Worse Still

The friend I wrote about in my previous post is fine, recovering at home, taking better care of himself. Praise God.

I called that situation "The Unthinkable". Well, reality is quite frequently what we don't expect it to be. A young friend of mine, 27, died after eight days in a coma, induced to save his brain from a massive stroke he suffered out of nowhere. But the damage was done.

There are many reasons why I'm having trouble coming to grips with this. Pray for his parents, Larry and Theresa. His funeral is tomorrow, geography prevents me from attending.

Life is never fair, and God does things for His own reasons. A good friend of mine says that God can see the whole tapestry, while we can only see the little frayed tassels that hang down. I trust God and His plan, that'll never change. I just wish young people didn't have to be taken away to remind us all how much we take this life for granted.

The Unthinkable

One of my best friends is very, very sick. He's in a hospital right now, has been for eight days, and has almost died twice. I can't go visit because the doctors want him to rest. This is horrible.

Rick has been the very best I could ever want in a friend, and I consider myself very good at being loyal and true to my friends. He stuck by me and defended me when I went through some really hard times, and at the time we'd known each other less than a year. We worked together at a rancid cesspool office of disguised evil, so we share an understanding of what's been killing him for the last twenty-six years. He loves my music and believes in me as a songwriter and a performer and encourages me to stick with it. I can confide in him and he confides in me. He's fun and funny and loves the Gators and Bruce Springsteen and can't tell you about a song without singing it and playing air guitar. My dad and I went with Rick and his wife to see Bob Dylan. He doesn't even begin to realize what a good person he is, empathetic and generous, hard-working, just a gem of a human being.

I'm literally beside myself. If anyone out there reads this, please pray for my friend Rick. When he gets released he'll have to make major lifestyle changes, so he'll need prayers for that, too. We all have our cross to bear, and right now his is heavy.

Lord Willin

As a man was leaving the office, a girl I work with said "Merry Christmas".

He turned around and said, "The same to ya'll too, Happy New Year!"

To which she replied, "See you next year!" Laughter was exchanged and general good vibes spread through the office.

As he walked out the door, the gentleman (who was wearing a Gator hat, by the way) said, "Lord willin, I'll be here!"

And I knew he was right, and thought of all the vain things I make plans about and was reminded of this passage from James 4:

¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Is That What It Is?

Artemis is the Greek goddess of hunting, wild animals, virginity and the moon, twin sister of Apollo. This guy asked for my phone number over the weekend and it made me think of this story (and wonder why it's been 2.5 years since the last time that happened, what is it about me? I've been told I'm intimidating, being a referee of men's rugby (and women's), tall and not ugly and all). Anyway this is the story:

Artemis was once bathing in a vale on Mount Cithaeron, when the Theban hunter Actaeon stumbled across her. Enraged, Artemis turned him into a stag and, not knowing their own owner, Actaeon's own dogs killed him.

I mean she was pissed he saw her naked. She couldn't have him going around saying, "Yo I saw that virgin goddess Artemis naked!" BUT, I think it's significant that she turned him into a stag (deer), allowing him to live in the form of an animal she held sacred. Hmmmm. Then again she probably knew his dogs would attack him if he were a deer.

Infinite Jest, an amazing book I just read and highly recommend, had a character named Joelle/Madame Psychosis who was beautiful (the former love of her life, Orin would continue to refer to her as the "P.G.O.A.T.", as in Prettiest Girl Of All Time). Her father warned her about men who were only attracted to her looks, ("The sweetest syrup attracts the nastiest flies.") so she was paranoid about that. But the author called it "Actaeon Complex", ("deep phylogenic fear of transhuman beauty"), which is what men get around women who are so intimidatingly beautiful they're actually repelled by them and can't bring themselves to even talk to her. I can't say this is my problem (I'm actually quite awkward and get this same Actaeon Complex around good-looking dudes as I go around looking like an unmade bed) but it makes me feel better to blame it on this. Maybe I should be asking "What's wrong with this kid who wants my phone number!?!?" (just teasing - I know that a girl's phone number is like a trophy for a guy)

*(Ultimately, at Thanksgiving dinner at Joelle's parents' house (with Orin at the table) her father revealed some gross crap about him being in love with her so the mother freaked out and went down to the basement where the father had his lab (he was a low pH chemist) and threw a beaker of acid at the father, who ducked, so it ended up breaking on Joelle's face, which made her deformed and un-look-at-able, so she joined the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed and took an oath to always wear a veil to cover her face. And obviously Orin dumped her soon thereafter. At least she didn't have to worry if men were just interested in her physical appearance anymore.)

