He calls me friend

back home i had this friend, we met when i was like 7 but i didn't really start paying attention to him until jr. high or so. throughout high school we had an on again off again relationship, sometimes we were the best of friends and he was the most important person to me, we would talk all the time and he would teach me things and i would share things with him. he showed me a whole new way of living, he was my ultimate role model and i wanted to be just like him. he was a bit older, a bit wiser, he knew everything about me and i felt closer to him than i did to anyone else in the world, he understood me and i understood him. sometimes i thought that i could feel his heart beating inside mine. i didn't really know a whole lot of facts about him or his past, i didn't know what he liked to eat for breakfast or what his mom's middle name was, but i knew who he was, what his character was like, i knew that he was the most loving person i'd ever experienced.
there were other times when we weren't so close, i would get busy and he wasn't friends with most of my other friends so if i wanted to hang out with them i wouldn't bring him along. sometimes i would talk about him when i was with them but for the most part they weren't really interested. who wants to hear about someones friend that you don't know right? so for the most part i picked one or the other. i knew that the best times in my life were when i was close with him but i really did want to fit in and have people like me and i guess they couldn't see all the good in him that i saw.
one other thing i should mention about my friend is that he's famous. now i didn't really understand or realize that back in high school, i mean i knew a lot of people had heard of him but no one really talked about him much, no one seemed to care much about him so i kind of figured he must not be that big of a deal. then i got to college and it was a whole new world.
going to college i saw as my opportunity to really spend some quality time with my friend, see i didn't know anyone where i was going but he was coming with me and i thought it would be a great time to just kind of start over and meet friends with him by my side rather than making friends apart from him. it was strange though because when i got here to school i realized that i had underestimated his popularity- EVERYONE knew who he was and not only that most of them were good friends with him too! at first it was really wonderful, when we hung out we would talk about him and he was almost always there with us, i didn't have to hide my friendship with him, in fact he was the center of attention for the most part, even in my classes they talked about him and what his thoughts on life were. my friends shared with me what he'd taught them and i go to share with them about the time i spent with him and it was quite surreal to have so much in common with people around me. i guess the problem started when we started to talk about him a lot more than we would bring him along. we ended up spending time telling people we knew him and doing things that he would've done but we never invited him to come and when we did we often times just ignored him half the time.
it was interesting to me that so many of my friends complained that they knew all of the facts about my friend but they kind of felt like they didn't know his character, that it was hard for them to spend time with just him and to get to know him and to ask his advice and such but yet they felt like they knew all of the "stuff" of his life. then came all of the "supplemental materials" it seems that my famous friend had inspired a LOT of authors, there were books all about his life and about his theories and about his actions, all the facts i hadn't known about him i could now read about. i learned all about his family history and about where he grew up, i learned about his friends and about all his great accomplishments. and while these authors were good friends of his too they weren't his words i was reading, they were a lot of what other folks thought of what he'd written. somewhere along the line i kind of swapped my intimate knowledge of who he was for all of the facts about his life. i was so eager to catch up with my friends who seemed to know so much about him that i missed out on spending any quality time with him.
when i went home for the summer i surrounded myself with more people that knew him so that i could impress them with all of my knowledge but the more i talked about all i knew about him the more i missed him, the more i saw how well they knew him adn how much time they spent with him and realized how far i'd pulled myself away from him, i scrambled to spend time with him but between work and friends i kept finding myself too busy to really, truly reconnect.
just as soon as i got settled at home it was time to come back to school again and this time was different.
i wasn't as excited to meet new friends and i was kind of depressed not having time to recoop adn spend time alone with my friend that i so desperatly wanted to reconnect with, then to top it all off my roommate had just about as bad of a summer as i'd had and being the rescuer i am i poored myself into trying to help her and neglected him even more.
this semester i feel like i've met and spend more time with so many people that love him the way i used to know how to. people who's hearts beat in rhythm with him, people who know who he is not just what he's done, but the more i look at them and how they're friends with him the more i realize i'm not there, i'm not even close. i've traded in my friendship for facts because i felt inadequate in my friendship before. i wanted to know the celebrity side so badly that i lost who he was to me.
i've been talking to him a lot more lately but it's not the same, there's this barrier there, i know he wants to be close friends again i knwo that it's not him putting up the wall but i feel so guilty having left him out of my life so much when i knew he needed to be at the center that it's just hard for me to swallow my pride and say that i'm sorry.
somedays i wonder if i ever really knew him, i wonder if my memory is just playing tricks on me and i've just heard so much about him that i feel like i have this intimate knowledge that i don't really have, that i haven't even met him...

changedfish- i just want to get back there
(oh yeah, my friend is Jesus)

