A little more than three years ago, I wrote a quick post about friends from my childhood in New York and Sylvain Avenue Elementary School. I invoked a few names in said post without thinking anyone would… well, you know, come across the dang thing. It’s just one web page, one blog post, out of millions and billions of web pages on the interweb, right?

OK, I’m lying. I knew that there was a high chance someone would come across the post, but the question remained if they would, and who it would be, and how they’d react.

Flash forward to a Saturday night in the autumn of 2007 and an email, sent through this site, from one of my long lost friends who I referenced. A year of conversation with them later and the posting of my 4th-grade-class-picture later led me to get back in touch with quite a few people. I don’t want to reference them by full name here as I am guilty enough of name-dropping in the past in order to get facts straight… But I’ve gotten back in touch with long lost friends who I had known since Kindergarden, I’ve gotten back in touch with shorter-term friends who I had known from 3rd grade on…

It’s almost scary about the amount of re-connecting that’s transpired through Facebook for me. It’s also heartwarming to know I was not flat-out forgotten by people after I left New York.

I have kept a memento album since sometime in the late 1990’s. Just a photo album with newspaper scraps, pictures of friends and loved ones, and letters/post cards from people that I’ve communicated with in the past. Not letters as in email print outs, but actual letters. You know, those that were hand written at one point in the distant past? Yeah, those things… Hard to believe we did stuff besides typing, isn’t it? Sentimentality is so over-rated…

But I went into this album today with the specific intention of taking out and tucking away a few pictures I’d taken close to ten years ago (within a year or two) and a handful of letters as well from that same time frame. I’ll just say that they were all of the same subject. That person has been chronicled here in vagueness and obtuseness.

But going through the letters — marred with the inconsistency of not knowing what I had originally sent (which had led to these response letters) as well as the letters themselves rambling in vagueness. I found one passage of one particular letter (written on loose leaf paper as they all were, and dated 8/06 and likely from 1998 ) that just left me smiling and nodding for all the wrong reasons:

Dear John –

Today is a day I shall always remember. I took a wonderful, if not so secret thing and brutally destroyed it. I’m disgusted. I have new understanding of several things Sorry so obtuse but I don’t wan to talk any more about it

Why do I take satisfaction in this? What kind of sick asshole am I to do such a thing? A ten+ year old letter, stated rather obtusely, about destroying something beautiful?

Answer: I hadn’t said it felt like someone died for nothing, people. This letter may be an echo of a person that I knew in the past, based on different events and different circumstances along with different consequences, but to me? It’s the only remorse that I will see in the present from that person.

We’ve all taken something beautiful and destroyed it – a keepsake, a plant, perhaps a relationship of the friendly or intimate variety — at one point or another in our lives. I know I’m guilty of this in the past with people and things, but I take some solace in knowing that at one point in time, there was expressed grief and remorse by certain people. Grief and remorse that I can’t quite see them express or have linger in their head or heart today over recent events.

You know, I wanted to write a long post about moving on from this ill-communication SNAFU that’s led to me drawing myself into a shell and feeling like someone died. Someone was snuffed out, and the person holding the gun simply said “oops” after the body hit the floor, hid it, and then announced to the world they used a glock pistol the first time.

Yes, I was going to tell everyone what I had learned from this, or had reinforced in me. Facts that apply to current and past malignant relations: Communications are vital in any friendship or relationship; that distance can and will kill (especially if you are half hearted on the communication front); that you make time for what’s important to you; if someone isn’t reaching back much when you reach out to them, they just aren’t that into you; that oftentimes we don’t want to see the obvious and want to imagine all is hunky-dory even though the painful truth is right in front of us.

But the two ultimate truths in this case at the top of my list
:

• I’m tired of being disrespected, or belittled in how someone deals with me. Not being honest or forthcoming while someone has the wrong idea and allowing them to go on is a huge disrespect to them.
• I hate being mad at the source of this disrespect

The problem here is, the first point trumps the second.

With my big heart, it’s too often I get disrespected or taken for granted. Willing to listen even if it hurts, to make time for someone even if I am busy, to reach out to even if it costs more than I have, to be understanding to a fault… I’ve lost other friends in the past because I allowed the disrespect to the point I was upset every time we talked.

Being big hearted makes my friends a priority and sadly, in this case, priority is the reason I know this entire situation won’t be settled any time soon. Because if I was a priority in simple friendship, none of this would have ever happened. I would have been down on myself a few days, but the 2nd of two “trump all” points would have ruled instead of the first.

Writing this won’t make things better, but it gets this stuff out of my head and out into the open for better or worse.

Revolves
Circles
Trances and dances to the driving beat
Roams around your Crimson Crown
And bows down at your feet.

