got to keep on truckin.

One of my old friends died at the beginning of this year. We had an intense friendship for a short amount of time and then we burnt out in a spectacular fashion. She wrote me a letter once, inside of a book she bought in Paris. She told me we would go there together one day.

I met my boyfriend's French friends at the front door of my apartment yesterday, which reminded me of Paris, which reminded me of Nicole. If I ever make it there I know that I will think of her. Constantly.

You can go through long bouts of forgetting those who are gone, and then instantly are brought back to that hollow feeling that someone you were inseparable from for six months in 2001 is now no longer in existence ... the fact that there are a very small number of people who knew you well when you were 15, and that number will only get smaller from here on out can be difficult to accept. Someone left this on Nicole's Facebook shortly after her death.

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I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

- Walt Whitman

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