by Jason. I ran to order the album less than half an hour after the email had been sent. I was sure I was one of the first 150. I wouldn't find out until the album came, and by the time the album came it wouldn't matter.

I'd know by then I'd be meeting him.

I got an email April 7th, the album set for release April 17th, saying that because I had preordered the album, I was part of a pre-presale for the tour tickets, and as part of this they were doing VIP packages. The money would go to the Jason Mraz Foundation. I read the email, about getting to meet him, front row seats, a gift basket.

I had to go.

The next day I intended to order the tickets on my laptop sitting in my English class, because I figured no one would notice. But as the bus pulled into campus I started to panic. I decided to ditch English and sit in a secluded place and do my thing stress-free. It was lucky I went with my nervous stomach, because my laptop wouldn't go to the VIP page at fifteen minutes to ten, when the tickets were to go on sale.

I walked as fast as I could to the computer lab in the Student Union building and luckily there was a computer free. (Someone was most definitely monitoring me from the clouds, I'll tell you that right now.) I got all the pages loaded and watched the little clock at the corner of the screen turn to ten.

I hit refresh and filled out the information at light speed, horrified I'd mistype a number in my credit card number or something simple like that and miss my chance completely. I received my confirmation email and went back to the VIP page.

There were no more tickets left.

I'd made it.

Now that you're caught up, reader, we can plow ahead.

I walked up to the secluded box office and greeted the girl. “I have one of these.” I said, passing her the printed VIP page. She looked at it, confused, and started to pose a question to her coworkers when a girl farther back in the booth said “Is it the VIP thing? What’s your last name.” I told her and she handed me the envelope.

I remember thinking it wasn’t all that miraculous looking for what it contained.

I handed her the form for my mother’s ticket, and walked on wind back to the car.

It was happening.

When I got my first Jason Mraz album Live at the Eagle’s Ballroom, I was too afraid to listen to all of it. I was embarrassed by what people would think, because I really didn’t know much about his music other than the fact that I really liked The Remedy. So I didn’t listen to much of it. It wasn’t until after Mr. A-Z showed me how much I truly did love his music that I was able to get over my stigma and listen to the live album.

We parked our car on the road, behind all these glamorous girls in their late twenties who were breaking out the champagne for their tailgating. I felt inferior in my “I wore this shirt when I met Jason Mraz” tee shirt. It’s something I’ve suffered from, a sense of Mraz-related inferiority. I sometimes joke that I’m such a big Jason Mraz fan because I felt threatened that Ellen was more into him than me, so I began studying harder and remembering all the little things so no one could question my fandom. But then I get in places like this and think “Surely these people like him more than me. I’m not a good enough fan to be here.”

“Erica.” I angrily reminded myself, sitting the passenger seat of the rental car with my stomach in a knot. “If there is anyone you are worthy of saying you’ve met on a tee shirt, it is undoubtedly Jason Mraz.”

I seem to forget that just because I’m the biggest fan in my general area, it doesn’t mean I’m the only fan like that in the world—which I would soon come to have as fact. And when I encounter more of them it frightens me. But tonight would permanently change that.

We got halfway to the steps leading to the Red Rocks Amphitheatre and doubled back for our deli sandwiches; with half an hour till house I figured we’d have plenty of time to eat on the steps, but of course I was hardly hungry and only ate for the sake of having something in me to avoid passing out.

People kept looking at my shirt, pointing it out to their friends. It all seemed rather non-verbal. I acted like I didn’t notice. My mother asked if I wanted to move up closer just as a guy with a meet-and-greet wristband walked past to get more to the front. We would only have fifteen minutes after the opening of house to gather for the meet-and-greet. We moved farther up the steps.

It was near the front of the line that a middle-aged woman spotted my shirt, without my knowing, and blurted rather loudly “You’ve MET him?!?”

Accosted I stammered, “I’m going to.” She then went on to say that she would die and that she was so jealous and how-did-you-get-to-meet-him-I-would-have-paid-that-much-I’m-nervous-for-you, and the venue employees began to move aside the barricades.

“I have bad news,” one worker said, walking down the stairs to be more in the center of those of us waiting. “If you have tickets for rows 1-12 you need to go back to the box office. There’s been a mistake.”

Part of the perk to getting the VIP meet-and-greet was the second row tickets (they save first row for ADA access) and a gift bag. The calmness that had been settled serenely about me from the moment I passed my VIP form through the box office window shattered. “Mom.”

