avoiding work (blue, like a rainy day, like a bridge over troubled water)

a friend of mine died this past week.

not a good friend (we only got to know each other in the past year), not a close friend (we only related as compatriots and comrades), but a friend nonetheless (at least, to a degree that any other word just does not seem appropriate). someone i've worked with, and come to know...and in a way more than just another human being (as in: just another one of many of the teeming masses i see and interact with, willingly or otherwise, on a daily basis), but as a person (as in: a name, a face, a personality, a body, a mind, a soul, living, breathing, talking, looking at you in the eye and shaking your hand and slapping you on the back and sharing a drink and talking, really talking, the way only friends--in whatever sense of what we may think we mean in that word--ever really do).

something that doesn't happen enough in this world.

not enough at all.

and which makes it all the more poignant, all the more painful, all the more tragic, when it is lost.

when they are lost.

it was pretty sudden. unexpected. a shock, really.

one moment there.

the next moment gone.

with just an announcement from an acquaintance and a request from the family for privacy.

which i will respect.

what is this like? what am i feeling? what can i say?

well...

...

..

.

it's like having a part of you removed, with not even the chance to see it or feel it or hear it or know it being done. like having a part of you removed, and then being told that it was done.

it's left me feeling a little blue.

and not really motivated to do much else except just look out the window and watch the rain streaking down the pane.

and not doing much of anything else.

there's a line from Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, when he discusses the near-death of his then-6-year-old son and the impact it had on his Senate career: you just don't care much then...you kind of put things in perspective...an entire month of priorities...*poof*, gone.

it's kind of like that now.

just don't really want to do much of anything.

let alone work, let alone study, let alone train.

let alone anything.

except maybe this:

Aretha Franklin (wow, Aretha playing the piano, and playing it well...and with so much soul...which is pretty much what we all need right about now):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DBl5gAs6WI

Eva Cassidy (not the greatest singer of our time--see above--but definitely a very nice, very good, very powerful, very perfect version of this song nonetheless):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYyQcQSqpbI

Elvis Presley (hey, it's the King, what else do you need to say?):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh7Hh-LD7gs

Simon & Garfunkel (the 1st version i ever heard, and in my mind, still probably one of the best):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KijLredMzJI


yeah, that's right. browsing Youtube, and looking for all the versions of this song that i know. and playing them ad nauseum.

don't know why.

it just seems kind of right, right about now.

whatever.