swarbles.

today’s theme:  some things never make sense, no matter how much time you spend trying to sort them out and make sense of them.

two years ago this past friday, a friend of mine from high school died from complications of pneumonia.

it was devastating when it happened, and it still is.  to die from pneumonia, after having beaten cancer (lymphoma), at such a young age (she had just turned twentysix, four days before her death).  it’s… insulting, for lack of a better word, that that is how she died.  she underwent three rounds of chemo before it finally took the third time, and she was getting better, until she got sick.  with pneumonia.  and died.  from pneumonia.

i took it personally.  i walk around with what i can only describe as a pseudocatholic, completely neurotic guilt (i’m not catholic, but the guilt i feel is crushing, and i hear the catholic guilt is a constant, crushing guilt), thinking that maybe if i hadn’t gotten better in 2009, that if i had died instead, there would’ve been something ghosty maria could have done to kept her alive.  this woman was so full of life and light and direction (she was going to be a women’s and children’s rights lawyer), and by contrast, i am not that great.

which sounds awful and i recognize that were i to have died, that would have been terrible and it would have been devastating to some people, but i have no sense of direction in my life, and thusly, i have that thought a lot.  often.  still.  later that same year, the younger brother of another friend of mine from school died.  i think i could’ve saved him too.

this is not a healthy way of thinking, but never did i claim to have healthy thoughts.

you would think this guilt would inspire me to become a lawyer or at the very least, inspire me to figure out what i am doing with my existence, but no.  i’m just here, as directionless as ever, but with more banjo?  trying to be less shy about things, which i suppose is a noble endeavor in some way or another.

andso on friday, i was going through my old creative writing notebook and i found a poem a friend of mine wrote as part of a project in which we had to write odes to other people in the class.

it is still one of my favourite things.

searching for answers, the gleeful feeling discovering

maria,

i giggled,

is the (secret) after all.

so delightful this girl i hardly knew

posting dreams and conversations, recreating identities

under assumed names.  she speaks from her (heart), from

deeper than that, from her toes.  there could be

no better way to live than that.

not asking (for) people to understand, but rather

waiting for them,

balls of her feet on the ground, forehead in (hands)

she opens her mouth to talk

reaches instead for the pen.

basking for blue, wishing for

gold, deciphering ruby pink, and creating her own identity,

in no better mode of (survival) than slipping

words through the p-ink.

each more vibrant than the latter,

like a big, loving old mangle.

i clasp them and scroll for more.

i’ve been dreaming a lot about high school, but with current life players mixed in.  the deer appeared the other night, and it was nice to see him.  of course, this dream ended with me being murdered in the house i used to live in, so that part was less nice.  another night, one of the other elegant bachelors appeared, and told me all sorts of wonderful things that i so desperately want to believe would be true (but probably are not true, but it was nice to hear in dreams).  and then last night, i dreamt i had food poisoning whilst on the road with all three elegant bachelors, and the deer was incredibly concerned and it was so sweet.

it’s amusing when you write lyrics with one thing in mind and later realize that they actually, very seamlessly, fit perfectly with the general theme of the song, and thusly no one will have any idea that there’s any sort of double entendre going on.  there were two instances of this happening in my most recent hoursong, and i didn’t even realize that they were not obvious at all (i thought they were) and actually very well camouflaged until i was showering last night.  certain people can probably figure out what they are, but okay.

i went to get pellets friday, probably for the last time until autumn, and my dog friend, belle, didn’t recognize me and barked at me.  i skipped picking up any pellets last weekend, and she wouldn’t come out from behind the counter today and it was really sad.  

i’m twentyeight years old and no one has ever been in love with me.  there was the nightmare, but that disaster was fueled by his hormones and my naivete and the more i think about it, the more i am certain that he did not actually care about me, but was really just trying to get laid, since he had been single for a while and i am completely romantically inept and bad at boys.  and since him?  a few futile crushes; one on a fellow one of my friends married, one on a hyperactive insane boy, one on you.  i’m not sure why i think my feelings for you are futile.  they aren’t, they mean a lot, all things mean a lot, and if one looks at the things that took place ten years ago, it makes sense that now, having met and spent time with you, i have such big, unwieldy romantical type feelings for you, but having them feels like an exercise in futility.  i wish you felt that way too.  i mean, i don’t want you to feel that having feelings for me would be futile, but i wish you felt big, unwieldy romantical type feelings for me too.  i wish i could tell you and i wish it were reciprocated and i spend a lot of time wishing for things that will probably never happen, and it seems silly to wish for such things, but isn’t the whole point of wishing to wish for things that seem unprobable?  i don’t know.

(related aside for the gentlefellows; if, for some silly reason, you are romantically interested in me, you have to come right out and say it or kiss me, because, as previously mentioned, i am bad at boys, and especially bad at reading boys motives and what not, and i will read things the wrong way.  i am notorious for trying to read things in foreign languages that are written in plain english.)

i am thinking about dying my hair blue, but i don’t want to bleach it out first, and i don’t think it will take well on unprocessed hair.  i used to bleach my hair all the time from when i was sixteen until the last time i bleached it in 2006, and it was dead forever, and i haven’t dyed it since i dyed it black shortly after pneumoniafest 2k9 ended, so it’s au naturale right now and relatively healthy, so i’m unsure about this whole thing.  then again, i can’t really afford hair dye, so.  i don’t know.

it really bothers me that only three or four people i know in real life care about my musical endeavors.  which is absurd because 90% of the people i know in real life are big fans of modern “country,” and i am most certainly not making modern “country,” so why would they be interested in the first place, and i know that they generally don’t have any interest in my life and what i’m doing, but it bothers me because it just reinforces that i do not have any friends in the area right now.  i haven’t seen anybody since the beginning of october and i do not know how to meet people.  going out to try to meet people and/or going to visit my friends who live further away requires money, and we are still two weeks behind in pay (this has been a perpetual thing for almost two months now).  i wish i lived closer to the people i actually have things in common with.  

mom’s going in for another medical procedure thing on wednesday.  my new jersey-dwelling grandmother has been in the hospital after having knee surgery since before my birthday, which was almost two months ago.  i cannot imagine that.   she’s 100% italian, loud, and very self reliant, so i cannot fathom how she’s been keeping up in a hospital, but she hadn’t been healing correctly, so they kept her in.  if all goes as planned, she will be let out this friday.

i’m currently achy, sorethroated, headached, running a fever (for some reason i always feel really wretched when my period is ending?  i imagine this has something to do with hormones, or possibly some undiagnosed nefarious thing) and my allergies are back.  just a ball of uncomfortable everything.  i got in bed earlier and the sheets got so hot so quickly.  radiating small warmth.

i’m just in a weird place and i’m terribly lonely.  it seems i always am.  i don’t have local friends anymore.  it’s sad and i don’t know how to meet people who like doing the that i like doing.  i feel as though i post this all the time.

also i feel as though nick drake and i would’ve been pretty good friends.