“Anxious is the bird lost from the flock –
The sun sets and still it flies alone, back and forth with no place to rest,
As night wears on, it grows sadder…”
~ T’ao Ch’ien, AD 416
“No one has yet put into words the psychological complexity of being adopted.”
~ Adult Adoptee, AD 1990
So what happens now?
Eat me, drink me,
grow,
or shrink away from all I have become?
Do I *want* to find my mother?
Perhaps not – but I NEED to.
She created me
She may destroy me
I am the only one in-between.
One thing that I do know…
I will find you before I die.
When the story is only fiction,
the author chooses his own end.
I do believe that you’re mistaken
when I read over and over again
‘you’ and ‘your’ –
You see, I never became.
I created me without any of you
lost in blankets of destruction
swathed in a shattered past
lost in a heartbeat never heard again
lost and never forgiving
this make-believe somebody
this undying nobody
for what I did to you,
the only one.
And my life has been extraordinary
and my life has been unnatural
and I don’t think that you will ever understand
what you did to me.
what you made me fight for
what you made me hope
hope that one day, one day – you might come looking
for your child…
“When the pregnancy was discovered,
your Birth Mother did not inform your Father
as she did not wish to marry him at the time…”
Gods forbid and fuck you for being so weak
and I love you for being so strong, because maybe
just maybe
you had no possible idea of what it would do to me
to my life, forever and always
because they didn’t know then,
and ‘they’ will never know…
but
I need
to know
you.
~~ ~ ~ ~
Driving on Highway 52
San Diego, heading back to the beautiful life you gave me
you sacrificed for me
so you could do what you wanted to.
I was searching for you then
Dad was driving, I was shotgun
and the woman who helped raise me
was in the back seat of the car.
He, always curious, always annoying
asked how the search was going and
I offered as little information as I could
but then
but then…
“I don’t know why your searching for her”, she said
“She’s probably dead anyway.”
And I’ve never hit a woman
the thought not ever crossing my mind
but at that point, that instance
when there were no words to be found
it took everything I had
everything I believe myself to be
a good man under any circumstances
a good man to anyone, everyone,
a man of more character than brute force
not to see her face, the mouth those words came out of
cave under my fist…
because if I had started
I couldn’t have stopped.
October 31, 1967
…… “‘You’ were alert and focused, followed, and concentrated on objects. “You” were not that physically active, however would draw your knees up under you and rub them around on the sheet until they became chapped. “Your” strength was average and “he puts slight weight on his feet” was noted. “Your” head control was average and you had a fair grip… “YOU” were a relaxed baby who did not startle easily, and “he is either slow or extremely sober, for he does not yet smile” was noted.
Four single-spaced pages, mostly about me as a baby. Two copies of original documents that have my mother’s name on them – whited out completely.
After FORTY FIVE YEARS, stories of my birth, of me as a… baby? – for the very first time. Nine and a half hours of labor – and… descriptions of my entire blood family at that point in time. Aunts, Uncles, everyone…
It’s here… arrived today in the mail, sent the 11th.
My mother was/is 5’4.5″, My Father 6’3. Norwegian, Irish, Dutch – German.
No one in my…… my… family? No one except my Grandmother had green eyes.
And black hair.
Gods – she must have been gorgeous.
Holy Shit.
It’s HERE.
Any day now. That is what I keep telling myself. It is what
must
be.
An envelope, inside of which one life begins, another ends – again. How many lives have I lived so far? How many more to come? Were any of them real?
Am I?
I have the writing on paper and computer showing me all of these people I have been, I have the pages torn through with pen. I need these to prove that I exist, to prove to myself – and others.
Look, look at me, see my heart, read my soul, feel my flesh… see me.
SEE me, for what I am, what I have been, what I could be. Look into these eyes all the greens of the Sea and SEE.
See that I love you for your wonderful or horrible childhood, see that I detest you because I would give anything to be beaten, scorned, loved, anything – anything, as long as I could look into the eyes of the Mother or Father beating me and know that they were MINE to love – or hate. That I came from them, their moment of ecstasy, and whether they were ready for a spirit as strong as mine – a spirit that I have built, stone by stone, day by day, into this person that I think I am; (This “person”? This Man?) they were mine, all mine, to say Good Bye to, forever.
Yes, good bye. It is what I know, the first thing I was taught, the very first thing that I was trained to believe in – that nothing is permanent, that you all will go away. This lesson sits in a place that I have no access to; I can only hope for the best – but this hope is based in my mind, this belief that you might stay is solely intellectual – I am no less than amazed when you are still there, still share your heart with me, after so many years…
Alive and covered with blood, torn from the womb I became in, sent into the world as an outsider, an outcast, an object to be passed onto others…
I tried to be like how I saw them. I tried to find myself in them. I tried to behave, to be the good son that they paid so much for in order to complete the ideal, regulation family of the times.
I failed.
I was nothing like them. Not my mom, dad, or sister. I can’t even imagine how frustrated they felt – all the years of behavioral therapy, family therapy, trying to figure out what was wrong with me – and it was *always* me. My fault, my disobedience that they centered on – why can’t I just be the perfect little boy, like my perfect older sister who they paid for too?
