gone but not forgotten

beverly cleary died today, and this death hit me harder than any of the celebrities that died this year, or maybe ever. she was such a huge part of my childhood and the adult that i grew into and the one that i aspire to be. 

i don't remember a time that i didn't love books. my mom is a reader, and we were raised on them. there are many books that stand out to me when i think of my early childhood - from picture books that every child in the school was obsessed with to obscure titles in our little bookshelf in jeddah that we'd read every summer without fail. but the first author i loved, that was beverly cleary. for years, any book that i read for pleasure was one of hers. we had used copies with yellowed pages and covers so precariously attached you were almost afraid to touch them. i got copies, shiny and new, for birthdays and major holidays. i distinctly remember opening up a present that included ramona and her mother, ramona and her father, ribsy, and socks. muggie maggie is the first book that i remember choosing for myself in a bookstore. i can't listen to the national anthem without thinking of ramona. and it should come as no surprise that when, a couple of years ago, i started reading chapter books to my kids, her books were ones of the first that i turned to. and seeing my kids fall in love with ralph s mouse, henry and ribsy, socks, beezus and ramona, ellen and otis, mitch and amy, and emily with her runaway imagination was like falling in love with them all over again. she might have been my most read author in 2020. and while it was special to read to my kids from the same copies that i had first been introduced to these characters with, i also loved all of the reprints we got from the library with interviews with the author at the back. 

beverly cleary books were the ones that made me a reader. i'm so grateful for her and them and the fact that i can share them with my own children, and that they're still as enjoyable to read in my 30s as they were back in 3rd grade. (which also happened to be the first year i had already read the book we read in class. my teacher had told me he liked henry more than ramona and i thought he was crazy, but reading them again last year and seeing how much my son loved henry definitely endeared him to me.) 

*I'll See You Again - Westlife

goodbye my friend. you have been the one, you have been the one for me

jasper is dead, and i am heartbroken. a few months ago (possibly longer), he started to have some issues. the main one was that he would sometimes just restart out of nowhere and then get stuck in a reboot loop where he would almost finish restarting but then decide to just restart from the beginning again. these loops would only last a minute, though, and usually if i took off my phone case they'd finish even faster. another very frustrating issue was that he would get in these moods where, whenever i would go to take a picture, he'd just turn off. like the take a picture button was a power button or something. he would also do this thing where he would turn off out of nowhere, and when i turned him back on, the battery would be mostly drained. my husband (and most other people in my life) told me to buy a new phone. but i loved jasper, and he was still perfectly usable most of the time, and so i stubbornly refused.

fast forward to a few weeks ago. i was at target with my husband having a text-conversation with a friend about whether or not she was going to another friend's dinner when jasper decided to restart. and restart. and then restart some more. i took off the case and waited, but he just kept trying to restart. i took out the battery for a while, but the second i put it back in, the restarting just continued. i tried everything, but all my efforts were made in vain. and then, after about twenty minutes, right when i was ready to call the time of death, he was finally able to finish a restart and everything was back to normal. 

now, a smart person would have heeded the warning signs and made some sort of preparation for the inevitable end. i am not a smart person, though. i am a person who apparently believes deeply in denial. "he's fine," i said. "it was just a weird one-time thing. i'll never have to buy another phone for the rest of my life."

and then monday happened where any time i touched a button i would send jasper into freak-out restart forever mode. he always came back after a while, though, and so i still did nothing. come tuesday, jasper was getting stuck in restart loops that lasted hours, draining his battery completely in the process. and now here i am on wednesday night, still unable to use my phone because he will not stop trying to restart and pulled rudely from the lands of denial. 

i am not ready for my phone to die. i never synced my candy crush with facebook so none of my progress is saved. nearly up to level five hundred, and for what? i have pictures that i have not saved to a computer or backed up in any way yet. there is so much stuff on my phone that i want and/or need, and now i cannot get to it. and i am sad. plus, buying a house is expensive. furnishing a house is expensive. having a baby is expensive. buying a phone is expensive. i was not prepared for that last one in the midst of all the others. 

for the meantime i am using my husband's old phone. and i am grateful to get to use it, but it has none of the apps i use (which are basically only four: whatsapp, instagram, candy crush, and babycenter), an awful background, all the wrong notification sounds, none of my alarms, the wrong layout format thing, and is not my phone. adjusting his phone to look like jasper just feels like defeat, and i somehow refuse to accept that. i am still carrying around jasper trying to get him to start up again, but so far have had no luck. sigh. 

it's been a good two and a half years, jasper. (it's actually been two years and seven months almost to the day.)