“No.” Mom said. “There’s no time.” (the box office is completely separate from the amphitheatre and would take at least ten minutes or more to get there, get the tickets, park, and walk up those brutal stairs).

“Mom I can’t…” I was literally a fragment of a second from crying, until the man to my left, the one with the meet-and-greet wristband said “He said if you just came from the box office you’re fine.”

“Are you sure?” Mom asked.

“Yeah. We’re meeting him too.”

Suddenly the clammy hands of death weren't gripping my neck and my tear ducts, there were no demons from hell clawing at my legs through the red ground below. The man’s misspeak about the tickets had passed and we were filing forward into the amphitheatre.

I found the place we were meeting, and I believe I was the third person there. A woman in a green shirt came over and stood by me. “Is that your mom sitting on the second row? Seat 54?”

“Yes...” I responded.

“She’s watching our blanket for us. She told us to watch out for the girl in the blue shoes.”

I laughed. “Yeah that’s my mom.”

The woman and I talked a little bit. Her name was Jen and her husband, who arrived shortly, was Aaron. 

They were from Northern Denver, if memory serves.

“I’m from Bountiful, Utah. It’s kinda by Salt Lake.”

“Like the northern part or southern side?” Jen asked.

“Of Salt Lake or Bountiful?”

“Salt Lake.”

“North.”

Jen nodded. It was at this moment I noticed three brilliant things: 1)Earthman; 2) Philly—she’s the one that runs RKOP, an internet forum that started up when Jason was just a coffee shop regular, and has now become the name of his fan-marketing; and 3) Elmo Lovano and Christina Perri’s bassist walking less than a foot in front of me. (Elmo plays the drums for Christina. You learn these kinds of things when you follow your favorite musician’s band and opening act on Instagram.) I didn’t have time to take a picture as they passed, but I happened to catch them as they walked on the level below us.

That's Philly. I was too shy to talk to her.

Earthman has peanuts for earings, a rainbow beard, flair, some type of stuffed creature on his shoulder, and a tendency to trip straight on his face while carrying a tub full of beer cans through the audience.

Elmo Lovano and...blonde bombshell, as Christina called her.

A woman who wore stage-hand type apparel introduced herself as Rachel and came around to check our names off a list.

Jen asked me why I came out to Red Rocks, and I explained that I had resigned myself to only seeing him when he came to Utah for album tours, and that when they released the tour dates and Utah wasn’t on it, I had decided to go see him in Colorado. And then I heard about the meet-and-greets and HAD to go see him in Colorado.

Time went by, I watched the new arrivals and talked with Jen about how I forgot her name and how she’s been having heart palpations all day, and Rachel and some dude came over and reigned us in to give us the low-down.

“Jason will only sign one item. Whether that’s a shirt, a CD, just one item. I will get really mad if you try to go for two, and then you’ll ruin it for everybody. Give Rachel your camera when you come up. She’ll take two pictures per group. And that’s not two pictures per camera and iPhone. If you came in a couple, you are getting pictures taken as a couple. No singles unless you came by yourself.”

“Lucky.” Jen said to me out of the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll take some action shots, so you won’t just have posed pictures. I like to have fun.” Rachel said. They had a pretty solid good cop/bad cop thing.

They took those of us that donated to the Jason Mraz Foundation (which I thought was the only way to get a meet-and-greet, but evidently that was the only way to get a meet-and-greet with a gift bag) and took us through the barn door to give us our gift bags. Among other things was Jason’s Polaroid book A Thousand Things, which he published around 2008, which I have owned since 2008. The man said it was “highly suggested” Jason sign the Polaroid book because he would stamp it with a hand-carved stamp from Korea.

I will not go into details about the turmoil that next took place. I had to decide if I wanted him to sign the CD I had planned on him signing since the beginning of time, or a book that he would stamp with a one-of-a-kind stamp.

“Will Jason have a marker?” A boy in a plaid shirt asked a few people behind me. He, aside from me and another girl near the back of the line, was probably one of youngest ones there.

“Yes! Good question!” Rachel said. “He’ll have one.”

Suddenly I was worried. “I have a question.” I leaned in more toward Rachel. “Can I…give him something?”

“Sure.” She said, slightly bemused. “If you have something for him, you can give him something.”

