dissappearing

Okaaaayyy… GO!

(……)

Hmmm. That didn’t work- let’s try it again. Ready words? GO!

(………..)

(I look around for some sort of inspiration, something to at least get me started… candles, my workspace for the jewelry, the photo of my grandmother from the ’30’s – not much for inspiration. I do my best not to look at the battery meter on my laptop…)

The candles burn, the end of another day at hand. Listening to The Cure of all things, which I haven;t listened to in ages. It’s good to hear again, bringing me back to I don;t know when, The Top. I adjust the laptop on my lap, sit up a bit – doing whatever I can to keep writing, keep it going, always looking for the ease with which I wrote when I was on the road – but things are different now, there’s much less to get me started.

“Today I woke up, worked until the battery died, went to the cafe, worked until it closed, and came back to my motorhome.”

yeah. awesome.

I ate somewhere in there, too.

Let’s start over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve been noticing a difference in me lately, something not so subtle at all, something that I’m not sure if I like – but at the same time it almost feels good, makes me feel more alive though it’s not something I’m accustomed to at all – there’s an anger inside of me that is much more prevalent, much more in the front of everything. It’s not always there, not always the primary emotion, but… when it;s there, it’s there. I want to scream at the world, tell it to just fuck off – and in a way it does feel good.

The incessant work on the magazine has made me numb, not much different from the way the average person must feel as they go through the daily routine, to the office and back, and forth, and back and back, because when the specifics are torn away, that is what I’ve become. Day in, day out – …

Gods, I need to get back on the road. I’m not built for this, I’m not- I can’t… I can’t do it like this for much longer without completely losing my fucking mind. Something needs to change, and soon. Very soon. I need to figure something out, a way out – a way back to me, because the dreams are becoming nothing but rhetoric.  I’m fading, becoming insubstantial, immaterial… nonexistent.

nonexistent.

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When the walls come down again, a deluge…

A perfect Sunday morning – silent, dark… there are times when alone is only solitude, and these are the times I love.

I force myself to write, as I know with practice it will begin to be a part of me again- the rusty hinges of the doors inside slowly worked open to reveal the things I hide from myself and you, the things that I have sealed up, not through want but from neglect, forgetting, as I do, that without these doors open and the things behind them allowed to be seen that more impossible doors are created, more walls to staunch what can not be neglected, cannot be stopped without losing myself again, and again, over and over.

Think I would have learned by now… but fuck, there were other things I needed to do, I told myself. Other things, work, and work, and work, and where the hell do I post it anymore, anyway? That was my excuse. Yeah, stupid, I know – but from LJ to Tribe.net to maybe I’ll post on the Magazine but then that stopped everything, because there are things I couldn’t say there. Then, WordPress – which I really dig, even more so now that it has let me import all my entries from LiveJournal.

The previous post – gods, I still can’t get over that. Something, somewhere, somehow, for some reason watching over me – there is still a reason I am here. Still. Here.

Fucking hell.

Well, guess it’s time to start getting on this again, and the writing is the first step, as always. Through it – when it flows, when I get this shit into gear again, it is here that I find the answers; the doors are opened, walls broken down, and things eventually will begin to make sense again… and yeah, it will also be much more fun to write, more entertaining to read. All I need to do is keep on going…

and go charge my battery again.

>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I keep thinking about it. This… well, this is nothing new, as it’s haunted me, sat there in the background of my thoughts, dictated my actions for now, half of my life. Twenty. One. Years. Twenty one years ago it was a death sentence, so I waited. And waited. Waited for the inevitable, waited for what one day would finally come… but it never did. It never did so of course I thought that the call I received from the random Dr. in San Diego while I was at work at Tower Video in Berkeley was nothing but bullshit, or a mistake, or something – something besides what it really was and I hoped and I did really stupid shit and I knew I would be dead by thirty so nothing really mattered and may as well just do it all, do it all and try not to kill anyone else if it was true because what if it was? Explore the twisted and dark romance I saw in being a Junky until that got old, meth, cocaine, living life walking through the avenues of death, just waiting, waiting, getting angrier and angrier because no matter how hard I tried my health was always juuuust fucking fine.