*Goodbye My Lover - James Blunt

i know that it might sound more than a little crazy but i believe

so there's this thing where you google "died on" and then your birthday and the wikipedia article that comes up is who or what you were in your previous life. now, i don't believe in previous lives or anything, but a friend who did it is studying art and her guy was an art critic. her sister, a writer, did it and her guy was an author. that was coincidental enough for me to try it.

apparently, in my past life i was pierre desproges, a french humorist "famous for his elaborate, eloquent and above all, virulent diatribes criticizing anything and everything." and i couldn't help but notice that one of my favorite things to write on this blog was wannabe eloquent diatribes criticizing anything and everything. in fact, one of my favorite thing to do in general is find all the people and things on the internet that make me angry and then spend hours criticizing them to anyone who will listen. he also wrote in various formats, which is totally my dream. so yeah.

now, like i said, i don't believe in past lives or anything, but this is just weird. i could chalk it up to random coincidence, but what fun is that? instead, i'm going to propose my own solution. you remember in grade school when we were told time and time again that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it just gets transferred from one form to another? well, what if interests and talents and hobbies and whatnot follow the same rule? what if there are always the same number of writers on this earth? (or maybe the same amount of writerly talent and that can be hogged by one really talented person or distributed among a thousand semi-talented people.) what if there were only so many people interested in art, and whenever one died another one had to be born to take his/her place? it's kind of cool to think about.

*I Knew I Loved You - Savage Garden

i can't hear you

so my phone died yesterday. my beautiful (on the inside, maybe?), crappy, dumb, dumb, dumb phone finally had enough of being thrown across parking lots when i get out of the car and forget it's in my lap, being drooled on by numerous children, dropping out of pockets and bags and hands onto various types of floors, and whatever else it had to endure on a daily basis. apparently dropping calls and eating text messages was just not getting the results it wanted, so yesterday evening it up and killed its own mic. suddenly people i was talking to could hear a robotic hum at best and absolute silence at worst. it was a very sad moment when i realized that i could no longer spend months looking at different phones and pretending that i was going to buy one. the time has come when i am forced to buy one.

i've switched over to a temporary backup phone for the moment. (though i did strongly consider not doing that and actually having a valid excuse not to talk on the phone with anyone ever until i got a replacement. i really do hate telephones most of the time. it would have been perfect. unfortunately, my family is in the desert and since we have no land line, they contact me through my cell phone. though i have no problem being telephonically-unavailable to people here (because, hello? just text me.) i don't think it would work so well with a continent or two between us.)

i've never had a phone die on me before. my husband, though, has had several. he's pretty much an electronics murderer. (okay, maybe not that bad... but whatever.) i blame my phone's death on him, obviously.

*The Noise - Regina Spektor

ten bucks says you don't have it in you

you're watching the tv tell a story about some famous guy who killed himself. he might have been a she, but the famous part is undebatable because we all know those are the only deaths that matter. and you look over and say, "life may get bad, but it never gets that bad. it should never get that bad." i think about punching you, but really, you're not worth it.

i never cut myself. i never inhaled water or took enough pills to need a stomach pumping. i never touched a gun or tied a rope or stood teetering at the edge of a cliff two thoughts past "what if." sometimes i wish i had the courage to.

they say that everyone dies twice. once when the soul leaves the body and once when their name is spoken for the last time. i just want to become famous enough to never have to die the second time. maybe then i'll never have to find out what comes next.

i think about the guy that killed himself. maybe he didn't do it because things got that bad. maybe he did it because he knew they never could.

