RE: Jules, Freddie, and the Monkey Man
Another stunning read, @willymac.
Your nostalgia posts remind me a lot of Stephen King's writing: a warm haze of friendship and innocence and rosey memories that somehow defined the individual and set the course of their lives.
You have definitely lived a very experience rich life. I hope I can say the same one day. I had an experience once something like what I am presuming might have gone on between you Jules and Freddie but for us it turned to jealousy and hurt and even though it was discarded not long after the seeds of destruction were planted nevertheless I've watched it turn into the crack that spread my marriage further and further apart until it finally crumbled. 10 years of marriage wiped away, and looking back I wonder if I could have seen the future if I would have done anything but honestly I think the experience did more to show us how different and mismatched we were but it took quite a few years more for both of us to realize it.
Thank you for the compliment, @corpsvalues, and I'm pleased that you enjoyed the story. The ones I really want to write are not easy to commit to actual writing, but I have bits and pieces I'm working to put together coherently.
I really feel for you and the loss of your marriage relationship. That is like enduring a death except you always feel at least some guilt in allowing the failure, even when there was nothing you could have done to avoid the breakup. People change with time and it is very easy in our multi-media world for a couple to be exposed to different influences and have different interpretations of the same events. Even more uncontrollable is the effect nostalgia has when we begin to engage in the "what if" possibilities.
I know how re-wishing the past can interrupt a relationship. I think all the marriages I have seen fail in my life have been in part based on trying to re-do the past instead of learning to live with it.
I also think that everyone is mismatched to some extent, and I know personalities change as we age. Two sounds can be so close in tone you cannot hear the difference. With time and with a steady change in one of the tones, they can become discordant and no one knows when it happened. Personalities are like that.
One thing in life of which I am certain: when magic is happening, immerse yourself in it and think of nothing else because you are in a special moment which will never occur again. Living with the consequences will be easier than lamenting the loss of that moment.
Will