Connection
Link
Being driven to the brink
Finding sanity in a time of horror
Thanks to the beat, you’re pressing onward.

Confusion
Illusion
Not sure of our contribution
It doesn’t matter where the river’s running
You’re flowing on with guile and cunning

Light
Bright
Sunshine shining through the darkened night
See the way, through friendships hand
To help overcome the flaws of man

Distance
Chances
Not sure if this one passes
Long sought diamond as to the pebble
Your Crimson Crown is one to revel

Sound
Silence
Not sure how the beat does find us
But as long as it’s on, we’re running strong
And setting the tempo to the world that we live in

© 2001 John P. Fontana

How many times have you been supportive of someone who is close to you or who has meant something to you in the past, all the while you end up feeling like crap for doing it? Not because of you giving support to this person, but because of the topic?

It’s almost like what should lead to a breakup… Being there for someone but feeling trampled on in the relationship. You care and want to be there but you can’t keep being a friend for someone when they don’t respect you or even consider what certain topics/phrases do to you inside.

Respect… And Disrespect. If you are there for someone when they need you and they aren’t there for you, if you will apologize to someone about things – but they won’t ever apologize about any anger they’ve caused… It’s just not healthy and just not worth it. Friendship or more — it’s a two way street.

Show me some respect or find another person to dump on… I’m not playing the inanimate teddy bear any longer.

First and foremost to anyone who knows me and actually visits Stonegauge from time to time to see what’s on my mind or what else I am up to… I’ve stayed off here a lot lately because I’ve been bored with it a bit — Boltsmag gives me a topic to focus on while Stonegauge asks me to focus on me and my life is rather boring.

Oh yeah, and the fact I don’t want to bitch about personal things knowing people know this is my personal blog.

But I gotta bitch today because I’m looking for an old family friend… Or friends more like it.

In 1984..? I think that was it… I moved into a house in Blue Point, New York with my family… Nice ranch place with cedar shingles and brick accents. There was a nursery next door and it was a quaint, small town on Long Island… There’s a plethora of details about Blue Point or that house but none are pertinant to this tory besidse what I want to talk about.

One afternoon after moving in, I was inside doing one thing or another and my brothers were out back — giggling and acting really weird by the back fence. I went to investigate what was going on and I found out they were making a fuss about a girl (and her friend) in the next yard. Mike and Andy were acting anti-social in one way or another and I thought “What’s the big deal?” and started up conversation with the girls… This was the begining of a great neighborly friendship between the Fontana family and the Reilly Family.

The girl in question was Shannon. Shannon H. Reilly if I do so recall her middle initial. She was about the same age as my older brother and went to Blue Point elementary school (while me and my older brother were attending Sylvain Avenue Elementary in nearby Bayport)… Shannon was basically the fourth child of my parents while me and my brothers became children of Shannon’s parents. We really were interchangable children and would spend time playing at each others houses all the time (except when I got tugged into some type of disagreement between my older brother and Shannon). I believe her parents names were Mary “Mussy” Reilly and Rich.

Shannon would later have a little brother, Brian, who became the fifth partner in crime. Of course, Brian would be too young for most of the -adventures that we’d undertake but he was none the less part of the equation when we did something.

At any rate, I moved away from New York to the Tampa Bay area in January 1989. The Reilly’s were there to send us off. They’d later take a trip from their home in New York to Florida and make sure to stop to see us along the way.

But time and distance made things fade. We did end up visiting the Reilly’s after they moved to Massachusetts during the 1990’s (not far from Foxboro if I do so recall) … But after that I can’t recall much of anything – news or what not – of the Reilly family. I did not see Shannon at that mid-1990’s get together because she was still in New York, finishing school while staying with relatives. I do remember Brian was playing offensive line in football but… eh.

I wanna know whatever happened to Shannon? I want to knwo what’s up with the Reilly family and I hope everything is ok. It’s a shot in the dark trying to write a blog entry about them — but after I did research on various platforms trying to find them and failed… I thought this was at least worth a shot….

I need a date for a wedding.

Michelle and Josh are tying the knot on the day b efore Valentines (Bill’s birthday in fact) and of corus ei am invited which is great but at the same time — going alone is not something I want to do.

And yet candidates to go to the wedding with me – friends or more – are few and far between. Some people have tread on that friendship with me and I’d be reaching down to ask her to go. Others are either too far or just might feel too awkward to go. Of coruse, me not even asking and jumping to conclusions makes things worse than they are.