-

goodness but there has been a lot of deaths over the past couple of weeks. my younger sister's best friend's mom, who was a close family friend and also worked at my high school, just passed away. i'm thinking all of the death inspired this. plus a verizon employee and a random internet poem.

*Dutch Courage - The Spill Canvas

all we need is some relief through these hard times

since my last post where i was able to spend an entire afternoon making book spine poetry, a lot has changed. for one thing, projects that were supposed to be due on the sixteenth were suddenly moved up to the second. exams were suddenly made cumulative. and group members were suddenly called out of town on business trips. basically, school decided that i had too much under control, that i wasn't panicking enough and that, sadist that it is, it had grown to like my panic in the beginning of the semester and wasn't ready to be deprived of it just yet. so it threw a whole lot of stress on me and watched me squirm. joke's on it, though, because i have everything back under control and this means that i will just have less to do in the upcoming weeks. (except for that cumulative exam. i'm really not looking forward to that.)

but school wasn't the only thing to decide that things were going too well for me. i mentioned on here that my dad was over in the desert. what i didn't mention is that he was there because my grandmother was sick. after a couple of days when everyone thought she was getting better, she passed away on wednesday (i'm not going to get into a sob-fest about it here, though). a wednesday that i still had to go to school. that was fun. and then, a couple of days after that, i found out that my ap physics teacher from high school died. which you may not think is too big of a thing for me considering the fact that i graduated high school six years ago and really haven't had much contact with him since, but my high school was really small. and everyone was really close. and a death in the faculty is kind of like a death in the family to us. (remember when i talked about the death of our ap history teacher?)

anyway, between the deaths and the stress i was not having a very good week. though aside from a really bad thursday where i was sleep deprived and bursting into tears about everything, i was doing a pretty awesome job at coping. which was why i was avoiding blogging. because writing it all out would make it real, and i just could not afford to do that at the moment. but, like i said, everything is back in hand, my dad will be coming back on thursday which should help his mood a bit (or at least distract him? maybe?), and i received an email yesterday morning that made my day. all i have to do now is make it through the next couple of weeks, and at the moment, it seems very possible.

*These Hard Times - Matchbox 20

all the small things

sometimes i wonder about the small things that disappear with a person when s/he dies. the little nuances in character that really made the person unique. the things that some people may have never even known about them. take me for example, when i die, people may remember that i liked books, but would they remember which book i read when i was feeling depressed? which one i read for light reading during stressful days? which ones held my favorite characters and which i couldn't stand? would they remember that i used scraps of whatever for bookmarks - receipts, tags, gum wrappers, ticket stubs - and that the bookmarks would stay in the books to be used forever after that? they may remember that i liked to write, but would they remember which pieces i was most proud of? would they remember that my favorite punctuation was the question mark or that i could never really write anything worthwhile when i was happy? would they know that anything creative was written with openoffice writer instead of ms word and why? would they remember my many insecurities or just that i handed out cockiness by the bucketful?

when people die (or even just leave, but you know, i prefer the morbid), the ones they leave behind tend to remember memories about them instead of the people themselves. they remember what they want and who they want. the random pieces that made them a whole person are lost somewhere in the dirt they're buried in. 

for future reference, here are some of the random things that make me me:

[one] the streaks left in the carpet after vacuuming make me happy.

[two] folding clothes is the bane of my existence.

[three] my favorite place is the ocean. large bodies of water fill me with a mixture of hope and sadness that makes my chest tight.

[four] i'm not a fan of feet.

[five] half of what i say is quoted from a book/movie/tv show.

[six] i don't like even numbers.

[seven] i like to sit in traffic and listen to good music.

[eight] growing up, all of my toys were boys. even now, most of my stuff that i name get boys' names (joe, junior, jj). 

[nine] i've always regretted the fact that i never took a real english/writing/literature class since ap english in high school.

[ten] i hate change because the unknown brings with it a higher risk of failure, and failure is my biggest fear. 

[eleven] i don't ask for help from others.

[twelve] i like the feel of sore muscles after exercising, but rarely have the will power to get up and exercise.

