Sunday, November 20, 2005

All night long, I dream of the day
When it comes around and it's taken away
Leaves me with the feeling that I feel the most...

Feel it come to life when I see your ghost.

Calm down, don't you resist
You're such a delicate wrist
And if I give it a twist
Something to hold when I lose my grip

Will I find something in there?
To give it just what it needs
Another reason to bleed
One by one, hidden up my sleeve

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I wish I was one of those people who can just sleep.

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Remember that hurricane? Katrina?

Vaguely?

Sort of got brushed under the rug by other news, elections, football, boner pill commercials, indictments, dead muslims and whatnot.

Kinda just forgot about it, didn't we?

Well, it is still royally, irrevocably fucked down there.

Every couple days, I check in with This guy... Operation Eden.

He is a professional photographer whose family lives (lived) down there. His blog contains amazing, moving photography, and is a daily reminder that while we all move on with our daily lives, the job of picking up the pieces after one of our country's biggest natural disasters ever takes a very, very, very long time.

Click the link.

Put it in your favorites.

Check it now and again.

Hell, if you have a few nickels, send some through the link on his site. It is one thing when you send money to a huge organization. It is another thing when you can see the faces and the destruction and the pain and the loss and the whole holy-shit-that-is-in-the-united-states-of-america mess. We went to Costco a few weeks ago, bough a bunch of stuff and mailed some boxes to the address listed. (Bless India's heart. Just when I think there are only a million reasons to love her, she busts out # 1,000,001.)

By all means, though, don't just blithely forget it happened.

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I'm so tired. I haven't slept a wink. I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink.
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I made a few changes here. You're bound to get that when you are wide awake at 3 a.m. on a Sunday and cannot, for the love of Allah, get back to sleep.

Anyway, you'll notice there is a new email for this blog - thedudeabides_01@yahoo.com. Those of you who have the other one, feel free to continue to use it. I just wanted to lower the google factor on my actual name a smidge. It was getting... alarming.

I also linked a few more blogs down in the lower right section. Check 'em if you want a diversion. There will be more coming soon.

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Rec'd a few random emails recently from some old friends. Despite my newfound solitude and reclusive lifestyle, it is nice to have your existence electronically validated.

People drift in and out of your life throughout the years.
(It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant. Narrator, Stand By Me)

With some, the connection fades, but with others, it remains, no matter the time or distance between you. You can pick up after six months or a year right where you left off. It doesn't miss a beat. No preludes, prologues or exposition necessary. No awkward, stilted bullshit.

A dear friend, T., one of two people who stood up in my wedding (Bells being the other) contacted me with a sweet, random email. We hadn't touched base in a while, but it didn't matter. The content was such that it could have been part of an inane conversation we had 11 years ago in Hermosa Beach. A little arcane NBA reference, a funny comment on a hilarious scenario from 14 years ago in Brighton, Mass., a brief update... I responded in kind.

I love it when an unexpected breeze brings a smell or a sound that transports your mind somewhere.

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Once there was a way... to get back home. Sleep pretty darling, do not cry. And I will sing a lullabye. Golden slumber fills your eyes.

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(I overdo parenthetical asides. I use the ellipse ... far too much. I use too many commas. My grammar is atrocious for an educated Duder. I know these things.)

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In junior high, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons with a group of good friends. This was not long after the game was invented (in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin). At the time, it was a fairly subversive, underground game. We were a pretty tight-knit group of smarter-than-average kids with a shared, bizarre sense of humor. I am still good friends with a couple of them.

( I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone? - Narrator, Stand By Me)

This kid who was a couple years younger played Dungeons and Dragons with different group of kids. I knew him peripherally; he was strange. There were discussions of getting together with that group and playing.

We never did get together with them and play. I never saw him again after that period. He went to private high school. We went to public school.

Five years later, that kid drove home in the middle of the night from Marquette, where he was attending college, and doing various drugs. He waited for his parents to come home. When his mother arrived, he shot her through the heart with a bow and arrow.

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Well, look at that. The sun finally came up. It's going to be a beautiful day.

(How's that for a segueway?)