Take these sunken eyes and learn to see

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." - Harper Lee

I was delighted the other day to discover that the squawking outside my bedroom window was a mockingbird. He (she?) sings this four-bar tune in four keys over and over, and I had begun to be the teensiest bit annoyed by the troubling song until it was a mockingbird. Then I fell in love.

I believe my little bird friend's song had a symbolic message for me, not just because his species is the central literary allusion in a book I adore, but because he belongs mostly to the South, and bizarre though it may be, I feel like he may have officially let me in the South for good.

Back in the day when I discovered it's most cool to hate where you live, I fell in love with the South -- or the movie and literary idea of it, at least. Most of my evidence came from Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes, and especially To Kill a Mockingbird, and a girl trying to rent my friend an apartment in Provo, who said one of its better features was the hallway's "deep drawers" in the deepest Alabama twang. This was all very mythical and romantic, but then that's something about the South I love too: amid its sordid and proud history, there is a deep mythical presence which I've described religiously before, but it also has a whole lot to do with family and manners and land and fried food.

Here people actually remove their hats when someone mentions the name of Robert E. Lee and they call people Miss or Mr. [first name] and thank you, ma'am and sir, and if you don't say it right, you ain't got no manners or background and you might as well be a Yankee. The South defines itself by its regionalness, by the weather, and by the way you treat your neighbors, sometimes with a wary kindness that may very well be covering up a litany of gossip to come, but an absolute duty to help out nonetheless. That's all very intriguing to me, and I think my secret wish to also be a New Yorker or live in San Francisco has made me look at the whole Southern package from an outsider's clinical, bemused place. Like, aren't they charming at the Winn Dixie eating pink hot dogs and fried vegetables.

But I like to think it's possible that Mr. Mockingbird let me in. I'm not sure it's very realistic, given my propensity for loving incorporated towns and calling the states of my past by their rightful names rather than the reductive "out west." Also, I'm just not born and bred, though I like to imagine you can retain your Western or Yankee roots (the former is probably more possible) and be a Southerner by adoption. That's what I thought I heard the mockingbird say, though he could have been singing out of pity for my wandering self.

Middlewoman

At the risk of proving how I am the girl who loves television way too much, I have a new, tv-based theory of my life, though I'm pretty sure that the minute one starts noticing parallels between one's life and the mind-numbing drivel that is Dawson's Creek . . . well, the implications are just too embarrassing to consider.

Disclaimer thusly spoken, humor me for a minute while I give a little backstory. The eponymous Dawson who doesn't own the creek but really thinks he does (along with any person or thing that has ever set an oar into it) is seventeen when my version of the story begins, since I only got sucked in around the middle of Season 3. Romantic tensions had begun to build at Capeside, Mass [really Wilmington, NC] High, when Dawson, in a fit of trademark maddening possessiveness, asked his "best friend" Pacey to "look after" his other "best friend/soulmate" [insert vomiting noises here] Joey when he had an existential crisis and spurned her romantic advances. I repeat, they were not together. It's important to the story. No, really. Quit rolling your eyes and let me continue.

So. Pacey's attempts to do whatever King Dawson asked turned him into something of a puppy, and I'm told that most of Season 3 has Pacey and Joey engaged in non-witty verbal banter until, surprise, he falls in love with her and kisses her one day. (I should insert here that Joey, being a made-up character and all, is possessed of some kind of superpowerful IT over boys. They all canNOT live without her crooked smile.) She spends 2 episodes pretending she doesn't want him and then blah-de-blah they end up together (which, by the way, I loved). But then they break up, because Dawson gets outrageously pissed and spouts off this doo-doo about how she's betrayed their soulmate-ness and suddenly wants Joey now that she's taken.

Joey spends the next 4 episodes trying to be Dawson's friend like she used to be while essentially dumping Pacey and pretending like Dawson's approval is more important than hers and Pacey's attraction. Never mind that Pacey's character is infinitely more interesting and kind and thoughtful and darling, and that the "writers" created as their hero the most self-satisfying jackass on television, but Joey proves to be pretty spineless in the whole scenario, allying herself to the boy who screams the loudest and treats her the worst. Luckily for us all, she chooses Pacey in the season finale and they last for a year, their demise no doubt attributable to dagger eyes and infuriating pouts from Dawson at every opportunity. Gah, I get annoyed just thinking about it.

