Hm.

Oh life.

So, I'm not exactly happy. And I think it's largely because I'm slowly drifting away from a large number of my friends.

So, like any logical person, I'm blogging about it!

It's strange. I'm torn between simply moving on and trying to hold on and repair the damages that are gradually growing. I don't know. See, the thing is... my friends tell crude jokes and make fun of others all the time. And I'm really sick of it. So, what shall I do?...

I think I need to think and pray about this all more. Will get back to you.

Oh, and Little Women has started again, though tonight was just music rehearsal so I didn't need to be there. First normal day back will be tomorrow. Should prove interesting.

Oh... and people want to do a Superbowl Party again this year. I don't know if I want to or not though....

Argh.

So there.

Musings.

So, it's been forever since I last posted.

I'm back at school.

Going to be a crazy semester.

Already had some crazy events. Some difficult ones.

I'm not as happy as I thought I might be right now. I'm okay though.

Life's interesting, you know? Never quite happens like you expect.

I've got a list of people that I want to get to know better this semester. I hope I stick with it, because the people on it are cool. I also hope that my current friends stay such.... though there have been some issues with some of them lately.

I might be going to Australia next Spring. I'm really excited about the possibility, but also kinda scared.... Leaving everyone for so long could be rough. But then, I'd be studying theatre and it'd be really cool. I dunno. I'm thinking about it.

I'm trying to go to Adoration more this semester and Thursday's Noon Prayer/Eucharist at Hopwood. I need to focus on God more. I hope I keep attending both of these events frequently, because they are good events that leave me happier than I was going into them every time. They bring me peace of mind unlike anything else. I see God in them. And that is good.

A Dream Forgotten

I originally wrote the first draft of this about a year ago. I've thought about it and reread it at various times. I've been meaning to go through and edit for a while... tonight, I finally did. I've not reread this second version yet so if there are glaring mistakes... sorry.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Laughter echoed through the dark hallway, dancing along the dark, moldy green walls. The yellow lights flickered a few times before coming to rest at a half glow. Grime rested among the cracks and creases of the walls. The ceiling had been corroded by water damage over the years, watermarks spreading along the floor where the endless dripping had never been stopped.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

The laughter continued from the room at the end of the long, windowless hall. A little child’s laugh? In such a hellhole as this? What could bring a child happiness with the living conditions as they were, so full of despair? Many called the large house home, though none of them were welcome according law; trespassers, some would call them. The house’s owners, however, had left years ago never to return. Yes, the residents were illegal, but it was winter, and what little warmth could be found inside the rickety, wooden walls was far better than the snowy streets outside. However, the heating unit was long out of commission and it was likely that many of the people trying to survive would not succeed. They all knew it. Sickness had crept into their midst. Nearly every day, another person joined the orchestra of coughs. They had no money, and the outside world was oblivious to their sorrow. And still, the laughter continued.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

That night was the coldest yet. The people huddled together, trying to gain warmth. Still, the child, standing apart from the crowd, laughed. “Why do you laugh?” one of the old men asked.

“It’s the laughter of madness, Jack,” the man’s wife whispered to him. “That child’s gone insane.”

“Stop laughing!” Jack shouted, angrily. “There’s nothing funny here!”

The child smiled and continued to laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” Jack asked again, his patience diminishing.

“Laughing at nothing, Jack,” his wife told him. “I tell you, that child is insane. It’s the cold and the sickness. The child’s marbles are off gallivanting around someplace else!” Jack’s wife cackled. She considered her comment extraordinarily humorous. Her cackle filled the room, until it broke into a cough and wheeze.

Jack trembled and put his arm around his wife. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“I’m okay, Jack,” his wife replied. “Laughing just clogged up the windpipe for a moment.”

“You see?” Jack said, turning back to the child. “You see what laughter does?”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” the child laughed.

After a moment’s glare, Jack asked, “Where are your parents?”

“That child’s parents died weeks ago, do you not remember?” Jack’s wife asked.

“Oh, yes. I do,” Jack said. For a moment, he was silent, eying the child. After considering the child’s loss, Jack turned back to the wife, “So, why’s the kid still here? Not welcome here. Not welcome at all.”

“Pay no mind to Jack,” Jack’s wife told the child. “You’re welcome here as much as any of us.”

And the child just laughed. And the laughing didn’t cease.

After a time, Jack spoke again. “It’s eerie. That laughter. How can someone laugh when it’s so cold? And when the conditions are so miserable? None of us are very likely to live much longer. I don’t see what’s funny. And the damn parents dead! Nothing funny at all!”

“Stop it, Jack,” his wife told him, slapping his shoulder lightly. “Don’t scare the child.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Minutes passed. The minutes became hours. The laughing never stopped. Jack and his wife simply stared at the child for a while. Then, as the night’s darkness truly took over, they left the room at the end of the dismal hallway. They went upstairs to the room where most of the people slept. They lay down together, doing their best to keep warm. The entire time, they were aware of the quiet laughter echoing up from the room at the end of the hallway.

Jack’s wife was asleep within minutes. Jack, however, could not sleep. “Damn kid,” he muttered. “Damn laughing. Damn cold.”

