You've got mail. Once magic words that announced, via electronic screen, that someone has taken notice of you're existence. These days, such a message is now conveyed in many different ways, through a wide variety of internet social networks: Facebook, Yahoo!, Myspace, just to name a few. A little announcement of a 'New Message.' Oh, wonderful. Someone, an acquaintance, a friend, is taking a little of their time to inquire how my summer is going, how the family is doing. For some reason, these methods of communication are preferred over cell phones, but why complain? Type a few words, or a paragraph, and then ask similar questions in response. That’s how the standard procedure goes. Sometimes it’s a person you rarely see anymore, but shared a past experience with, a relationship that’s now faded because of difference in life circumstances-yet either party still reaches out for continued contact. Sometimes it’s a close friend you see regularly, someone you’re close to and have known for years. Yet one still feels the need to communicate via the all-encompassing Internet. Either circumstances...what does it matter? A person is making time to somehow keep you apart of their life, in the small way of internet messaging. One sends the message, one responds. A volley of words, back and forth. Type. Click. Send.

  The situation is different when its a person you've never met in reality, only the chance crossing of words on a screen that caught mutual interest-enough to instigate a more personal communication. Private messages are sent, conversations happen. A discovery is made that, even though this person may never exist in your actual life, you've found someone to hold a decent conversation with. Someone with whom mutual interest are shared, and can discuss for hours different issues, music, books. And it’s a nice thing, that. It’s something a bit reminiscent of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks characters in that romantic comedy 'You've Got Mail.' And astonishingly enough, the bond they first formed out of stark words on an electronic screen could actually carry on into the real world. What a story.

 

  People aren’t like that. Not in reality land-that’s why stories like that are stories. Common qualities are not the binding glue that can keep people together. Experiences, years of knowing each other-not even those things can serve as the cementing glue that can tie two beings together.

It can be a question: How much is that person worth the words to type, the phone calls, and the get-togethers? That’s entirely up to each person.

 

 In the end, its a choice. It ultimately  becomes the choice to make the effort. To make the decision of whether or not you’ll type those few words in askance of life’s events. To pick up that phone and dial that number. Sans the effort, from one or both parties, the friendship will simply fade. And one day you’ll see something that reminds you distantly of that person, and think ‘What happened?’ Depending on the impact someone had in your life, that wondering will come at varying degrees. Maybe it was their fault. Maybe it was yours.

 In the end, there exists the choice to keep someone in your life. Two people who met in the dance of life, who danced their dance together….how much is it worth to keep on dancing? Someone has to keep on trying.

 One can never know how much they could lose till one day you look around and its just not there anymore. And you find yourself missing that person, and wondering what happened.

      This isn’t a movie. This is reality. People must work for anything and everything to maintain its continued presence in their lives, if one so desires it.

 

      Make the effort.

 

 

And so the story goes...

Imagine you're at the top of your world. You've worked hard for everything you've achieved, gained it all with dedication and perseverance. Things couldn't be better, perhaps. A perfect life is difficult to attain, but you've managed to create something close to it.

When life is that grand, there is no end in sight.

To have your dreams, everything you've ever worked hard for in life, vanish in the space of a few months, ending in the ultimate end of death, is an unbearable thought. It's a tragedy that will repeat itself over and over again. It’s a fact of life.

But its something noticed more than ever when it strikes the young. It’s not just a tragedy when this happens, it’s a crime. When someone young dies suddenly, it's remembered because of the injustice of life that someone who’s just beginning dies before they take those real steps into life, the steps that make them who they are and creating their dreams into reality.

Not everyone who dies young is noticed by all. It’s usually limited to the circle of family, friends, and communities. But in the case of Grègory Lemarchal, his death struck an entire nation.

Unless you're French, or have kept up with popular singers of Europe,you probably don't know who Grègory is. He was an immensely popular singer of France, winning StarAcademy in 2004 (the French American Idol) by an unprecedented vote of 80%.  .He was twenty when he won Star Academy, and the nation saw for the first time a vibrant young man who sang with everything he had. Grègory possesed a remarkable stage presence, his face and voice expressing every word of a song as he the captivated the audience with his powerful, passionate voice.