Then everything changed. I met a girl. I fell in love. I had a great job, made money, looked ahead to life with her… planned a future, put the past and the stupidity behind me. Everything was beautiful, I dared to hope again, dared to think that the past, that call, was a mistake. Of course it was, it couldn’t happen to me, not to her, not to us. We were so excited. Terrified. Got the books, and just to be sure went and got tested – the usual precautions, now fourteen years after that call, the call I only told one person about the day I got it. She came out first, out of the office. With apprehension I looked up at her from the magazine I was reading… and yeah, she’s fine. Perfect. Healthy.  Gods… dear gods, thank you, thank you thank you thank youthankyouthankyou we’re going to name it Blue it will be fucking beautiful it will be ours it will be the only blood family I have and it will be brilliant it will be an artist a healer a GOD and it will be our child and it will be beautiful and then the doctor called me into his office and I had I had hope and all this time all this anger all of this shit seething inside of me was just a joke just a dumb mistake and he has a look on his face that I can’t read I sit down he takes a breath (what, just say it) just say it so we can go and we can continue to be terrified and raise Blue to be beautiful and of course we’re going to argue all the time because she’s so goddamn stubborn and so am I but c’mon doc tell me the good news tell me tell me tell me…           what?

no.  no… but……….

Blue is the tattoo on my right wrist, from a dream she had. Blue is a sonogram buried deep inside on of my journals. Blue is my angel, my son, who watches over me. We decided it would be the best (best? least of the worst) to terminate. How do you tell your child as soon as it can understand that daddy is dying? Could die? Might die? Only be there for part of its life, a small part, large enough to make a difference, maybe, but who knows? Blue…

Half my life, and then amplified to a point where no matter how much I write about it, the pain, anger, raw fucking anguish is always seething inside, but still I want him(?) to be proud of his father. It would have been a boy, she knew, and she knows these things and I trust her.

Somehow we’re still friends. She now has two beautiful children – I haven’t seen them, they’re hers and in New York, but they’re hers so they can’t be anything but beautiful.

But they aren’t Blue. And I shouldn’t be writing this, but I need to, need t keep trying to make sense of it, knowing that perhaps I never will.

Twenty One Years. Half of my life, half of my life and all of the dreams I had before. Half of my life, and the life of a child that could have been.

I write this because it is what makes me who I am and there is no escaping that. I write this although I know it won’t make it better, but maybe because I need to, because I need you to know me, because it is who I am. I am bitter, enraged, furious, impassioned, and it is the burning I hold so deep inside to fuel my need to bring as much beauty into the world as I possibly can, the fire and the passion that makes me a fucking force to be reckoned with, that gives me the strength, that gives me the need and the love to do what Blue could have done just simply if he had been able to exist.

I want Blue to be proud of his father, and I know that he’s watching – I know that he is helping, and cheering me on.

Fixing Holes/A Reason to Continue

I haven’t done this for a while.

This thing where I write – you know, just write, write what I think, what I feel – or not think, just write like I could back when everything I though was formed in a way as if it was already written, where I noticed so much more, where I felt so much more alive because of that and I put things down in my head in beautiful prose and all I needed to do was copy the pages that had already been written in my heart… all I had do do was shit down and rest the fingers on these little square things that make the letters and then the letters when put together well became words and when those were put together well it made the beauty I saw or the pain or the frustration or the joy or the love come out and it would just be here because it needed to be because when it was when it worked then I felt so much more alive so much more like me and it made sense when it made sense I was so much more in love with you and felt so much less alone.

It was there, simple, it was honest and it was true and at times it was good at others, scathing, but I really didn’t give a fuck what the words ended up sounding like because it was honest and if for one reason or another it was one of those times where I hated everyone then fine because there were words behind it that didn’t somewhere, many times there were the words that were written through the eyes I prefer to see through, and it was just me, just like you, when sometimes the pain was there and it was as real as everything else… but there was so much back then. So much beauty, pain, frustration, confusion; So much love for every fucking second. I was alive and I knew the world was mine and all I needed to do was figure out how to get it, how to let it know…

Everything was magical, back then.

But now, now. I don’t know anymore. Every single day is a fight, every smile forced and false. Somewhere along the way I was broken, somewhere along the way I made far too many mistakes, or just one, but at the time it seemed right. At the time it seemed like what I was supposed to do, so I did it and in doing so, lost myself. I created something that I thought was going to be beautiful, that I thought would be worth it, but all it is doing is ripping me apart piece by piece and I don’t know how many pieces I have left to give.

