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Just Shelley

Mellow out, or burn out

No matter how strongly you feel on a subject, at a certain point you either mellow out, or burn out.

Moth to a flame. We circle our inner passions, beating at the fire with our wings, driving in air to make the flames leap higher. At some point, if we continue this feeding of the fire, our wings will catch in the flame.

Jonathon writes of a meeting between an old friend and himself, and the differences between the person who was John Anthony, intense participant of seventies demonstrations, and the more mellow Jonathon of today.

I also attended demonstrations in the seventies. I yelled and yelled and yelled, through cupped hands and microphone. During one march down the middle of I5 in Seattle, I pounded one of the lights along the side of the road with a stick, jumped up on the cement border, and yelled and yelled with all my might into the crowd. When I stopped to draw in breath, hoarse from the effort, one of the guys in the crowd yells back, “I can’t hear you — there’s too much noise!”

Like Jonathon, I too changed my name during this time, from Michelle Rae to Shelley. Unlike Jonathon, though, I am still as intense now as I was then and find myself living in a state of alt from day to day.

However, I also wouldn’t mind being thinner. If one is going to go up in a puff of smoke, one can at least look good while doing it.

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