I felt everybody watching me and slowly turned to the front.

I began to talk to Jen and Aaron about how I didn’t know what to do, and mid sentence I spotted him.

The gay couple at the front of the line was walking to him. I hadn’t even seen him show up. He was just suddenly there. I first saw him in profile, his head turned to the right looking at the couple. In the second it took me to register him before I pulled out my camera, all I could compute besides his existence was that he was wearing a green cardigan.

Here it is. The first picture I took of that green sweater. And the man abiding in it.

I watched him sign the books for the two men, and realized he had more space to write on the book, and he was using it.

“I’m going to have him sign the book.” I said. Jen and Aaron turned. “Thanks for…standing their while I made my decision.”

“Well, you have to make your own choices.” Jen joked, walking away to Jason.

“I have to be an adult,” I muttered as they approached him.

I noticed they had placed their bags on the ground, and as I now had two bulging totes instead of one, I promptly followed suit.

“That’s really clever.” The abrasive guy who told us Jason would only sign one item, said to Rachel.

“What?”

“Her shirt.” He was being really quiet about it, but I knew he was talking about me. I turned my eyes from Jen and Aaron’s conversation with Jason and showed the guy, Philly, and another girl part of the tour crew my shirt.

“That’s awesome.” Philly said.

The other girl held up her camera and I posed as she took a picture. “He’ll really like that.”

“What?!” This girl behind me declared. “I want to see!”

So I turned and showed them my shirt. Fifteen people watching me again.

“Are you going to have him sign it?” Her boyfriend asked.

“Well I was until he could only sign one thing.” He nodded and as I faced front Jen and Aaron were walking out.

It was my turn.

I handed Rachel my camera and told her the picture would turn up on screen if it took.

“Awesome. Thanks.” She said with a smile.

There are moments you dream about when the clouds are crossing the sky, or sleep is gently pulling your consciousness under. There a moments you perform in your head in so many ways in so many places, moments you wish on stars and eyelashes for, moments that cross from consciousness into your dreamscape and happen as if reality there. These moments are unlikely to ever come, and when they do, in spite of all the preparation and imagining, they never go the way you thought. You never say the right things or you say too much or too little. And in moments like this, where the majority of the moment depends on the response and attitude of the one facing you, you have no capability of matching it to what you’ve consistently imagined; because it’s in his hands.

He was shorter than I expected. I hadn’t gone in expecting a giant, I knew he wasn’t overly tall, but in every moment I had tried to pair myself next to him I’d suddenly become very short, constantly looking up to him. But there, walking toward him, I hardly had to tip my head. He was just a little guy.

I drew attention to my shirt as he approached me with his arms slightly extended.

If he was going to act like he was going for a hug, we were going for a hug. My left arm, holding my book and sticker, when under his right arm against his back, my right over his left.

I really don’t remember what it felt like.

Just that…he was there.

As we pulled apart he said in his smooth, mellow, may have done a joint voice. “You wore that shirt when you met me. [pause] I wore this sweater when I met you.” He touched the opening of his cardigan with his right hand.

“Thank you.” I said with a nervous chuckle.

We were posing for a photo. I cursed myself for having my items in my left hand, causing the dream of just once putting my arm around him to dissolve. Rachel took a picture.

“Rachel, did you get the shirt? Get the shirt.” The abrasive guy prodded.

Rachel readjusted the camera, Jason squeezed my right shoulder closer with his right hand.

It was over. I subconsciously took a step back, looking down at my book. “So I follow you on Instagram…and I brought you this sticker from Salt Lake.” I held it out to him and he took it, glancing at it for a moment, waving it a little.

“Thank you.” He said smoothly. I really don’t remember how, but I told him my name.

“With a ‘C’?” He asked.

“Yes.” I said.

“Did you drive here?”

“No, we flew.”

“Plane.” He nodded.

“We intended to drive but…you know.” All of my cognitive word processing seemed to have slipped away.

He had my book in his hand, he was opening it. “Erica with a ‘C’?”

“Yes.” I responded, watching his pen block out my name. I could sense Rachel was taking a picture and hesitated before looking up at his face.

“Thank you for taking the journey.” He said so very calmly.

