Tidal waves and strange sequences.

"Before electric light, you paddled through the soup of darkness as a crocodile..."

It's raining on and off, like it has been the entire week. It's been cold, though. And not in a temperature sort of way, just cold. The world gets distant when it rains. Everyone is in a hurry to avoid the elements, and no one wants to talk. Everyone just wants to get where they're going.

Being exposed to the elements alone, though...well, it's almost refreshing.

There was no one here Monday. The fountains were running, the rain was pouring, and no one was here. To hear your own boots echo off the ground in the middle of a place like this just doesn't happen. But it was nice. For the first time in almost 21 years, I actually kind of enjoyed the rain. It was a strange echoed combination of me, the rain, and the wind, and it was peaceful. Tuning out the world to the sound of music and singing is something I do fairly often, but tuning into the world as well as the music at the same time...they interacted so interestingly.

It almost makes me like the rain. Almost.

"While we're tidal and flexed on a full moon, it'd be a sure sure shame to not do..."

I found a small book last week, written by one of my favorite authors and the title including one of my favorite creatures. The library was telling me to check it out. So I did. I wasn't expecting Joyce Carol Oates's Triumph of the Spider Monkey to be quite what it was.

That is, I wasn't expecting it to be exactly the sort of book I was looking for.

I've been writing several short stories on this character, Akira Nozaki, for some time. And something small inside me told me I should collect them and make an overall story out of it. I was not expecting Triumph of the Spider Monkey to be in exactly the sort of format that I had considered putting the stories in. I was not expecting it to be so unusual, yet engaging. I was not expecting that there would be such an element of non-understanding to it.

I was not expecting to find direction in a book I knew nothing about.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep writing soon. I haven't felt like writing much lately, but I blame that on the loss of my computer, which is not back from the shop and is not showing signs of being back from the shop any time soon...all the same, I have paper and pens if something should strike me. There is a lot to Akira, and this structure of the stories should allow for a lot, most of which I hadn't even thought to explore before. It's exciting.

"Do it for all the times we wished we had!"

That'll put things into perspective.

"I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier..."

I've only had a few people leave me mid-life, so far. Only two of them have been deaths. Neither of those deaths were "end of life" deaths...least, not until now. There is nothing but fact in knowing that Bill lived a complete life, down to the very last moment.

Knowing that there's no reason to be upset is what makes this so hard.

Bill lived a full life, did everything he wanted to, got married, was happy...and I have no doubt that he's up in heaven with the God he believed so faithfully in. He was a great person, and he did so much for so many, probably without even knowing half of what he did. He affected so many lives in such a positive way...

It's really no wonder this is so hard. The world just lost one of the good ones. I'm not cynical, by nature of being, but there's not likely to ever be a person like Bill again. I'm sitting here in the library, having walked from my dorm, just so I can sit in front of a computer and at least feel a little closer. To him. To someone. To anyone.

"I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier."

Sitting here in the library willing myself not to crack and be upset because he'd tell me not to. Sitting here in the library listening to The Killers and trying not to sing along because it will make me sad and I can't sing songs like these quietly in the first place.

Is it strange that I'm this upset for someone I never actually met in person?

If you said yes, then I'm going to respectfully say you're wrong. The man is one of the reasons I even bothered really learning to write well. I was interested, sure. I was there, sure. But he was the one with the knowledge who sat down and really willed me to learn. Pointed me in the right direction and taught me.

"I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier."

It's moments like these that you really feel alone in a library, knowing that you are so lost in yourself that you have to further seclude yourself in a four story building already void of other people by putting on headphones and tuning out the silence.

I'm expecting the books to jump out at me. To be smacked in the face by an American Film Institute catalog as if someone were trying to snap me out of it. And I want to be out of it. But I want to be sad, too. I want to sit and be upset and listen to songs that remind me of people I won't see anymore, and I want to let this out.

I forget what story it was--I think it was House of the Spirits--but one of the characters says that if you are to be sad, you must be sad with every fiber of your being, let every last part of yourself be sad and upset. Then--and only then--will you be able to move on. I'm hoping this holds true, and when I'm not in the middle of a foreign building, maybe I'll give it a try.

"I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier."

For this moment, though...for this moment I will smile, knowing that I was able to know this man in the first place.

To W. Brown, October 15, 1983 - January 11, 2010: Thank you, for everything.