The tears began last night as I stood out on the balcony, as I preparedmyself for what today might bring. I remembed every minute detail from one year ago, getting out of Alberts truck after helping him begin to set up the sails we would set up to make certain that the wedding was protected from the weather, seeing Deb and Baruzula come towards us, and then Deb turning to Baru and asking her to help. I asked if there was anything I could help with…silence… they stopped, then Baru looked up, tears streaming down her face…

“Casey, I’m so sorry…”

I looked at her, I knew and my life drained out of me. I reached back, shaking, and sat down on the bumper of Albert’s truck…

Last night I had a dream. I had a puppy – it wasn’t Bean, but it was Beans energy, and we were playing – I don’t remember any more of the dream, but I got the message, and I woke up smiling, remembering fondly the times we had together.

The tears still fall, and they will – but there is a warm smile that they fall past.

I love you, Bean.

I miss you.

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And wasting little time, the boy gets back into the West Coast swing of things…

Vau de Vire Society, Gofferman, Angelo Moore, etc. TOMORROW!

You know what I would really dig? I would absolutely love it if YOU went to this.

Yes, you.

If you don’t, I’ll try to understand, and it will still be the absolutely amazing, phenominal, jaw-dropping, eye-popping, hair standing, oooh! and Ahhhh!-ing, sense elevating and multiplying (wait – I thought I only had five common senses – where did these other three come from, and damn – why can’t I experience them ALL the time!) Epicurian, Circusian delight that we have all come to love these amazingly talented and sexy people for – yeah, it will still be all that and more…

but without YOU, there will be just that tiny bit that’s missing, that piece that we just can’t put our finger on, but notice that it’s not there.

We hope to see you.

(I may or may not bring out a version of my four-legged stilt character, last seen in an Enchanted Forest in Austin many, many months ago…)

~ kSea flux

Sept. 23rd (LoveFest after-party)
Bohemian Carnival – @ DNA Lounge, 375 11th st., SF www.dnalounge.com, $15, 9pm-late
You’ve asked for it and now we finally deliver…a monthly circus orgy in our own backyard. Vau de Vire, Circus Metropolis and bi-polar productions are bursting with excitement in announcing the inaugral launch of a tittilating monthly event at our favorite venue in town. Taking place every 3rd Sat. of the month, Vau de Vire Society and Gooferman along with a variety of Local, National and International guests will offer up a unique night of entertainment for those of you itching to shake your ass in an interactive debauched party. If you only leave the house once a month, then Bohemian Carnival should be your soul/sole stop.

Sept. 23rd Line up:
Vau de Vire Society www.vaudeviresociety.com
Gooferman www.gooferman.com
Angelo Moore (Fishbone) and Jila (Rabbit in the Moon)
The Jazz Mafia www.jazzmafia.com
El papachango (El Circo) www.elcirco.org
Xeno www.xenodrome.com
1 Man Banjo www.1manbanjo.com
The art-magic of Shrine (Lucent Dossier, LA)
Tim Barsky
w/ Vatra, Keno & Aza, EOTOE, Klown Kollective, Fire Arts Collective… and many more sexy Freaks abound.

more info. @ www.bohemiancarnival.net
www.vaudeviresociety.com

Without question, one of the sweetest "miss you" messages I have ever recieved…

…so of course, I had to post it here.
(From Cameron)

Subject

Don’t make us come get you!!!

Message

New Orleans misses you too!! I’m sorry we all left you this summer in the heat to tend to our lives for us… but we came home just to wave goodbye. DAMNIT! So I went out the other night and…. EVERYONE misses you, deeply. You know the crew. We are conspiring to come get you and drag you back. Its cooling down. Tourists are back in town, most are back from thier travels, gigs aplenty and focus from many. It’s just not the same without you.We can’t replace you and we leave little white and red flowers on yur spots in the square. (sniffles) We sat around and toasted you lamenting lamenting… you who can never be replaced, loved by so many. If you ever want to come home remember the long list of us who were gone through those hot monthes who all love and miss ya. Shall I start naming names? Smooches

exhausted, but thoughts still come. I say this
and then sleep. Quiet the thoughts. Quiet.

