Don’t you hate it when plans go to shit, or they drastically change and you just can’t get with the program? It’s like I have everything and nothing going on at the same time – a lot like what death is supposed to be. Maybe. Have I become too grim now?

One day I’m a busy bee, getting the Spark done so I can set up an oil painting space on the Mayline table in my office; I wind up working on the Turtle House a total of a couple of hours and I’m back at the keyboard writing again. Not having my manuscript to work on was driving me a little bit bonkers, so I went bonkers with rewriting my short story, Maybe Magic Things. It’s now edited – very well I might add – and I feel like it’s a good, stand-alone story that represents the spirit of Shrapnel – without it being an actual chapter.

So, yes. I’ve been writing instead of painting. In a recent blog post, I mentioned how I may be developing characters for a new fictional story. They are based on real people that I know, and just as I was tinkering with all that I got news that one of my oldest friends – who I’m sitting there writing about – was in the hospital, extremely ill. By the afternoon I was there with him. It was shocking. He was shocked to see me and we are both almost unrecognizable. I’ve put on a crazy amount of weight and he was skin and bone. And so, I guess this is the end?

Dare I write in this blog who this person is to me? I don’t think writing some simple sentences are going to do it, like: starting at age 12, he taught me how to play the drums, he made me believe in magic, or he was my lover – we once lived together. That doesn’t sum up anything. All you need to know is that I didn’t like seeing him like that and the whole thing is hard to swallow. Talking to his mother is hard too. She lost her oldest to cancer. And I’ve know them all since I was 11.

Then, this past Monday, Michael and I drove out to Lancaster to strike down the Exodus Project from MOAH all day. It was 107. And it wasn’t until the next day when I found out that my friend up and left the hospital on Sunday night. Now I am not sure where he is. But if I had limited time, I suppose I wouldn’t want to spend it in a hospital bed either.

I don’t know what else to say today.