10 Nov 2005
This song is about remembering someone from your past who died before their time.
I don't know if everyone had one of their friends slip on to the place beyond life while they were in junior high or high school or not.
Some how I think that there tends to be at least one tragic story for every class that graduates from high school. Some kid who died working his after school job or overdosed on drugs or just passed on doing something stupid.
For my class, and for me, it was my friend Kenny. We were in grade 12 when he shot himself. Well, there is still some question as to whether he shot himself or it was an accident, but everyone knows better than to play around with loaded guns.
Plus, the things that had been happening in his life and the conversations he had been having with people seem to lean toward it having been something intentional, and it was ruled as such.
I remember his wake. It was hard for me. Very hard. In a strange turn of events my family and I had once upon a time lived beneath the funeral home that his wake was at. I know, how many funeral homes have apartments in the basement? I have no idea. It's odd, and kind of creepy in retrospect.
It put me in this strange situation though, where here I was in a place filled with great memories of growing up, all of the fun and games; while at the same time it had become this place of death and sorrow.
I went to the wake with the first girl I ever fell in love with. We are still really good friends to this day. I can honestly say I don't think I would have made it through that time without her. I will never forget the strength that our hug that night gave me.
I had always been a bit of a hard person. More like a rock than flesh and blood. Vacant of most emotion, at least on the outside. That night though, every step I took closer to the casket I felt all of those shields I had built up fall one by one. I remember very distinctly crying that night. I remember this, because I don't cry.
I know that his suicide in some ways saved my life. I know that it prevented my own. That, and the patient friendship of someone who is no longer in my life. Someone that I would move Heaven and Earth for just to be friends with again.
I can remember that some strange year book rule the school had kept him out of the book. He wasn't allowed to be in it because it was ruled a suicide. I can remember my friends on the year book committee, lying to me about it right up until the end. They told me he would be in it. I know they did it to protect me. I would have gotten into lots of trouble trying to get him into it.
I wish the last words I ever spoke to him before he left this life had been different.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment “Palm Reader”.
08 Nov 2005
This is a song about the way the lead singer of 3eb felt after he and Charlize Theron broke up. It's about how he could never get away from her. She was everywhere. On magazines in stores, on tvs, everywhere. While this was a literal problem for him, I think we all feel this same thing after a relationship ends poorly.
It's the way that you can't get away from love. Again, I'll go back to they way I feel and understand love, it isn't physical or solid.
After a relationship ends that you aren't ready to let go of you see that other person everywhere. Every single thing will remind you of them. The scent of her shampoo lingering on the pillow case. The emptiness beside you on the bed. The volume of e-mail you don't receive any more. The loss of the candles and thoughtful letters. That soft smile greeting you when your eyes flutter open the days first light.
You walk out into the city. You see their favourite restaurant. Their favourite book store. Their favourite cake shop. You see their friends and hangouts. You see so many things that used to be amazing that now seem to be lacking because they aren't there with you.
The waking hours are longer. The sleeping hours are shorter. The dreams are stranger. You are sadder.
It just takes time. There is no quick fix. Even though they aren't there you just can't get away from them. Eventually most things will go back to normal. If the feelings were strong and pure though, certain things will always remind you of them. There is nothing you can do to get around those things.
There are still things years later that I miss about some women that have passed through my life. Things that will never fade. I think that's a good thing though. It means that those relationships were important and special.
I still love all of them in a different way.
Tune in tomorrow for “Wake for Young Souls.”
07 Nov 2005
“My people are the misfits
The ones that don't fit in
With the smile I know it comes within
I can feel you in the corners laughing when the lightings low”
…
“Those are the ones for me
Those are the ones for me
The misfits, the freaks, the enemy, you and me”
Ever been a misfit? Felt like a misfit? Thought someone else was a misfit?
I've always been a misfit. I've never really found a place or a group where I was like everyone else. I've seen circles of people that you can look at and tell that they are obviously friends, because they are all the same.
I have always been me. Nothing else. Nothing less. How would I be anyone else?
From the way I dress to the foods I eat to the way I work to the things I find fun to, well, everything, I am an individual.
When I was in high school there was a very obvious division of the student body. One half were the “Preps”, the other half the “Grubs”. I straddled the line. One day I would hang out with one group and the next day I would hang out with the other. I just floated in limbo. I couldn't understand the source of the division. I still can't see what was so different among those groups. I guess that's because I didn't really fit in to either group.
I have certainly found great circles of friends. Great individuals. We get along and we have fun and we are what friends are supposed to be. We don't necessarily like all of the same things, but we all like enough of the same things. We are all quite independent. We are all quite dependant on each other.
I count myself lucky to be among my group of misfits. People who have gravitated toward each other over class, gender, religious, and even national boundaries. I think, like I'm sure everyone else does, that my friends are the greatest.
In a way, we are all misfits in the end. We find the people who are freaks from the consumer advertised definition of normal in the same ways that we are. In those people we find family and solace. Comfort and strength. Support and laughter. Even inspiration.
And when we find that perfect freak we fall in love :)
Tune in tomorrow for “Can't Get Away”.
07 Nov 2005
With the howling wind, the fuzzy green numbers on the microwave, standing on the checkered floor; it all came together. It's out there and I'm in here.
07 Nov 2005
“Always think we get more time
Now flying through the air
Maybe living maybe dying
In this motor crash it's you who comes to mind
Don't we always wish we had more time”
I don't know if those few moments between when you think you're going to die and then you either live or die are the same for everyone or not. I know for me it didn't go quite as expected. Of course the only accounts you tend to get from people are the ones that when embellished have the most dramatic effect.
