The Beginning of Nothing

I learned many years ago about the importance of practicing writing.  It was a craft to be worked at, refined, reworked and eventually accepted.  A ball of clay that could be made into anything you like.  It was important to continue working at it, lest you lose something in what you were weaving.  In more recent times, I listened to a friend make a promise to himself that he was going to write something everyday.  I found that very inspiring and it rekindled in me a desire to put pen to paper, or nowadays, keystroke to screen.  It brought me back to those early days of writing, the ones in high school where poetry and prose, romance and ego were all I needed.  I wrote everyday back then, mainly because I couldn't get enough words out in a fast enough manner to really express what I wanted or, for that matter who I was.
Back then my brain would cruelly move on to the next epiphany before my hand had a chance to scribe the brilliance.  Poetry, that young man's game, I loved it.  I wrote of so many things ranging from the weather to the political climate; from faith to the religious zeal of athletic fandom.  There was nothing off limits, especially the likes and loves of my life.
That is why this space has been titled 'Camille is Dead'.  Nothing quite so gruesome or shocking as you might expect.  Rather, it is my attempt at an eloquent nod to my wife.  In those days of young ego and white hot love, every girl I ever liked, loved, dated, infatuated over, dreamed about, was assigned a name.  And while ever so deeply in love with Adia, Rose, Ivy or any of the others, there was always Camille.
She was the faceless picture of perfection that my heart, mind and soul yearned for.  The one in who I put all my faith that I would one day find her; secretly tucked away in the corner of my heart while steadily pursuing all my feminine interests in reality.  And as the days wore on, she was the only one who never disappointed me, never left me, never fed me any lies, never put her interests above mine.
Then, just over a decade ago, I met Lisa.  And maybe I should have known it right off the bat.  The hot pink hair, the confidence that oozed from her, the flippant way she engaged our conversation while really keeping one eye on the hockey behind my shoulder.
She was out of my league.
But in the end, the drunken stupor of male arrogance, mixed with some lust and a large portion of curiosity kept me pursuing her.  Camille sat idly by, waiting for me to contact her.  The days in which I wrote to her, about her, grew less and less.  Then, there was a flight to Michigan to surprise Lisa.  Orchestrated with the help of great friends, this was my chance at a movie moment.  The romantic film that ends with marriage and happiness ever after.  It was on that flight of five hours that Camille came out swinging.  She could no longer contain herself as she realized she was slowly being erased by Lisa.  She reminded me that in reality, girls like this actually file restraining orders, not embrace you when you show up out of the blue 2500 miles from home.  She told me that this girl couldn't care about me, she was in Michigan after all with a trip already booked to Paris for three weeks.  Camille told me Lisa was a world-travelling muse, a girl who could not be contained.
I didn't listen.  I walked off the plane, met with Lisa and let her tour me around the areas she had grown up in.  I wish I could tell you that it was the ending of the perfect romantic movie, but it wasn't.  I could not figure out Lisa and that ultimately intrigued me more.  Camille's last desperate attempts came at me in the late nights when I was alone, me, her, and the thoughts of failure.  Camille knew I had my heart set on Lisa, because this is where Camille had always made her home.  She knew if I committed to Lisa, it was an eviction notice for her.  But Camille could not survive without me, it was only me that kept this idealized figment of the perfect woman alive.
September 9, 2006 I married Lisa.  Camille did not attend.  She had been gone for nearly five years already and I had not thought too much about her.  I didn't miss her, I didn't wonder about her and obviously had not written about her.
February 18, 2012 I sit here battling with the final sentences of what is a renewed promise to myself to try and write something everyday.  I had given a lot of thought to what my friend said about writing and that provoked my introspection in all the things that I had created.  That was really the first time I had thought of Camille since the beginning days of meeting Lisa.  And it was at that point that I realized Camille is dead.  The idealized woman I created as a teenager was no longer needed because I have her now in my very real life.  That is how the title of this blog is a tribute to Lisa.
And if you are reading this now, then you are a witness to my beginning, of nothing really.  No agenda here, no motivation except to continue stringing words together, making magical pieces of thought jump into your head.  If you are reading this, then you are the peer pressure that hopefully keeps me writing day after day, because as vulnerable as I now am placing all my thoughts here, it would be even more embarrassing to not fulfill my promise to write a little something everyday.

And if you're still reading and wondering about my naming system of the women in my life, well, it was all relative to what was happening or how my relationships had been going.  I don't know, I can't really explain it because after all, sometimes nicknames just make themselves.
But Camille, I do have Prince to thank for that.  Camille, that alter ego to Prince on my favorite album, "Sign O The Times".  The duality, the yin and the yang, that was how I ended up with Camille; the idealized perfection that was to be my ultimate component, making me a better man.  I always thought I would have Camille in my life, never did I dream I would ever write her eulogy, let alone find someone who would surpass my own fantasy in every way in this life.  I love you Lisa.