I lay in a borrowed bed and wonder of my plans.
I wonder why. I made it here but I don’t want to stay,
and each day for weeks I ask myself why L.A.?
I knew, I don’t anymore. Many reasons.
I don’t want to be here
I don’t want to be there I don’t think, or when I think too much
anywhere.
Far behind everything outside that is seen
there is fear
and sometimes I don’t have the ways to push it back.

I lay in a borrowed bed
and wonder of my plans.

transbay paper scratches

With all that my life is and has been, how can my heart still be so fragile?

Cursed in the infatuation with romance, cursed by something fueled by the need for a life that dances with poetry, cursed by dreams and condemned to the permanent adolescence of the heart, the symptom of the disease, the disease is romance. The disease is a blessing. What else but the heart of a child can see utopia in grains of sand and a bucket?

 

Hopeless? Yes, but look again.

Look again.

In all of the words, in all of the lines somewhere between there is hope.

 

What is a hopeless romantic without hope?

Perhaps I am a fool but I prefer to think not. Perhaps a fool and if so I would rather be a fool with dreams than an empty man with a paper heart. I don’t suffer fools well.

 

I kissed you with all of me. I kissed you with the life of me and felt yours. I kissed you with my heart and there was only one then, only one between us and it was ours and in your arms, in your eyes there was no need for words.

 

Perhaps I am a fool but I prefer not to think so. If I am I will suffer myself gladly. Better a fool still believing in romance and the flight of dreams than a heart that dies of starvation. I only ask for anything but silence.  Anything. Either spit in my face or kiss it once again. In your silence nothing is complete and I vanish.

Don't know what to think about this…

Flattered, though a bit uneasy…
Zoe somehow found me shortly after I began this journal – or through Tribe, I don’t recall. We’ve had some great on-line conversations and have a mutual admiration for each other, but this is kind of freaky – freaky in an incredibly sweet way.

I think I should just accept it as a beautiful gift – but still – I’m not accustomed to things like this…

http://zoe-novak.livejournal.com/

It’s down a couple, under “4 kSea”

Don't know what to think about this…

Flattered, though a bit uneasy…
Zoe somehow found me shortly after I began this journal – or through Tribe, I don’t recall. We’ve had some great on-line conversations and have a mutual admiration for each other, but this is kind of freaky – freaky in an incredibly sweet way.

I think I should just accept it as a beautiful gift – but still – I’m not accustomed to things like this…

http://zoe-novak.livejournal.com/

It’s down a couple, under “4 kSea”

I put on the clothes, the makeup. One last look in the mirror and a forced smile. I push harder. It almost becomes sincere. I’ll keep trying.
I can’t think about her when I work. I need to reach down to them, the transient crowd, the people who stare with wonder. I need to reach down and lift them up. I can’t think of her. I cant lift them when it’s all I can do to hold up the heaviness of my own heart. I’ve been thinking about her too much these days.

I close my eyes, escape into character, hide behind the makeup – and walk out the door.

Transbay bus paper scratches

The beginnings of so many shattered poems
struggle to find what gave them birth inside of me
so that they can finally be complete
so that I can finally let them go.

When the only things left are memories of the joy we shared
and your silence
there are no new words
to paint love fresh.

very, very strange dreams.
I’m remembering them now, at least somewhat – something that hasn’t happened in many years.
It’s nice to be back.

As I cross the bridge on the bus i look out over the water, like I always did, from one side to the other, taking it all in again. Gods, how I love being a passenger across the Bay Bridge.
In to the city today.
The City. San Francisco. I need to take care of a few things. A couple commitments. It’s time.
Off on First & Mission, then walk up to Market. New Orleans still hangs inside of me, and I almost feel a bit out of place in the busy professional bustle, suits and ties and everyone looking the same, everything so clean. Everything so…
so open and alive, I guess. Travellng the elevated freeways through Oakland on the way there I noticed that something was strange – then I realized what it was.
Not a Blue Roof to be seen. Anywhere.
I don’t know why, but it felt wrong. Artificial. I can’t explain it…

I hop the N Judah and it takes me along paths well known, but somehow so far in the past. It must have been more than a year. A year is nothing. It seems like ten or twenty, except that everything looks the same.
Out to Ocean Beach, where I spread Connie’s ashes, then Beans. I step back, and the white edge of the Sea comes and claims Bean & Connie to her.
Connie made it to California, to the ocean – just like he wanted to.
Bean will continue to play here. She always got so excited when we started getting closer to the beach…
I walk a bit, pick up a couple stones to send to Deanne, take a couple of pictures with my phone so she can see where Connie has been.