The old man slowly pulled himself out from under his wife’s arms. He quietly left the room, going back down the stairs. He walked through the dark hallway and back into the room where many of the others were still huddled.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” the child laughed.

“Kid, come here,” Jack said to the child commandingly.

The child ignored him, continuing to laugh. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to respect your elders?” Jack sneered. “I said come here, damn it!” The child continued to ignore him. Jack stepped forward, reaching down to grab the kid. “What the hell?” Jack muttered, fearfully. His hand had made no contact with the child.

The child laughed. Jack tried again, but he could not touch the child. Jack’s eyes widened. He turned around frantically. “Did any of you see that?” he gasped out to the people huddled around the room.

Nobody seemed to hear him. And the child laughed.

“Did any of you see that?!” he asked again, more loudly. Still, nobody responded. Jack approached the closest of the people in the huddle. He reached out to grab the man’s arm, to get his attention.

Jack let out a yell when his hand moved through the apparition. He ran to his wife as fast as his old, weak legs would carry him. He shook her to wake her up. “What’s wrong?” she asked as she wiped the sleep from her eyes.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Jack told her.

“What? Why-” she started, but Jack interrupted, “This place is haunted or something. I don’t know what’s going on!”

“What are you talking about?” his wife asked. “Calm down, Jack. God, what time is it?”

“I-I don’t know,” Jack replied. “It doesn’t matter! Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!”

Before she could respond, Jack was running back down the stairs. His wife sighed and got up, glanced at the clock, and followed Jack down the carpeted steps. She watched with confusion as he ran out the front door. Standing on the porch, she called out to him. “Jack, come back. Jack! Come on. Enough of these games. It’s nearly midnight. Come back to bed.”

“I can’t!” Jack yelled. “Not with them inside!”

“Who?” his wife asked. “We’re the only ones here, Jack. The kids have been gone for years.”

“Kids?” Jack asked. He gasped and his eyes widened once again, as he stared at the house in front of him.

The black shingles glistened across the roof, only a light layer of snow spread across them. The house was red brick, standing two stories tall. A beautiful oak stood in front of the house, a tire swing swaying under one of its branches. The windows were decorated with icicle lights, glowing in the darkness. Similar lights covered the mantle and the overhang of the roof. The house glittered continuously.

“Come inside, Jack,” his wife said to him. “It’s freezing out here, and it’s Christmas Eve!”

Jack slowly walked forward, reentering the house. His eyes darted around the place. Deep scarlet wallpaper with a golden trim majestically covered the walls. The hallway was almost sparkling, as the pictures of young children across the wall reflected the light that came from the room on the far end. Slowly, Jack approached the distant room. As he stepped into it, he saw the fully decorated Christmas tree. Gold and silver ornaments glistened as the yellow-white lights illuminated the tree. Boxes of various shapes and sizes were around the base. Jack stared, understanding he’d just had a dream. He turned to his wife, who had followed him into the room. There were tears in his eyes.

“Jack,” she said to him, “what’s wrong with you?”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” he said quietly. “It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re happy and warm.”

His wife just shook her head. “I’m going back to bed,” she said. “Don’t go outside again. You’ll catch your death doing something like that.” She left Jack alone.

Jack stood for a time, simply staring at the tree and at the gifts. Finally, he sighed and turned to follow his wife back to bed. Before he made it to the hall, he heard a familiar sound.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

The old man turned back towards the tree quickly. A small envelope was sitting on top of one of the boxes. Jack hadn’t seen it before. He broke the golden seal. Inside, he found pictures of the people from his dream. He flipped through them until he found a picture of the child. He turned it over in his hand, seeing the note on the back as he did so. He read it vocally and a tear crept across his left cheek. “Each of these people did live once, but they are gone now. You could’ve been one of them, but you got lucky. Don’t forget them. They’ve not forgotten you.” The clock struck midnight and Jack muttered the note’s final words, “Merry Christmas.”

Life, Thank You Bartholomew.

This is a short story.

Gnomes! They're everywhere, dancing in the fields and eating my cabbage!

Where did these gnomes come from?

Well, there once lived a great dragon named Bartholomew. In these days, the world was bleak and black. There was no color to it. There were no flowers, nor trees. What little grass there was died shortly after being born. The people knew not how to farm or work to create. If it had not been for Bartholomew, mankind would have perished. The dragon would fly from his castle and light fires for the people at night and during the winter. Then, one day, a dark cloud whispered its way across the land. As Bartholomew took flight to give the people light, the storm began. Rain spattered. Lightning flashed. The thunder growled. Bartholomew was caught in mid flight by lightning and he fell to the earth. When the storm ended, the people came out of their homes and found the dragon taking his last breaths.

He told them not to worry and he told the secrets of fire. He told them about the great treasures in his castle; these were not gold, as one might expect. They were stories of old. The castle was actually a vast library from which the people were invited to learn. The books were the storehouse of infinite knowledge. With his dying breath, Bartholomew told the people to seek out knowledge and live on in peace. The people wept for the great dragon.

