Greg.

I don't remember the first time I met him, but it would have been during a Salzburg orientation meeting. He was one of the people I'd be spending a year abroad with, and we all had to go through them, so I assume he was in them. The thing is, moments in your life pass by unnoticed, and you never think on them until years later, and you find that the memory is gone. Can't have been important, you tell yourself. We called him the Patriarch, cos he was older than all of us, and the name lent itself in a year we were studying Art History like it was going out of style. He was lucky enough to get one of the only two single rooms that the UP Salzburg Centre has to offer, and he would stand on his balcony, cigarette in hand, and survey the courtyard-- and mutter comments about Schneibel under his breath. Or maybe he didn't, but this is how I remember it. I do remember he was there, with Bri and Ali, on the day I got back after a night of extra-curricular activities. And he wondered why it took me so long to start enjoying all that Europe had to offer.

After Salzburg, we were part of a great group of friends who hung out with each other and, to be honest, whoever the fuck wanted to hang out with us. It wasn't until after University, when I moved away because working on a cruise ship seemed like a better idea than getting a real job, that I lost touch with him. Then he went into the Army, and I don't think we said two words to each other in twice as many years.

It wasn't until FaceBook that we started to reconnect. Say what you will about the evil timewaster, it IS a good way to keep in touch, reconnect, and bombard people with game notifications. It was good to catch up, and to find out that he was going through some of the same things I was. Drifting apart from people, through no fault of anyone's but life, it was a comfort to know that there was nothing wrong with me. While other people were getting married and having kids, he made it okay in my mind to not want any of that. And when I coerced him into coming down to Portland for our 10-year Reunion, it was because I was selfish and wanted someone to grumble with.

The last time I talked to him was January. He asked me to write a letter of recommendation for Seattle University. He'd decided to go back to school, Seattle University, to join the Therapeutic Psychology Program. I'm lucky, because I got a chance to let him know what I thought of him, how highly I valued our friendship, even if the letter was for a specific purpose. I didn't have to embellish.

Fuck, this is hard. I'm going to miss you, Greg. I'm going to miss your 'Ladieth Man' impressions. Your opinions, your stubbornness, your compassion, your generosity, your friendship.

Thank you, old friend.

September

Already? I don't know why I'm so surprised every year about this time. Summer is almost over-- although we've got another month or two of weather I would have called summer living in England. I'm on the downward slope to my next birthday. I think about all the things I said I was going to do this year, and try to work out if I can get them done in the next four months.

First and foremost, I had hoped to have an agent by this point. I finished draft one back in December last year, which seems like a lifetime ago. I re-drafted it, and gave it to someone who had offered to give me an outside perspective, a rough edit, before polishing it myself and submitting. She had it for a month. That month has now been five, I've given up hope of her coming through, and someone else has it instead.

Not that I've entirely wasted my time. As of tonight I'm thirty-two thousand words into book two. Starting book two before I'm done with book one is a definite help. It's drawing attention to things I left out, or need to mention in book one. When I get book one back I'm going to have to sit down and plot out on my whiteboard the exact timeline, because if even I am having trouble keeping up with the ages of the characters, what's a reader going to think?

My whiteboard. I have a 3' by 4' whiteboard hanging on my bedroom wall next to my bed, and every day it hangs there, silent and accusatory, reminding me of future book/play/screenplay ideas. I've jotted down a couple of almost-remembered dreams just in case. The problem is that I do a lot of my writing in down time at work. I know the music and the show so well by now, that it almost serves as a quiet place that I can shut myself off from the world. But it's not practical to take the whiteboard to work every day.

Anyway, back to the goals for the year. Agent, nope, but book two started? Hells, I'm almost half-way through. I've started work on a bunch of other projects, some literary, some theatrical. I built a set for the show BNTA's opening in less than a week. I came up with a new five year plan. So while I suppose I only had one goal for the year, I haven't achieved it and in the time left I'm not sure whether I can achieve it, there's all these other things that I've managed to do without even having them as goals.

I hate the idea of a bucket list. When I think bucket I think of the galvanized ones my grandfather used to have in his garden. Though there's nothing wrong with them per se, they had a tendency to sit there, year after year, collecting rainwater and mosquito larvae. They never moved. No one cared about the water they had in them, except maybe the mosquitoes. And the list part of that? Making lists is useless for me. If I write out a shopping list, I'll inevitably leave it at home and forget half the crap on it. And if I remember the list, how do I add to it in the store when I don't have a pen? A list is too finite. I've just got things I'm going to do at some point.

