The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

This time of year always makes me sad. I know it’s the holidays and all and it’s supposed to be a happy time and I do get happy – when I’m around others. I get really miserable when I’m alone. I guess it’s because I was always sure of a certain visitor coming around this time of year every year and he always made it a point to contact me. But after that horrible time 7 (or so) years ago, I haven’t heard from him since.
He used to call me before he came every time to let me know when he would be at his sister’s house – which was right around the corner from me – and we would meet up and hang out. 7 years ago, I didn’t realize that it would be the last time for a long time. Why? For the dumbest shit ever. I have experienced some fucked up shit over the past few years but nothing has really topped what happened that night 7 years ago. And it was after that night – even after I thought everything was okay – that I didn’t hear from him again. Mind you, I didn’t do anything. It was basically what happened in front of me that I couldn’t believe but I let it go. But why would that cause a long silence? I don’t understand. And each Christmas, I expect a phone call from him telling me that he’s at his sister’s house. But it never comes. That’s okay though. There’s always next year, right?

When dreaming…

The last 2 days, I’ve had very vivid dreams. You can read about last night’s here because it was VERY entertaining! The other one, was more somber.

I was at school. The campus was huge – like, 2 college campuses huge – and it was the first day of class. I went to the registry office to find out which class I had to get to and instead of taking my class sheet with me, I left it so that I could go back and forth (for some reason).
I checked on my class and headed in its direction. While I was crossing the yards, my friend Richy reached out and grabbed me. “Katzi! I haven’t seen you in forever!” He held me in a tight embrace for at least 5 minutes, which made me think that something was horribly wrong. I told him I was on my way to class but I ended up skipping it and staying with him on the yard. We sat on the edge of a cliff looking over an NFL-sized stadium way down below. Me, Richy and an unknown person sat and talked about random things until the bell rang, signifying the end of class.
We all jumped up and started looking towards a set of double doors that went inside the school. A large crowd was forming and one student in particular stood out. He was 6′4″, had short black hair and he was wearing a hospital gown. He seemed to be in a daze and when he started to turn in our direction, I immediately recognized Nate’s profile. Confused, I tried to reach out to him to get his attention but all I could hear was the chatter of hundreds of students and Richy yelling “Don’t let her see! Don’t let her see!!” His friend threw his jacket over my head and I felt them both pull me down to the ground, like they were shielding me from something.

Then I woke up. I don’t think Nate saw me. I woke up wondering about the hospital gown, the school and the cliff but I haven’t really found anything that really makes sense…so far, anyway.

Makes Me Wonder…

This past weekend, there was a gettogether for all of Nate’s friends at the Corner Tavern in L5P.  At first, it was just me and Alysia.  When ever I’m with her, I just feel overwhelmed with emotions.  It’s not a bad thing at all – she helps me cope with my feelings over Nate’s loss.  But I feel like: who am I to be mourning so much, you know?  I’ve never been good with loss…
So, after a few people showed up – including Nate’s fiance – we started talking.
First of all, I would like to say that out of all the times Nate and I hung out, he NEVER ONCE mentioned a fiance. He mentioned having a girlfriend the last time I actually hung out with him, which was in Februray, March or possibly April (I can’t remember, exactly). It was strange at the funeral hearing about Nate’s finace when they didn’t live together at the time of his passing and he never mentioned, to me at least, that he was engaged at all. Eventually, that would all be explained by Alysia later on.
So during our conversation, Alysia joined our end of the table and sat next to me. The question that came out of her mouth shocked me back to reality. I was elsewhere in the conversation and had drifted off to my own thoughts until I felt a nudge followed by the question, “Katzi, have you ever slept with Nate?” Surprised, I said, “What?” And everyone laughed, including myself. Should I reveal some things or should I keep them to myself? Alysia answered for me with “I guess that says it all. BUT you didn’t say no.” to which I replied “No, I did not.” Nate’s fiance and I glanced at each other. Her gaze was ice cold. I hope that she recognized me from Robert’s pictures.
Robert had compiled a shitload of photos for the wake and he had brought some to the bar Sunday night. There were some featuring me in them, so she had to at least recognize me from some, if she had looked at them, proving that I’d been friends with these guys for a long time. But what does it matter to me? I don’t know who she is and I don’t care, really. I know that sounds shitty and bitchy of me but she wasn’t the only one who knew Nate like that, if you know what I mean. And who the fuck cares? I don’t have a thing to prove. I can grieve just as much as she can. I have the same right.
Whenever I see her, I feel like she thinks I can’t grieve for his loss as much as she can. That’s why I feel comfortable with Alysia. She lays it out on the table and welcomes it. It’s almost like Alysia feels less sad knowing that I’m just as miserable as her about Nate’s loss. So, who the hell does the fiance (he never talked about) think she is? And I don’t mean to get catty but I’m just as sad that he’s gone, you know? She doesn’t have to get all territorial. A lot of people vied for his attention because he was so giving to ALL of his friends. He was always gracious that way. Who knows, maybe there were other girls that came over to his house at 4:30am on Sunday mornings (after he got off work) to have some shots of Jack, touch his guns and look through his extensive collection of porn to compile the greatest compilation ever…I’m just sayin’.