A Series of Unfortunate (and fortunate) Events

wow, talk about the bull in the china shop, let's just review the week.
ok so we'll start with tuesday night, i'm supposed to have my first night class, i had kept slipping up adn saying it was from 6-8:30 rather than 6:30-8 (or so i THOUGHT it was a slip up) at about 6:07 i get a text from heather asking where i am because firmin just called my name for attendence, CRAP, so i run over there and i'm like freaking out, but it turned out ok, he was waaay nice about it and actually there was a girl who showed up later than even i did so i was very much relieved. now wednesday morning i get all bundled up and clean up my room for roomchecks and head out the door, i get to my class and it's empty and i realize, wow you're a dinkus, you don't ahve cook's classes today, so i proceed to go to the apple lab and print out a paper (for his 1 o'clock, not putting together that i don't have that class either, once again, dinkus) and write some emails and such, and as i'm sitting there i realize, hey i have time enough to go get breakfast, i get to the ssc, look in my bag, guess who forgot their ID and key, that's me alright (i tell you i do more dumb things before 10am than the world does all day) but wait, it gets better. that afternoon i'm sewing and a friend asks me to have dinner, i should've said yes and set up a time but i didn't know how long the sewing would take me and i'm not interested in rushing myself so i told him i'd let him know all the while forgetting i had a conference at 6. so at like 5:20 i realize i'm just finishing up and gonna call him to go eat and DUH i have conference. so i tell him, nevermind go eat with the boys i have to clean up and go to that. after it's over and i do eventually get food i'm on the phone and sitting next to my computer. now would be a good time to give some background on my laptop. now without going into too many details about my sanity and regard for firecodes i'll tell you that for the past semester i have taped (duct, packing, scotch, whatever gets the job done) my power cord to the back of my computer. -the battery's shot and doesn't go much mroe than 20 mins so i constantly have it plugged in- this taping process causes the cord to heat up a bit more than is regulation so i'm on the phone near my computer when i notice that it's not charging, so i go to rearrange it and it makes this mysterious sizzle noise that it's been making for the past couple of days and as i do that it begins to smoke (more than usual) so i kind of freak out and rip off all the tape and yell at my roommate "what do i do what do i do" deciding that i can't douse it in water because it's an electrical appliance but it has now begun to spark slightly and is creating a flame, i freak out, throw the phoen and dive under my desk to unplug it (this luckily stops the flame) and after an open window and door and the fan on the smoke was all the way down the hall. this too is not the end. i get that all under control, return my phone call and after that decide to take a shower before bed, i grab my towel off the rack on the back of the door and lo and behold the whole rack comes with it!! my roommate and i about die laughing deciding that nothing more could go wrong. [edit added 1/19 i totally forgot this part: then at like 3:45 in the morning i awake to my whiteboard calendar swinging from one hook, about to fall completely off the wall adn on top of me! so i quickly grab it and rip it the rest of the way off the wall and place it on the ground before returning to my slumber...it was quite the day]. however some things did go RIGHT today. "coincidentally" this weekend i got the urge to order a new computer cord because i so desperately needed one and what should happen to arrive today but said needed cord!
i've stopped believing in coincidences (hence the quotes) and today was a day that proves to me that no matter where i stand, no matter how much i slide or take for granted, or try and do things my way, God's still in control...changedfish

The Terror of Tunage

do you know how absolutely terrifying it is to fill out that "music" section on a facebook or myspace? i'm just thankful there isn't one on my profile here. it's like no matter what you put you're going to be judged, in fact that's the whole purpose of putting it on there. you see music is much different than say movies or tv shows because those are truly just preference questions, but when you get into the area of music it's a whole other ball game. there are those that list every artist on their ipod, others that put down one or two favorites, there are some who just put genre preferences, etc. but there is still no right answer on it, if you have too few bands then the elitists find you lacking but if you put too many on then people think you're over confident and showing off. you see, there is no way out. i thought about doing mine like "favorite songs of all time" but even then you're letting people in on what you like to listen to and they will judge you (believe me, i've watched/heard the gnashing of teeth happen)

my biggest fear when it comes to the music box of doom is that i will be found out as who i truly am, a music follower. yes, it's true, i don't think for myself very often when it comes to music. well i shouldn't say that, i think for myself as in "oh i like this," "no i don't" but my list of hobbies does not include surfing myspace for new bands that i will learn to idolize and spend much on their merchandise. rather i just wait for someone to say " you have to listen to this" and i do adn if i like it then i add them to the list of things i enjoy.

i guess for me i just want emotion in music, i can't handle songs that i think the person making the noise doesn't even like it. songs taht make me happy, sad, mad, songs that make you want to jump up and dance or contemplate life while looking mournfully out a window at a rainy day, it doesn't matter what it makes the listener feel as long as you can feel the song, almost see it playing out before your eyes. that's the kind of music i like ok, whether it's country, hip hop, pop or obscure indie, i'm not picky (well unless requiring emotion is picky)

i think we all secretly have a list of songs that we only listen to in the privacy of our own rooms, earbuds or bathrooms while we shower and no one can hear. it's those 90's guilty pleasures that keep us from publishing a true list of our most frequently played tunes.

changedfish- the music-a-phobe