i've been silenced for a few days posting as i worked through the feelings i had about heath ledger's death. tuesday, when it happened, i had what i felt like a really personal reaction. then i spent wednesday and thursday berating myself for that.

he was, of course, my favorite actor. my infatuation with him -and even his family- is long known. i can't deny the countless times i walked gus past his house in brooklyn, hoping to catch a sight of him. it's a little embarassing, yes.

i think that real-life connection -hi, i'm admiring what you guys are doing to your backyard, hannah just saw you at fairway again- is what knocked the wind out of me so badly.

we all gape at celebrity and as a society can't seem to resist that car crash mentality of wanting to see what's going on. it's not something to be proud of, but i'd be a liar to deny i wasn't a part of it.

i'm torn between not wanting to hear anything about this tragedy and letting it absolutely consume me in the quest to know everything. i wish i could turn that off, be a bigger and BETTER person.

my heart aches for his little girl, his family, michelle williams. but i have no idea of the life any of them, the true lives, that is. so it doesn't even seem right - seems intrusive, presumptuous - to think that i do care. what right do i have?

this isn't about me.

roxy just told me that he was found in his apartment this afternoon. tmz has it, though I imagine it'll be everywhere soon.

Sadly, from what I've seen, he made an excellent Joker. I'm really sad because of this. It will certainly make the movie more somber.

how fucked up do you have to be one of the colts fans who boo a 14-year old girl who won an award just because she is wearing a patriots jersey?

i don't care if new england is their biggest rival, she's a 14 year old kid!

that shit gets under my skin.

i almost wish i hadn't read tripp's post before posting tonight, because it really didn't influence me to write. it's the fourth anniversary of the day my mother died, and i always write around this day. i look back and reread the years before, and end of reflecting how things change. how i change. how much also stays the same.

last night i had an absolute jahrzeit-related meltdown. it started brewing after school when i had taken my SCA kids carolling at a home for invalid elderly people. the flashbacks and sights and smells of people nearing the ends of their lives was just too intense. that feeling was practically palpable and i couldn't stop thinking of the way my mom looked four years ago. the noises she made and the drugs that she took and the sounds and their eyes. it was just too much for me yesterday. it is still too much for me today.

after dark i was making my way precariously through the windy, pitch black roads of harrisonburg, bringing home a third grade girl who remained with me well after the 5.45 pickup time after our trip. when i called home three hours after the time she would normally be getting off the bus, her grandmother answered the phone and said, "oh, we had wondered where she was." they wondered where their eight year old was.

when i was this little girl's age the cancer was growing in my mother but we didn't know it yet. i was still happy and i skipped around and life hadn't shown itself to me yet. as we drove those dark roads last night a piece of me wanted to turn the other way and drive away, to take that little girl away from whatever shit-tastic life would be there for her when she walked through their front door, thinking maybe, somehow, i could play holden caulfield and just catch her.

on the way home, i talked to my father. and we both sobbed. december 18 will always be shitty. thinking about it will be shitty. and i will continue to be sad and angry and lonesome for my mother. and things will change, but things will stay the same.

i am helping to raise a child. i just vocalized that notion for the first time a day or two ago and it blew my mind. i am part of what is shaping zane's life. it's different than just being a teacher. and it takes priority. my family within these walls is my life now. i miss posting, miss the seemingly carefree days when i blah-blah-blahed about boys and drinking and complained a lot. several times a day i bet i think about a post, compose something in my head that never comes to fruition at a keyboard. and i lament that. i envy ray for seemingly being able to strike a balance that, for the moment, seems elusive.

but i am still here.

it isn't a secret that i have been up and down about almost every aspect of my life the past month or two. my mood swings have been frustrating, as i swing from happy to depressed at the touch of a button. a couple of sentences, seeing someone, just thinking to much and — bam — i'm camping for a bit in depress-o land.

it isn't much fun there. i feel anxiety about feeling anxiety.

i've trapped myself. and every remedy i have discovered so far has only been a temporary fix; i am not willing to hop from one to another without tackling the root issues. good weekends have helped, but i can't and won't live for the weekend.

so i have been left to focus and concentrate, trying to repair and build upon my relationship with roxy, trying to find joy in my job (which isn't joyless, i just have had trouble truly finding my footing there), trying to complete projects and feel excited by them.

part of the up and down, i think, has come from further realizations about life. i spend time organizing my mp3s. and then wonder 'why am i doing this?' no one cares but me. i remind myself that it doesn't matter. but then, when i get down to it, not much will outlive me. not much will be with me the rest of my life.

see? i can drag this down to a base level of 'nothing in life has a point, other than living in the moment…' which immediately begs the question of why i go to work every day. its a cycle and not one i want to encourage my head to try and dwell upon.

(i'm listening to 'this means war' by busta rhymes. which appears to be 'iron man' with a rap over it.)

yeah, so. i figure that i've got this infrastructure, this site, where i can dump personal thoughts and feelings. so instead of links and silly comments, i ought to continue returning back to using this as a diary.

(the guy next to me on the train just had his red pen explode on his hand. suxors to him. also, this busta rhymes song isn't very good.)

how is your tuesday?

it's halloween.

so spooky halloween to you! i point you to this discobelle post of fun halloween music. i am currently rocking out to the halloween mix*. loudly, as i am the only one in the office right now.