Random Memory – Part 1

My memories are superficial – if viewed from the outside – but they’re my happy memories nonetheless. This one in particular is pretty hilarious and I get all giggly when I recall it. I’m not sure who else remembers it but I remember it well since I almost got in a fight, choked someone, started smoking and got the courage to talk to my future (ex)BF.
It was Saturday, February 14, 1998. Two days earlier, I had broken up with my BF Matt. We had a strange relationship. He was in Chicago, IL and I was in Alpharetta, GA – worlds apart to 2 high schoolers. I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed to be single. I needed a BF that was in the same Metro area as me, at least. So there it was – we broke up. In order to try and stay friends, I called Matt on Valentine’s to see what he was up to. I told him I was headed over to Peter’s house for a party and he decided that that was an appropriate time to tell me a story about an older woman at the store who mistook him for a girl (since he had shoulder-length blonde hair at the time). She said to him, “You would look good with a short hair cut” and Matt told this older lady that she “would look good face down in a ditch with an axe in her back”. Of course, the older lady was horrified and so was I. Why was he telling me this? I felt scared. Was he saying that to piss me off? Matt was always the shy quiet one, maybe he had a serial killers’ mentality.
Who knew. Either way, by the time I reached Peter’s party, I was pissed. Depressed and pissed. But that still didn’t stop me from wearing my beloved knee-length boots + fishnet stockings combo with my favourite mesh animal print top and a skirt. I thought I was a Goth-ish dream girl without all the heavy, caked on makeup. Just some cat-eye eyeliner action and maybe some red lipstick.
I made my way to the corner section of the couch in Peter’s basement where I could overlook who was coming down the stairs or coming in through he sliding glass doors. I managed to pull a few things out of my purse to get them ready for whoever wanted to be my “pet” – if there were any takers. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
I heard loud, rumbling steps so I turned and saw a large figure with shoulder length black hair, wearing all black waving at me. I waved back at Nate and Peter and a mystery fellow. Nate joined me on the couch but, sadly, he was off limits (at the request of my friend Erin). Instead I focused my attention to the mystery fellow.
While my gaze followed the mystery fellow, I didn’t notice that Nate had gotten his hands on the contents of my purse and was fastening himself to me.

Your July birthday

In honour of my favourite Cancer, I have posted the painting Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth.
When we were together, me and my favourite Cancer would spend many lazy days in his basement room. He would play guitar while I doted on him and watched as his talented fingers strummed violently. After a time, he put up a print of Christina’s World. He told me he felt like her sometimes because he thought the subject suffered from schizophrenia (like he did).  Ever since then, I only see love when I look at that painting.
After we broke up was when his Mother told me that that’s what was what was ailing him.  He confided in me that he hated being in public – everyone looked like they were rotting corpses in his eyes – except for me. I was the only “normal” thing. After he told me that, I went on a sort of quest to find out more about his condition. I wanted to know how to keep myself as the only “normal” thing – I never wanted to upset him or make him see me as a rotting corpse too.  His Mother would call me at strange times during the day and tell me her son was not well and that I needed to come over to talk to him, make him feel “normal”.  And I went over every time.  And every time, I walked past Christina’s World.  I thought of the subject and how she was lonely, in pain and in her own world of vast emptiness in a sea of nothingness.  I thought of my favourite Cancer like that – lonely, in pain and in his own world of vast emptiness in a sea of nothingness – a void that can’t be filled.  A painful void that I was desperate to fill but I knew we couldn’t be together again.  Not romantically, anyway.  He was (and still is) one of my best, closest friends.  I try to tell him but I just can’t seem to get it right and when I feel like I am getting it right, I think he never believes me.
So, for his birthday yesterday, I sent him a message online (the only way to contact him, sadly). As soon as I sent it, I thought of Christina’s World. Not because of his ailment (which I’m not sure how that’s going) but because I remembered the lazy days in his basement room when neither of us had a care at all. Those days were always so short. And I could never think of anything clever to say until after I’d left. But the silence between us was never bad. It was a beautiful silence I don’t think I could ever share with anyone else.
So, to honour his birthday, I posted Christina’s World not to commemorate his ailment but to remind me that true love exists. And with all the joy and pain and sadness and every other possible emotion that came with that first love, I would do it all over again if I had the chance.