I need to dig down, find the answers. It’s not you I hate, it’s not me. It’s not the magazine, but what I have become as a result. It’s how fucking alone I feel in trying to make it happen every fucking day and trying to ignore the feeling that none of you really give a fuck about the magazine, about me, because I can’t find the line between them anymore, but that’s not it. It’s how fucking alone I feel, and it’s not your fault because I’ve always felt this way so there must, there must be something wrong with me, because I think I’m doing things right, but nothing ever works out…

and fuck, this isn’t want I want to write at all… but it is, maybe, because that’s what came, but these days for some reason I’m worried about what you’ll think which is the most fucking absurd thing possible because… because I at least want to pretend you give a fuck, and the last thing I want to do is sound like some whiny woe-is-me asshole but … but that’s how I’m feeling… but no, NO!, I’m supposed to be fucking strong, I’m supposed to be resilient, I’m supposed to keep on fucking going because people aren’t supposed to show weakness, not like this, not like this not whiny and self pitying because that’s childish bullshit but gods I feel like a child and I’m fucking scared and I fight back tears of frustration every single day these days because I need to get things done, as futile as it all seems I need to get things done but I’m fucking terrified and I don’t know why the magazine isn’t working the way I want it to and I don’t know why you never ask me to hang out with you and I don’t know why I feel this way when so many of you say you love me and I really don’t want to read any bullshit “it’s going to be okay” comments because what I want you to do is ask me out for a cup of coffee just a fucking cup of coffee where we can talk just you and me and be real and express our fears and be human and honest and maybe you’ll let me know you’re scared too or jesusfuckingchrist not even that just say “hey let’s do something, y’know, hang out” but that never happens and so it must be me something wrong with me, something wrong with me? Still? And I don’t know why half my life ago I fucked that guy or maybe that guy then got that call that changed everything (okay, just wait, just wait and it will all be over) but I’m still alive when so many others have died and there’s a reason somewhere there’s a reason that I need to get way down inside but I’m frightened but even though I’m frightened I am fucking strong but I don’t know how strong I can be I  don’t know how much I have left to give and I’m full of nothing but frustratiion and I want to stop looking at the full bottle of morphine knowing that’s all and I want to believe that I’m not that far gone but sometimes, sometimes… and I think the magazine is good but I don’t know if it’s worth it but I want to keep trying and I want to make it grow and I want to change the world because I’m not dead and I DON’T KNOW WHY and I can I can and I don’t want to stop making the magazine, I don’t want to stop creating my life, I don’t want to… ,

I just want to enjoy it again, and feel like it matters.

And then this came in my email literally just before the end of the last “paragraph”, before the last line above, wne I already knew what was going to come out of this fucked up head…

It fucking blew me away, as the Universe usually does at times like this – but seldom so directly.

Hi… I’m sure this seems kind of weird because you don’t know me
(well we’re facebook friends, does that count? haha), so I’ll
introduce myself a bit. My name is ***** **** (name removed by request) and I’m a circus artist
and dancer. I’m mexican but soon moving to Buenos Aires to train in
order to enter a circus school, after years of struggling with what I
wanted to do with my life. I first fell in love with circus at about
14, after discovering the Cirque du Soleil. Then, there were no circus
schools, classes, or teachers in my city, so I applied to Montreal
school. I was rejected (which few people actually knows), and decided
to forget about that dream. For the next 5 years, I did many kinds of
dance (but mostly ballet), until I lost my ballet teacher, and with
nothing to do, decided to enter a silks class (now there are some
circus classes here). And then contortion. And acrobatics. And
handstanding. And aerial hoop.
I was amazed. I found what I thought I had lost, I felt alive, and I
knew this is what I wanted to do, because it makes me feel happy and
alive as nothing else in the world.
Yet, I’m 21 years old, and though I’m flexible and more or less
strong, this is a really late age to start. I have lots of things
against.  I actually started Graphic Design, but dropped out after one
semester. Then I started Fashion Design, which is cool but not what I
really love. Then, a month and a half ago, we weren’t able anymore to
pay for the place where we trained, and became “homeless”. And then I
realized I was fooling myself by trying to “play safe”.  During those
days my best friends were out or unreachable so I was really face to
face with myself. And then I decided to go for what I really want.
Buenos Aires was my choice because it’s a city with lots of circus
opportunities, great schools and definitely more affordable than San
Francisco, Montreal or Europe. I’m lucky to have my mother’s support
(my father thinks I’m wasting my time),  and I was able to get a
ticket to Buenos Aires, where I can stay with a cousin. I’m training
all year to be ready for the school I want’s audition in 2011.
Truth to be told, I’m terrified. I’m really afraid of not making it,
of not being strong enough, of failing, of… wasting my time. But I
feel deep inside there’s no really another option.  Everything else
would be fake.

I’ve been following you and Culture Flux for some time now, and I’ve
been reading your facebook messages. I know your going through hard
times, and though I can’t do much, I wanted to tell you what you’re
doing is inspiring and definitely worth it.  I admire you for going
for your dreams and fighting, standing even in tough conditions. I
wanted to tell you that you’re not alone.  I guess this sounds naive,
due to my age and life, but we’re really in this together. Us and
others. These aren’t good times for dreamers but that’s what we are
and I think it’s worth a try to go for our dreams. I send you an
illustration I made for you, to show you in some way my support to you
and your project. I hope it helps in some way. I’d be glad to really
send it to you, if you agree.
Sincerely,

***** ****’

>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<

Morning now, still amazed at what she sent to me at just the perfect time. Always amazed when things like this happen… and christ my hands are cold but still I don’t think I’m done here, not yet, because as perfect as this is there is still an emptiness inside – though the will to go on, at least, is much stronger.

