thought we could all (i guess that's me and my readership of 1) use a happy picture. this is somewhere along the coast of the coromandel peninsula in new zealand. happier times, happier place (at least for me). i remember driving to the tip of the peninsula. the last several miles were on unpaved roads. yet there were people who lived out there, and there was even a hostel out there. but i camped. set up my wee tent at a campsite on the beach. it was glorious. fell asleep and awoke to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. it was scary, though, because with all the flaps closed, it sounded like the water was washing up inches away. but it wasn't. it stayed at the same place all night, give or take a few feet what with the tides and all. ahh, i have been so garrulous as of late. please forgive.  

overflowing
my brain is full. i am blogging compulsively because my head is too full of thoughts and i can't do anything except watch tv to drown everything else out and blog to let some of this out as some sort of e-therapy.

in more banal news, i have another blog. i think this might be my third or fourth. there are probably more out there that i don't actually use. like, i have a xanga account, but have never posted there. so the new blog is at livejournal. what i like about it is the lock feature. you can keep people out. which ... well, if i had done that when i started this blog ... ahh, no regrets. anyway, as i have only one friend on livejournal -- so i can read her locked messages -- i'm not worried and am going to spill my guts in the most (even more) intimate detail. this one will seem as dry as a law text in comparison. mwah ha ha!

blergh
i think i've hit the wall. i don't know how to grieve anymore. i don't know what to do. grief makes me miserable. not grieving makes me feel guilty which makes me feel miserable. can't win. and none of it helps ANYONE.

addendum to the anything post
i do so love hanging out at the gym and relaxing and not worrying about studying. but ... if it's inevitable, i have to say, i'm looking forward to the start of school. i have that same anticipatory giddy feeling in my chest that i used to have when i was a kid. maybe it's just the potential of new pens and clean notebooks and new textbooks that gets me excited. of course, in college, that feeling usually faded after a few weeks when i fell very very behind on my reading. but that wasn't the case in my first year law school. maybe my schoolgirl crush is making me feel like a schoolgirl and making me forget that i actually go to law school. aka hell school. aka sink or swim school. ahh, i remember college. i don't think i turned a single paper in on time in college. there is no such nurturing in law school, but i'm also old enough to not need it. and anyways, i don't take notes by hand anymore, so i don't that school supplies are really what's exciting. maybe it is just the prospect of learning. i am learning this summer, but antitrust doesn't turn me on as much as, say, environmental policy or family law. ooooh. maybe it's just the structure i'm looking forward to. maybe i'm just lonely and can't wait to see all the familiar faces again. nah, that's probably not it. maybe i just want to haze and scare the bejeezus out of the incoming class. heh heh.

the anything post
i'm kinda tired of seeing that last post on here, so lemme just fill this space with some words, something, anything.

i went rock climbing at the gym today with a friend who hasn't been in several weeks. she was having some trouble overcoming her fear and getting to the top. while it's perfectly ok not to make it to the top, it's hard not to have that goal in mind when, well, it's right there. but today, she was ab-fab and made it to the top on three separate occasions. i was amazed. it wasn't just like she took one step forward from where she was last time; it was an improvement by leaps and bounds.

i was pretty stoked, too, because i did this overhang climb that i had some trouble with the last time i did it. but today, easy peasy, went right up it. i amazed even myself.

i love climbing. i love spending three to four hours at the gym not worrying about work or studying. i love our new gym. it's still so shiny and new and, because it's summer, rather underutilized. except the pool. sometimes, at the pool, total chaos. no one knows which way to swim, or even common, basic courtesy. oh well.

so ... moltmannian reminded me of this thing called the wayback machine which, i guess, crawls through websites and archives them for posterity's sake. it was thus i found an old blog and spent the better part of the morning reading someone's old blog that is no longer accessible through the original server. (again, i call it due diligence thank you very much.)

my blog continues to be self-involved, selfish, inane and makes me sound rather dumb at times. i don't really care. beats writing about the profundity of a dying parent every week.

mortality part the second
my friend's father died in a motorcycle accident in a state that is very far away from home. he was on a vacation/road trip. i think there was a deer involved. i haven't really gotten the details because my friend didn't have the details because her mother was far too emotional to tell her. the father. he was a character. he had a very large presence. i think he terrorized a lot of us growing up b/c he was quite intimidating, but i remember spending a lot of time at this friend's house and her father was, while intimidating and loud, also quite welcoming of me into his home. he was also very influential. not in a wordly powerful sense, but i think my friend takes after him in a lot of ways. his presence will be missed greatly.

one of the last times i talked to him -- well, i was in the car with my friend and he was on the phone with her -- he laid out my life. he's a laywer. he likes to quiz me on torts -- well, he did once and ever since then, i feel like i have to brush up on my law knowledge just to be around him. he says i should be a freelance memo writer. then i could live anywhere and work whenever, but still make enough bucks to have a house in the mountains by a lake. it was funny that he got a good sense of my personality/lifestyle/desires.