Conversations with my Dad: The Hollow Earth

I was spending time with my Dad on Saturday (to make up for not seeing him on Father’s Day) and we spent most of the afternoon talking about our favourite things: Conspiracy Theories.  This week’s item: The Hollow Earth.
Not many people believe in the possibility of the Earth being hollow but after listening to (all parts of) this interview, it sounds likely.  I mean, openings at mountains and caves…  That sounds amazing!  My Brazilian friend has told me, many times, about “Giants” making deals with miners in the mining regions of Brazil.  She, personally, hasn’t seen them herself but it’s known throughout the country that there are several openings to the center of the Hollow Earth.
And you know around Halloween, History Channel and Travel Channel start showing episodes about aliens, conspiracies, ghosts and other things but lately, they’ve become more frequent – which is awesome. But it furthers the idea that maybe there is to be a world-wide sighting / reveal of aliens to the human race. There was a show on the Travel Channel just yesterday about that.
But upon mine and my Dad’s search concerning the paranormal, we stuck with the Hollow Earth because it was the most haunting, probable, beautiful and strange thing to think of. And reading a few excerpts of Admiral Byrd’s journal entries concerning his flight into the Hollow Earth via a passageway from the North Pole, it seems like it could happen.  And it reminded me of an episode of UFO Hunters about Unidentified Submerged Objects.  In that episode, they mentioned that maybe the USOs were coming through special openings from the center of the Earth – more “proof” concerning the Hollow Earth.  Either way, it’s an interesting topic to look into.  And I highly recommend the Coast to Coast AM interview about the journey to the hollow Earth and the people who live there. It’s really interesting.

It was more like a restoration in the art of filmmaking…

All right, we’ve all heard that Kodak is discontinuing Kodachrome film. Honestly, the first thing that came to mind was Kodachrome by Paul Simon. It wasn’t my way of doing a sort of sad face because a film medium I don’t think I’ve ever used is going away, but because that song has always stuck with me ever since I first heard it way back in high school.
You see, Kodachrome has a different meaning for me. My “friend” Wade and his friend Joey shared a few video classes with me during my 4 years in high school and Wade made it very clear that he wanted to be the next Quentin Tarantino. If you had heard him talk or seen him, you would have thought that he was, indeed, QT’s younger, blonder brother. And if you saw the content of his short films, you would see the connection between Reservoir Dogs and a little video short called Connect Four (yes, about the game).
“Connect Four” was awesome, I will admit. At the time, I hadn’t seen “Reservoir Dogs” so I never made the connection, but I was still awed by “Connect Four” because it was funny, short, made by my peers and bloody. Really, really bloody. There was unnecessary violence and during the shoot out (if I remember correctly), “Kodachrome” was playing in the background – forever embedding it in my head in the style of Little Green Bag – recalling memories of blood and guns and knives and gore with an upbeat song.
Of course, there were more “Connect Four”-style movies from Wade and Joey but this one sticks out more because it was the first one I had seen from them and it kept my dream as a future filmmaker alive when I was all angsty and ready to give it up.  It sounds silly, I know, but I really looked up to those guys and Joey was really the only one who respected me as a fellow video artist (I suppose) and even though Wade disrespected the hell out of me, I have him to thank for my love of interpretive art.  He also had a viewing of the now infamous South Park Christmas Card.
So the death of Kodachrome, to me, is really a re-introduction to my love for filmmaking. Since all the news stories crying about it keep playing the Paul Simon tune, it conjures up all those feelings I had while watching “Connect Four” – my faith in filmmaking has been restored once more and I now have the same 16 year old drive and love for the art of filmmaking.

And now a scene from “Hipster Theatre – Alpharetta Edition”

*Curtain*

Girl: “Hey, boyfriend! Let me try on your fedora! Aren’t I cute?”

Boy: “Wow girlfriend! You look rad! Here, try my nerd glasses too!”

Girl: “OMG! We’re, like, the cutest couple EVAR!”

Boy: “I know! We’re FUN! Now let’s go to Barnes&Noble and loiter!”

Girl: “The kids still do that, right? If not, we’re gonna bring it back!”

Boy: “Careful, don’t cut yourself on my caribeener.” (submitted by The Big O)

END SCENE

This scene was based on actual events that took place on North Point Parkway at around 7:30p today while I was on my way to Jason’s Deli for a delicious sandwich. There was a black Volvo in front of me that didn’t go on the green light. Now, I’m not one to honk my horn if you don’t go right away so I waited a few moments. In those moments, I witnessed the girl take the guy’s hat, put it on, look at the guy as he looked at her and said something that looked like, “You look good!”. Then she was about to take his glasses off when the car behind me honked. I started laughing uncontrollably at their startled looks while they took off. I wish I had a video of it. Oh well. I was too busy Twittering the great masterpiece that you read above.