Like get an agent, as soon as book one's in the state it needs to be.

Morbidity

I hemmed and hawed about writing this post. If you've read any of my short stories or the bloggage I did back on MySpace, you know I talk about death a tad.

Still not really sure about the whole dying thing, whether it scares the shit out of me or whether I just don't care. I definitely don't want to die just yet, but only recently do I feel like I really have a reason to not die yet.

I have to write. I have to finish the stories I've started, write the ones I haven't started but have been thinking about, and I have to share them with people. As to whether they're any good or not, I can't be the judge of that. The novel I'm writing right now, I'm not sure if it's what I set out to write-- there's more characters and twists to it that I had originally thought about-- but I feel a compulsion to finish it, cos I want to see how I get where I'm going. I've surprised myself so far. Cryptic I know. I just don't want to give too much away, and I want you buggers to actually buy the bloody thing when it's published. I'll sign your copy.

But here's the thing. If I were to die in a plane crash tomorrow, flying up to Portland for a much-needed get-out-of-vegas trip (too many hyphens?), then I'd leave these stories unwritten. I don't even have the 28,628 words I have written saved anywhere that someone could come in when I'm dead and print them off, or finish the book. The only people who would really care are Dee, a bloke I work with, because he's been reading every chapter as I finish it, and my Dad, because he's read the first one and wants to know what's going to happen. I'm talking about caring about the book, by the way, not me. I hope all of you are mourning if I'm dead. And by mourning I mean raising a glass with the alcoholic beverage of your choice.

It's the idea of leaving it unfinished that worries me. I've set this challenge for myself, and I want to complete it. I want to finish them all. I want to be able to erase the big whiteboard on my bedroom wall because everything I've hastily scribbled down on it has been done, and needs to make way for the next several ideas.

If I don't die in a plane crash tomorrow, then there is more likelihood of me finishing my novels than there is of something that's quite likely. But there's the shitty thing about this situation. Now I've joked about dying in a plane crash, if I do then this blog will be some strange, tragic foreshadowing of my fate and I'll become famous for the exact thing I don't want right now. People will lament the fragments of stories they are able to piece together from printouts and digital echoes I've let behind. They'll read this blog and wonder what could have been. Well, except for the fact I'm not taking it seriously at all. If I die, I die, and while I won't be happy about it, after writing this blog know I'll probably be laughing at the sheer stupid irony of the situation, while crapping myself at the same time. And did I actually cause it to crash because of this blog? Does the world really, as I've come to believe every time I wash my car and it rains the next day, does it really revolve around me? Cos if it does then this would be the absolute worst time to have that confirmed for me.

But is it better to be James Dean, who had a lamentably small body of work and will always be young, full of unrealized promise, or to be like Marlon Brando, who did a lot of good work and is lamentably remembered for his large body?

Either way, if I'm dead, and you have a copy of anything I've written, let my parents know and maybe see about getting it published. With the disclaimer that I didn't have time to edit it properly cos I died in a fucking plane crash, so that's why it might not be that good. . .cheers!

And just to be really twisted, I'm setting it so this is published half-way through the flight. . .

Strange mood

This isn't the blog I was going to write, or probably should have written. The drafts for those are scattered between my laptop, a couple of computers at work, one thumb drive, and the digital graveyard. All those blogs I started but didn't finish, or saved because I meant to finish, and now never will because life got in the way. I'm happy. I have been for a couple of hours now, although for reasons I can't really explain. Went to the bar, had a few drinks, played some trivia, this has all happened before. But driving home after the bar, I decided that when I got home I was going to chill some Whiskey, and go for a walk. This I did. I got home, retrieved my backpack from the boot of my car, and went to the kitchen to chill some Whiskey. The single malt I had in mind was a 10-year-old Laiphroag, which was given to me for my birthday, and which I'd never had before but have decided it's one that I very much like. Decanted a tad into my flask, and went out the front door, which I seldom use because I come in through the garage most days.

I went for a walk because it was raining. Having lived in England, Louisiana, Oregon, Austria, Hawai'i, and the Caribbean, all those places have a fair amount of rain. Some are warm, some cold (guess which ones!?!), but I think all are refreshing to some extent or another. The rain in England is why it's green, and can support 55 million people living there. Louisiana, Hawai'i, and the Caribbean, the rain is warm and is much better than the humidity, because it's nice to be wet from something other than your sweat. Oregon is somewhere between the two; it can be warm, it can be cold, but it definitely rains there.