[thirteen] i get buyers remorse over just about anything, so it takes me forever to actually buy something.

[fourteen] colored socks make me happy. 

[fifteen] my favorite number is fifteen, followed by seven and nine. 

*All the Small Things - Blink 182

it's been a long day

today was a long day. a long, long day. today started at four when my body decided that it just wouldn't go back to sleep to avoid hitting snooze on my alarm one too many times. it also decided to spend the next hour and a half until my alarm actually went off and i got out of bed covering and uncovering myself because it couldn't decide if it was hot or cold. after leaving the house before the sun was even considering coming out for the day, i went over to my parents house to pick up my sister. together, along with my husband who was acting as driver before i could really wake up, we made our way over to the testing center to finally take our gre's. i thought i was unprepared last time because the only "studying" i did was to take an online practice test and a half. that was the last time i prepared for this test. add that to the fact that my brain was not fully functioning yet (while waiting for the building to open i was completely slaphappy. the radio played that no no no cat, and i was dying of laughter over it among other things) and i was pretty worried, though my mind didn't realize it at the time. thankfully, once i finally was able to sit in front of the computer and get the test started, my mind and body automatically went into test mode, a comfortable place for me. when i got my result range at the end, i was happy enough with it that i don't think i'm going to bother with a retest.

after the test my sister, husband, and i went out for a bagel breakfast. again. i swear that ever since my brother-in-law introduced us to this bagel place a few years ago a huge chunk of its profits has come from my sisters and i.

later in the day i went to my parents house and say with my mom, sister, and nephews. then my cousin and her husband and my dad came home. (did i mention that my cousin and her husband made a stop in DC to see us on their honeymoon? no? well, consider it mentioned.) that meant pretending i wasn't tired and being my semi-fake version of me that i use with some of my cousins that i am not particularly close to. the overly laughing and smiling and polite version. once my brothers came home we went out to olive garden. when we got home i helped my brothers with their homework, did a bit of reading with them, and then sat on the couch and alternated between reading my book and watching criminal minds with my parents.

i left my parents' house at ten, got home, couldn't find my computer and searched the apartment for it until finally finding it between the couch cushions. and here i am, blogging this in the commercial breaks of top chef: just desserts. and i am tired and can't wait until my head hits my pillow.

oh, and steve jobs died today. you know, in case you didn't know. must have been a long-ish day for him too.

*Long Day - Matchbox 20 

and i just wanna get mugged at knife point, to get cut enough to wake me up

as i'm sure most of you know, the virginia/dc area had a pretty big earthquake yesterday (a 5.8). i've felt a couple of earthquakes in my life, both here and in california, but nowhere near the scale of this one. i was sitting in my apartment on the third floor going my turn on facebook scrabble games with my sister while my husband played crash racing on the playstation when everything started shaking. i was woken up yesterday by our neighbors downstairs who were getting new carpet put in and felt that in order to do that they should bang around and generally make as much noise as humanly possible. so when the shaking first started i just assumed it was from them. when it turned into a real things-falling-down-walls-vibrating-oh-look-my-chair's-moving sort of thing, i kinda figured what it was. so i sat in my chair, waited a bit for the shaking to go down to vibrating, said, "huh. that was cool," and finished playing my turn.

when i closed out of the games, statuses were of course talking of nothing but the earthquake. everyone was saying how scared they were, how they thought they were going to die, how their life flashed before their eyes. the only thing i felt during the earthquake was a slight annoyance that the harry potter plaque i made in high school had fallen down and i would have to go check if it was cracked again. (laziness at its finest, people.) and suddenly i was so incredibly jealous of these people. most of you probably weren't reading my blog back then, but i remember once wishing for a near death experience to kind of wake me up, if you will. i needed something drastic to happen to pull me out of my perpetual apathy. two years or so later, and i still feel that i could use a jolt that only fearing for my life can give me to really get my act together. after talking to my mom, mother-in-law, and grandma (thank god for voip phones when cell reception is down and you have worried mothers) my jealousy for lack of a better word just increased because here they were scared and worried when two of them are on the other side of the world right now and none of them felt the earthquake. if just hearing/reading about it could scare them enough, why couldn't experiencing it shake me at all?

