Confessions of an Addled Mind;

I am incredibly tired for no reason lately, so I apologize in advance for any and all errors I will commit from here on out.

I am a liar. Not little white lies, though maybe that is how we all start? It started with slight exaggerations of real life events, after all, what is a good story without spice and flair? In recent years I have come to understand that most of the memories I have are probably invented. Well, not so much invented but rather 'enhanced.'

My logic is that my life is boring, and truly, it is. So, if I deign to open my mouth and recount various tales of my own personage, than I had better make it worth my audience's while. Clearly, my people pleasing ways are to blame. I often have to ask myself and disassociate the falsehoods from the truth more often than not, but I will never allow myself to tell another.

If I told you a story that seems absolutely unbelievable, it might be true. If I told a story completely believable, it may not be true. You see, I'm kind of muddled in the web my silver tongue has spun myself. I am unsure what parts of my history are true, and which are invention. It doesn't help that this penchant for exaggeration runs deep in my family, and so the lesser lies of my immediate family permeate my own world. A whole worldview, a whole history, a whole life, built on little lies upon little lies. Though, I am sure, I am not alone here.

Lying is as automatic as breathing for people, no? I once pushed my younger brother down the stairs out of spite. He ended up in the hospital. My mother was verbally and emotionally abusive, though I never found the distinction between the two. After the birth and death of my younger brother, she changed her tune, after she had expended all her visceral remarks and etched them upon me. She needed to cope, and really, only me and my father were around to weather the abuse. So, I was a mite bit jealous, I suppose. Also, still angry at him for being a replacement.

My older brother once took my sister's homework and lit it on fire. Not really her homework, her valedictory speech for high school. He lit it on fire and tossed it around, eventually extinguishing the flame when it was blackened thoroughly and about to crumble. He then held it up to her face, crushed it, and sprinkled it over her head. Tears welled in her eyes. Then, tears welled in his eyes when she took the full force of her body and channeled it from her fist to his face. I sat, watching, from the kitchen table, desperately waiting when one of them was going to make me dinner. Later, I would learn my parents had left to go to an abortion clinic for my mother. I had always wondered why they were both absent that night.

I have an Uncle, who I shall not name, who was once chased down by an airplane. Apparently, speed limit was indeed enforced by aircraft. He acquiesced to his fate, but after ending up in patrol car, tried to break free as soon as the plane was gone. He was apparently so belligerent that the officer ended up hitting him in the face with his billy club and knocking out some teeth. That's his story of "how I lost these here teeth." He's now in prison, for an unrelated offense. I mean, he went to prison for assaulting an officer, got out, mucked around in Renaissance Faires as those were his passion, then developed a cocaine habit. Push came to shove when he was living with his brother (my other Uncle) and my Aunt (the one who actually is related by blood; though she had married both of the brothers at different points in her life), for he, the first Uncle, brought home a copious amount of strippers and the final straw was dirty coked-lined panties found in the master bedroom.

I ask you: Which of these do you think is true? All of them? None of them? I wish I could answer you definitively, but I can only give you my best guesses.

Where do I go from here? I don't know. My life has not really suffered, I think, being built on these sorts of things. I think everyone's life is, honestly, I just feel like its one of those epiphanies I'm having. I always prided myself on my silver tongue, and had aspirations to be a politician or actor because of its grace. Alas, we all know how that ended! But really, just because I fancy myself a good liar does not mean I am a good liar, nor does it mean I would be suited for either of the two careers I listed.

"Jusqu'ici tout va bien"

Sunday Sunday Sundae

I do not know what I am going to write about tonight, this night, at nearly three in the morning.

The palm of my left hand occasionally hits the mousepad on this laptop and moves the cursor around and clicks it while I am typing and it is really annoying. That is a thing.

I am happy with myself. This feeling annoys me. I feel like I am doing something wrong by being pleasantly pleased with life. What, then, do I need to fix? I am not certain. So, what I am doing writing here? Blah, I will think of something, I swear.