For him, to achieve success as a singer might have seemed an unattainable dreamwhen he was a child; from the age of two, he was diagnosed with cysticfibrosis, a hereditary illness that causes unnatural congestion of the lungs. To have a healthy set of lungs is absolutely necessary to succeedas a singer, non? But he overcame that affliction in pursuit of a dream.

He was at the top of his world.

From 2005-2006, Grègory was one of the country's top singers, his album certified platinum and songs topping the charts. He toured the country, andsang duets in concert with Europe's biggeststars such as Patrick Bruel   and Lara Fabian.He won a major award in the NRJ Music Awards, the French equivalent of Grammy's, and was compared to Celine Dion for his talent.
Fans loved him and he was mobbed by their overly exuberant adoration whenever he was caught in public-after all, he was picked by the people of France to become their next big star. And he achieved that dream.

It was a typical story of a person’s rise to stardom.

It became a story that ended suddenly in death.
 
Gregory announced at the beginning of 2007 that he would take a few months off to rehabilitate, assuring his fans that he would soon be back on stage. But after months of hospitalization, he died on April 30, 2007.

His death shocked the people of France.How could he, whose sang with a voice full of life and passion, die so young?Five thousand flocked to Chamberly, his hometown, where he was a local star before his Star Academy days. A concert in hommage of his life  was organized in May that year, and most all of France's singing elite sang his songs in commemoration of a young man whose voice now sang in heaven.

 Hearing his music and learning of his death was like Selena all over again; I never knew Gregory's voice till this year. I may not be French, but his death still struck me when I learned of it.

Did Gregory know that  death was so near, as his final days drew to an end?

Because of his voice, Gregory's death was mourned by millions, and he'll always be remembered; 'La voix d'un ange '- the voice of an angel.

Call me sentimental, call me trite, but don't tell me that death  doesn't seem worse and even more unfair when this happens. Death is always sad, but the exquisite unfairness of it all strikes a deeper cord when a young one is taken just as they just begin to experience life on a grander scale.

He was another of life's brutal lessons that no matter whom you are, your age, your status in life, the unavoidalbe end of every human being can strike at any time.

Haven't been writing here much. Life is a terribly demanding occupation these days. I've just realized how very busy I will be tomorrow. Fittings for a custom dress for a big formal event in May; I could just buy a dress, I know, but I never had a prom, and I want to feel gorgeous in whatever dress I end up wearing. Call me hopelessly girly for wanting that, but dammit, I'm wearing it, I want the dress just so. I envy guys for their easy options when it comes to formal dress; if I was a guy, I wouldn't be clawing my eyes out right now, looking up designer dresses for inspirations of my own creation. So far I've found two very lovely dresses by Tadeshi and Doo. Ri. that I'd like to make myself a slightly different version of-namely white, as that is the required color for the dress-so maybe it won't be so bad after all.....hopefully. Still irks me how much time I've had to waste looking for the perfect dress.

On a less frivolous subject, tomorrow will be spent (did I just spend that much time talking about dresses? Mon Dieu. )studying for a sociology exam and big ‘discussion’(code for ‘debate’) happening on Thursday. The Patriot Act (cue dooms day music.) Certain people in my class will tear me to bloody pieces over that particular discussion, because I've been placed on the side favoring the Patriot Act. Doesn’t help that today in the same class, the teacher showed a PBS documentary on home grown terrorism, and how the FBI has failed to prove that actual sleeper cells of Al Queda connected terrorist have ever planned something in the United States- all the video did was prove how incompetent intelligence agencies have been in proving that terrorist plotting activity happens on US soil. Which means any arguments I’d thought of using for the debate have been completely crushed after seeing that video. Which is just fantastic. I’m already going to be a bag of twitchy nerves on Thursday because of musical auditions, and now I have a hopeless debate to look foreword to as well. Ah, well…..I’ll find something to back up my arguments. Somehow. Bleh. Any suggestions?

Oh. My. Auditions. On Thursday. But I’m not terribly nervous, as I’ve learned a few songs by heart already, but still….butterflies form themselves anyways. There are a lot of characters that have solo singing parts, so I’m confident. Then again, I could be cast as a dance role again. Damn it.

