Graduated!

I finished my final semester in the MAT program!
It turns out I need to pay another fee to get my certification.
Everybody gets a piece of the pie.

Christmas was a jumble, a transition, very busy, some joy, some sorrow.
My best friend died from complications due to type 1 diabetes. He was 35.

My kids got too many presents!

Our baby, Maddie, had her first Christmas.

April is back to work.

The weather: frigid!

We move in a little over a month! ...we hope. This move is contingent on the house being ready to inhabit. But it's a big house, & we need the space!

I began reading Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, for the third time. Maybe I can make it this time!

I have been reading some books on rock & roll, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, books and articles about babies, something about Pakistan, some nature stuff, & some children's books. I seem to forget titles & authors instantly. The pictures stay with me longer.

Ross, my friend who died ten days ago, was a musician. He and I played and recorded together on and off through the years. I also recorded some of his songs, and have posted many of them. More are on the way, as I prepare a massive upload of a good chunk of his work and some of our collaborations. It will be available at:

http://rossongs.net

I have been writing a very long poem about him, thoughts and emotions, memories, but it seems so raw & uneven, hard to get a grasp on, so I think I'll refrain from publishing it. Perhaps I'll work on something for the liner notes to the extended box set I'm compiling. He had been working on album entitled Presence for some years, and sporadically recorded and wrote for it. He had another CD, Delayed Dreams, which he self-published several years ago.

He seemed to be stuck in some indecision about how to proceed with his musical career, and then it slowly became less about that career and more about survival. The duality of career and personal life, or financial success and internal success, however one arranges it, confronts each of us; with Ross, I feel like he lived a succession of lives, filled them with as much as he could fit, and when he reached a dead end, he just took it. He went off dialysis and died shortly afterwards. I had talked to him that Tuesday, I think, and he died four days later. He never told me of his decision. I'm pretty sure he hadn't made it then. He was impulsive, but he went through with his decisions.

He was a good person, a complex person. I have a feeling that everyone who knew him know a different Ross. This is a hunch, but he worked hard to get along with people. I admired that, and learned much from him. I miss him and wish he were still here. I guess I'm still angry at him for dying. He suffered all the time, though, and had for many years. It's hard to fathom. After all, how can one really identify with a chronic and mortal illness, one that he lived with all his life? We are all given death as a birthday present, but Ross's wasn't even wrapped. & he lost his kidneys, got a transplant, and a pancreas transplant, lived and sang with them a few years, then they failed, and time got short. I wanted more time. I have a hard time accepting something that Ross must have accepted long ago.