I am a pessimist. I never think good things could happen to me, so I never stick my neck out. I never take a chance without intense calculations regarding risk. I consider this cowardice; it is probably pragmatism. There are quite a few contradictions to this pragmatism in my life I am sure.

Despite my innate pessimism, I constantly offer optimism to others. After all, their life could only be better than mine, right? This idea is silly. I am an extremely lucky person. If you are reading this blog, then you are too. Just by nature of being in a situation where you have the leisure time to read the musings of a kid in college means you have done something right. Whether you did it or you were born into it is meaningless. You live a privileged and leisurely life. By the same token, I know this is true of myself, but refuse to admit it. You cannot shy away from this truth though. If you do, then you are making yourself miserable.

I have plenty to be miserable about. You have plenty to be miserable about. The world has plenty to be miserable about. You have plenty to be happy about. The world has plenty to be happy about. I have plenty to be happy about.

Regardless, without question, we whine. We hide. Why? I doubt there will ever be an answer. I am fine with this conclusion. I should not be, but I am.

My life is not even one third over yet, and that fact terrifies me. The same fact is also the source of unending hope. I can always change; if I work hard now; I could; I can; I should; if this; if that; I could if I want; if. I will probably do none of the things I plan to do. Every plan I make is probably an exercise if futility. That is an okay thing. Should a plan work, that is grand. Should a plan fail, that is equally grand.

What a sequence of events, eh? There must be something in the two of us. How can we just sit here and do nothing? Read a blog, write a blog, sing a song, write a song, do something, do nothing, just the act of sitting is a thing to do! How dreadfully droll and dull.

This whole thing is kind of a train wreck. Vageries aside, every generation thinks it better and worse than the previous, and thinks the next will be far worse and far better. These contradictory ideas are so deep-seated in human thought, at least, Western thought. So, why do I beat myself up for having such oscillations? Ah, what knows! Tomorrow the sun will rise, and tomorrow the sun will set. Is this cycle not the same as our wandering through life? Tomorrow I will love myself, and tomorrow I will hate myself. It's true, I will talk more of hating than loving, but is that not some indicator than in reality I do more of the former than the latter? Woah, that could be misconstrued I think, I am not certain I did everything grammatically sound there. Antecedents are jerks.

So, remember to hate yourself in small doses, and love yourself in equally small ones, okay?

Script Frenzy; Two Weeks In

I promised myself I would write a screenplay for Script Frenzy this year. I had originally enlisted a partner to help me in this endeavour (it's totally allowed, jerks) but she chickened out. What a bitch, right? Well, like most things, I am behind on this script too. I have an outline, and it's April 12th, which means I have two more weeks to take this outline and write one hundred pages of amazing screenplay.

For today, I will introduce you to the principal cast, and if you have any ideas on how I can mold these characters into firmer people, please let me know. 

The hero of our story, if it can be called such, is a young teenage boy. Probably a sophmore or junior in High School I'd imagine. Those sorts of movies are always the best, aren't they? Anyways, none of these jerks have names yet, so deal with it. Our teenage boy is your standard awkward, geekish boy, obsessed with cartoons from the 80s/90s (in my mind his favourite is either Darkwing Duck or Rocko's Modern Life, I can't decide). He lives with his grandmother, as his mother is dead and his father is in jail. Those two things are most definitely related. Being a tripe high-school romantic comedy, his biggest desire in life is to date this exceptionally nerdy love interest, but she is incredibly off-putting and more interested in academics than anything. Also, his father is finally about to be released from jail or something, so he's really worried about having t olive with his dad instead of his grandmother. Gangly, mousy hair, probably on the short side. Just learning to shave, nicks/cuts on jaw readily apparent. Thin, pale, etc.

His grandmother is an old woman, probably a tad bit senile, but full of love. She's a crazy old bat, and really really old. Like ancient. My inspiration for this character comes straight out of Hey Arnold! and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I want this woman to be just as eclectic as the grandmother in that show. She loves her grandson unconditionally and her heart breaks when she realizes he is growing up without parents. Her husband died some time ago, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time in that. Pictures of him decorate the house, sure, but nothing more. She is not at all fond of her son, who is now en route of parole. She simply wants her grandson to be happy, and tries her best to support him with her government checks. They give those out for old people taking care of kids, right? Sure, whatever. She should be a good head or two taller than her grandson, hair completely gray or white, long but usually in a bun, thick glasses, and pencil thin body. Obviously, she should have a whole closet full of various weird outfits.

