I think I want to talk about friendships or just share a story. Maybe just ramble on with some thoughts like in the good old days of the internet were just writing was ok.
And yes that sentence makes me sound like a old "back in my day" guy.
I have always been a person who takes the word “friend” very serious. I wont even attempt to say I’ve always been the best friend to have but I never have and will never call many people a friend because that word means so much to me. Not having many friends growing up put that twisted little bit in me.
Also there is only one person who I've ever called friend, or Soul Friend as I use to phrase it in my more emo days, who I don't still consider a friend and a loved part of my heart, even though they might not feel the same about me now, they are people I still call friend.
Last night I couldn't sleep because memories where attacking me. Memories of friends who I have lost contact with, friends who I no longer get to talk to; so what I want to do is tell a small little story about one of my friends.
For the most part I have also always used nicknames when talking to and about friends online so I will do that here also.
I stopped doing that with Mar because she hated the nickname I gave her {Wave} and because she came with a nickname built in- Mar.
I may have told this story here before and I might have even used it in a story, though I don’t think it was in anything I’ve published yet, but none of that matters because this is how I remember those events now. This is how the history of those memories effect me now and every detail of every memory will not nor can it ever be completely truth or false.
A number of years ago I took a bus ride across the country from Virginia to Vancouver in Canada. I say in Canada to stress that before this trip I had no idea there was more than one Vancouver.
Actually I drove to Tennessee where I caught a bus that would in time take me to Vancouver.
I could write a book and I think I do have a couple journals full of stories about that bus trip alone but when I finally, after a week, five days, crossed the border into Canada and stopped at a bus station in Vancouver that is were this story begins.
Maybe one of these days I will tell the stories of the Italian Ambassador who was in Tennessee for some reason and got onto the wrong bus and told him the situation was perfectly happy with him. Or the gang fight in a bus station bathroom that started and finished while I was shitting. Story ideas for later I guess.
Will stop here for moment to mention that for most of my life I had idealized the notion of travel a long distance on a bus. Why? I don't know but I did find out why people say "idealized" with stuff.
I got off the bus completely Schrodinger in my brain from the trip. I hadn’t showered in days, I hadn’t sleep in days, I had already had enough with humanity and wanted more than anything else to just have an alien invasion happen and start killing human after human so I wouldn't have to be near people ever again. I thought that was just about the only way I was going to have a good day.
I walked through the bus stop with no thought of where I was going. The trip had stripped me of any higher reasoning skills that I had developed in my life before stepping onto that bus in Tennessee.
I was in another country.
Didn't notice.
I was walking with a man beside me carrying on a conversation with me in another tongue and he could have been eating my arm as if it was made of ice cream with a spoon.
I wouldn't have noticed.
If I had not caught the sight I would see I would probably have walked through the bus station, out into the street, sat down, and let a car hit me. I wasn't zoned out, that would suggest I had any zoney structure left from the journey.
Sitting at a table just inside the bus station reading a newspaper was my friend July. Head down, eyes down, immersed into whatever she was reading. This wasn't our first meeting in person, we meet as mutual fans of the same television show online, but I was going to be spending a week with her and her boyfriend. She was going to show me around the city and the plan was for talk and talk and talk to build our friendship and that happen and so much more.
I ended up staying a lot longer than was the original plan but I'm not going to talk about that. Or talk about getting robbed. Or talk about us at the Vancouver Film Festival. So many great memories of Taco Time, Subway, and trips back and forth to McDonalds with the best drive thru worker maybe in history.
I have this scene to talk about. This moment in this bus station or in that gas station. I'm not always so linear in my thinking. I still remember only slightly getting out her name and how surprised I was that she was able to hear me. It was like I was giving her the chance to say, "I don't know you, go away." She didn't give in to that urge and gave back a great smile, left her seat and went to hug me. I warned her about my week long bus trip stink but she hugged me anyway.
Canadians are a very brave people.
We sat down for a second for me to catch some reality and her tell me what she had planned for me for the day. She told me about her and James Bond, she talked about the Film Festival, and how she was going to be volunteering, but she could get me into a couple writers panels and how we were going to go to a couple movies premieres. She talked and I found zone. I found my place back into the world and it was through the presence of a friend.
My stay in Vancouver turned out to be one of my biggest life changing moments, even though I went on to have two nervous breakdowns in the years after this, I had went on this trip thinking when I return home I was going to end my life. During those times of losing touch with reality a few things kept me from going over the edge and one of those things was memories of my time with a friend in Vancouver.
I don't have any sort of contact with July anymore; which is my fault. At one time I considered her my closes friend. The only person that I would talk to with complete honesty but I threw that friendship away by being a coward in so many ways. I hide from life, from my friends, and from responsibilities. I hope she is doing well. I hope her life has been lived with much energy. I honestly do think whether she ever thinks about our friendship but it isn't important to me to know. What's important are those memories and how they helped shape me into the person I am today.
Maybe over the next few weeks I tell more stories of friendship. They both make me smile and cry so don't try to hold me by this statement.
Check Out These Links:
More Green brothers videos. Mar makes fun of me because I watch so many things John Green does video wise but still haven't read any of his books. I don't find that strange but she plans to solve that by bringing me several of his book home on CD from the library today. John Green plays FIFA and talks about Euro 2012: The Euro League: The Miracle of Swindon Town #127 and Euro 2012 Part 2: The Miracle of Swindon Town #128 while Hank Green gets real about Evolution: Evolution: It's a Thing - Crash Course Biology #20
This looks pretty cool.
Rants and screams:
If your website has different pages almost every paragraph on a piece to show me more ads I don't come back. What really pisses me off is a website piece that's mainly photos and Top Lists and each entry has to be clicked to. Sorry, just a turn off for readers. Or is that just me, Am I the aqiverlint of old internet man on his porch.
Is this what people mean when they say they tell me they wipe their ass with my writing? I'm always confused because I haven't had much published in print so now I know what they are talking about. Good, now everything is clear.
Have you ever noticed that the plots for horror movies and stupid romantic comedies are pretty much the same? I never noticed before but do the research.
I really don't know what to say this makes me so angry. Again it shows how in this country the victim is viewed second in sexual assault cases. Put that with the hero and money worship of college sports and this is a prime example of the dangers that can follow. Just another example of how the very concept of "student athletics" in money sports is such a bullshit concept and the only people who come out clean are the college suits. New Report: Penn State Officials Thought It Was ‘Humane’ Not to Report Sandusky
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