“Thank…you for taking the journey.” I meant it as a breakthrough—as more than “Thanks for going on tour lol.” I meant it as “Thank you for quitting college for the second time. Thank you for driving alone to California to follow the dream you wished on stars for. Thank you for caring about the fans. Thank you for being so down-to-earth even if you’re a little high. Thank you for giving me a deeper love of words and an outstanding appreciation of music. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for doing this tour.”

But I didn’t say that. I parroted back what he said. Word for word. But perhaps he understood, perhaps he somehow felt what was buried behind my bright-red blushing chest.

“It really is a journey. I love the journey.” He paused and gave his name little sunbeams. He took the stamp from the abrasive guy and stamped the LOVE blocks near my name.

“Have a great time.” His eyes were on mine and I couldn’t…

I really wanted to hug him again.

I hugged my book instead.

“You have…have a great show.”

He nodded and I basically turned tail and ran, the abrasive guy calling me back for my camera, which I had not forgotten, I was just going to grab my bags first.

I forgot until I’d left through the barn door with one last look at him to check that I actually had the pictures on my camera.

I did.

When I Grow Up

Being a nineteen-year-old female in America, the small-talk question I am most commonly asked after "Where are you going to school" is "What are you studying?" Luckily enough I have an answer: "I'm doing a double major in English Education and Theatre Education." Usually I slur my words together -something anyone would fall victim to after rattling off the same phrase more than one hundred times- and usually have to repeat myself. That, or people don't want to believe they heard someone level-headed saying they're going  into theatre. But they did.

And I am.

I have found, after enduring such conversations on nearly a daily basis, that those who have dabbled in the arts smile knowingly and remark that it sounds "fun" or "exciting." Those, especially the elders, who have nothing but the patron-perspective try to translate it for their industrial minds: "You must have had a really inspiring teacher." They respond this way every time, and in return I deliver yet another practiced statement. "Actually, no."

After their confusion and timid topic change, I am left to ponder over the anomaly of why teaching theatre has to stem from the actions of those who taught me. In a way they aren't wrong; I designed to be a theatre teacher because I was severely disappointed in what my many theatre teachers "taught" me. From age eleven until entering college at the closing of my eighteenth year I enrolled in acting classes -community and otherwise- hoping and praying to expand my knowledge and skill with regards to the trade. The farthest we ever breached were improv games and audition etiquette. Then we would put on a show.

I appreciated it for the sole reason that I was given another show to put on my resume at the close of each school year, but no one ever pointed out the difference between reciting lines on stage and portraying a character. It never mattered if a message was passed to the audience, so long as we remembered our positioning on stage. I had to propel myself through a tangled forest, learning from trial and error which berries would give me substance behind the proscenium, and which leaves would leave me itchy and flighty. I came to college with the overwhelming knowledge that I was -and am- under prepared for the theatrical world. And as a child raised in a family of homebodies and panicked public speakers, who enrolled for every class she could find, the fault falls to my educators.

Michael J. Fox was a high school dropout. He was good enough as a junior in high school to begin to forge a career in the performing arts. And he forged the career, he sustained the career, and in spite of crippling medical conditions still dabbles in the career. Talent? Yes. But he didn't get there by himself.

That is why theatre education was such an obvious choice; I've always known I'd end up a teacher -I'm not motivated enough to strive for anything else- it was merely a matter of what I would end up teaching. I want to equip students with confidence and technique. I want to prepare them for a life in this field; I want them to be good enough they could go without a degree and stand a chance. I decided to teach theatre so that I could give aspiring actors the information I eagerly yearned for and was constantly denied. I want to do for someone what I always wished had been done for me. I want to do the job no one is doing, even if their title says otherwise. I want to be the change I wish to see in the world.

Closer to Fine

I brought a palmfull of water to my face and let it drizzle where it may. My hands rubbed over my closed eyes and across my mouth for good measure. Sometimes I wish I was absorbent, where water would never run down my neck or drip onto my blouse. It would seep inside of my pores and...

I imagine the water droplets making passage into my skin, and like white blood cells they begin swirling through my being, fixing and protecting me. If that's actually what white blood cells do.

If I was absorbent it wouldn't matter what they did. The water would fix me.

But as my reflexes lead me to wipe my face dry of the water that hasn't run down my neck or dripped to my blouse, I know there's no easy way to fix me.

She keeps saying I remind her of herself when she was younger. I'm tempted to scoop more water to my face but stop, knowing this time I am no different than moments before. I am not absorbent.