It was the secret. *I* was the secret. Adoption was not seen as anything that could be harmful then – after all, I was lucky. Lucky to be adopted into a loving family, lucky to be “chosen”.
Right?
WRONG.
Fuck your secrets, fuck what the neighbors may think when I was bad, so bad, badbadbadbadbad. Yes, it was me who accidentally set my mattress on fire when you were having a cocktail party – there was a small hole on the bottom side of it, and I just wanted to clean up that hole – I didn’t have scissors so I used a lighter, and it worked! It worked too well. What they don’t tell you when the mattress stuffing is chemically treated to be inflammable is that regardless of how much water you pour on it, it will keep smoldering.
Oops. Fuck you. I was maybe eight years old.
Yes, it was me who drove the Impala for the first time when I was 10, then ran the mom’s Mercury Zephyr station wagon three feet into my room when I was eleven. You were out at a party – but at least then, I told the truth. I weighed the consequences, and realized that honesty really was worth something – though my friend & I thought of every other possible way to get out of it…
I took all of your hidden silver quarters and bought candy and super-balls. Hell, I didn’t know. I found your pistols and shot the little cabin you had built for us, and I guess the four barrel .22 thing couldn’t handle it and the catch broke – yes, it was me, everything me… and it was also me who hid the single can of beer that I found in Katherine’s drawer, hid it much better and left her a note so she wouldn’t get in trouble. I mean hell, she cried over getting a B in class… She is your golden child. You invested well in her…..
And I still loved her, even through our differences, until only recently.
Where was she when I was in the hospice? No calls, no visit even though it is on her way home – nothing.
I can’t help but wonder if any of you would even care if I were dead – but believe me, your actions say it all.
no.
So I wait for this envelope, look for it every day in the mail. Expecting it.
Any day now…please.
They said it would take $100 and up to eight months. I paid the money to the adoption agency, paid the $2500 to the search company, and got a letter from my good friend and Doctor which the agency received and said that, due to my “terminal” illnesses, they would expedite – and that was two months ago, after a Fourteen Fucking YEAR search.
A search that I took on myself in the beginning, a search that brought the impenetrable walls crumbling down, releasing the me, mySelf, my soul in words that I didn’t even remember writing on every scrap of paper I could find, the Me who felt FUCKING EVERYTHING until there I was nothing, who put my .38 Colt Cobra in my mouth – then took the pressure off of the trigger…
The me who I became to be, because that was all that I could, and can, be.
I wait for the envelope that contains the non-identifying information, because that is all the search company needs to verify the person that they think, they think, they just need to check the details to find out if…
if it is the one person that I need to meet. If it is the one person that I might find an answer in – a thousand answers, without saying a word.
If she is even alive.
GODS, please… as I have written before……
I don’t want the first flowers I give her, from my love, from my heart, from my hatred, from me…
to be laid gently upon her grave.
Hello friend, it´s been a while again huj? I have been pretty busy here getting myself into shit and then trying to figure out how to get myself out of it afterwhile. It is such a – I don´t know – would you like to chat with me some time? I feel like, in a way you´ve been trascendental? something meaningful?… in my life, but then, that was me projecting something only you could so well represent, and you saved me and you drove me crazy too… I know I did scare you… it makes me smile, laugh? Yah… you were something special in my madness… I love that picture, it gives me something, I feel something, I feel as if you were telling me something, and I was happy to hear it for I have been sitting here, and then I just take a look again and I feel you are telling me you know how I feel… and that you are here in a very sublime way… I need you right now – I know this sounds all crazy, I am sorry, I am so pasionate and expresive, Have you gotten married? It´s beautiful what your eyes are saying… it´s like you found something, as if you have become who you wanted to be. Generally that happens when people find their beloved. Your picture also tells me you are so sane, zen? I am like the turtles and so are you, because you are honest and not afraid to take it all out and give it away… that´s what makes you the king of my world, although I don´t know you, but I have read your lines and your eyes say you have a pretty strong character, determination, like a warrior with a sword, and you can move in all directions and travel through all different galaxies and still keep that precious heart in its place, going through changes…
I will be here from now on for a while again… hope to hear from you soon, my friend. Love.
When I call, you’re always there, aren’t you?
For the past few days I’ve been thinking about you, about the beautiful words you wrote to me, for me, what seems like lifetimes ago. Do you remember them?
“I do admire you… I do not know how you do to live the life you live. You remind me of the replicates in the Blade Runner Film. So wild and beautiful like poetry lost in time… like tears in the rain…
Do birds ever come to you?
I will be praying for you these days… for you, my friend, to get home soon. I am so very glad life is good to you because you are so good, way over too many stupidities of this world. And, I might be wrong, of course, for I perceive your nature must bring this need to pull it all the way. Not being a slave at any risk… it’s a pretty good damn meaning and purpose. I believe in you, you are an inspiration to life itself…
I feel you have been giving way too much, and you are so intense, could be dangerous like love… you seem from here like a wild tender beautiful authentic being, more than human. I want to pray for you to find what you are looking for, what you really need….