i started thinking, and you know, i don't think i have ever actually been afraid for my life. i have been in countless almost accidents (my sister can be a crazy driver), a couple of accidents (nothing actually really bad to anyone but the car/bus), i've spent a night on the kitchen floor too sick to get up because all of the tylenol in my system i overdosed on, i ride on planes at least twice a year and haven't worn my seat belt on them since i was ten, my school has had bomb threats, i've had creepy people follow me to my car, and countless other things have happened that might make a normal person a little scared for his/her life... but me? nothing. i mean, sure, i'm terrified of death. i think besides failure and not measuring up it's the thing i'm most scared of. but i have never been terrified for my life, and i kind of want to be. i want to suddenly appreciate this thing that i have always taken for granted. i want to be forced to recognize that it is something precious. i want to be pulled out of this black hole of apathy and depression and realize that there's something worth living for, even if it's just life itself.

but i don't. i let opportunities for near death experiences pass me by. i let chances of fear turn into afterthoughts. i let the apathy win out every. single. time.

*This Week the Trend - Relient K

always got something to do, someone to be seeing, somewhere to be dancing, i'm a weak human being

so i pretty much suck at this whole taking you guys with me on the final leap to this marriage. in my defense, my days are crammed full of errands and family visits and boys' homework and swimming and a million other things. there are times i don't get home or get a chance to just sit in my room and relax until after one. by then, i'm way too tired to worry about coherency in a blog post so i read a bit and fall asleep. at the moment, i am ditching my aunt's retirement party to sit at home in my pajamas and catch up on my internet life. i feel kinda bad, but even as i walked in the door at ten i was ready to fall into bed. i don't think i could have made it through the whole party anyway.

to fill you all in on these last minute wedding plans, aside from meeting with the dj person saturday night (it annoys me how nothing can happen when the sun's out here) i'm pretty much done. photographer has been chosen and coordinated with, the flowers for my hair have been bought, dj person has been chosen and paid, and i can't remember what else i did but all the loose ends are falling into place. this wedding has been one of my greatest products of procrastination. it's on wednesday (eek!) and most of the details and plans were set over the course of the past couple of days. who said that the last minute can't be used for everything?

on a completely different note, the street in front of/next to my house is flooded with cars, and has been for the past week or so. see, in our culture when someone dies we hold what's called a 'aza which is basically three nights where everyone comes to give their condolences. a few days ago, one of our neighbors died. we had three nights of craziness on the street has hordes of people came to pay their respect. the three days finished the day before yesterday. yesterday, another three days started because the dead dude's wife died. i feel like there's a great story in this (a few, actually), but i don't have the time or energy to write any of them out or even flesh them out much in my head. i'll leave it up to you to write the romance, the mystery, the horror, and whatever other version you can think of.

*Procrastination - Amy Winehouse

and in a couple hours i'll be dead

okay so people, namely all my cousins in saudi arabia, have been having the weirdest reactions to my engagement. i feel like i'm gonna get off the plane over there and they'll have a coffin ready for me to climb into. yes, they are making me feel like i am dying not getting married. or at least going somewhere far, far away from where i can never ever come back and they can never go. for example, the first cousin i told (well, actually he was the third, but he was the first to respond), after saying that he was happy for me and wished me all the best said something along the lines of, "i will miss you so much, and i will never forget you. you will always have a special place in my heart." (actually, that may be exactly what he said.) my response was, "um lool i'm not dying. why are you making me feel like i'll never see you again?" he replied with something stupid like "i know" or something equally pointless.

the second cousin i told replied with, "that is so exciting, i will miss you soo much." umm thanks :/.

her niece that i spend practically all summer with sent an i will never forget you and then changed her profile pic on facebook to one of me and her and her status to "i will miss you sarah." in all caps.

her sister sent me a message saying, "don't ever forget me because i will never forget you and the fun times we had together."

