Just got an email from my mum about my darling younger brother which scared the shit out of me and made me feel like crying and throwing up at the same time. Evan and a bunch of his mates were cavorting around on the beach in Wellington, playing around in the water's edge (160 km an hour winds and big waves that day she says) when two of them, Daimo, Evan's friend and flatmate, and Evan (other Evan, not my brother) got knocked over by a bigger-than-the-rest wave and sucked out to sea. They managed to pull the other Evan out of the undertow, but poor Daimo - poor, poor Daimo, fuck this is horrible - was just out of reach and he drowned.
Evan says they formed a human chain trying to get him out, but he was just out of reach - says the worst part was that they could see him but couldn't do anything about it.
Just thinking about it makes me feel like curling up into a ball and retching. Partly because it could so easily have been Evan, my darling younger brother, and I would die if anything happened to him; but partly because just thinking about it is so awful. That poor guy, only about 21 years old, out at the beach with his mates, spent the afternoon listening to jazz and mucking about, and ends up drowning in front of a gang of his friends.
Evan's just got back from identifying him at the morgue - tragic. Fucking awful. He says he can't cry about it, other people are but he feels like "an actor on a stage, nothing's real".
It really shook me up actually. Now it's the next day and I can't stop imagining how it must have felt to watch one of your friends being swept away, screaming and choking and drowning, right in front of you. And I can't stop imagining Evan and his remaining friends, panicking and screaming and trying to help and not being able to do a single thing to avert the chain of events.
My soul is now crying out for frivolity and a bit of nonsense, so I shall try to attach some pics that my friend Bianca took of me when I was doing some modelling for her jewellery shop. She stripped me down and pasted me up with plaster of Paris, which was fun (and gooey).
You will be able to gauge my success rate by the appearance (or nonappearance) of the photos.
Evan says they formed a human chain trying to get him out, but he was just out of reach - says the worst part was that they could see him but couldn't do anything about it.
Just thinking about it makes me feel like curling up into a ball and retching. Partly because it could so easily have been Evan, my darling younger brother, and I would die if anything happened to him; but partly because just thinking about it is so awful. That poor guy, only about 21 years old, out at the beach with his mates, spent the afternoon listening to jazz and mucking about, and ends up drowning in front of a gang of his friends.
Evan's just got back from identifying him at the morgue - tragic. Fucking awful. He says he can't cry about it, other people are but he feels like "an actor on a stage, nothing's real".
It really shook me up actually. Now it's the next day and I can't stop imagining how it must have felt to watch one of your friends being swept away, screaming and choking and drowning, right in front of you. And I can't stop imagining Evan and his remaining friends, panicking and screaming and trying to help and not being able to do a single thing to avert the chain of events.
My soul is now crying out for frivolity and a bit of nonsense, so I shall try to attach some pics that my friend Bianca took of me when I was doing some modelling for her jewellery shop. She stripped me down and pasted me up with plaster of Paris, which was fun (and gooey).
You will be able to gauge my success rate by the appearance (or nonappearance) of the photos.