(* track 15 on this mix: The Bulgarian (ft. Spoek) - The Zombie Door (Vox version) turns out to be rather filthy. the chorus seems to be 'jack it like a zombie' repeated. just letting you know so you don't, say, for instance, blast it in your place of work for everyone to hear.)

due to a miscommunication of sorts, half the team is working in san jose today, with two of us up here in the city. not a big deal, but annoying, as i had to buy a train ticket to get up here. goodbye 11 dollars it turns out i didn't need to spend.

also, mike sent me a list from the av club of bad horror movie villians. shockingly, i have not seen most of these films. more shockingly, mike claims to have. and triply shocking — morty, from 'the fear', jack frost (the evil snowman) from 'jack frost', or the gingerbread man from 'the gingerdead man' are not represented. i might have to call sheningans on the article now.

also, i need to tell you the taglines for 'jack frost': "He's chillin…and killin"
and for 'the gingerdead man': "Out of the oven… and into your heart!"
wow.

and i am in a funk. for a multitude of reasons.

but this morning, walking into the office, i passed an older, bald man with horns attached. i, myself, am wearing my old devil 'headband' which is an easy, lazy, pretend costume. but it was great fun to pass someone else in the street who had dressed up the same way. we said hello to each other and it made me smile a lot.

that made the trip up here worthwhile, i would say.

in other news, robert goulet died. this is not huge news and, sadly, i remember him most for his excellent emerald nuts ad last superbowl.

and if we want to really cheapen his memory, how about will ferrell impersonating him singing the thong song?

i haven't been writing. this fact, as an isolated statement, doesn't mean much. but when taken in a larger context, when factoring in this site and my own creative writing, it is bad. bad. i have spent more time in the last 2 weeks writing documentation for an api than i have on my own thoughts.

i had decided this weekend that this was to stop. that i had plowed through enough of my own small projects and could easily dedicate 15 minutes a day to writing. and the assumption is that 15 will snowball into something larger.

one of these projects over the last weekend was dvd-ing more home videos. 9 of 13 done. but i woke up on sunday morning, climbed out of bed and took the most recently compressed video and marked chapters, setting it to export as a video_ts folder. and climbed back into bed.

as i was marking chapters, i was skimming the video. this dvd is footage from 'urban light works' in 2000. it has a lot of footage of yoffy, who i spent the day with setting up an installation. it has footage of kelly, who came out. it has footage of me, bald and silly.

but as i was scanning the footage, a face popped out. popped out from the past; i stopped breathing. i felt sick. lia was staring at me. lia is dead. lia has been dead now for almost 6 years. i feel sick typing this right now, sitting in a tullys in downtown san francisco, a life-time away from that day.

i went back to bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about her. thinking about the murder. thinking about life. i felt sick. i thought i might actually throw up. i was completely and utterly ill-prepared to deal with seeing her on video sunday morning. i still am. i might never be able to watch that dvd, just knowing the pain it will cause my heart.

another dvd had been made last week. a silly one, of another vcu project. on it, i had found some footage that qualified as 'behind the scenes.' it was studio footage, a group shot of the entire class, with the instructor's voice coming from behind the camera.

patrick power.

sunday, after i came home from brunch, scant hours after the above story, i got an email. from meg. again, i was unprepared.

patrick died. i have no details; i immediately answered her email, but have not heard back from her. below is the email she sent out.

I am extremely sad to share with you all that my brother-in-law,
Patrick Donald William Power 2, passed away unexpectedly on October
16.

Loved by many - and at the beginning of a great life with his new
wife, Dawn Bennett, and his 5 month old son, Patrick Power 3 - this
man will be very much missed.

In lieu of flowers, his family is asking for donations for Patrick 3.
There are lots of legal and medical expenses that the family has
recently incured and ANY donation will be super appreciated.
Patrick's brother, Kevin, and I have set up this website as a place
for contributions:

http://www.forp3.com

I am sending this to many of Patrick's friends already, but please
forward to anyone who you think would appreciate hearing about the
news.

lea was a student at vcu. patrick was an instructor; he taught me 'intro to video.' he was amazingly kind and amazingly cool. i got updates every once in while through meg — i heard when he got married, i heard when he had a baby. and now this.

i hadn't seen him after my first year at vcu. once again, it feels like a life-time ago. and, in many ways, it has been. but my mind still cannot process this information; i had to read the email several times before i could even begin to believe that it could be talking about the person i knew.

i got a vhs dub of bjork tapes from him. i have silly videos from his class scattered around my harddrives. kelly got a nickname from him that still gets tossed around once in a while.

the guy was great.

there is a temptation on my end to ascribe some meaning to this; i believe it is natural. but i don't actually believe i can point at richmond or vcu or any aspect of this and place any meaning or blame. it isn't fair or good or even understandable that this has happened. but it has.

i hate that this is where my life is heading, what my age has earned me — the people i respect, the people i love, are slowly beginning to leave this plane. my heart goes out to his family. i am overcome; i cannot imagine their grief.

the world already misses you, mr power.

later:
i posted this yesterday; it is now midday tuesday.

there has been a flurry of emails and im's from people i knew from vcu. but there has also been a flurry of emails to me, from people who knew patrick through his time at vcu.

i invite any and all of you to post comments. i don't feel right posting your private emails to me; i hope that you can share your memories publicly to help everyone smile and remember this awesome man.

i didn't expect to be a conduit with all of this, but it's becoming clear that a lot of people have a lot of things they would like to say. please, please share them everyone. (but you can also feel free to email me with the button below the comment.)

just know that you aren't alone; the sorry and loss and confusion has been echoed by everyone i have spoken to. and our memories are big and large and more than any of us by ourselves.

(turns out cody has an excellent post on patrick as well.)