Bethi

No pic today, I'm afraid, because I'm typing this from a hospital computer, so I don't even have an archived picture to post! But no need to worry, the 150 of you that read this (!), I'm on here for work experience, and haven't been laid up through some dreadful illness. Once again I am posting because I need to vent, and people don't tend to take it so well if you vent at them! Not that anyone in particular has upset me, in fact I am surrounded by lots of wonderful friends and people I care about. The problem is, I am shortly NOT going to be surrounded by wonderful friends and people I care about. Through a series of unrelated events, and no fault of anyone, I am shortly to lose one, maybe both of my housemates, of whom I am fond; and a very special friend. My housemate has decided it's time for a change in his life, which leaves a lot of uncertainty hanging over whether we can fill his place, or whether we'll all have to move on and go our separate ways. Though I'm struggling to imagine living with someone who isn't him. Hoping that neither of them decide to log on any time soon (because they know who I am, rather unfortunately - it's one thing to tell people who have never met you that you are fond of your housemates, but quite another if they find out!). In addition to this shake-up, my friend from Ghana will shortly be returning home. I know that he can't stay here forever, in the words of the immortal Axl Rose

Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain

. But sometimes I wish that the warm things in life lasted, particularly good friends that I care for. The thing that annoys me most, though, is not their going - I know that it has to happen sooner or later, and even later would be too soon; but my own inability to tell them that I care about them. I know why, too - it's because everyone I have ever told matters to me has either abused that or been scared off. I guess it's not conventional to care about people any more. And the last thing I want is to lose the precious friendship that is all I have at the moment. Telling someone how much they really mean to you is a gamble - will it strengthen your friendship, or will it cause the end? And you can never know which way it'll swing. I'm not a gambler at heart, I'd rather stick with what I have than try to improve it and risk losing everything. But I wish I could just say. I'm not asking for change, I just want people to know that they are cared about. In a world as messed up as this one, people need to know that more than ever. And yet so often they run from it. I don't get it. Bethi

I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamed that one of my friends was a bounty hunter and was hunting me down for skipping bail. Weird, especially as I have no idea what I had done to end up in that position, and it certainly has no bearing on real life! No matter how hard, fast or long I ran, he just kept coming. At first he caught the other fugitives I was running with, one by one, and so I got a little borrowed time as he had to sort them out while I, fuelled by sheer terror, put as much distance as I could between myself and him. But he always caught up again, until it was only me left. Every time I thought I'd lost him, he was always just round the corner. Every time I thought I was lost and invisible in a crowd of people, he'd be waiting for me on the other side of the road, or just across the square. Until eventually I couldn't keep going any more, and I gave in and ran straight to him. Well, my now infamous housemates had a field day analysing that one! Apparently I secretly like the guy who was the bounty hunter, and that's why I dreamed he was chasing me (and I supposed, why I was scared stiff of him?). Also, I have repressed guilt which is why I was running from the law. So I must be hiding some dreadful deed I've done in my past. Go figure! Why am I telling you this? Well, you must ike reading my drivel, or else you woulda left the page ages ago! And I like the freedom to say whatever I feel. But also because it gave me a great idea for a new song - Bounty Hunter. It's basically the story of my dream, but it goes far deeper than that. See, all my life I've spent running. Running from bad things and bad people that happened to me. Some of my friends live seeing people who have hurt them every day. I don't. The people who caused me damage growing up don't know who I am or where I am. But the only way to keep it that way is to keep on running. Never stand still, because if you do the past might catch up. Not just the people, but the memories. Bethi

I am feeling thoroughly melancholy at the moment. I know it's been a long time since I've blogged on here - almost an entire year in fact, but building a career and a family is very demanding. So much so in fact, that I've written very little since my unimaginatively titled 'Praise Song'. And I've forgotten BBCode! My misery is my own fault - I blew off a friend's phone call because I was in a meeting, and I hurt his feelings. He means an awful lot to me, possibly more than he knows, and so I am very upset to have hurt him to the point where he won't answer my calls or reply to my texts. And because I now have a whole lot of pent up sadness which I'm naff at talking about, I'm singing about it instead. Ike, if you ever read this, this is for you:

I didn't mean to hurt you today

I didn't mean to push you away

I'm sorry that I put my work before you

I'm sorry there's so many things I have to do

Isaac, dear friend, to me you mean so much

When did I become so very out of touch?

Priorities, priorities

How do I handle my priorities?

With work and life and love and friends

Where does it all fit in?

