The Bastard, The Dreamer, The King ~ & The Fool

“A Dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,

and his punishment is that he sees the dawn

before the rest of the world.”

Oscar Wilde, 1888

5.31.12, 6:33am

Up to avoid the street sweepers, I drive to the Mission & park on Treat Street –  and can’t help but wish, at least a little bit, that it were in my motorhome. In the car with all of its windows I feel so… exposed. So naked. This is far from the sanctuary of Serenity…

I think of the things that must get done today, eye my backpack with the envelope that I will send to OmniTrace, priority mail, so that that last piece of what they need can be sought, found, compared with information that they have already discovered, and…

and maybe, in some way, a hole will be filled.

*Bastard*:

n.

2 – a difficult or awkward thing

adj.

2 – (of a thing) no longer in its pure or original form; debased

 

Fuck You. This is ME that you’re trying to classify, and your definition does NOT apply… at least anymore. When I was younger, those descriptions could not have come closer to the truth of who I was, and perhaps that child still lies deep in my soul – the silent one, insecure, unknowing, afraid, alone… but at least now, on the outside, in the person I have fought like hell to become, that doesn’t apply.

Most of it, at least.

I am The Dreamer, The King, The Fool. I am The Secret. I am born of nothing and no one, I am The One Who Cannot Die, broken but never destroyed, and that which doesn’t kill me… makes me wonder who She is, more and more. Makes me believe that maybe she has the same things inside of her that have kept her alive. Makes me wonder if I would have felt it if she died, or… if I have, and just didn’t know what it was.

I wonder if, when she closes her eyes, she calls to me, like I do her.

It’s impossible to wrap my mind around how quickly this is moving – this new search. After the Adoption Agency gets my request for the non-identifying information it could still take them up to eight months to process it, but I’ve been told that if I call them, stay on them, request them to expedite the process, that it has been known to happen in as few as eight *weeks*, and occasionally, even less.

My birthday is in 98 days, including today.

After 45 years, it just may be the first one that I know my true name.

It just may be the first one that I don’t have to carry this with me.

It just may be the first one in which I find a reason to actually smile.

Of course, I may have to come to terms with the idea that I’m human – but that just may be something that I don’t mind too much, after all.

 

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…loved off…

“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.
But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

-The Velveteen Rabbit

on automatic

Effin’ Hell.
Crawl out of bed at 6am, stumble to the kitchen to make my coffee & smoothie, meanwhile keeping my eyes on the clock – I swear, it always seems to go faster in the morning. By 6:30 it’s sip of coffee, throw on a sock, sip of coffee, the other sock, gulp of coffee, the boots. 6:45 – do I bring my laptop today? Yeah. Close it, hit the bathroom to throw some water on my face & brush my hair. 6:55 already? Screw the lappy, just grab my small bag & a couple books, a few decks of cards shoved in my pockets to practice manipulation & magic, throw on my hat, grab my keys then limp to the elevator – no stairs, the legs hurt again today for some reason. Not legs, leg. Always my left one. It’s the bitch that never got the memo that I refuse to be sick or in pain. Need to have a talk with it later.
Dragging the doors of the ancient elevator open, I see my car through the entrance doors, right where I parked it, directly outside of my building. Good.
I walk outside… waitaminute. Cars lined up in front and in back of mine. No one rushing to move them.

It’s Saturday. Goddamnit, I knew that. No towing today, only street sweeping on the *other* side of the street.
A weak chuckle at myself, a decision to save fuel, and back inside.

It’s easier to practice with the cards in my apartment, anyway.

in which dreams are formed

 

It was only a few minutes, nothing really to speak of at all – but for those few minutes, that brief moment this past Wednesday – I was home again. Where I feel best, where I feel I belong – with 454 cubic inches of motor singing its sweet, throaty song next to me in the driver’s seat of my motorhome.