The three times that I almost died I saw flashes of the faces of all of the people that I love. One at a time, just quick flashes. A half millisecond delay on the ones who apparently are the most important to me. The very most important person seeming to always flash last oddly enough. After that, nothing. It was just me and time, which dilates amazingly in a situation like this, and my brain screaming “Holy Shit!” in the back of my head. Before the situation was resolved even that scream in the back of my head faded into nothing and there was just silence.
It is true that we always think we get more time. It is also true that you will live your life completely differently after a near death experience. At least, you will live your life completely differently for a while. Some things will eventually fade back to the way that they used to be.
It will certainly punctuate the importance of the moment. It has a way of decreasing your level of hesitancy in various situations. It makes you realize how important family and friends really are if you didn't already now. It definitely shows you both how fragile and how strong you are.
I won't bore you with the details of all of my encounters. Simply the oddest one. Well, now that I think about it this isn't one of the three I was even thinking of before. So, okay, random near death experience number four.
I don't normally think of this one because it took place in the water. I don't fear the water. The water is actually the place that I feel the safest. It has always been like that since before I was even aware of what water was.
So it was the May long weekend. Which of course means we were all out on a canoe trip. Remember how in a previous entry I said that they all didn't go well? Well this was one of those times.
It has been a hard day. A couple of what we called Tupperware canoes (Coleman plastic/resin canoes) had already been wrapped around log jams. We had to pull them out and kick them back in to shape. We had lost enough beer down the river that if anyone had ever fished it out they could have pretended to start a brewery of their own. side note: we always called beer brown trout.
I can't even imagine how much other stuff we lost down the river that year. Sleeping bags, clothes, food, portable stoves, tents, coolers, you name it, we lost it. Everyone rolled their canoes in the rapids multiple times. Two canoes got pretty much destroyed. Ours included.
It is the destruction of our canoe where things got deathly. There was a huge log jam across the width of the river. The current was so strong that we couldn't paddle away from it to the bank. We got sucked right up to it and the canoe went sideways against it.
The rushing current started to pull the side against the logs down into the water. As the canoe tipped I was trying to climb out of it. The mix of it going down and my going up left me exactly where I was. My legs where under the water and canoe was jammed against the small of my back. I could hear the wood and fiberglass start to crack due to the force of the water. I knew that my little fleshy body wouldn't stand up to that force once it got past the thick part of the canoe.
The log jam was some 20 odd feet along the length of the river. When I looked behind me I saw that my father was no where to be found. He had been pulled under the water.
Even at that point I wasn't afraid for myself yet. I was worried about my father because he was nowhere to be seen and I had no idea how long he had been under water. I also didn't know if it was possible to go under the log jam so I thought he might be trapped.
At that moment my sister's boyfriend grabbed me and that pulled me from my thoughts. We wedged his feet against the canoe and pushed as hard as his adrenaline powered legs could push and he pulled me up onto the logs away from the torrent. Right after that the canoe gave and with a horrible crunching sound the entire bottom of it buckled.
I climbed up over the log jam and was incredibly relieved to see my father bobbing along in the current behind it. Also of interesting not here, my father hated my sister's boyfriend at that time. Actually, hate isn't even a strong enough word to describe it. However, after he saved me that day, my father was always tolerant of him. Although I'm sure he was still happy when they eventually broke up.
We probably lost close to 400 cans/bottles of beer that trip. No doubt there were some very happy 12 year-olds staying at their cottages further down the river that found them.
The log jam was the destruction of everything. All of the canoes were lost to it. We had to hike through the forest. Everything was soaked. There was nothing dry enough anywhere to make a fire. We were cold. We managed to salvage a few of our pails of goods further down the river.
We trudged through the forest. There was still snow on the ground in some places. The footing was treacherous. Sometimes your next footfall would be on something solid and sometimes you would wind up with your leg buried in mud or leaf covered water up to your hip.
My father and I are fairly outdoorsy people. He's a trained forest ranger and hunting guide. I'm sure you could drop us with a helicopter in the forest a hundred miles from nowhere with nothing but knives and we would be walking out of that forest in a few days time. Heck, I'd like to try it sometime. I'm sure he would too.
On this day, none of that helped. We had about 15 other people with us on that trip if I remember correctly (it was over 10 years ago). There were too many people to worry about who needed to get dry and warm. We all pushed on until we found a road. We collapsed there and opened up the few containers we had managed to salvage.
Luckily my father and I found our sleeping bags. The odds of the two pails we found being sleeping bags must be very slim. They were still nice and dry because the pails were water tight. So we wrapped ourselves up in them. Someone else had some clothes in a pail so they passed around dry clothes to as many as they could. We huddled up on the road and waited for a car.
We were very fortunate that a car did indeed show up within the hour. They took a few people to the ranger station and to get more help. Eventually we all made it to the ranger station. There we were, all of us huddled around the one wooden stove at the station. Hands almost touching the searing hot cast iron and we were still shivering.
Somewhere the rangers found some packs of cheese sticks. We only got one each, but we devoured them like the greatest meal ever made. Eventually our families showed up and took us back to my Uncle's camp.
When we arrived they were barbecuing for us. None of us had eaten anything but that one cheese stick in almost 24 hours. They threw those burgers on the grill and barely seared each side before we took them away and gobbled them down. That was probably a very bad thing to do, but I don't think I can really explain how hungry we were. I abhor the though of rare meat. I hate the taste of it. That night though. Oh my God did those ever taste good!
Shortly after that we all unceremoniously passed out where ever there was a chunk of floor and slept until noon the next day.
And that is the story of how I almost got ripped in half.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's entry “Misfits”