The dad is a drug dealer, or drug addict, or both. I don't know. I do not know much about the world of drugs, so clearly I shouldn't write about this. "Write what you know!" and all that jazz. Anyways, a drug deal gone bad got his wife shot (maybe they weren't even married, who knows, his baby momma for sure), and got him a prison sentence. He is due out soon, and desperately wants to reconnect with his son and remake his life. That shit is hard to do though, and his son wants no part of it. He should look prison-y. 

Immediate family out of the way, that leaves our love interest. She should be a nerdy girl, but by no means ugly. Maybe freckly. She is a math geek, or science I guess, really into physics or something. She's also a novice astronomer which will totally play into their first date, right? Right. She's one of those very off-putting, academic-first, I am speaking to you only because I must sort of girls. Over time, the protagonist melts her icy exterior a tad bit, and a relationship forms. How this all ends is still undecided in my mind.

The last of the principal cast is the homeroom teacher. He is also the English teacher for both students as well. He is a sad, lonely bachelor(ette?), and sees himself in the protagonist. He desperately wants to change the protagonist's course in life so the young teenage boy does end up like himself. He feels their high school days have too many uncanny parallels and wants the next generation to be happier than him. At least, in the terms of the love interest and the teenage boy. He tutors the teenage boy after school in order to help him stray from the path of loserdom, with the excuse of bad English grades. It is true that our protagonist is no great fan of literature, so he relents. However, these tutoring sessions are more or less the two of them shooting the breeze and figuring out how to hook the girl and the boy up. Eventually, Teacher invents  a project for their class in which the two kids will be partners. Something lame, like performing a scene from Romeo & Juliet or something equally bad, first kisses and all that jazz. Teacher is more or less a stand-in for myself, my voice, though I have yet to decide on the gender of the character. For a male Teacher, which is what I'm leaning towards, is a mid 30s or 40s portly man with a mustache and glasses. Continually drunk and depressed. Disenchanted with society and the world at large.

I have used this Teacher character before in a small comedy skit I wrote. He teaches inner-city school kids and confiscates a loaded gun from one of them during class. The students begin to panic because now their 'unstable' teacher now has a gun. He laughs, and asks them if he thinks he would want to snuff out their bright lives before they had a chance to be crushed by the world. These bullets, if they were being reserved for anyone, were reserved for himself. In my head, it's also a revolver and he takes all but one bullet out, spins, puts the barrel to his head, laughing, and as his finger pulls the trigger the scene ends.

I thought it was funny, at least. Can you imagine the scared look on the children's faces?

I am not procrastinating.

I am blogging. There is a huge difference between these two tasks, I assure you. Please believe me when I say I am not putting off all the work I owe. I am absolutely 100% certain I am blogging because I feel need to for the good of the people who are reading this blog which means you. Actually, since the my first post, I have completed the entire list except the term papers.

Anyways, I am going to try to keep this one short tonight, considering the lengthy son of a bitch I laid out for you last night. Hopefully you will not begrudge me for this self-imposed half-assery.

I always do this thing, this procrastination. I guess it is intrinsically human, I do not know many people who do procrastinate. Pushing assignments off and off is quickly spiraling out of control for me, though. Tonight, I am going to attempt to do the majority of the French work I owe. It will be a long, arduous task--but hey, I have to do it sometime, right? I also have a quiz tomorrow in French, ugh, that will not be a pleasant class.

I am hopeful, though. Next semester I have four hours of class in a row on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. However, my day does not begin until 1:15 P.M., and on Fridays, I only have fifty minutes of class. (My first class) I am sure this is all wildly interesting to you. On Tuesday and Thursday I only have one class as well, from 11:50 A.M. until 1:15 P.M. What I am trying to say is, I think I will have a lot of free time next semester despite having taking more credits. Coursework notwithstanding, of course.

