distracted abstract fish

dear jennsee,

looking over my last letter, i realized that like always, when you tell me to get to the point, i've already forgotten what i was talking about. as you said, there are boulders in my conversations.

what i meant to talk about before my fish wandered off, was that it is so neat to hear and see all those little lights: like someone telling me that you warned them about melodrama too. like how at one point in your celebration, pastor mike told us to turn to our neighbor and share a memory of you. that was cool because that was all we spent the weekend doing, between gasps and tears, we reminisced not just about you, but about everything and i learned more about my friends and you and above all about myself.

WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

-from Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Ode

love,
mysfit

p.s. hey what do you want? i told you i was made by hallmark

this little fish of mine, i'm gonna let it shine....

dear jenn see,

i think talking at your celebration yesterday was one of the hardest things i have ever done. you know how much i love talking in front of people anyway, but there were so many people there... and it was beautiful.

i keep thinking of things i meant to say. like how i am so grateful to your family for sharing their jenn with me and for allowing me to share a little of the light from the jenn i know. and how every one has their little light - the jenn they know - and each little light, like a brightly colored fish... but then, you would say i was being abstract and melodramatic and to get to the point.

oh and i really meant to call you a fashion-diva, if only for laughs.

but there's time enough to say everything that needs to be said. there's time enough to make you understand, no matter how stubborn you are. i think i have enough spirals for that. each little fish - a spiral on spirals.

love,
mysfit

's a fish

right now it's the stupid things that are hurting. like the fact that i drove to my parent's house instead of mine.

saturday fish

dear jennsee,

i flew to philly today. it's difficult coming back to the east coast this way. after two years gone, there are things that were never resolved i have to face along with, well, this. but it's good to be with friends. i miss you.

love
mysfit

crystalizing fish

thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. i know we all need them.

my love and light is gone. i will not hold her again. i will not smell her again. i will not feel her again. i will not see her smile nor hear he laugh again. she will never again say "is that my love?" from our control room here when i come home from work. i have felt so much pain and grief and anger in the past two days to fill up several lifetimes, but these emotions will not get the best of me. jenn would not have wanted it.

when life gives you shit you have to kick it in the fucking teeth.

instead of posting one long rambling entry about jenn i am going to be posting individual and focused ones. they will come when they do and they will not stop, even when my tears do. there are also several draft entries that jenn never got the chance to finish. i will be posting these as best i can, for i cannot know what she had intended for them or what it was they were waiting for the be finished.

situations like this were made for cliches, so here's one.

it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.


most recent and final photo of jenn and i, home from bonnaroo and happy, 6/19/06

jenn was, is, and always will be a part of my life, and i'd have it no other way. if you have love, or if you're still finding it, hold it and cherish it when you do. never go to bed angry and never underestimate the importance of saying i love you. jenn has taught me how to love. really, wholly, and unabashedly love.

at present i am in our home, alone, acclimating myself to being here without her yet surrounded by her. i am here for proxy, but how do you console a cat? she's one of the many pieces i still have left of jenn and i will hold and cherish her for as long as she remains with me. i hope you don't mind, mysfit. ;-) she's clawed me once already and i gave her a kiss for it.

you always hear about people dreaming of lost loved ones. how they came to them in a dream and spoke with them one last time. until now i have chalked that up to subconscious trickery. something the psyche does to help us deal with loss. i dreamt of jenn the night we lost her. she said goodbye and that she loves and misses everyone. she wishes she could come back, but she knows she can't. when i tell you that i felt her....that i actually reached out and touched her, you may or may not believe me, but it's given me a little bit more of the resolution that i so badly need right now. there will never be such a thing as closure.

einstein: time?
crichton: wounds all heals.

if you are in the area and so inclined, jenn's celebration, we're not calling it a funeral, will be held on tuesday morning, 6/27 at 11am at

wimberg funeral home
1707 new road
linwood, nj 08221

please do not send flowers. we are setting up a scholarship fund for artists and musicians in jenn's name. we feel that this will be a good way to further jenn's legacy. anything you'd like to donate, no matter what or how much, would be graciously received. when i have more information, i will publish it here on the fish.

in parting, some of jenn's favorite bands and artists

the smiths
arcade fire
bright eyes
regina spektor
pink floyd
the moody blues
clap your hands say yeah
radiohead
nick cave
the flaming lips

again, thank you all, from the bottom of what's left of my heart.