do you see the trend going on here? why is everyone going to miss me anymore than they do when i see them a couple of months a year. why do i have to be remembered and not forget them either? i mean, yes, my older sister sees them a lot less than she used to, but that doesn't mean i will. i will still talk to them. i will still see them. i really don't plan on changing any of that. so their reactions, though i find them mildly hilarious, creep me out a little. i swear i'm not dying. i do not have any special kool-aid to drink on my wedding night. i will still be me and ignore their messages for weeks and weeks before sending some lame "sorry. i've been so busy with school. here is an answer to every pointless thing you've sent me over the past month. i miss you too and can't wait for the summer either." at least... i'm pretty sure. do they know something i don't know?

*Sunsets and Car Crashes - The Spill Canvas

shortly after i finished writing that last post, my mom called me. her and my dad have been living at the hospital for the past week to stay with my uncle, who was battling the last stages pancreatic cancer. this morning, he lost the battle. in a few hours they were going to fly him back to saudi arabia to see the two kids of his that couldn't come here and all of his brothers/sisters/nieces/nephews and mom for the last time.

i'm really good at compartmentalizing and have been keeping my mind on a tight leash and focusing on house-ish things with more concentration than strictly necessary for the past few weeks. at the moment, i think i'm kinda shocked, but soon, i know, the compartments will start to crumble and i'll be forced to actually deal with stuff. i dunno, it always comes as a complete surprise for me when people die. this was in no way a sudden death. a part of me has been waiting for the call for days now. a part of me has also been saying that it might be better for him to die. (if it were me, i'd either want to die or to be getting better. slowly and painfully deteriorating just seems like the worst possible thing to happen. ever.) but despite all of that, i'm still shocked. i'm still numb. i'm still surprised enough to lose myself in a foggy denial. this won't last long, i know. the fog will lift and i'll be forced to acknowledge the reality, the grief, the emptiness.

breathing just passes the time until we all just get old and die

"your family talks about death too much. it's kinda creepy."

that's a paraphrased version of what my cousin has been saying for the month or so that she's been here. i never really noticed until she brought it up, but death is a common topic of conversation in our house. not in a really morbid way, but more in a death is perfectly normal kind of way.

a couple of days after she arrived, she came to me and my sister and said, her voice completely shocked, "i was talking to your dad about doing something in the summer when you guys come to jeddah, and he said 'if we're both still alive.' it was kinda ominous." this is my dad's answer to any and everything thing that has to do with the future. it has lost meaning to the rest of us, but apparently freaked her out.

then, we were sitting around the dinner table, and my brother tells one of my parents, "when you die, can i have (something which i dont remember)?" that's another common thing in our house that's been around for as long as i remember talking. we've always been asking my parents for their stuff "when they die."

we have had meetings about what to do in case of a parent's or both's death, including discussing all pertinent financial details about bank accounts and investments and whatnot. a lot of conversations will either start with or turn to a discussion about dead people and death in general. we tell each other to go die on a regular basis and talk about suicide rather fondly (though mostly jokingly because none of us are really suicidal). there are a bunch of other examples, but i dont feel like writing them down. main point is when lost for words, we turn to death.

we know that none of us will live forever and don't pretend any differently. to my cousin, this makes us morbid and weird. i think it just shows us to be prepared and not delusional or living in some fairy tale where we think we're immortal.

what do you think?

*Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying - Fall Out Boy

and wouldn't it be grand if we were dead?

so i was sitting talking with this kid in my class yesterday as we waited for the rest of our group members to actually show up to the meeting thay they planned - it was ridiculous., they showed up forty five minutes late. anyways, i was talking to this kid, who's actually almond boy, if you guys remember that far back. we got to talking about that dude that was thought to be in a coma for twenty three years but was really conscious the entire time. you know, the one i mentioned at the beginning of this post.