I panic so much because if parallels are the way she claims, destiny has written me a widow who never had a mate that could die: an old maid.

That's what she says I am.

I have to stand up. This kneeling by the stream is killing me in more ways than physical taxation on my lower limbs.

I always thought the first male to be truly interested in me would be the one I wed, not due to a sinking feeling that no one else would come along and I better take what I was given, but that no one hitherto approached or acted as though he would. It gave me reason to believe the one with the strength and desire to stick around would be the only one in the universe. It was not a matter of succumbing to fate, but that of accepting that I would be a fly on the wall until someone came to pull me into the action.

It falls back to romantic comedies from a young child's perspective. It stems from Disney and true-love's first kiss and one-take love stories. I idealized it so with dolls that it has cemented itself as fact in the core of my heart. Someday my prince will come. And unlike my mother and the majority of females the country over, I would not require a list of 64 Mr Wrongs that marshaled with pointing lights to the prince. Mine would come when he came, and he would be the only one.

But soon I began to panic that those who have thus shown interest are those I am not...of want to wed. It suddenly occurred to me through my own clumsy way of handling romance that I would need at least a percentage of the 64 so I may cognate how to respond to the prince. But the seed I planted at a tender age has been nourished daily by each cycle of my blood, and now towers indefinitely in my foresight, obstructing all but the notion that he who comes first is him that remains. I've choked with the idea that I will end with a second-rate companion because I am doomed to be sealed to he who comes first.

This is not so, but I cannot uproot this false truth out of my being.

Try as I might I am not absorbent. Water will not fix me.

I slump beneath a tree, wishing the breeze would lift me up to that Virginia in the woods where I could write and muse and sing in peace. Where I would walk with wilderness and thrive under branches and canopies or green. Where I could do all I dream to do without the prying eyes and responsibilities that cascade around my failing body like a landmine of clutter, choking with each tendril that reaches my shaking frame.

But in the depths of my quest for solitude, I do not wish to be alone.

In my mind her voice echoes again, like a bitter cricket continually causing friction between his legs.

If I am her, I will be alone.

The thought drowns me more than being permanently siphoned to a man not fit my make. In reality, along would not be secluded in a forest glade with no concern of taxes or the obtaining of food. Alone would mean in public and in bed. Alone would mean being auntie to the merry spawn of my brothers who fulfilled their one true task as males by carrying on the family line; this would only serve as comforter if I was a carrier of hemophilia and knew b not mating I was sparing my children and theirs from the condition my blood most fears. Alone would mean a general shame to the girl of yesterday who only ever picture love, who made movie after movie in her imagination with her dolls apexed on the ideal of it.

Alone would not be an alone of peace and creative plundering of the mind.

Alone would be hell.

I find myself staggering to the stream, whether I will attempt another prayer of absorbency or merely submerge my head until the constable lifts me out by the hair, my spirit floating off to the only place alone means not alone, until I find I'm sen to a sort of purgatory where those who left before their allotted time are sent, with no husband to follow my acrylic painting landscape like a map to my resting place of despondency to drag me from it to his arms.

I suppose I have decided neither; my fingers curl around the bank but I neighter plunge them nor my body in.

The air breathes the tender word Patience, and I know it's right. It's the action potential of my mind that bring the panicking to pass. I will survive this the way I have health classes and airplane turbulence and learning of FGM. It's a matter of focusing my eyes, breathing at a fixed and concentrated rate, and pleading with the God above to spare me.

And as he has in those near-breaking moments and the moments I now fail to remember, he will lead me safely again.

I will not be her. I will not be alone.

Water will fix me.

Never Go Back

There was something that made Maniac Magee run. I don't remember if he was running from or to something, or if it was the innate love of movement that fueled him.

I just remember him running. And his pizza allergy. And the theme of equality.

I stop and wrap my right pointing finger and thumb along the bead of my bracelet; the clasp where the initials JM are carved, where the wire of the band are coiled into one now ovular circle. I glare absently at the trees ahead.

I want to stop this. I want to crash off the path and be where I was before, or someplace new entirely, and I want to be content there. I want to want to stay there.

I want to built home again.

But even as I move the bracelet back and forth along my wrist, the particles of my arms being to boil, the sensation and temperature rising to my shoulders where my blood vessels must conjoin and weave to my life source because my heart erupts into panic and I can't stand here anymore.

I run.