After his burial, the fields around the grave flourished and the first trees came into the world. The dragon's body was the fertilizer of the world. As it decomposed, life began. The grass no longer died just after its birth. Flowers entered the realm. The people went to the castle and from the books they learned how to work the fields. They learned how to harvest and build. The people learned to hunt and how to cook. They learned a great many things. But, as time passed, the people forgot about Bartholomew who had saved the people. Dragons became things of myth and the people began to make up their own ideas about where their knowledge came from. During a great earthquake, the castle fell into the ground, buried deeply.

Most of the people forgot about Bartholomew, but there were a few who held on. These few dug into the ground, trying to find the lost castle. Their tunnels were eventually so deep that they lived inside them and some of the children were born underground, never seeing the light of day. These children were the first gnomes. As time passed, they too forgot about Bartholomew and his great castle.

Eventually, the gnomes had dug their way back to the surface. Upon seeing light for the first time, these former humans began to ask questions. They questioned their own sanity and the sunlight excited them beyond reason. The light hurt at first and they scurried about trying to understand what they saw. Time passed and the gnome fascination for the surface world never ceased. Then, one day, a gnome came across a cabbage field. Cabbage was new to him, but he ate it and he loved it. He told his friends about it and they told their friends, who told their friends and so on. Thus, it was not long before gnomes understood the wonders of cabbage. For their discovery they danced in the fields and ate cabbage.

I forgive them for eating my cabbage. After all, they don't know any better. Besides, Bartholomew would have wanted them to be happy and gnomes are certainly the happiest of all creatures, for they lived in darkness but found the light, whereas other creature live in the light and always seem to seek out darkness. And really, is it better to be born in the light and never appreciate it or to be born in darkness and learn about the wonders of light later?

With that, I leave you to ponder.

The kiss...

There I was.

There she was.

And between us... sorrow, deep as the pit of hell.

The earth shook. Fires crept out through the night. Tornadoes gasped their way across the world. The sun was gone. Ice cracked through the clouds, plowing its way down.

I blinked and she was gone. I fell to the ground in agony. I ran to the others. I asked what I should do. The answer was nothing. Do nothing. And there was nothing I could do.

But there, up above the world, there was a single inch of blue sky. There was one corner of hope not cut off by the despair. To it I fixed my gaze. To it I held. But it got smaller. Harder and harder to hold on to.

This is a slight modification of a nightmare I had a while back. The trouble is... that nightmare has become real. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm lost. I'm trying to hold on to hope, but it's so hard. I'm lost.

So, where's the kiss? The only kiss was the kiss of death. No physical kiss. Sorry. My best friend asked me to say goodbye, at least for a time. And she meant it. She's gone. And my dreams are filled with sorrow. Not very sexy. Oops.

Sickness

Sickness is incredibly humbling. Seriously. The craptastic feelings began on Thursday, shortly after my weight lifting for Fit For Life. At first, I thought it was just exhaustion after exercising. Then, I thought it was just allergies.

On both occasions, I thought wrong.

Turns out, I was getting sick. With a fever. Headache. Congestion. Ugh.

I still am sick, although I've discovered that Sudafed works quite well for me and am feeling better now than I have in the last 48 hours or so.

You'd think that the discomfort and ughness of it all would make me very unhappy. It certainly has not been fun. However, I consider it a blessing. See, being physically ill has been a bit of a gut punch for me. One that I needed.

Lately, I've been thinking myself into semi-depression. I've been allowing myself to forget about all the wonderful things in my life and focus on the smallest details of the bad. Well, sickness has returned me to my senses. Sickness has made it so that I remember the good things that I usually take for granted. Sickness has granted me a much healthier mind than I had beforehand.

I believe that sickness was just what I needed.

Yeah, I know what you, my faithful readers, are saying... "Still no kisses? Come on! Get to it, man!" Well, hold your horses! I'm getting there. The story's still going. Besides, you don't want me going around kissing people while sick. That would just be wrong. Seriously.

Don't expect this to be regular...

Blogging more than once in a single day. Don't expect it to happen often. I'm just on break and don't have a whole to do right this minute.

So I sat in my bed and I blogged. And then, they came back. The family. They returned and the time came for me to get out of bed and put on clothes. Crazy Crab. Stuffed flounder. That was my lunch. I felt odd eating Ariel's bff-- not to mention that it was stuffed with, you guessed it, crab-- both Flounder and Sebastian? Oh my... I'm going to hell, aren't I? But hey! It tasted pretty good.

Barnes and Noble is my homestead. I can spend hours upon hours there and be content-- even though I rarely actually read most of the books I look at. We went there to digest the food before...

The bike ride. We rode our bikes for a good 2 hours. It was fun. Level ground, easy ride with shade most of the time.

Raspberry Sorbetto: that was my choice of wonderful cold sweetness to cool down after the ride. It was good-- although, I believe that I prefer straight up ice cream over sorbetto-- gelato beats them all though.

Okay. This is dull, isn't it? Hrm. I must figure out how to write interesting blogs.... will figure it out.

(The kiss is coming, don't worry! Fiesty sex scene up ahead, for reals.     >_>)