well, i was pretty sad over the last few months

so much so that a few workmates have remarked on it

but now i'm pretty much back to my default setting

of

AWESOME

AWESOME

this is my world

peace for rhys

hey rhys

i can't believe it's been three years since you died - and if i can't believe it you can certainly bet on the fact that others will not believe it also - and certainly not want to believe it, if the truth is more plainly spoken

i've talked about you a bit in the last few weeks - there's been an odd set of coincidences that have lead to this

last week i had to go and visit a man who was on his final journey too, and i was privileged enough to see him for the last four or five of his good days and on one of those last days that i went to visit him and his wife i walked in, listened for a second or two and announced "that's vinyl -  i'd know the quality of  that sound anywhere.  miles davis, too, if i'm not mistaken, 'summertime' from the 'porgy and bess' soundtrack, no?"

this won me some super big props on that day, and it segued naturally into how i knew this

so i told the story about you, and your dad, the common love of music and aural exploration you both shared and also 'fessed up about the time that i visited your house and thought that ed's giant speakers were amazingly big heaters

after the laughter died down the universe in all it's karmic circularity revealed that this man in fact was a classmate and peer of your dad's

last year i had to go to one of our old flats for work, and i was so remarkably restrained in not asking to look around - to go and see the hot water cupboard where spike spent 2 days and nights only to emerge soporific on heat and so dehydrated he drank a whole bowl of water without stopping

i satisfied myself with the living room because it was the same as i remembered it, and that reinforced my belief in my good will hunting memory - that the way i remember things is the way they were

and this picture, this one of you and me from 1995 outside linda and andy's flat on cargill street - well, that's how i remember us

and that's how we were, for such a short time in this weird game of life that i can't quite seem to learn the rules to

i remember you today

hope the time is right for it

you can kid yourself for so long, and you can kid your expensive friend for so long

like, 5 years or so and counting - at least. let's just concentrate on the recent past and not ancient history

what a waste - time, money, life unlived, potential unfulfilled, yada yada yada

and then there's the two years you spent in the shit storm hell of push/pull compulsive masochism without chemical augmentation

but suddenly you're there, in the moment and with the man your life seems to have been leading up to
and even though it's everything you've wanted and hoped for and thought you'd never get - to have it is too much because it's foreign and frightening, and you find you can't ante up without more than a little something something, and then a lot more of a little something something

so you're back on the ssri slow dance in order to cope with the lovely man who is lovely to you - go fucking figure, right?

and believe me, it's a s_ l_ o_ w dance.  days are weeks, weeks are months and let's not think about the possibility of years

so stick your fingers in my mouth, pull my lips back and watch me smile - oh, i take direction so so well

and god help me, but i think mr d'arcy going to catch me on my troubled portion

minerals, ice deposits

rhys would have been 38 today

i still pretend he lives in wellington

i realise that's not as easy for other people in his life to do, but hey - whatever gets you through, right? (and quite obviously by you, i mean me, hey?)

when i went to pavement in auckland last year he was all i could think about through the two bottles of sauvignon blanc and the bourbon and coke chasers, surrounded by all the same people that we used to go and see pavement with at sammy's in 1993 and 1994

that's a long time ago - at least three of my lifetimes ago.  quite the time warp - way more than just a jump to the left

this was always my favourite pavement song, right from the first time i heard it at the ripe old age of 17 and rhys used to say it reminded him of me, no doubt because of the line "i saw your girlfriend and she was eatin' her fingers like they're just another meal", me having been a recidivist nail biter since back in the day

he's still in my life and i think of him often - there's so much common musical discovery we had together

i just wish i could share with him some of the new stuff i've found and learned, because i miss my friend

but that's nigh on imfuckingpossible

so i'll just wait there, in the levee wash, mixin' cocktails with a plastic tipped cigar

i'll be waiting forever

when you can't see me anymore

i wish it were simple

classical music

left my pavement b-sides cd in the work car for a week when i was AWAY

sorry jackie

she doesn't mind when i leave billy joel or rod stewart behind, but i've come to learn she doesn't like nwa, public enemy, the beastie boys or rage against the machine

might double check with her about the sordid sentinels, though.  who WOULDN'T love them?

i know, right?