In last night's episode, 3 years later, Joey tries to broker peace between the two of them by doing the whole clichéd send them both a note to meet her and then not show up. Yeah, so basically, their conversation went like this:
[subtext/]
D: I can never forgive you because I am always right.
P: I am a loser, and therefore can't expect forgiveness, but Joey wants it.
D: Yeah, well, who cares what she wants as long as she's mine.
P: Yeah, she'll never be mine again because I'm such a loser but for some reason I really really want to be your friend so here's a [token which would take too long to explain, and would also be boring]. [/subtext]

Then Pacey really says:
The only thing we have in common anymore is that we're in love with the same woman. It's funny, because all she ever wanted was for us to be friends.

[Okay, exposition over. The fact that I just did that makes me very nervous, but I'll just go on and pretend like analyzing asinine television characters is what normal, well-adjusted people do.]

But today I had my own little Joey moment, when one general contractor and one facilities manager went head to head in what probably ought to have been a literal boxing match, and stuck me right in the middle with their rantings. Neither is as spoiled as Dawson or as darling and self-deprecating as Pacey, but one very much has a sense of entitlement attributable to being tall, in charge, and right (at least about building things) most of the time. The other is ex-military, precise, sensitive and thoughtful, and sometimes woefully misguided -- though earnest -- in his interpretations of others' intentions.

So this morning, in a battle of wills over something pretty insignficant, the two of them were so mad that they both said it was the angriest they'd been in a long time. Some time passed and they got over it, but I sat here in the middle pulling a Joey: trying -- somewhat desperately, I'm afraid -- to make it right, to explain away the various troubles that caused it. Neither of them needed that, and though they were talking to me, they didn't even really need much of a response. I could have merely served as a sounding board with an occasional "uh-huh" thrown in for good measure.

But I can never leave it at that. I have to get all in their faces and go back and forth and try and fix their relationship. The truth is that the work will get done one way or another, the hellfire will melt away, and the tertiary characters in the drama will soon forget it ever happened, if they haven't already. And yet, I am still compelled to do anything, including getting irrationally mad, to make sure that at the end of the fight, they are still friends.

Of course, one of the fundamental differences between our stories (besides, you know, the reality thing) is that Pacey and Dawson were fighting over Joey, and maybe that makes the parallel a bit of a stretch. That said, residual anger is never really about the thing, but more about your inability to let your own grudge go. That holding onto old stuff makes you bitter and despicable never seemed to be a problem for the Dawson's Creek writers; they seemed to let Dawson's years of bitterness be justified by what seemed like the ultimate betrayal. (When they were 17. Please.) I am left to wonder: is anything -- least of all petty male posturing -- worth that kind of inner turmoil?

Sigh. One man and I had a big fighting match in my office that resulted in me crying, partly because I was just that mad, and partly because I was pretty ashamed for letting myself -- even asking to -- be so involved in what really wasn't my drama to begin with. It never really is; I just let myself be put there because "blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth." If only my motivations were that pure. No, that's not the real reason I do it; it's much more primal and instinctive than that. Until I figure out how to stop and just let the people who are in the fight hash it out themselves, even if they do dump it on my head, you'll find me chillin in the middle, though I'm pretty sure if I had my very own script writers I could get it resolved by the series finale.

Prosaic

There's this road near my house that's called Dairyland because, natch, there's this terrific dairy on it. (Be careful of the mooing.) I think it's kind of a charming name for a road, though it causes me troubles each time I come here to write some more drivel from my head; invariably, I type in dairyland and end up nowhere I want to be.

I was thinking about that dairy and their really terrific almond ice cream and it led me to think about my little vanity project today, thinking for sure I should find something to say about something, since it's been awhile, and, frankly, that last entry was pretty boring. There's not much mileage one can get out of boring discussion of a hideously boring project. But I find that I'm distressed when the things in my head I consider writing about have no logical connection: Diet Coke, crying, the war, cold sores, Alzheimer's, flies, weddings, acne, a nice person allegedly getting back together with her not-nice spouse, whom she wisely left 5 months ago. So much of my life lately has been consumed by the business of getting things done, that I don't have time to put those strings together.

The busyness, it turns out, has also turned me into a nightmare co-worker and friend, as I learned this morning. Murch told me today, Friday, that it was the first day I had even been tolerable to be around, an accusation which, though true, made me bawl a little in my office this morning. He said he and Clark decided I need somebody who will "nurture and take care of me," a notion I scoffed at, but . . . well, there's some truth. If said mythical person existed, maybe I'd be sitting here at 3:13 on a Friday afternoon learning how to use Illustrator instead of wishing I hadn't gotten out of bed this morning and faced these men and their construction problems.

Then again, maybe thinking about flies and dairies isn't even poignant in the least, though they are, at least, connected.