And I don't know why.

It's different from those times I ran in the past, different from when Maniac first started running. Before there was pizza and question of equality.I've been unraveling thread as I've run; the farther I travel the tighter it pulls me back. It must be what triggers the boiling within me. It must be what urges me forward.

I stop again, my hand gripping a tree.

What pulls me onward is what tethers me back.

I wipe an agitated portion of my bangs from my forehead.

There was a day, when I was 12, when we went white water rafting. They debriefed us beforehand, specifically saying to lie on your back and plug your nose should you fall out of the raft. The life jacket would keep you moving down the river, but if you wanted to breath you'd have to get on your back to make it safely through.

We hit a giant rock at the portion of the rapids that were only three feet deep but very swift. I, along with all my raft-mates save two, was hurdled into the river. I felt my feet brush the riverbed. My knees were bent and my feet where touching hard ground. I tried three times to stand up.

It was infuriating to know I could reach the sturdy purchase of the rocks beneath me, and momentarily succeed in doing so, only to be swept away from freedom and breath. I was drowning in three-foot-deep water. I was dying where I should have survived.

My heart has reached that state of panicked frustration and I'm back to running. It's those rapids all over again: the moment I find structure and security it is wrangled from me, and I am left suffocating and overcome. But this time there is no hand pushing me to lie on my back, no voice telling me to plug my nose so I can stop struggling for air. All I have is a thread tethered to something in my past I'm determined to escape, but for whatever reason I tied the thread there in the first place. For whatever reason I want it to  keep me focused on what I'm desperately escaping. I, at some point before the running began, wanted to have a way back to this.

And as a result it's drowning me.

I die.

And I don't know why.

Living In The Moment

"Well I'm almost finally, finally, out of words." -Jason Mraz (You and I Both)

I've felt a lot of things lately that I haven't been able to pin down into a definitive statement. I know how they feel and what they mean, but it's a language of the soul that keeps speaking out. I can't put it into English, I can't craft it with letters. If I could grasp your hand and siphon the feeling to you, I very well would.

All I can do is toss literary darts in the general area of the target and hope to come out making sense.

I know the following statement to any blog reader of mine is redundant to say the least, but this is were it begins: I'm in a separate state of being when I listen to Jason Mraz. There's nostalgia and there's hope for Virginia to come around, but there is something else that makes it so...makes it so expedient and desirable that I remain there, in this state of being. I felt it irrepressibly tonight when Erin put my dated Mraz Mix in her car's CD drive, and it was such a presence that I felt I had to draw attention to it. So I said: "I always feel...more myself when I listen to him."

And though I've said this and thought this before, it took that moment to connect what Jason's music had lead my soul to experience for years to my recent moments of confidence. Moments that, looking back, happened as they did because I was acting more myself; I was showing up as me.

I haven't read the scriptures in some time. I've been desirous for personal revelation, but I haven't tried to track it down. But lately I can't help but feel that the Lord is guiding me to my answers in the way He knows I'll find it. It's the only place I've been looking.

Jason Mraz.

For the first time in my fandom I have fully connected with an album not because it was catchy or the lyrics made me think or I couldn't get over how phenomenal his scatting is; it's been because that's what I've needed to hear.

I've felt these things for so long, thought about them, almost understood them, but I couldn't put it into words what they meant. Jason did it for me:

"I'm letting myself off the hook for things I've done, I let the past go past. ...I'm letting go of the thoughts that do not make me strong. ...I can't walk through life facing backwards. I have tried, tried more than once to just make sure, and I was denied the future I'd been searching for. I turned around and hurt no more by living in the moment."

There has been much more that has struck me, but this seems to be the overbearing message of it all. This is why my life to this point has been so lackluster and passive and timid. I haven't seemed to "let go of what I know I don't know."

Life hasn't worked for me because I haven't shown up as me.

Today I did it, subconsciously. I showed up as me. And the lightness of my soul that accompanied that moment is the same breath Jason's music breathes into me.

I am more myself when I listen to him sing, but I'm actively striving to be myself even when the music's off.

"And I know I only do this by Living in the Moment."

I Won't Give Up

Get More: I Won't Give Up (VH1 Storytellers Sneak), Music Videos, Live Performances

It took me until now to realize I'll be okay.