More to come, at some point. I do remember that the coding on here won't allow me to paragraph things the way I want to - or perhaps I'm just so technologically illiterate I can't figure it out, it matters not, the end result is the same. I like talking to you guys - I can say anything I want without fear of retribution - because no-one knows who I am, and most of you don't care! I just wish that I didn't always hurt the friends I care most about. I never argue with friends who aren't close, but one way or another I always push away the people who matter. Either by scaring them off, or arguing, or by putting unimportant things before them. Also, I noticed that photos only ever show the happy times - ever think about that? I have hundreds of photos from holidays, my prom, my wedding and honeymoon, days out with friends, my nephew mucking about photographing me (at age 4 - it was so cute!), but none that really represent how I feel now. And I can't be bothered to take one. So I present, as the face of this blog entry, a drawing from the site http://xkcd.com, whom I hope won't mind me showing off their artwork. It pretty much sums up my life. Bethi

My housemate has complained that he's not on here yet. So the photo for today is of him (and two of my other housemates). So if I ever shoot to fame (highly unlikely), they won't be able to go anywhere without being mobbed!! I apologise for the poor photo quality, the light was terrible, and one of them was in the process of trying to conceal his face when I took it. There isn't really a lot going on at the moment. Assignments, coursework and presentations are all cashing in their chips for my time right now, so not much on the music front. But you guys don't wanna read me babbling on about how much music I haven't written. And I don't wanna talk about it, because it's boring (because there's nothing to talk about), and it's unoriginal, and I enjoy being my own person and refusing to conform (so sucks to all the psych students who tried to do experiments on me through college!!). In fact, my nonconformity is very reminiscint (hah! cannot spell that!) of Kat in Ten Thigs I Hate About You. I also used to conform to what people thought I should in order to fit in, and experienced a major life event in my last year of school that made me want to be free. People didn't accept the person I tried to be to impress them, so why bother? I would rather be me and be free. After all, I didn't exactly act normal through my teenage years:

• I had one major argument in my mother all through that decade of my life (and none since, I'm happy to say!)
• When I went through my teen rebellion rock music stage, my mum actually liked the music I played!! (I was shocked to discover, during her packing to move house, that she actually had loads of cool vinyls, like Led Zep, and Credence Clearwater. How cool is that?!!)
• I used to sit in fields and churchyards just listening to my walkman, for hours and hours in the evenings.

That last one I blame on living in a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere. But I'm grateful for it - if I'd grown up in a major urban area, instead of out in the sticks with no TV to kill my mind, I probably wouldn't be the creative person I am. Even now, living in the bustling metropolis of a capital city, I still miss those times I used to sit in a field at dusk and do nothing but listen to music and collect my thoughts. Sometimes I still try, although there aren't any fields, and no matter where you go, you can't escape the city here; you can never entirely block out the sounds, and there are people everywhere. And people are so shallow. This is a particular peeve of mine. What does fashion matter, when people are dying and the environment is being raped of all it's resources, so that the world we leave to our children is going to be nothing more than a polluted shell?? This is a theme that my friend Komakino picks up well on his site www.retrojunkies.co.uk. Listening to Marillion's song Blind Curve/Vocal Under a Bloodlight/Passing Strangers/Mylo/Perimeter Walk/Threshold, especially the Threshold part of the suite, always makes me think too. Fish writes:

I see convoys curb crawling ---------------------- Trying to pick up a war They're going to even the score Oh... I can't take any more I see black flags on factories Soup ladies poised on the lips of the poor I see children with vacant stares, destined for rape in the alleyways Does anybody care, I can't take any more! Should we say goodbye? I see priests, politicians? Heroes in black plastic body-bags under nations' flags I see children pleading with outstretched hands Drenched in napalm, this is no Vietnam I can't take any more, should we say goodbye How can we justify? They call us civilised!

I've edited part of this song to avoid any possibility of offense, although I don't think that it was written with racial intent This is so true. How can we term ourselves civilised when we let the atrocities go on, and don't do anything about it? One of my housemates id the epitome of this. S/he has been heard saying that, "There's no point him/her doing any good in this world, as no-one else does, and no-one cares." (Gender unspecified to protect his/her identity from those that read this) I thought that this was so sad, yet it is so true of our culture in affluency (by affluency I mean anyone who has a roof over their head and food to eat. And that's only about 10% of the world's population, at the upper limit). So I want to leave this challenge to every reader of this who has access to a computer to read it. What are YOU doing about this? Bethi