I don’t know how to fix it, where to start. I look back trying to find answers, clues as to who I was when I was who I wanted to be and I wonder if I ever have been that person. I know I’ve been close. Close.

One thing I do know now, without question, is that I need to continue with CultureFlux. I need to continue because one person cares, because one person is inspired, and I can’t let her down – for a million reasons, and because of what she has given me.  We give our strength to each other, our fears, and through that they are diluted. Through that we can walk a bit taller, feel a bit better, face the world even if we are terrified of it, and maybe even smile because we know how strong we are deep down inside. We just need to be reminded from time to time…

and not feel so fucking alone.

I need help with CultureFlux though. I don’t know what… but I need people. Good people. People I can tolerate. People who have beautiful dreams and believe in this one. I want meetings on how to improve it, market it, figure out ways to bring it to print, have it make money. I want a fucking office, because I’m sick to death of the cafe. There’s a great place called ActivSpace right across from where I park my Motorhome where they have private office spaces for only $400/mo., and I want one of those. They’re cheap, and have a window. I’ve already talked to the manager, move-in would be rent + $500.

All I know is that after almost two years of doing it almost entirely alone, I don’t want to – can’t – anymore, and I need to keep it going.

Maria has made me realize that this dream has come true, but I want to reach even more people so it needs to grow and I need, perhaps, you. I sure as fuck need someone.

killing my twitter

When I woke up from my nap just a few moments ago, the weight of what had happened hit me – hard.

Sure, I have noticed it before, and each time was secretly disgusted by what what was happening, but until now it had never resorted to physical violence.

I guess there’s only so much it can take, and simply being acknowledged then shoved behind the thoughts of all the work I need to do, the thoughts of my empty pockets and how I might somehow get something in them; my empty personal life and the same – well, I guess it was through with being ignored and pushed aside, and slammed me with a hard right hook to the “what the fuck are you doing?” part of my brain.

That was the second thought that came to me after my nap. The first was constructed to be just under 140 characters.

I’m thinking in fucking Twitterish.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sat. Noonish.

No internet as I had to move my motorhome back about 20′ for some road construction they’re doing. Feeling a little cut off because I can’t afford my phone bill either, but – fuck it. My thoughts for the past days haven’t been cheerful ones, so that’s probably better.

It seems to be coming more and more frequently these days, this darkness, and though I dearly love what I do – creating the magazine, showing the rest of the world how beautiful it can be – and now back to designing leather pieces & jewelry and even opening my own shop on Etsy,  I’ve almost been looking with envy at the 9-5 people for the first time in my life. That would be so simple, so easy, so secure, always having the paycheck coming in, and hell, if the job goes away finding another one would be a cakewalk compared to all I need to figure out and do for the magazine. Just dissapear into the world of the gray slaves, and pretend that this part of me never existed… and just wait for the day my life got tired of breathing me. It would be even more welcome than now, come quickly, painlessly, and pass unnoticed by anyone, least of all my “parents”. I’m beginning to wonder if they were right when they called me delusional not too long ago. That was the last time I talked to them, with no intention of doing so ever again.

I think the only think keeping me from that right now is letting the people who believed in me down – but I can’t survive like this much longer.

I know without question that these feelings are only amplified due to exhaustion, but that makes them no less valid. All I can think of is the tons of work I still need to do, and except for what it brings to people, how futile it is. Sure, it feels great to create, it’s what I’m here for, and gods, getting to work on designing jewelry and other things again, working with my hands  has brought me tons of joy, but unless the things I make sell, or the magazine begins to support itself through other means… hell,I don’t know what happens “unless” that. This is who I am. This is me, my life, my choice, my love, and I’m lost in it.

All I want to do is be able to survive, to not feel as if I’m working myself to death for no reason. Somehow, I need to make money – and I’m trying.

gods, I’m trying… and I don’t know how much longer I can

If you have something to advertise, please consider CultureFlux. Check out my Etsy store, and see if there’s something you like – or if neither of those suit you, pleas help CultureFlux with a donation.

More rest should get me out of this frame of heart – it usually at least puts the pain behind being able to work again, at least, but that doesn’t mean that my need to survive is any less – just more optimistic. For a time.

And hey – please tell everyone about my Etsy Store. http://www.etsy.com/shop/kseaflux I could use your help in spreading the word.