-oldben

friday fish

dear jennsee,

i keep forgetting what i'm doing today. i am useless at work but it is better than sitting at home drinking myself into a stupor - or is it? i jump every time the phone rings and i don't know what to say. i've talked with a lot of people today and none of them were actual conversations. something in my head tells me that people often look for meaning in things like this, i'm just looking for some way to get through the day. for now though, i've found the only thing that works: i love you.

i've decided not to apologize for anything any more. you never did.

love
mysfit

good night sweet fish

dear jennsee,

thank you. i love you. i wish you peace.

love,
mysfit

it is with deep sadness that i come to the fish tonight. i keep trying to come up with the right words to describe what happened today but there are none. jennifer passed earlier today from what they think is a heart aneurysm. i don't have any comfort to give and i don't want any - not yet. she was a beautiful girl full of life and love and i just want to miss her for now. i miss her dearly.

the mark of the... um... beast?

only days after the day of the devil - 6/6/6 - a mysterious and smelly creature appeared on the fish. the slightly disgusted fishies huddled in fear bemoaning the end of well, everything. but as the creature eerily jumped up and down and up and down and... the fishies need not have worried - not much anyway. It's only:
!!
and the end of the worl... the univer... the, well, everything really, is not until next week's episode - or the one after that... maybe...

(mysfit's note: all the religions that have prophesied doom doom doom and the end of, well, everything have been so apparently wrong, it's frankly embarrassing - unless, of course, we don't actually exist in the first place, then everything could have ended many times in the time it took you to read this post, and no one would have noticed anyway.)

update fish of the future

remember this?
well, this is me lying in the street, my dear little clock-maker bleeding from the ears.

ok so that's a little gruesome, but according to my fish i owe you an update on a little thing i like to call 'my life' or alternately: 'mysfit's life of doom'.

the lurking mandate of change has indeed taken the big metal fish of the future: and bashed me over the head with it - repeatedly. and as i was forewarned about this almost two months ago, i am totally and utterly...

...disarmed by this attack. but you already knew that, right?

it's finally happened! i've been offered a full-time job. after languishing for a year-and-a-half in the purgatorial hell of temp-hood ("job-shoppering"), one of my jobs has took pity on me and decided i'm worth giving benefits to. yay! it's not as much money as i like, nor exactly what i want to be doing, but it's a job! they offered it to me last wednesday, had to decide by friday and started yesterday - damn but life moves quickly once it gets off it's couch-potato ass. i asked my other boss about it on friday and he said it's a no-brainer... take it. ah well... i should have learned to play hardball, but

oh and i told you about that super-cool dude who wanted to move in - but no. not going to happen. there's just not enough space in my garage for him to do all his weldy-metally stuff and now that he quit his other job, he's a) unemployed; b) a contractor between assignments; c) a metalsmithing guy who needs a three-car garage; d) still a super-cool dude - so who am i to argue. it's ok though, we're going to move in with him. so my 'happy dance of not packing' has now (or soon will) turn into the frantic dance of oh-my-god-i-have-so-much-crap.

the bullshit part of this is that we told out landlord (read: property management company) that we weren't going to renew and in less than a week they put a "for rent sign" on our front lawn and a key box on my front door (which is just plain creepy)! and without telling us! we still have two months and i don't want some strange-ass woman with fifties poof and pink powersuit wandering into our house whenever she damn well pleases. (please don't be offended - i have a strange image of real estate agents). as far as i know, this may violate my tenant rights and i will not stand for it.

anyway, the end point of all this is that everything being insane right now, i'm going to be taking a short break from the fish.

i miss you already,
mysfit