we both agreed that that would be a miserable existence, simply awful. we also agreed that living alone in your own head would most definitely cause some insanity, because come on that situation just reeks craziness. we didnt agree, however, on why (besides the whole only having yourself to talk to) it would be so miserable. almond boy said that for the twenty three years they thought he was in a coma, he was probably hoping for them to pull the plug. because really, who wants to stay alive on a machine forever? and then he was like, now that they know he's conscious, it makes everything worse because they cant pull the plug now. it goes against the hippocratic oath. but if it was him, he'd still want to die. he said that having suffered for twenty three years, he wouldnt want to suffer any longer. he'd want them to end it for him, and that would be the reason he would try to let them know he was still conscious. to tell them to kill him.

i wasnt sure what to think about that. on one hand, i suppose it is kind of true. but on the other, he must have some hope that he would regain control of his muscles or whatever and make a recovery? yes? no? almond boy knew exactly what he would want and do in a situation like that. i have no idea.

and then i got to thinking, you know in movies and shows and i suppose it happens in real life, too, but ive never witnessed it so i cant be sure, when someone goes into a coma everyone goes and says what theyve always wanted to but never got around to saying to him? some of those things are probably good. it'll make him happy to hear what they were saying to/about him. but some of them would be awful. confessions to lighten the other person's burden. things you would never have the courage to say to him if he wasnt a vegetable.

and like dream world in narnia, how could the good thoughts stand a chance when the bad ones are so persistent in remaining in the foregrounds of a person's mind? twenty three years of having to live over and over those confessions. nothing else to think about besides how hopeless your situation is. nothing to do but watch as everyone you loved moved on with their lives, leaving you behind? nothing to do, nothing to say. just the thought is horrifying. and then i think, you know, maybe almond boy is right.

*Dead! - My Chemical Romance

the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

have you ever thought about your death?? i'm not talking about the metaphysical stuff or the religious life after death aspect. but the actual day you die.

not even as much about how it happens... car crash, plane crash, getting trampled by a stampede of hungry college students on their way to lunch. my thoughts are consumed by the more trivial points: what i'll be wearing or doing at the moment.

knowing me, i'll probably be in some outfit that'll give the doctors something to laugh about as they announce my time of death. my socks won't match, i'm sure of that. it will probably be in a time that i have neglected to shave my legs. if anyone looks through my bag, they wouldn't find much besides gum and chapstick... and an awful license picture. i wonder if i'll be listening to my iPod and what song will be playing. i have to remember to take off any songs that are an embarrassment to human kind.

and what about after?? when people go through my room, my stuff?? my closet will more likely than not be a complete mess. it will probably the day before laundry day when my laundry basket is nice and overflowing. they'll find everything i write - something i dont like people to read - and realize exactly why i didnt want them reading it after they are thoroughly confused by the first few pieces. they'll wonder about my treasures that are really just sentimental junk, and probably throw them away. all of the movie ticket stubs i've saved - for god knows what reason - will probably label me as psychotic. my favorite clothes that my sisters aren't allowed to borrow (not that they listen) will be up for the taking. that is, if my family even bothers to go through my stuff. the mess might just scare them off, and some men with a bulldozer may just have to clear out my room for them... straight into the city dump.

and, no, i'm not morbid. so you can just stop thinking that. it's actually pretty comical in my head.

on an entirely different note, this song has been stuck in my head all day:

*Blowin' in the Wind - Bob Dylan

there was a man back in '95 whose heart ran out of summers

apparently death has been knocking on a lot of celebrity doors recently. of course, michael jackson's death is overshadowing everyone else's, but that doesnt make their deaths any less real. speaking of michael jackson, you may or may not be following the news about him, but just in case you're not, after the autopsy they decided he didnt die from a heart attack. his doctor looked suspicious for a while but apparently he is no longer considered a suspect in his death. they don't know what or who killed him yet but are looking into another autopsy to get some answers.

anyways, the most recent celebrity death (as far as i've heard) is billy mays. yes, the king of infomercials has followed the king of pop straight out of this world. i kind of feel bad about this one because of how much i hated him while he was alive. that's usually the case with me. when i hate someone, i feel an incomprehensible guilt after their death - as if my saying 'go die' so many times actually killed them. which i know is totally ridiculous and pretentious of me. but that's the way my brain works.

*The Riddle - Five for Fighting