Conrado left the following comment for my entry on Saturday, January 17:

!!! You’re the man KZ !!! Remember thataru.

And in response, Francisco had this to say:

This is the end my friends. the last blog entry from kz any of us will read for a long time. Here’s why. you see, our friend josh bought a video game about a month and a half ago. he thought it would be a good idea if i bought it but, i thought it would be better to buy a bunch of booze so i never had enough money. and deep down inside i didn’t want to purchase the game either. conrado bought this game shortly after josh’s purchase and they started playing it together online.

Here’s the point of the story, kz has recently bought the game and i have not seen nor communicated with him since. my three friends have fallen into a world of time-consuming geekiness known as “final fantasy xi.” conrado’s comment is just a brief glimpse of the geeky horror that my dear friends have fallen into. plz, help them if you can.

I just wanted to say that no, I haven’t become a recluse due to Final Fantasy XI…yet. The real reason that I’ve been so hard to find lately is because I’ve been reading The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide by Douglas Adams. I started reading the book in August. But seeing as how I’m a slow reader, coupled with the fact that I had also been dragging my feet on law school applications, it took me until last night to read through all 815 pages of that book. Pretty sad, I know. Maybe I should look into one of those speed reading courses.

Anyway, I dearly loved the book, and I highly recommend it to anybody who isn’t too put off by dry English humor. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll disappear again until I’m struck with another poignant revelation that I feel like recording. For now, I’m off to read shorter books and to level up like crazy in the world of Vana’diel. Fear the mighty TaruTaru!

Posted by KZ on 01/29/04

“I can’t believe I’m talking about this with you,” she said to me. We had just met, after all, and already she was sharing thoughts with me that you’d normally save for good friends. It’s funny how open you can be with a total stranger once you learn that you two share a common loss. There’s an immediate, binding, indefinable connection; and despite whatever differences that may yet divide you, a mutual understanding unexpectedly links the two of you.

Heartbreak always heals in time, but it’s the lingering loss of love that tends to stay with you. The sadness may have faded long ago, and yet you can’t seem to forget the feeling of her fingers intertwined with yours. You may know in your heart that you no longer need her, and yet some nights as you lay down to sleep, you can almost feel her by your side, the way it used to be. Although it’s been ages since you’ve stopped questioning whether you could ever be happy without her, you sometimes catch yourself laughing at the inside jokes that only ever made sense between the two of you.

I do believe that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. The loss of love is an experience that nearly everybody endures at least once in his life. It is in realizing that fact, in remembering that it’s all been felt and dealt with before, that we can learn to appreciate just how much we all have in common. “The human experience” is an all-encompassing term, and for good reason. We’re not so different from each other, which just may be one of the most fulfilling discoveries in life.

Posted by KZ on 01/17/04

Well, I did it again. I spent another late night chilling with friends when what I should have been doing was finishing my law school applications. I’m already two weeks past my personal deadline, after all. But hell, you know what? I honestly believe that there was no better way to spend my time tonight.

Sometimes living for the present isn’t as simple as only thinking about today or about what’s coming within the next few weeks. Sometimes living for the present compels you to confront the “far,” uncertain future and all of the hard times that it has in store for you. At this particular instance in my life, during a time that most would still consider to be my “early years,” I choose to think about death. It’s the one wrong turn that we all see coming from miles away, and yet it never fails to break your heart when somebody in your life finally rounds that corner. Freaking mortality.

Anyway, the thought of death doesn’t occur to me because I’m particularly sad at the moment. Nor, for that matter, does it cross my mind because I’m actively trying to suck the joy out of my own life. No. I contemplate death because it reminds me that now, at this stage in my life, I have as much as I could ever want.

Maybe my friends have noticed something. Maybe they’ve sensed me smiling at them from my silent corner while they carry on. As fun and as vital as we all are when we get together, I can’t help but think that one day, we’ll all be gone. And though my heart stings slightly from the thought of losing any of those guys, I know that there’s little good in mourning prematurely. So my heart swells, and I’m filled with warmth and an irrepressible joy for having ever found friends that make me laugh as hard and who make me feel as loved. Mind you, I’m writing all this without having tasted a single drop of alcohol tonight. I tend to be a weepy drunk, as you might imagine.

I guess all I’m saying is, joy doesn’t have to be an ephemeral thing. It is a condition that you must constantly insist upon in order to have it–even if that means occasionally bumming yourself out with thoughts on the inevitability of loss and suffering. Joy isn’t so bad once you get the hang of it.

Posted by KZ on 01/10/04