Anyways, what was I saying? Oh yeah, next year. I'm not going to London after all, but hey, that's whatever. I can do that next year. If I play my cards right, I can be in Paris next summer and London in the fall. With any luck, I will also be living in a single dorm, but one of those single rooms attached to a common room, with a friend of mine and his two freshmen buddies. I have never met these two freshmen, but whatever.

This sort of stuff is boring and really tripe, so let me spare you anything further. Suffice to say I am boring, and am a procrastinator.

Now, to start writing French papers, oh boy. Writing in a language that is not your native tongue is very annoying. I am fairly certain they are riddled with anglicisms, but what can you do?

Death is just all right with me:

First of all Doobie Brothers, all of you, it is "all right" and not "alright." Alright is not all right. So next time you try to praise the lord and deem him acceptable, remember your grammar.

I am, regrettably, not here to talk about the Doobie Brothers, their artistic merits, or even the wonderful Jesus Christ, nor West End girls and East End boys. Wait, what? Totally different song, era, genre, band, etc.

Very recently, a family member of mine died. No harm, no foul. She was an important person to me, sure, that much is true. However, if I had a heart (and I suppose I do, as blood does flow), it seems to have grown hard and callous.

Do not get me wrong, it is not for lack of caring my body is built this way. I was, of course, remorseful, sad, grieving, the usual when the news hit. A bit peeved too, considering how the information was disseminated. Facebook is not an appropriate place to announce the death of family to more family. I feel this sort of thing is best left to the most impersonal of personal gestures: a phone call. A human voice is soothing, right? I digress, the news did rattle me, and I was upset.

This period of grieving was incredibly minor. Despite her influence in my life, which is a fair bit more grand than most extended family, I was quickly over and done with it. I read the news, I called my mother (who had just been informed via Facebook herself, and called her niece to confirm), and she was not shaken, after all it being her sister-in-law I'm sure had something to do with it, and I exclaimed "Well, my aunt is dead." My roommate turned to me, knowing my penchant for mental and emotional instability and asked if I was all right. And I was.

The pain/misery/guilt combo lasted all of five minutes, and returned only when it became apparent I could not make the funeral. You see, she died on a Monday, and the funeral was on the Friday. I found out Monday night, approximately 5-6 hours after her passing, and began to plan my trip Tuesday after clearing it with University officials. Unfortunately, a plane ticket would have cost $900, a bus ticket would have been $300 and every Amtrak ticket that would get me there in time was swiped up. I am a poor college kid, so I could not afford the plane. The bus was an option, but it was literally 30+ hours of travel, and I could  not miss that much of my schooling.

And like that, coming to terms with my inability to attend, I was over the whole deal. It's disgusting, really, how I equate death, I think. Most people seem to be much more shaken when so much as a cousin, or some far flung relative, or even a cousin of a friend who they met once, but I don't seem to be as touched. Perhaps the people with whom I associate are simply melodramatic.

Really, I remember the first three deaths of my life vividly, and I remember the red hot tears welling in my eyes. My brother died when I was very young, as was he, I was a mere five years his senior, at the tender age of six. I remember the news, huddled in my parent's bedroom with my elder brother and elder sister, my mother choking on her words, delivering us the most painful news she's ever had to say aloud. My sister broke down immediately, and my brother, who had convinced himself he need not visit the hospital as he would have a whole life to live with his newest sibling, flew into a blind rage. I sat motionless for a time. My sister's heaved sighs and moans, my brother's cursing (which, incidentally taught me many of the colourful four-letter words I know today), and my mother's pleading with him to stop and calm down. Below, I heard the now unmistakable sound of my father hitting the liquor cabinet and the clinking of glasses of whiskey. Well, after a while, the news sunk in. I had only visited my brother in his glass box a few times, and it was the first time I had seen a baby up close. What a telling experience. We were not allowed to touch him, we were far too dangerous, so through plastic gloves I playfully waved at him and he did that quintessential baby thing and grasped my index finger and squeezed. I was so excited to be an older brother, for I loved my brother so. (Also, this is about the time our relationship turned sour, as he was an angry teenager, and I was a naive  youngster.)

