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August 07, 2004

the past

i had fun tonight at chicks rock, talking with folks, meeting a few new xdu folks, talking for a little while with an old xdu folk who i encouraged to come back...

but then there was some sadness, i ran into an old friend from college, nikos, and he started catching me up on all the people that we used to know. a lot of stories of people having sad lives, going crazy, developing a lot of agoraphobia (was it all the drugs? do potheads become agoraphobic later in life?)

he talked about chuck, who is one of my favorite people ever, when the bookstore where they all worked closed chuck didn't have a job for two years, he just kind of didn't know how to cope. nikos says his show on wqfs is incredible though, of which i have no doubt, and i've been wishing they'd put in a damn web stream for years just so i can listen to chuck again.

he talked about george, my old housemate, a brilliant mathematician and musician who never leaves his house now, just lives off of money from renting a shack on his property, and does some programming but only stuff he can do without ever meeting or talking to other people. nikos said he once had to go into an office to discuss a database or something, and broke out in a cold sweat and had a panic attack. i assure you that this is not the george i knew back in school. jesus, he was amazing back then, like a force of nature.

he talked about carol, george's girlfriend back when george and i were housemates. carol's sister donna was one of my closest friends at guilford, although we lost touch. i remember carol as this amazing bright girl with perfect, smooth blonde hair down to her waist. she and donna were the brains of the family; i once stayed at their house in elizabeth, nj, and the conversation over dinner was astounding, with the two of them and their father pushing each other, constantly challenging, me and their younger sister darla shyly standing to the sides.

anyway, he told me that carol had died; she was married and living in new york, working as a russian interpreter, then got lymphoma and died. donna was devastated.

i'm not really sure how to get my head around that... i think tomorrow or sunday i'll try to find her picture in my yearbook. i don't feel like crying, but i feel like i want to feel like crying... i guess that's how i can best put this feeling. but mostly i feel like i can't quite get my head around that.

anyway, nikos' own story is also a little sad, his dad died of cancer a few months ago, so he moved to durham to be with his mom and help her out, and to help himself out because things weren't going well in greensboro. he plays in some bands, and music is definitely still a huge thing for him; i'm a little intimidated that he'll probably listen to my radio show, but i shouldn't be. hell, i should try to recruit him as a dj.

he says he goes to the yoga spot a lot and would actually like to be a yoga instructor. what can i say? we went to a hippie college. nikos as yoga instructor is surprising, but he's always been a really physical guy, now that i think about it, so it does make sense.

it's hard to get this big chunk of brutal, negative stuff about one's old friends, and i know it's partly that it's filtered through nikos' lens, which has never been a particularly rosy one; and the thing about carol, well, i'll be trying to wrap my head around that one for a while i think. i might think about trying to find donna again...

Posted by lisa at August 07, 2004 12:32 AM | TrackBack

Comments

thank you for coming to the show . . . i'm sorry it was an occasion of bad news for you. hug

Posted by: alicia on August 7, 2004 11:10 AM

well.. while being told about carol in the middle of a rock show by nikos would not have been my first choice of ways to find out that news, i am glad that i know. and it was good to catch up with nikos, regardless.

i went to ooh la latte this morning to get coffee, and suddenly found myself crying after i placed my order. i'm not sure why it was at that moment. all day today as i've been doing everyday things, suddenly i'll think, "but how can carol be dead?"

Posted by: spacegrrl on August 7, 2004 06:28 PM

suddenly finding out someone is dead is really surreal--i imagine a lot more so when it's someone your own age, b/c who thinks of people so young dying?

call me if you need anything, ok?

Posted by: alicia on August 7, 2004 06:44 PM

yes, i think surreal is a good way to put it. i imagine you must have experienced something similar when you found out about your great grandmother recently.

Posted by: spacegrrl on August 7, 2004 07:55 PM

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