 

Wednesday, 6:30 am and the alarm on my phone went off, my eyes barely opened as I lift this hellish thing off of my dresser and be certain I touch ‘dismiss’ instead of ‘snooze’. It’s not a noise I wish to hear again. Of course, the night before I had found the rare parking on Hyde St. which *didn’t*  have street sweeping this morning, but they were unable to start my girl the day before and needed the space for a 50 foot trailer that was coming in. Not expecting to find such ideal parking I promised that I would be there at 7:30 to move her…

It’s been a while – perhaps well over a month since I’ve been to the East Bay, as with fuel prices and bridge toll it’s not a trip I can make too often, and besides, except for just opening the door and sitting in her, there was little reason to go visit my motorhome.

I felt her welcoming smile as I opened the door and stepped inside again after so long – it was like visiting a dear old friend. Some may understand this; those people whose vehicles become, after a time, much more than just something to use in order to get around in – they become, in a way, a part of you. Part of your history, part of your future, part of dreams both realized… and yet to come.

I climbed into the driver’s seat – *my* seat – and sat there for a minute or three, just looking out the windshield with my eyes closed, imagining the roads we would someday travel, then with a bit of massaging and a small simple trick I turned the key and her heart roared to life, a deliciously low rumble as her blood was sucked up from the oil pan and started circulating again, feeling her strength & power as I pressed lightly on the accelerator pedal, checking the gauges to be sure all was well and, after far too long, moved the lever on the steering column to that sweetest of letters: ‘D’.

DRIVE.

I didn’t go far, just out the rollup door and around the building to the other side, but it was still a sweet little spree and reminded me of what I had been missing.

In those few short minutes, I was home again.

 

Perhaps some may think I’ve gone off the deep end in writing about a motorhome with such romance – words that are usually saved to paint poetic images of and for loved ones of the more, shall we say, *human* nature, and well, perhaps I have – but dreams are still dreams, regardless of what form they take or the way in which they are realized, and Serenity, my motorhome, is the way in which my dreams not only are formed – but can also become a reality.

Betwixt & Between

The past is the past.

Let the dead bury the dead.

I should be over it.

No one wants to hear about this, no one else can understand except those very, very few.

I don’t have the right to feel this, to talk about this; it isn’t fair to others.

It will only open old wounds…

and of course, those lovely words from my adoptive mom when I was searching before: “I don’t know why you’re bothering with this, she’s probably dead anyway.”

The mind, the ego, has its own repertoire of rationalizations that keep us quiet, keep what we truly feel suppressed. Emotional debts to the past in the form of feelings we can’t allow ourselves to express, but the past isn’t over as long as these debts go unpaid. It coils around our soul, suffocating us, keeping us from who we truly can be, living our lives in quiet desperation and pretending that everything is alright…

But I am a construct of my past, the things I cannot forget, the things I cannot let go, the things that made me who I am – a boy forever searching for Self, denied by law the right to see a true record of my birth. Though I look human, my life is a hard-wired fantasy that has no beginning; I am one of the Unborn. I bleed and get sick just like you, but astonish the doctors when I don’t die.  By others I have been called an illusion, an apparition, a vision, a ghost. Wrapped up in myth, living a life of secrets and taboo from time before my first memory, I never became so I never can be, living a life of fiction where I am the author…

They say that you cannot change the past, but they are wrong. Terrifyingly wrong.

In my heart there is a hole, a hole shaped like her, and no one else can fit it. Fill it.

Why would I want them to?

Of course I have tried, not expecting anyone to be able to, but perhaps they could blunt the edges that have cut this mold, this man, that boy, that child I once was and still am – that child that can be seen through the razor edges in this man’s heart, looking out at you, looking into each strangers eyes, searching for the arms, for the voice, for the hearts beat that soothes and mothersoft skin that was comfort, that held the promise that everything would be alright, that even in this world of suffering I was safe, protected… that I was hers.

That I belonged… not only in this world, but also – belonged *to* someone.

I received a call on Friday – the search is moving forward, they are making progress. I play the message over and over again. As soon as they receive the non-identifying information from the adoption agency (which in CA commonly takes up to eight months for a couple of pieces of fucking paper), they “should be able to wrap things up fairly quickly.”

I need to change. I need to start living again, break out of what I let the past couple of years of bouncing from one hospital bed to the other do to me, and again be a part of my life; create, perform, breathe… exist.

I need to be someone that she would be proud to meet.