Another reason I’ve not felt inspired to write anything of interest or content here is that I’ve been devoting my energies to writing short stories and the beginning stages of novels. That’s where the money could come in, if I’m truly devoted to it (which I haven’t been), so that’s where my words will go.

There, a post about things I actually do in my life, which is what this blog was for to begin with. Amazing how my blogging style has changed over the past three years.

Random mention: gas prices? About to hti $4 a gallon? Ugh. Hate the world. I could rant on and on about it, but need to run off to practice rooms now. Maybe next update I'll rage about it.

 

 

Things I've learned in the past weekend:

-That listening to the Dario Marianelli's soundtrack for Atonement never gets old for me. He deserved that Oscar. And has become my new Nobueo Uematsu and John Williams.

-That I can sing songs by the likes of Aretha Franklin and Shania Twain, quite decently actually. And still be able to hit those high notes for songs like 'Mi Mancherai' and 'Think of me'. I just need to be obsessive with practice.

-Eating food cooked by one's own hands is one of the life's simple pleasures. Enjoying the taste of something made by Your's Truly is better than eating something cooked by someone else. Why? Because I was the one who made this delicious concoction of flavor and nutrition, so while I'm eating I can savor both the delisciousness of the food and take pride in the fact that I made it.

-That I laugh hysterically at some of the things written in Glenn Duncan's 'I, Lucifer.' Which is kind of wrong on certain level, but I can't help it; it's black humor at it's absolute, most filthiest acerbic honesty-after all, it's Satan telling the story here.Which means it's so evil and so true that it's funny. His intro recitation, consisting of nearly every title God and human alike have called him is followed by a starkly contrasting 'oh la la', and that strikes me as rioteously hilarious. I am now torn between dreading or being excited for the movie adaption, as screen writer's evidently take some kind of malicious glee in utterly butchering novel's original storyline for the movie screen. Editing the boring dialog out is one thing. Rearranging the the whole damn plot is another thing entirely. Oops, off topic....seems I'm still bitter over the Golden Compass. jeje....

-and that I absolutely, positively MUST learn Spanish fluently. Not just for the current job that I have, either, but for any other jobs that I want to pursue. I have no intention of working in my current job longer than the next year or so, and then moving onto a real career. Even so, I've discovered how my fellow waiters at different catering events all speak Spanish, but almost none of them speak English fluently. Saturday I felt oscratcized while waiting  for almost half an hour during the Hindu wedding ceremony, because all the other waiters around me chattered away in Spanish, only Spanish,. This made me realize that actually speaking Spanish, as opposed to just understanding the written word and being able to write it, is a must. Especially for someone like myself, who  apparently looks Mexican enough for people to automatically assume that I speak Spanish fluently and so instantly try to converse with me. In Spanish. People have assumed that I am Filipina or Middle Eastern, but thank god no one ever tries to talk with me in either language, as Spanish still presents a difficulty when it comes to conversation. Bah.
Also, I get unreasonably annoyed by people that don't speak English fluently, or at least enough to get by in simply conversation, after living here for more than a year. When one of my fellow waiters asked me, '¿Porque no hablas espanol?' my immediate answer was '¿y por qué no hablas inglés? ¿Usted vive en América, no? Inglés es el idioma de América!' (Ok, so I can speak a little Spanish, but I understand more, ALOT more, than I speak it. I'm so weird) I mean, when I go to Mexico, I'm  not going to tell, for example, a cab driver 'Look here, I'm an American, only speak English to me, comprende?' Because dammit, it's Mexico, you speak SPANISH there, it's the national language. Speaking Spanish when there is just how it's done. Yet people will live here  for 1-5 years, and not learn English....why is that? People in the Philipines, Europe, and Asia learn English, and those are whole osceans away. Mexico is over the river. Get with it, gente; learn English. Or at least don't look at a Chicana like me, who is barely Hispanic at all,  think that I am the stupid one for not speaking Spanish. I know, yo se, es mi lengua materna, y todo eso , pero...esta America. Aprenda inglés!