But then again, it’d be easier if I knew exactly who to ask and wasn’t just takign them as a friend…. But seeing I’m not in arelationship and not nearly in one… it’ll be just friends for this thing.

taken from a conversation with a female friend…

friend: wanna hear something funny? Rob is more insecure about me talking to you than he is about me talking to Eric
friend: how do you like that? YOU are threatening
me:
me: It took me a minute to really fathom this…
friend: yeah, Eric called me last night, and I had Rob answer my phone (because i didn’t reconize the number and I’m hiding from bill collectors) and he wasn’t too upset about it
me: If he only knew….
me: what did Eric have to say last night? Just checking up on you?
friend: yeah just calling to say hi, we haven’t talked since before the holidays and I don’t know what made him think to call me, but we just talked about the site and his health and all that jazz
friend: mind you, Rob did get jealous, but not as jealous as he gets of you
….
me: You should have him talk to me if you think that would difuse things.

but then again I’m getting a kick out of this so iets put that off as long as possible

It’s hilarious to think that I get someone jealous. It makes me feel good that I can actually make someoen who is physically superior to me jealous for that matter. As someone with his own insecurities, this is a bit of an ego boost. Of course having a friend who cares about me enough to talk about that friendship with her significant other is also pretty heartwarming…. But knowing that me and this friend could never really be more, and for Rob to be jealous of me is like a cat being jealous of a dog panting. It makes no sense.

But it’s sure fun to think about

Random Christmas Eve rants —

I hate having to play the dick but that is what happened a littler earlier today – maybe I didn’t exactly play it but listening to someone start falling all over themselves for the umpteenth time and putting themselves into a shit situation — a dick is all I could be.

This very person had remarked about going with your head and not with yoru heart and how things will be nifty right at the start… This person also happened to tell me, a few minutes later, that she was “in love” with an abusive, controlling, insecure prick who wanted to keep her as a possesion and not as a person.

Over a couple of weeks chatting with this girl, I’d feed her logic and a few days later she comes back with “You were right.” And yet her own self-hate, self-loathing and low self-esteem leads her to punish herself… “This is the best I can do.” “I don’t deserve better”, “I’m not good for anythign more.”

I was also told by this same little girl that I shouldn’t settle for anyone or anything, that I seem like the person who would strive for just what they want… That’s true in a lot of ways but if there is anyone in life that has been resigned to the fact he’s got to settle in the end – its me. You can have personality up the waazoo, you can be sweet and romantic and a really funny guy… You can be selfless or benevolent but it really amounts to shit with people if you got a few things wrong with your person, or don’t meet the market ideal of what a lover should be.

…

And for the record, you don’t write off people and leave them in the cold (or — even worse — confess to avoiding them) at times when they need your friendship… Or to pull that act 3 or 4 tiems and expect continued benevolence. You can’t expect a friend if you can’t be one… but that’s a cold November story so we’ll just leave it be.

…

Maybe someone needs to get typing lessons for Christmas. I type fast and don’t copy edit and what happens? I look like I don’t know how to spell anything (typo after typo).

….

Anyone who tells me they don’t deserve, is full of shit. Anyone who puts up with someone’s abuse is either too in-love or just too insecure to go back to what they had with nothing. Anyone who falls in love with someone else but gets engaged to the guy they are dating just becasue she wasn’t ready to break up yet… Well, that’s just fooling everyone and setting up for problems. You can want to share a bed with someoen but, dear God, you’re REALLY setting up to get screwed by drawing it out like that!

…

And by the way… Bryan? Not that you read my blog but you really shouldn’t get so upset over Liz. Yes there were a few misteps there but give it time, buddy. Just be a friend or try to be and be content with that. Keep your eyes open as well, you never know what else is goign to come along (and actually be clear about their intentions instead of wishy-washy like a middle-school girl.

While I am a bit distracted with things going on in my life, though it’s not like I don’t have time to blog. I’m still trying to figure out just where and what I am going to take the Stonegauge to with regards to blogging…

Keep ranting about personal stuff? Take it more pop culture with entertainment things that I can’t always speak for when it’s current? (My Adaptation review was an old post, I comment on old songs, previously released movies, published books, etc) Political rants which are done better on other blogs and are the norm on the blogshere, and certain people I’ve met with Boltsmag talk about local issues pretty well….

Then we have the fact I do talk about sports here and there — Boltsmag is a success just because I really timed this shit well :smile. There’s writing stories I could give but those are about failure. Medical stories I could tell but those seem irrelevant…

This is the personal homepage of John Fontana but then again? I want the Stonegauge to be a place to stop by and have something worth looking into, commenting on or discussing. Not the garbage I’ve had lately. My April entry spurt was brought on by a certain someone who does a real good job of showing up when she needs a crutch, but avoids really well when things don’t fit her current schedule, which includes friendship..

I want to give “a better ‘Gauge on things” but damnit – I want it to be relevant in some way shape or form. It isn’t at this rate.