From wikipedia, other reasons I identify with Artemis' story:
The childhood of Artemis is not fully related in any surviving myth. The Iliad reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, who, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus.[17] A poem of Callimachus to the goddess "who amuses herself on mountains with archery" imagines some charming vignettes: according to Callimachus, at three years old, Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, Zeus, asked him to grant her six wishes: to remain always a virgin; to have many names to set her apart from her brother Apollo; to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer; to have a bow and arrow and a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt; to have sixty "daughters of Okeanos", all nine years of age, to be her choir; and for twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested. She wished for no city dedicated to her, but to rule the mountains, and for the ability to help women in the pains of childbirth.[18]
Artemis believed that she had been chosen by the Fates to be a midwife, particularly since she had assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin brother, Apollo.[19] All of her companions remained virgins and Artemis guarded her own chastity closely. Her symbols included the golden bow and arrow, the hunting dog, the stag, and the moon.

"She wished for no city dedicated to her..."
"...Guarded her own chastity closely."

And she killed Adonis, the guy everyone thought was so hot. (Also from wikipedia):
In some versions of the story of Adonis, who was a late addition to Greek mythology during the Hellenistic period, Artemis sent a wild boar to kill Adonis as punishment for his hubristic boast that he was a better hunter than she.

So, Artemis is one of my favorite mythological figures. There was a point but I forgot it.

You Know Who You Are

Thank you for bein a friend

Travel down the road and back again

Your heart is true

You're a pal and a confidant

And if you threw a party

Invited everyone you knew

You would see

The biggest gift would be from me

And the card attached would say

Thank you for bein a friend.

I Want To Be Weird Again

"What kind of music do you play?" Uh, Haylee Slaughter Music. I don't know. Some of it can be pegged into a genre but some of it cannot. Since I've been recording an album in a real studio with a very talented producer, I've taken into consideration mass appeal to a certain extent and attempted to meet the listener halfway. There are songs I've deemed too personal that have been left off the final track list. The tendency to hold back and water it down now is stronger that I started refereeing seriously, for fear that rugby people will hear a song or read this blog and think "Ummm, yeah, what an unstable emotive weirdo." Referees are definitely not supposed to be unstable, emotive weirdoes.

You know who my song-writing hero is? Daniel Johnston, an unstable, emotive weirdo. So RAW, so REAL. Much of his early stuff was recorded on toy organs or badly-tuned guitars onto a cassette. Check him out, : http://www.hihowareyou.com. I want to make music just as weird. Some instrumental, all experimental, brutally honest lyrically, all music that exposes my heart and soul in a way that makes other people uncomfortable.

In the first two years of my refereeing career, I thought I had to fit a mold, not stick out too much more than I already do as a female. Be humble, not join in conversations, always get to meetings on time with my clothes ironed and my shirt tucked in. In other words, Play the Game. It's not quite me but I think that in a way these expectations have helped me grow up a little. In other ways, I've have to suppress who I really am for fear of weirding people out. I'm much more morbid than I allow myself to let on, and I've learned which anecdotes I need not share. Maybe these are good things. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to understand where I'm coming from, and it's really quite a hassle to try to change this on a day-to-day basis.

I've got high hopes for this record I'm working on right now; Internet radio play and shopping it for song placements on TV, movies, commercials or with major recording artists. I may do a CD launch party and actually perform for the first time in months. Who knows? But when it's done, I want to let myself be weird again. Really weird. Daniel Johnston weird.

Some Things I Learned This Weekend

1. I need to learn how to get in touch with my feelings.

2. I have to stop spitting.

3. Being teased by both my mom and my coach together is disturbing.

4. Many things are not within the scope of my control, but many things in fact are.

Quote of the Day

"You play right up to your limit and then pass your limit and look back at your former limit and wave a hankie at it, embarking. You enter a trance. You feel the seams and edges of everything."

....TALENT IS ITS OWN EXPECTATION.


-from the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's so weird and I can't put it down.