Thank You.

I made an announcement to the Universe yesterday concerning my current situation with my former arch nemesis. On the advice of my really good friends W & B, Double D and my Mom, I finally figured out what to do.
It has been 11 years since we had stopped speaking and what she did was confusing, weird and unsettling. After talking with W & B, I realized I had done nothing wrong except be a friend and apparently, that wasn’t good enough and we were both so fed up with each other that not speaking was the best thing for us. Okay, great. So, what was with the random mystery FB message? We speculated a lot of things: maybe her Mom (who I was also close to) was sick, maybe since she is a new mother (found out on my own investigation) she wants to set the record straight, it’s the 9th step in a popular 12 step program, it’s our high school’s 10 year reunion this year, she’s a spy for a family member who I don’t talk to anymore. It could be a number of things but Double D and W & B convinced me to not worry about why it was happening, just what I was going to do about it. I didn’t want to spill my guts because I didn’t want to relive those emotions again but I wanted her to know how shitty she made me feel when I was trying really hard to be a good friend to her and out her over my new friends and myself. But you know what? Rather than explode a heart story 8 years in the making with 11 years of silence, I had two words for her:

And I mean that.

Hooking up with NPR

As I do every weekday morning on my commute, I listen to NPR. This morning I was lucky enough to catch the story I heard about hooking up. According to the teenager I stay with sometimes while her mom is out of town, hooking up means making out but according to NPR, hooking up means anywhere from cuddling to full out sex. I can understand that, so when NPR did that segment on hooking up, they meant doing it.
So, they talked to this girl who said she was having a hard time finding guys to have an intimate (emotional) connection / relationship with and she was wondering why it was so much harder to find that than a “hook up” buddy. I thought back to my own days and then thought about my many, many conversations with the teenager I stay with and compare her high school experiences to mine. Obviously, there’s one HUGE difference there: the Internet.
The internet has been around for a while but back in my day, we had to actually call each other or talk to each other face to face (*gasp!!!!*)! There was no texting, IM-ing, or Facebook / Myspace to hide behind, so we actually had to get to know each other via face-to-face communication. I mean, it’s not like kids don’t interact face-to-face or anything, but the internet has made it a lot easier to have emotionless contact with others. So I’m thinking that when people actually meet each other IRL, they already have a “sense” of their personality because they’ve already scoped out their social networking profiles: they’ve seen racy photos, photos of them and their friends, them having fun, they’ve read their blogs (maybe?), they’ve checked out their other friends, ect…so they have an idea of who they are. Maybe that false sense of knowing their personality is the new “getting to know you” part of modern relationships. I don’t really know. All I know is that morals and values are changing and people aren’t really taking marriage and kids by 24 as seriously as it used to be.
I mean, I’ll be 29 in October and I’m not really interested in being married (or having kids either) and I’ve been noticing that most people around me are happy just like that. I’m happy because I can be selfish a little while longer and focus on finding myself and my career and doing more things that will add to my life’s journey. I can understand and appreciate that others are happy getting married and starting a family at a young age as well. But what made me truly happy and appreciative of the fact that I’m not married or with children is a friend / co-worker.
She is a 24 (or 25 y/o) who lives in a small town in Illinois and is married to someone almost 10 years older than her. They’re both self-proclaimed “rockers”: they love Motley Cru, Poison, Bret Michaels, ect…and they party hard. She is 3 months pregnant and every time she talks about it, she gets all upset because she’s afraid she’s going to lose her figure, she’s upset because she won’t be able to do the things she used to do, she’s also afraid that her husband isn’t ready AND she’s upset because it happened a year earlier than they were expecting. She talks about her pregnancy as a terrible curse and I don’t ever want to be like that.
I had another friend who was a beautiful pregnant woman. She accepted all the responsibilities that came with a family and was excited about it the entire time and they didn’t plan it at all. She was graceful, thankful and happy and she’s practically married to the father of her child. Her beautiful daughter is such a wonderful and amazing person to be around and you can tell that she is loved. I’m sure that my co-worker / friend will get there b the next time I see her (when she’ll be 6 months along) but I think it’s her kind of attitude – which I’m not saying is terrible – that is the mentality of the youth of today. Social Networking has made us all narcissistic and selfish where everything is about you and only you and for us girls, hooking up is a source of power and liberation to some degree but, as with everything, it comes with a price: making it harder to find a guy who wants to be in an emotional, committed relationship.
So – I think we should step back from social networking and take the time to reconnect with others personally. Forget about sex, making out and all that other physical stuff and get with the mental. Talk to each other, try to have stimulating conversations about other things, not sex. It’s better that way. Unless hooking up happens to be on the menu for the evening…