On April 1st Jason Mraz posted a video on VH1 saying he was quitting the music business. It was a prank, for April Fool's Day, but as I listened to him in his seriousness state the reasons why he couldn't continue, I had the distinct impression--nay, utmost certain knowledge--that should he ever quit, those would be the very real reasons.

As I lay on my bed having just listened to Love Is A Four Letter Word for the first time I peeled open the album casing to read his acknowledgments. I was just smiling that he had thanked "EVERYONE at Atlantic Records...all the way up to Skrillex" when I met the line "Thank you for believing I had another one in me."

I paused, dismayed that the man who, to the furthest extent of my knowledge (which, not to brag, is quite and expansive extent) he was still and always had been creating music. This seemed the next natural movement in his vaulting career. I am almost embarrassed I didn't guess sooner that the April Fool's joke had not until recently been fully a joke.

He stopped blogging, which really only meant his blog was down and out. He continues to post on his website. But he gave a definitive farewell to blogging, so much so that I was surprised--thoroughly overjoyed, yet surprised--that he was posting on his website. He did a farewell tour with Toca; granted, it wasn't named a farewell tour, I believe everyone else, like myself, believed it was just a whimsical reminiscence of the old days, not a last hoorah. He filmed no youtube videos of the album making process. There was no play-by-play. They are giving 20 VIP meet-and-greet tickets to every US show on this tour.

What better way to say goodbye.

Watching the above video, which I really hope embedded correctly, I realized how close I had been to losing it all. If you've read any of my recent posts, you know how central this man is to my being. I almost didn't plan anything special for his 35 birthday because I figured I'd just do it at the next milestone. As he spoke I realized this may well be the last milestone he publicly displays.

I don't know. I thought the same thing when he got engaged to TP, but that is over and he's still here. But as much as I love him and appreciate him and respect him, I know when/if ever he finally abdicates his position in the music universe, I will be okay. It will hurt, but I'll be okay.

I don't really know why I felt I had to write this; but I did. I know I'm really the only one who benefits from my blogging, despite my meager attempts to get strange eyes to spy it, and perhaps that's why it had to be written, because my private journal has been gathering dust since this time last year. But I had to say that as lenient as I am on Mraz's progress and existence, I watched this video and could already feel myself letting him go.

I wont yet, naturally, but when the time comes it wont be hard. I'll be okay. I won't give up.

Ocean Eyes

If I could paint, I would have by now. But I can't. I can't even take pictures half of the time; or rather, I can't make a camera capture what I see. I can take a picture of what I'm looking at, but it doesn't grab...what I see. It's like how a loved one isn't the same when they're chatting with you across the table as they are in a casket. Somethings missing.

All I can do anymore is stare until whatever I want to capture is engraven somewhere in my retina, hopefully being converted to storage somewhere in my brain. Often I don't even know if I'm successful--if I forgot it I couldn't remember it to have known I failed at remembering it in the first place.

I could stand here for one run of 93 Million Miles and turn in to bed like I intended, but I'll forget these night caps; these white cresting waves folding out of a dark drifting sea that pans on until the world ends. The ocean seems conquerable in the daylight; that perhaps just beyond that far-see there's an island or the drop-off. It would be easy and pleasant to go out and see. It's in the dark that the depth becomes incongruent. There is no horizon, only the expanse of ocean wrapping up into the night sky that so fittingly mirrors its shade. It curls under the flat surface of the earth where the salt water swirls in space of eons, crashing and breaking across itself and the thousands of shipwrecked ruins that Earth's surface has written off and forgotten.

This person is not the same as the one I chatted with this afternoon. It has transformed into something else entirely. Gentle hands call me to come in, be enveloped, and stay forever. Archaic blackness swirls off to where the wild things are. Death and happiness and fortitude and loss all scream in the roar of salt water.

I want to know where she'll take me, for in this moment she is a woman, teeming with life yearning to better minor or take it for her own.

But I watch her from a distance, barred in by a deck and a leg-shattering fall from leaping and running to her, from meeting and capturing what my camera and pen cannot. And what my eyes barely retain.

I wonder why muses were ever given a humanoid form. The Greeks must not have monitored their sea by night.

She speaks in tongues and an aquatic sign, but for a moment, perhaps, she is clear to you, as an individual, dashing your heart's desire in the nettles of her wake.

She is wanting. She is inspiring. She is calling.

I pray I have cemented her enough for recollection. And worry lest she changes again.