Realizing that all I had wanted at the time in the world was my younger brother, a good grade in handwriting, and to play "Secret Agent Man" all day was a pretty profound thing. I had my life in order. This was the only time I can remember where I had a clear set of goals that were immediately achievable (in my mind). The carpet was pulled, my face hit the floor, and I do not remember much else. I do not shed tears as often as I did in my youth, but if I recall rightly, my mother was terrified whenever I cried, as I made no sound. Even as a toddler, supposedly, after learning how to speak, I stopped blubbering. I guess a child who sits there crying silently for years is a pretty terrifying thing after being told your child has died. My mother frequently refers to that day as one of the worst in her life, and I can understand why. She sat with one child, dead in her arms, crying herself, only to go home and tell her remaining children of her experience, and kill some (or all) of their innocence.

The timeline of my life is confusing for me. I do not remember whether it was my Great-Great Aunt or my Grandfather who died next. I only know that my younger brother was the first. My Grand-Aunt was my grandmother, in essence. Both sets of grandparents lived far away in the south of the country, and I saw them very rarely. The most conversations I ever had with them at the time of Genevieve's death was over the phone, for hours at a time on holidays and birthdays. Genevieve was my grandmother, I think. In terms of role in my life. She visited occasionally, laden with gifts, and we children slept over her house occasionally and her house smelled weird and she had a bunch of cats. That is what grandmothers are, right? When her health took a turn for the worse, our family and her bachelorette self were the only family so far north. As such, we took her in during her last days. She took my bed, and my bed was moved downstairs. My mother and father recount horror stories of colostomy bags, sponge baths, and the like. I just remember seeing her with an oxygen tank, her flesh falling off her body nearly, lying in my bed with my sheets, calling me over with a little bell and asking for assistance for the most mundane of things. I do not begrudge her this, after all, she was dying. She had been good to me my entire life of eight years, so it is only right I be good to her in the last of her eighty years. I actually think she was closer to seventy, but oh well.

So, we played our part as servants. She died, in my bed, one day. I was at school when it happened, thankfully, and when I got back the body was already gone. However, her dying in the bed I slept in for the next ~7 years definitely creeped me out. Finally, at her funeral, more family appeared. My parents decided to leave it up to their children's discretion as to whether to stay or not. My brother, cold-hearted to the world, had "better things to do," which in retrospect probably means working at Wawa and getting stoned during break. My sister had some big fancy sports competition that she decided to attend and dedicate to Aunt Gen, and as for myself... I did not attend. I had no good excuse. I felt pressured, as I would be the youngest person in attendance, my parents told me it would be very boring and very religious and if I did not like that sort of thing I should go home with my neighbour. I did not and do not particularly care for my neighbour, mind you. I relented to their decision, because I felt they must know better than me. I have regretted that decision for pretty much my entire life. I have absolutely no closure with my Grandmother/Aunt type person. I saw her in her casket, I put a stuffed cat in the casket so she would not get lonely in the ground, and then I left. All the while after, while attending my neighbour's son's school's spirit day, I cried, silently, and begged to go back to the funeral home. She told me "You made your choice, Alex. I can't take that back, you can't take that back, and I can't abandon my son and daughter here for you." Though I am sure she was just trying to explain the situation to me with the best of intentions, to this day I think she was criticizing me for 'abandoning' my family. This experience is why I feel a compulsion to attend the funeral of every family member I can. Though, often times, I cannot, and so I am often left unfulfilled. This feeling of non-closure peppers my life, and so it does not bother me now, but it certainly did then.

The next monumental death in my life, I was no older than nine or ten. My sister had gone to college, so this one must certainly be the latest of the three. My grandfather died. Now, I know, I just said I had a very distant relationship with my grandparents. I only had three during my life, my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother. My maternal grandfather died before my mother was twenty, and being that I was born when my mother was in her thirties, I did not meet him. Though he seems like a swell guy, alcoholic as my paternal grandpa, but with more domestic abuse, and sans a leg.