And now I live in Vegas. (Oh, by the way, I might go on for a while. I'm not busy, or in any hurry to go to bed, so I might sit here and type for a while. There, you've been warned.) Vegas is one of the last places I thought I would end up. And I shudder to use that phrase, cos I ain't dead yet so don't like to think of myself as having 'ended up here.' But I've been here for coming on to four years, and that's a long time for me to be anywhere. I'm a little antsy, to say the least. There are things I miss. I miss seeing those friends that at one point or another in my life I've taken for granted, and now they're not just a couple blocks away, ready to go out for drinks. I miss moving around, and having to see a new place and how I fit in to it. I miss being able to start fresh every few months, with at most four or five people who knew me before. I miss not having to drive home after going to the pub. This list could go on forever, but I'm going to grab another drink, back in a few. . .

So I poured myself another Whiskey, and I'm going to take the chance to correct my spelling from up above. I'm drinking Laphroaig. 10-year-old. Nectar. Anyway, where was I.

I miss the rain and the ocean. Vegas is the first place in my life that I don't get either on a regular basis. And when I do 'end up' somewhere, I'm going to need one or the other. I drink less water than anyone I know, I'm a prime candidate for dehydration, but I seem to have this need for water in my life. As long as I'm not drinking it or putting it in my Whiskey (I'm a one ice cube guy), I seem to love having water in my life. Walking in the rain tonight, deliberately neglecting to put on anything waterproof (including my shoes, as it turned out). I think the rain is one of the things I'm really going to miss when I die.

So let's make a list of things we're going to miss when we die. . .I'll go first (and these are in no particular order):

1. Rain on my face. in fact, rain in general whether it's on my face, a tent, windscreen, wherever. 2. My parents. Although I'll probably miss them before I die, cos I'm sure they've arranged things so that they won't have to be here after I'm gone. So my family as a whole, because I'll probably leave some of them behind, and I'm sorry for that, but hey, we had fun, right? 3. You guys. I'm going to be sorry that I won't be able to write anything that might make you smile, frown, or just bring a thought you might not have had were it not for reading some crap I'd written. And hey, we had fun, right? 4. The sound of the ocean. And the feel of the ocean. Whether it's fucking around in the surf, jumping in time with the waves and snotting out salt, being on a ship and feeling the whole thing move under you, or being a part of it, diving, there is something I find calming about the Ocean, even when it scares the shit out of me. 5. Sunrises and sunsets. 6. Dogs 7. I'm going to miss being able to close my eyes while listening to some pieces of music and just feel that things are better. And there's a couple on the album I'm listening to right now. 8. Alcohol. Be it Whiskey, Cider, Absinthe, Jager, Beer, or any of the others I have come to know and love in the past 17 years of imbibing. Mostly I'm going to miss the feeling that comes with having just enough but not quite too much. 9. Orgasms. Mine and other peoples. Mine, because at the end of the day it feels good to come. Other peoples, because if you're lucky enough to get to give someone else one, then you've delved that little bit deeper into their soul, you've both shared something of yourselves that you don't give out to everyone. And it feels good to come. 10. Smells. There are some fantastic smells in this world, from fresh-cut grass, to someone else's skin, to a wood fire, to a summer wood in the middle of the English countryside. 11. Tastes. See above. 12. Anger. Because it feels good to be angry. I'm going to miss being angry. Angry at nothing, at things that dont matter or mean anything, and anger at those world-changing issues that some people just don't seem to get. I know I shouldn't feel this way, but anger can feel good, and I'm going to miss the feeling that righteous anger can give. 13. I'm going to miss the feeling standing in the middle of a club, with a bit of a buzz, and just giving in to the music. To feel the music in every nerve, muscle, et cetera et cetera blah blah blah, insert body part here.

Thirteen seems like a good number to stop on. Promise there are more, but I'm not thinking of them right now. And after going back and looking at them to make sure I'm not repeating myself, I realized it might seem a bit morbid to list things I'm going to miss when I die. But the strange thing is, I'm not depressed or morbid when talking about things like this, I'm just matter of fact. I think that the short story I just wrote has something to do with it, cos it's sort of about death. Well, more about fear and selfishness, but death's a big part of those two things. But we've all got to go through with it, so why ignore it?

Well, I'm done with this for the night. But I'm not done writing for the night. Going to work on some other things I've been thinking about, might finish up in time for the sunrise; I just hope it's still raining, because two for one is always good.

The revolutions that change the world are the ones that happen inside of people's heads. I'm not sure if that is a quote, but it feels more true than ever right now. Peace out. And thanks for making it this far with me. . .