Then it was my turn. I stood for a while, closed my eyes, and.. just stood. Feeling how good it was to be back. Feeling the energy, listening to her again. I walked closer, just a bit past the tide line and stood, looking out at the ocean. I crouch down, waiting for the next whispering remainder of a wave to come close so I can touch it again. It’s been a long time. A wave comes in, and just as I think it will simply wrap around the bottom of my boots another one combines with it. I have a few seconds to get out of the way – but fuck it. I laugh as my boots are submerged, then feel the cold trickle of water as it gets into my boots. I laugh a bit more, shake my head.
I guess this is what I get for being away from her for so long.
Bitch.

…I missed you too.

Then I walked down Haight and through the Mission, blah blah blah. Used books and thrift stores, a crepe and coffee and solitude and walking and my socks finally stopped squishing.

It isn’t words. It isn’t for us to read, we feel. We feel. Written on us, in us before matter before anything mattered and this is who we become. I can’t read it, I feel. It is there and I feel, I know.
She asked me to explain what love means to me. I don’t know what love means. I know what the books say, I know the general rules. I don’t know what it means. Does Love need to mean anything? Can it be dissected, put under a microscope and ripped apart? The greatest of poets may come close, the worst, closer in their honest passion. There are no words but the ones inside of us, the ones we cannot read. All words are useless in love.  We feel. We know.
It is there. I feel, I know. I know it always has been in the way I can only see her anymore and I don’t know if my sight has improved or worsened as I only see what matters, I only see what I want.
On a broken morning I let her go. I walk away, I breathe and the breath soon becomes easier than it was when i was walking there. I let her go and see me again, I let her go and feel the words written inside and know she is still there and we are both free from the cage of my imagination. I let her go and she is closer because I feel, I know.
In the ashes of the man she sees the fading ghost of me and this was not for her eyes but that seems to be what she chooses to see, what I showed her. In the ashes of me she thinks this is me this is what is, and I can’t say anything. All words are useless and the ashes distort my face. I am a ghost, a ghoul. I am the carcass of my past and she only sees the surface in the ashes of the man and the ashes of the boy that I had fallen to.
In time the ashes are blown away, leaving me able to see me fresh and raw and ancient, and I remember who I need to love. I remember who I need to love and I do. The year has made me forget this. I knew what the books say, I knew the general rules, but the words written in me  were hidden in every way I could escape. In the fire of the Temple everything was let go, and more returned.

It is there, and again I feel.
Again, I know.

skirt, boots, eyeliner, stripey arm things. Do what I can with the remmants of a good hair cut, months ago.
Leather coat.
Not down south any more.Check the schedule, walk out the door. Jess leaves for Berlin tomorrow, Aleph will be there with her. I’d like to see them. Perhaps I’d like to see a few people – but I know the conversations by heart now, I know what will be said. I don’t seem to be able to talk that way anymore. Just a few close people, all I want to see. Say hello. hug, and catch up a bit.
Down the steps to wait. I look a the time – 10:00 – still early. I think of my book, the comfort of my bed. I think of getting out to the wharf tomorrow at a decent hour. I don’t feel like drinking. That used to be all it took to get me out. there is so much that doesn’t interest me anymore, replaced by other things. I’ve had only two beers since I’ve been back, and my birthday bottle of wine.
A few people I want to see. A bunch of alcohol I don’t want to drink. Conversations where only the names have changed from a year ago. Disinterest. Jess will be back. It’s a good book, I need to work tomorrow. Battle for the small space on the wharf.
Somehow I feel almost arrogant in not wanting to hear the same things over and over. I feel as if I am seperate. Not with them anymore. In on the outside. Stepping further and further away. Looking for, needing more. Transformation, growth.
It’s been one hell of a year.

I’ve changed. A lot.

I turn around, walk back the few blocks. Open the door, up the stairs.

I’ll see Jess & Aleph some other time before I leave.