I've noticed a trend in my own blogging. I tend to not have a whole lot of sense in the writing, and I usually start off by telling you something you're not going to like about the post--and then telling you that i don't care that you're not going to like it.
Not the case this time! You're all going to absolutely LOVE this post. But it's a bit long (
That's what she said.) and a bit..sensitive. So I hope you ate a big meal, Wick; and I hope you all like poetry, cuz this post starts with a poem. (not by me)
---
Brother, that breathe the August air
Ten thousand years from now,
And smell --- if still your orchards bear
Tart apples on the bough ---
The early windfall under the tree,
And see the red fruit shine,
I cannot think your thoughts will be
Much different from mine.
Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the shadows of the trees, ---
Things that you could not spare
And live, or so you thought, yet these
Are gone, and you still there,
A man no longer what he was,
Nor yet the thing he'd planned,
The chilly apple from the grass
Warmed by your living hand ---
I think you will have need of tears;
I think they will not flow;
Supposing in ten thousand years
Men ache, as they do now.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
---
If still your orchards bear is a poem about loss and care for the soul. We are singing a rendition of this song with music by James Quitman Mulholland in Statesmen.
To be perfectly honest, I absolutely hated the piece because I never really took time to look through what it meant. And then, today, Mulholland came in and visited (something he does about once a year or so) and discussed the meaning of the poem a little bit.
As with all poetry, the meaning is open to interpretation, but the key points lie in the references to the apple in the orchard, fallen on the ground. The fallen apple--or perhaps the hand touching the apple--represents a loss. A great loss. To me, the hand is Joe. The poem says:
And memories hard to bear/By moonlight harder still/Form in the shadows of the trees./Things that you could not spare/And live, or so you thought, yet these/Are gone, and you still there.
The memories of Joe are hard to bear. And at night they truly are even harder. "These things that you could not spare and live, or so you thought." If someone had asked me, I truly would have thought it nearly impossible to go on after something like the death of Joseph David Clements, and yet, just like in the poem "yet these are gone, and you still there."
We're still here on this planet, living out our lives and we're doing it with one less absolutely amazing friend here at our sides.
"A man no longer what he was/Nor yet the thing he'd planned/The chilly apple from the grass/Warmed by your living hand." The death of Joe on March 10, 2008, is an event which changed the lives of many people. We are no longer what we were because of it; and yet, it has changed me in ways that I wouldn't have predicted.
The chilly apple lying in the grass is us. It is humans and the distant way we tend to live our lives. Only once warmed by a living hand, and picked up from the grass, the apple becomes more than just an object rotting alone in the grass. It is warmed when it is touched by another life.
Much in the same way the life of Joe warmed those around him. You could see his infectious smile cheering those around him. I long ago lost count of the times when Joe and I would lie awake talking till 5 in the morning--around campfires, at LAN parties, watching the stars at the overlook, and even while defending the realm of Azeroth.
I met Joe in the third grade (wow, 12 years ago?) during a game of flicker ball (much like ultimate Frisbee except played with football). I was wearing a pair of moccasins, and thus picked up the name "loafer boy" which stuck for at least a good year or two.
After that, I would hang out with everyone in the neighborhood--but I never really spent time hanging out with Joe until a Pokémon card tournament around a year later. It was raining, and we had set up a round-robin style tournament in which the last game was to be played between Joe and I. It was raining outside, and we had set up a table in the garage which we were playing on.
Ever since that day, Joe and I became nearly inseparable. I spent nearly every single day there, along with many of the other kids in the neighborhood. Joe and I played video games, biked, paint balled, and did stupid-stuff. The kind of stuff that made all of them place bets on how long I would live. (If I make it another 6 months, I will have proved every single one of them wrong except Devin who bet 25 iirc).
I remember one day in particular where Mom (Joe's mom) told us to go outside and play because it was so nice out and we were at the time hopelessly addicted to Morrowind. We proceeded to dig through the garage till we 
found an old red dolly and a piece of plywood which was quickly combined with the wheels off of an old bike we purchased at a garage sale for $2. The end result, a gravity-powered go-kart of DOOM.
As my actual mom pulled in the driveway to pick us up, and saw us flying down Barnaby Road wearing an old, black, dusty motorcycle helmet retrieved from the depths of the garage storage bin. Joe's mom came running out of the house yelling at us to stop and then turned to my mom and stated "Sometimes, I regret telling them to go outside and play."
That wasn't nearly as bad as the time she caught us trying to fasten bottle rockets to our roller blades.
We played miss-o and spud, seven-steps and wolf-wolf, Perfect Dark and Golden-eye, Dota and Charades. More Mt. Dew and super-sugary kool-aid was consumed in those few years than in most people's life-times. And we loved every minute we lived.
We also thought it would be brilliant to create our own little "jackass" video. I don't even remember half the stuff we did anymore, but a few of the best included the following:
- -Duct taping Lindsay and I up in a tree and then ordering a pizza while Joe video taped from the bushes (lol)
- -The go-kart of doom
- -Using AOL CDs as skates for our bikes and skidding (it makes it like your bike is on ice, it's the weirdest thing) (I broke a skate helmet doing this) (literally, split the plastic right down the middle and busted the foam out of it)
- -Jumping off a small cliff up on the bluff into a sand pit (I was the only one who actually went through with this one)
So many stupid things were done that I can't even come close to remembering them all. But in the words of Maya Angelou, "I've learned that people will forget what you say, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget the way you made them feel."
I may not remember exactly all the things that Joe and I did together, but I remember the way I felt.
It is through those feelings that Joe lives on now.
Shalom, my friends
Here's Laura skipping a rock on a black-sand beach. The sand is black because it's from volcanic rock.
Laura catching her first wave. She stood up her first try. I knew there was no way I could do anything other than stand up on my first try too after that.
A baby whale practicing 'breaching'. Once again, we really don't know why whales do this, but it's assumed to be some form of communication.
Here's Laura skipping a rock on a black-sand beach. The sand is black because it's from volcanic rock.
Laura catching her first wave. She stood up her first try. I knew there was no way I could do anything other than stand up on my first try too after that.
A baby whale practicing 'breaching'. Once again, we really don't know why whales do this, but it's assumed to be some form of communication.
