oh my beardness

so, i was browsing some friends photo's and found this doozy. i had forgotten how ridiculous it looked. somewhat of a change from the me that is typing today.

those in the photo are, from left to right, an american girl whom i don't remember and have no way of finding out who she is. her, for lack of a better word through lack of understanding the situation, friend and her were in town, Palermo, Sicily, because her friend was a singer in a band that consisted of just him and an orchestra and some opera music which was performed in an opera theater. in fact, come to think of it, I don't think he was a band at all.

his voice made me think of some archvillan in some comic book series who could knock down entire villages just by hitting a low g note. he was not a particularly
evil looking person, in fact he resembled a very tall and thin version of a stork; a stork that wore a suit and had a people face arms for wings and legs for legs. also, he looked more like human version of Lurch Adams than a stork. He sang in Italian and rocked the house and then left us, never to meet again.

to her left, our right, is Jodi the folk singer. to her left is her best friend Rachel whom neither new the either would be in Sicily, let alone Palermo, let alone the same restaurant one evening in May. I was there and wasn't really too sure what all the screaming and crying and shouting and hugging was all about until the two of them settled down. Jodi was the first to settle because she was the only one to not have had an emotional spike comparable to when Tim Murphy was blown back off the T-Rex fence in the Jurassic Park. She explained that she had been at a village close the city with family on the past week and so or hadn't speak english, at all. I forgave her and she continued, her english coming back in leaps and bounds.

By this time, however, Rachel had come back to us and could form words again. sentences where a bit much just yet, but at least her communication was recognizable. The two had tried and tried to make their plans compatible but had abandoned all hope when the whole project appeared futile. Yet, only when they had given up completely had their plans worked out better than they ever could have.

Next to Rachel in the photo is the one girl who's name i can't remember. I feel even more terrible about it because she is the one who entertained me the most. She was traveling with Rachel and was friends with Jodi as well. The three of them went to school in Wash DC, USA and had been studying (I think Jodi did too) in Florence for the past four months. The four of us spent an afternoon at a small village somewhere just outside of Palermo and took some great photo's together. She-who-cannot-be-named was able to ascertain my love of taking photo's of other photographers without my talking about it. This might have been because i was also either asking the to take photo's for me (you see, my camera had broke a month previous) or because i kept grabbing for their camera and asking them after. Never the less, i need to find out her name. I feel a bit like Tom Tucker (anchorman for the Quahog Channel 5 News) asking for that girl he met last night at the sky lounge. I assure you this is not the case, I just feel bad that I remember everyone else in the photo.

Next is Valentina, from Sicily, Italy. Her mother is an America from Boston I believe, which means she loves to here stories from North America. She hosted Jodi for the one day she stayed in Palermo. Valentina is also a friend of a guy I stayed with near Verona with Grayson; you might remember that day better as the day i hitched from one place to another.

the last, and not least, is ... well, that's me and all my bearded glory. i kept it for a week or so once i got back to Ireland but it soon came off when people at work told me just how much older it made me look. there are some photo's of my last night at the pub before i left for italy, one particularly when i am up on a stool giving a farewell speech(it wasn't so much as speech as it was a photo opp). With myself standing next to the computer on which said photo is shown one of the regulars, one who came in to the pub one night completely locked and out of his mind drunk and I had refused because I didn't recognize him as he had recently shaved his beard, told me that it added ten years.

Not that age makes that much of deal to me, and not that i feel like i am thirty-five, thirty-six tomorrow, but I did go home a shave the old boy off.

I do miss him though, Finn at work told me I looked tougher with it.

edit: jodi was studying in London, England; not Florence, Italy.
edit: Carolina. she-who-could-not-be-named has been re-named Carolina, thanks to Rachel. Thank you very much.
edit: also, she had a really cool shirt.