so here are some dry facts of my daily life right now.

my mom likes french roast coffee. i am finding that i do not. uf. i have...something...that is not french roast! i think maybe sumatran! at home. but i am not home. perhaps i will not drink the coffee.

my fingernails are currently bitten down to the nubs again. no return in sight for awhile.

i have been driving a lot. i think my dad is with me in spirit in the car, because i am somehow suddenly a decent driver, unafraid of freeways and driving in seattle and ugly parking situations. some might chalk it up to experience, but in my 2.5 years as a licensed driver, i have hardly driven more than once a week on average.

the trojan torch vibe, while it may look kind of cool and is mercifully quiet for a battery-operated toy, is ultimately too weaksauce to satisfy. i hate frustration!

i am wearing my new perfect jason webley-concert-going tshirt that i found at value village last week. it has a shovel and it says "dig it" underneath. a SHOVEL. perfect. and i am going to see webley tonight in tacoma with margot and, with luck, becky and shawn. my 12th webley show. i love that beautiful man, but i maintain i do not send him nightly marriage proposals like some crazy people. you've got to go deep down.

i also bought a dvd player. $90 at shopko. now i just need to find someplace selling donnie darko for non-full-price. and some other movies, but donnie darko especially.

bumbershoot is in less than a week now. i'm excited. my sister leaves for san francisco on wednesday. my brother's birthday party is the next day. my mom wants to go to the beach for an overnight visit.

my brother just asked me a dumb question: "who would be a better shaft: chris kattan or bob saget?" ...no.

i am worried that i won't have enough stuff to do with myself in september. i should get busy, except i am also going to be low on fundage due to not working for a month and a half, but that's ok. life will be fine. i should go to oregon and spend time with a bunch of people i don't often see, or something like that. i dunno yet. there are a lot of things i should do and i can only hope i take the time to do them since i have this chance to breathe.

i am looking into going to southeast asia next summer to kick it with the malaysians and see some neat places and eat some great food.

the stupid wireless networking stuff we have on the computers in this house is incompatible with winxp, but i only found that out AFTER mom bought the upgrade cd and i went through a bunch of stuff. today i need to go back to circuit city and try to exchange it for win2k, which IS compatible with the symphony crap.

ok. time to run away. paul is barking about being out of milk. he drinks like half a gallon every day, i swear.

listening: gary jules - mad world / annoying tv in the background

i woke up with a need to explain myself. i felt flooded with insight, or, at the very least, some vague collection of thoughts that have been floating around for awhile. i feel it's important for me to understand how i'm grieving, because i don't feel i'm processing this the usual way (i.e., crying and asking the vague power, "why us? why now?")

the fact is, i am not asking why. i think i have learned after so many responses of "i don't know" that why sometimes becomes a pointless question. i don't believe this is a question i can offer to god, because i don't believe in god. those who have raised me believe my lack of spirituality leaves me without a net to catch my grief and suffering, but i disagree. i mean no disrespect to their beliefs--in fact, i believe people will find what they believe; belief is a powerful psychological device--but... that is just how i think.

first, i have logic. i recognize that logic alone fails to explain or comfort any emotions, but it's a place to start. the principles of logic--randomness, probabilty, deduction, induction--provide the framework for some philosophical explansion that, while i have yet to entirely explain it to myself, i implicitly understand and feel comforted by. somehow, saying, "it was chance, genetics; it could've happened to anyone" seems FAIR to me. the answer to "why us?" is "why NOT us?" because we are all human and all have a chance to survive or not. that is the chance we take by living: shit could happen to us, or not. why should we expect special privileges beyond those chance affords us?

the point is, in cases like this, beyond asking why for medical insight, the question is a moot point. we should instead ask, "what do we do now?" time and life trek onward tirelessly; we can only try to keep up. what we can do is remember (or realize in the first place) the good fortune brought into our lives by the deceased and use it for future understanding each other and whatever else is to come. having a positive profound impact on those whose lives you entered seems to me the greatest possible heaven. it is your consciousness distributed to the greater whole and leaving it changed for the better. it may not seem like much, but... isn't it?

we may want to believe in an abstract eternal resting place where there is no pain, but this sounds very boring to me. life without pain is no life at all; pain is an essential component of happiness. we are scarred by the loss of a loved one, yes, but it leaves us with a deeper understanding of what is important (this usually means happiness in some sense). armed with this suffering, we know better how to alleviate it, and we can make the necessary adjustments that only leave us vulnerable to suffer again, but this is exactly the point.

i suppose now i can address my specific issues. i just lost my father. i see grieving all around me, and yet i can still smile. i don't believe i deny my loss, but i am happy in a lot of ways because of what he left behind. my father left the world a different place because of the lives he touched. my philosophy aside, i feel fortunate to have had such a great father for as long as i did, rather than 50 years of a mediocre one from whom my life lessons included, "avoid affection and concern wherever possible," because my dad was the opposite of that. in the end, he suffered, and i think that served to deepen his impact. more love was shared by those who knew him, and that is an energy only he could release into the world.

more later, perhaps. sorry for the way-long and rambling thoughts.

a toast to mary, the girl i once loved
oh lord, why do things have to die...
if drinking beer could bring her back here,
i'd drink the damn place dry.

jason webley has some of the most lovely songs for lately. so does cat stevens. and nick cave. i don't think they are comforting to anyone but me, so they have to stay on the headphones or in the car, but there it is.

the service yesterday was beautiful. i didn't cry as much as i thought i would, but i still cried, of course. i was almost surprised at how many people came--including a harem contingent of christine, jesse, graylan, and chris... becky, of course, was also there. so many people. i got hugs from people i barely knew and people i'd known my whole life. the reception felt like a party... i was with my friends, and there were a ton of people, and people were playing music and singing and talking and laughing. well, we were laughing. i think it's important to laugh (aha, cat stevens - "if i laugh"), important to do what feels right. it was good to see people; i wish the circumstances were better.

i am staying here for perhaps nearly the rest of the month, going back to seattle for bumbershoot at least, maybe some other things. i would like to spend more time with my mom, as well as go to oregon and spend time with people there. there are a lot of people who want to see me, and i always mean to see them, but it's hard because i feel so busy... now is the time to take pause, reconnect, before plunging back into my crazy college-student existence. i just need to make up a final exam in my stats class, and i am clear of work and internship until fall quarter begins. so that's good.

i probably have more reflections, and maybe later i will write more down. i've just...not been quite in the mood as much. my aunt is gone, so there is a quiet calm. it feels like we can deal now that she's not being all high-strung on our asses. i have a lot to say, and in time, i will say it, but until then, i love you all for being there for me. i am lucky to have you all in my life, just as i was lucky to have my father. i wish i could have known him better, and i wish more of you could have known him.

listening: jason webley - entropy