i've always had friends, and wanted friends. other people are to me, through a lens of maybe you'd call it compassion or simply investigating enough to find out what's there, other worlds; like me, they see their entire reality through a filter of their own experience, abilities, doubts, beliefs, fears and loves. it's like travelling between planets.

sometimes it's hard to remember that the sky is blue because light refracts and distorts against the infinite backdrop of space. our planet is to that like dust to our heels, and we are just thoughts in the void, existing for their own sake, or sadly deluded.

i'd like to list my friends here, but they keep dying. one may have suicided because he had a fatal disease. another dropped dead recently from an overdose, the jim morrison method of pulling the trigger without using a finger. before that, one went insane, took too much acid and blew his head off. there was another one, in the middle, who killed himself alone in the wilderness with a chemical cocktail to alleviate pain.

i don't know what it means.

below us, the muck and above us, that blue.