Dziadzia was a weird man. He was old, very old, and a military man. The Army runs deep in on my father's side, and dziadzia was no exception. However, love of liquor runs deep on both sides of my family, and again, he was no exception. Purported now by many a family member to be a worthless drunk in his old age, I loved dziadzia. When I had to sit through those boring conversations with his wife, nima, I would have to be sweet, caring, kind, considerate and tactful. Nima loved the fact I was into birds. Dziadzia loved the fact I played video games. He was the only man I knew over twenty-something to own a PlayStation. In fact, when he died, he bequeathed his PlayStation and games to my older brother. A pittance of an inheritance, I am sure, but when you are young, that is badass. I realize you may be confused by the naming of my grandparents here, so I am going to explain it to you as my father explained it to me. Dziadzia is "Grandfather" or more accurately something like "grandpapa or pop-pop" in Polish, and Nima is a term of endearment like "honey or dearest." I do not know why we did not call Nima whatever the word for grandmother is in Polish, but what makes sense anyway? Anyways, by the time Dziadzia died, I had met him a few times. We had great fun playing F-Zero and various video games and card games and pretty much everything. Sure, he was probably piss drunk at the time, but what veteran wasn't?

Again, upon returning from another wonderful day at elementary school, I found my mother mournful in the big reclining chair. We knew Dziadzia's health had been declining, and my father had left with the newest addition to our family to go visit him. He went by train, as plane was too expensive for us. Dziadzia died about thirty minutes before my father arrived, and so my father and young brother, not even a year old, were stranded at the station for some time. Upon entering, I knew something was wrong. My mother was home before I was. She worked much later, and rode her bike, and her factory was definitely at least 5-10 minutes further away than my school by walking so--her being home sent up red flags. It didn't need to be said, but she started anyway, she spoke his name, I knew, I crawled into the chair, and did that horrible spewing of tears she hated. Being motherly and all that, I think she tried to comfort me. I'm sure of it. My older brother, pissed at the world, a high school senior or junior or something, came in and knew too. He saw me in the fetal position, my mother being all tender (which was rare since our brother died), and he grabbed me. He shook me something fierce and yelled at me for crying. I should be a man. Crying solves nothing. Did I think crying was going to bring him back? Dead is dead, get over it. It worked, I think. My mother did not appreciate his sentiment, and stood up, shaking, and smacked the shit out of him. It was very rare we witnessed one another get beat, so I was in complete shock at this point. It wasn't just a slap on the face. It was about five. She screamed something unintelligible and told him to get the fuck upstairs.

Maybe my brother's speech still rings in my head. Perhaps that is why death does not rattle me so. Maybe I am thinking too much on this, and other people are just being too sentimental. When Nima died a few years back, I shed zero tears. I feel horrible about this fact, but in truth, I have not really cried over someone's death since Dziadzia's. It's certainly not because I cared more for one than another, as I came to know Nima much better later in life. (My parents decided that it was unequivocally bad that we were being raised, essentially, without grandparents in our lives, so we visited often after Dziadzia's death.) The 'form,' if it can be called that, my grief took after Nima's death was cigarettes. I began to smoke after her death, ironically I think, in her memory. Everyone of my grandparents (and parents) was a heavy smoker. Nima, later in her life, was denied smoking not by her doctors (though they certainly didn't approve), but by her youngest son. He essentially said "well, stop smoking or you can't see my kids ever again." And, because he was the baby boy, and because he was a mama's boy, and because he lived across the street from her, and because they were the only grandchildren she saw regularly, she did. She did not really want to, but she did. She died of diabetes anyways, no smoking involved. At least Aunt Gen died of lung cancer, so you could argue that.

