It's been a sad, strange National Day weekend. 

Whilst the nation turned 44 and set off fireworks, there was mourning for an ex-classmate whose passing seemed to have no sense or reason. This morning, I received news that Versailles' bassist, Jasmine You, had also inexplicably passed on, mere days after taking leave for health reasons. 

It's a very, very mad world. 

The Memorial is over although the mourning probably won't really end for some time. 

I received the news almost first thing in the morning on Friday but it's taken a while to sort my head out, to understand the emptiness. 

( Long Live The King )

Karma karma, so sweet so sour. 
Tell me when did I learn envy? 

Tell me, was it when I lived in a bottle and secretly sailed the seven seas to get away, away from land, though the idea is terrifying and I lack the courage. 

Tell me, what happened to years and years ago, and the sense I was born with? I knew the ground then, understood it and so stood tall. No stooping, from pride and its consequences, no hunching over wretched Ifs. None of that nonsense in the past. 

No nonsense, no people, no worries. 
Just books and books of happy endings.
 
Heroes, fairies, dragons, princes, castles and kingdoms, magic, truth, healing, purely impersonal sorts of love and Victory. There was always justice and victory. They were the most important really because they made things real and meaningful, the raison d'être for my paper people and there was no fault in that. 

And such gratification I got from the vindication of these paper people. I could live between pages, relish their every triumph and just never, ever care about the way this story is going. This story is boring and not worthwhile. Predictable plot with flat characters. Trivial and so utterly meaningless by comparison. Unfulfilled and unfulfilling. 

Yet I've taken to writing it anyway, attempting to inject something more, anything actually. Change, Life, Poetry. I should have just stuck to my books.  

Oh yes, they wail about this world in flames because the problem is it isn't on fire. 

I worked on Christmas day which sounds more miserable than it really is. It doesn't say anything about Christmas Mass in the morning or our lovely tree which is real this year. I fails to mention the presents, the bickering, the fiddling with tree lights (controlled by the Treemote, bad joke I know) and the Feast (which features more curry and chilli than anything else). Much quieter this year also. 

It wasn't quite the same as coming back utterly stoned and yet, glittering in a way that doesn't involve containers of itchy stuff that sticks to the worst places. It doesn't feel like when you're setting up the tree from scratch, knowing that every bauble and ribbon was placed there by you (or thrown actually, towards the weary end) with the pokey leaf marks to show for it.

It's different but it's not bad really. Christmas, whatever it's been marketed or preached as, is a festival for Family, for appreciating who you have now and remembering the ones who are not.

So on the night before Christmas, as my mum waited for the cake in the oven, gorgeous buttery smells filling the kitchen and mingling with the lingering scent of long laboured-over Devil and Feng, with the tender strains of Nat King Cole singing 'Unforgettable', I thought of my late grandfather, of how long ago it seemed even as it felt like yesterday. The memory of him was so tied to the music he had always loved and sang and his passion for cooking (and indeed, nobody's cooking can ever replace his), and so, our family's idea of Christmas.

It was hard that first Christmas and very different. The next was not much easier. These days it isn't so much regret, guilt and should-haves but simply Missing Him. Time wears away at the trivialities so that only the important and the true remain. 

In the first few months after his passing, his sister had dreamed of him once, perfectly content in heaven and enjoying a cool beer as he always did. And you know, I rather think he is even as I type this. Farewells only last a lifetime really, or less and we all live brief lives. Hah, before I know it, I may well be up there having a beer of my own with him and perhaps enjoying a sunset that's perfectly heavenly.