he is a big part of my friend's life. she says he calls every day. he called even while he was on this ill-fated road trip. he helped my friend out a lot when she moved here last summer. and i think that's going to be really tough -- my friend is independent enough, but her father really helped her take care of things. guided her a lot. in addition to missing his presence and his being, i think this is going to be a big step for her in terms of entering adulthood. i think she's really going to have to step up and fill his role in a way for her mother and younger brother, and that's going to make it even harder.

my friend, she said the last thing she talked about with her father was how she was bored at jury duty. i like that. i don't know how she feels about it, but i like that her last conversation with her father was ordinary and mundane. it wasn't a fight, but you also can't expect to profess your undying love and affection at every phone call. i think he knew she loves him. and i think she knows he loves her.

while she was getting ready to go to the airport this morning, she decided to wear the jewelry he had bought her. she put the precious stones on her ears, her finger and her wrist. it was so sad. a visible sign of mourning. a visible sign of what she has lost. not to say that all her dad was good for was for buying her jewels, but ... i don't know, i think it has to do with the whole adulthood thing. her father is never going to buy her another piece of jewelry again. she's going to have to do that herself. growing up. really. this is going to be the second funeral in two weeks. i don't like these reminders of reality, of growing up. i know tragic car accidents aren't necessarily signs of aging, but the loss of a parent ... i don't know. this isn't about me. but i'm kind of in shock. i'm afraid that in a week from now, the saying that tragedy happens in threes is going to come true. maybe i should go call my parents.

the four beers and 3 rounds of pool post
just got home from the bar. well, i got home about an hour ago and have spent a significant portion of the last hour stalking a boy on the internet. i'm feeling sort of warm and fuzzy inside from a new burgeoning crush. unfortunately, i have verified my suspicions and discovered that the new boy is 20 years old. twenty three wasn't young enough; we're moving down the line. well, i knew this was going to happen considering where i see the boy. twenty is actually older than i guessed. why do i like him? sure, he's cute. and i've discovered lots of things tonight -- it's called due diligence, not e-stalking, thank you very much -- that make me think i'd like him even more. but that wasn't what made me like him. what it was was that spark, that moment when he noticed me. made me feel noticed and attractive. is that how love starts or do i have it all mixed up and convoluted? i worry sometimes that everything i see in the world is screwed up by my own issues. by my own desire to be loved and to love. that i get everything wrong b/c of my desires, desires that are rooted in sin and brokenness. i don't know. i have forgotten what it is like to be god-centered and healthy...or at least pursuing health. emotional health. mental health. physical health?

in better news, at least, i was at the bar tonight with the now ex-crush. i'm over him. but golly gee i sure do enjoy hanging around him. well, that's good, b/c we're friends, and i enjoy it. he's really a great guy. fun. smart. interesting. teaches me lots of things about things i don't know -- like soccer. and he's taught me some pool. uhh...who's the physics major in this scenario? me, but i know fuck all about top spin.

shuttle launch
i'm watching the pre-launch cable news coverage. i confess, it's bringing tears to my eyes. the pictures of the fanfare as the astronauts walked towards the shuttle. the lost astronauts from the last mission. and even the lost challenger astronauts, which i watched happen live in third grade. and something about humans going to space -- looking up, looking forward. being above all the CRAP that's going on here. for a moment, we can forget about the death and dying in the middle east. for a moment, we can unite as a nation, maybe even as a world, over just how amazing it is to overcome earth's gravity. here we go ...

more taste, just as filling
the taste test continues. last week, i picked up a balance bar, yogurt honey peanut flavor. this one was different. the consistency was smoother -- more like a traditional power bar than a granola bar or all the energy bars out there today. instead of crunchies, it was one smooth consistency. i don't know if this had anything to do with the fact that for three days, in 100-degree weather, i carried the damn thing in the bottom of a very heavy bag. it was pretty good. there were still some small crunchies blended into the bar, and they kinda stuck to my teeth, but because the crunchies were small, it wasn't that bad. i kinda liked this one. not as good as luna, but up there for sure.

mortality
my friend's dad had a heart attack last week. his brain did not have oxygen for 10 minutes. the EEG results showed no brain activity. he does seem to be breathing, but there is some talk of machine-turning off this weekend.

how do you go on living life, thinking about camping and school in the face of life and death things like this? the living should go on living, but it's hard to fight off the feeling of inanity and inconsequence that seem to flood in at times like this. or when people have near-death car accidents. or after a terrorist attack. you can't think about it all the time, because then you'd have to curl up in the fetal position and suck your thumb. but it feels weird to laugh and be happy, to plan good times, to think of good times, to worry about the trivial, because then you remember the suffering, and then you feel guilty.

somehow, i guess you must find the middle ground, to encapsulate those feelings and use them for good, somewhere between being incapacitated from grief and being heartless and not caring. maybe realize that life is short and God can take you or your loved ones at any time. to go to bed at night with all your relationships tidy -- no outstanding apologies to make, not forgetting to tell others how much you love and appreciate them. to realize that some things aren't worth the effort, but others totally are, even if it's a losing battle.