 Of course, after death, everyone feels comfortable airing dirty laundry. I think a lot of it is invented and exaggerated. Then again, I am not innocent of this sin, so who am I to judge? My Aunt became a nymphomaniac, drunken harlot. She divorced her husband, allegedly because she was not getting it on the regular, and she was prone to gambling money away. My grandfather became a drunken, verbally abusive bastard who wasted his cheques on video games. My grandmother became a manipulative woman, disapproving of my parent's marriage (Catholic + Baptist? No, no, no! Say it ain't so!), who was keen on twisting her children to her whims. My maternal grandmother, a manic-depressive kleptomaniac who refused medication (it was not proper to see a psychologist in the 40s and 50s, so she was undiagnosed except by her children) and mentally, emotionally, verbally abusive after the death of her husband. The kleptomania thing was certainly true though, she stole me a bunch of Pokemon toys when I was a kid. I know they were stolen, if only because of the sheer volume. She would steal me 10-12 packs of toys with several repeats. I know they were stolen because, well, my mother kept her wallet when she visited. I do not know why but it was a thing.

My younger brother? Well his dead turned my heart to steel regarding a new younger brother. So, I treated my youngest with the most hostility I could muster, and our relationship remains tenuous to this day. I know I am simply mistreating him because of who he isn't, but I cannot bring myself to stop. It's terrible, really. I'll say something ridiculously sharp, and immediately know I have shaken him, but I will not apologize. At this point, my parents will not even interject, for fear of losing more children. They were once so keen on denying us things to show us how they were raised, how to make us better people, et cetera. Once the younger was lost, they began to satisfy whatever whim they could. I hate it, but I don't, and can't stop it.

What I am saying is, it has been a long time since someone's death has moved any part of me. In fact, I tend to look with more sadness as to how radically the people closest change rather than the radical change of a person no longer living.

Five minutes. Five stages. A few more, and I'll be just like Jack Donaghy and do all five in a second.

Gray or Blue;

(Disclaimer: I did not actually watch this video, I just listened.)

This song makes me feel so sad. When I have finished listening to this song, I seriously feel like a worthless human being. Also, look at that nifty YouTube thing. I am slowly learning this blog thing.

The song literally begins "I feel so helpless now," Well of course I would relate. When have I not felt helpless? No matter what I try to do things fuck up! It's almost as if I am at the whims of some greater cosmic force. Maybe this train of thought is simply my attempt at coping with my own inability.

Do you know what the worst kind of love is? Unrequited love. When you are particularly blessed to see someone you desperately feel that they could be something or do something and you just want to know but you really can never find out because what are you going to say and how are you going to say it and is it even right and while these thoughts have been racing in your mind the object of your desire has slowly walked up to you and began a conversation and you realize you have been smitten with a dear friend and you have absolutely no idea how to proceed.

In the song she says she struggles with the xylophone to make her sound, but come on, there is definitely some sort of stringed instrument in there, Jaymay. You cannot even pretend there is not.

This sort of slow, melancholic song usually is not something I normally deem acceptable. However, after a while of self introspection, I did realize I can completely empathize with this song. I've known the shape of hands by watching someone talk, and I've known the shape of body by watching someone walk. I've even desperately watched someone's mouth and wondered how it would taste. I think we all have done this.

When the song begins to wind down, I began to have the most issues with it, lyrically. Well-- "a person cannot lie" is a very ambiguous way to end a song. I do not approve. Lying is second nature to most people. More than anything, I guess I really like this song because whenever conversations happen about people and their appearances, I always get bonus points for my eyes. Then, without fail, there is always some sort of debate whether they be grey or blue. I am not certain myself, nor do I particularly care. I mark blue on all my forms, because I come from a blonde hair, blue-eyed family. Though, in recent years, my hair has darkened and my eyes are certainly a lot steelier than the remainder of my siblings.

I digress. I am very ambivalent about folk music as a whole. I am not even familiar with Jaymay as an artist; I do know her song "Snow White" and I remember being OK with that. Is this folk rock? I do not know. I am unsure of how to categorize even the most basic of musics. Whatever, when that tambourine gets going, I get to rocking.

Alas! Let me poorly muse upon the lyrics which Ms. Seerman has provided: The friend zone is a complicated and awkward place. I have since long come to terms with it, but there is always a glimmer of hope, you know? I think this song stirs the fancy particularly fiercely within me.