There is something of me in you; still we might be completely opposites… You are, brother, creator of fantasies, worlds, and million thousand ways to fly. I watch you fly mesmerized; still I wish something wires you to the land… I don’t know why, sometimes I wish I could become that wire to connect you with your land, or at least, send it to you in some magical way…
The higher you fly, the further away, the deeper this wish buries in me… like a dream, it cuts. It’s not easy to say this kind of things, to describe this kind of experience without some fear…
I hope you’ll understand… I hope you do receive a kiss and a hug with these words which aren’t enough, I know, but it’s all I got now…
Blessings,
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ”
It *was* lifetimes ago – two, actually, as I came incredibly close to dying twice since then, and each time I pulled through was called a ‘miracle’ by the doctors tending me. It’s difficult to believe them these days.
– but even when I was my worst off, I still remembered who I was, am, and who I want to be… there are still more things that I need to do in this lifetime, I just need to figure out what the hell they *are*!
In time, in time…
No, not married, no one “special” in my life except for my pup, and though I love her it’s strictly platonic. Not that I would mind someone, but unfortunately I have the kind of thinking that is making it difficult to find someone – someone who would dare to want me, and that *I* would want as well, of course. I truly wish that my eyes were telling the truth – but the fact is that right now I’m simply trying to remember who I *was*, so that I can move on to who I can be. These days I’m finding myself confused more often than not as to how to go about this — time to venture inside again, time to look to the words and hope that they direct me.
It’s disquieting what almost two years in a hospice & hospital can do to a person; everything on schedule, sleeping as much as possible just to make the lackluster days go away faster… after a while you almost want to die, simply for a new experience, a new road, the final adventure – it took more than most people realize just to hang on to a bit of my wandering spirit among the suffocating walls.
They clipped my wings, but feathers grow back.
My heart to yours, Dharma. As always, it fills my soul to hear from you.
Love.
…and Life begins when the heart is seen again, and opened.
A gathering of friends today at CELL Space to help recreate it – Mike recently took over the lease and has now begun making it into what it can be. If anyone can, it is he.
Seconds after I got out of the car I see Keno, who says he wrote a poem about me the night before – a poem of dreams, he said. I replied that it is the best kind. He asks about CultureFlux again, and I am still tentative. I feel that he is the only person including me who wishes that to start up again – all consuming, for so little that it gives back, but I can’t deny that beginning it hasn’t been on my mind, if only to get my blood pumping again. Still, there is a deeper desire to perform again.
Then, inside, letting Ruby off the leash to cause havoc with the other dogs, Shannon, Mike’s wife, comes up to me and says that she has been meaning to get in touch with me for this year’s Edwardian Ball – if I would join Vau de Vire Society as a statue with the others, this time creating atmosphere around the venue instead of simply on stage.
Gods, yes. Both nights.
Then, seeing Mike, I asked what was needed.
Painting. Why is it always painting? I loathe painting – but I was there to help, and at least this time, considering that – painting wasn’t so bad. After all, I was already walking on clouds…
Amazing what life will offer if you just show up for it.
Last night, for the first time in far too long, as my mind wasn’t letting me get to the sleep I so desired that easily, there was a notion. A notion that turned to a thought, a good thought that twisted itself into inspiration. Inspiration about a production I could create, then another idea, and another… so involved, so beautifully intricate, incorporating a collaboration between Bad Unkl Sista, Vau de Vire and myself, bringing to life my battle against death over the past years – making it art, making the ugly beautiful, hoping that it inspires. So very much work to be done before I even present it to them – at the very least an outline of the scenes…
But I truly believe that it can happen.
All it will take is showing up to life, and work.
Glorious work.
4:06am
Sleep.
I watch Ruby curled up against my legs, doing her best to take up as much of the bed as possible, and envy her sleeping so soundly, so peacefully.
So serene.
I sleep a lot, but it has been a long time since I didn’t have trouble getting there, or wake to another day wondering what I do now – wondering where my life is going, who I become. Having the will to become that person…
So many things I want to do, thoughts that bounce around inside my head, each momentarily taking on a bit of life until the next one knocks it out of place, leaving me with only a glimpse of the passion I once knew for life, for living, for being something or someone new. For creating.
I need to find a place to begin again – the majority of two years spent trying to stay alive, learning how to walk again, building back the muscles… for this? This recluse, this uninspired shell of who I once was?
I know that, as always, it’s as simple as taking that first step, whatever it may be. I know that once I begin doing *something*, it will all fall into place, and the world will open for me again.
I just need to take that step.
And somehow, the Journey continues.
It’s not simply just another year alive – I look back to older writings and photos, think of things that could be, and realize that this passing of the day I was brought back into form should be, could be something special.
Still, it doesn’t ease my distaste for my birthday, and I know with every stale, colorless, unimaginative and seemingly obligatory ‘Happy Birthday kSea’ (SMALL ‘k’, CAPITAL ‘S’ – yet another thing I detest about that fucking site that won’t let me have the name I gave mySELF) that is posted on facebook I will cringe. I try not to question the sincerity just as I try not to loathe seeing the same ordinary well-wishes, word for word, over and over, written without feeling and forgotten, told that is what they are supposed to today in between taking a shit and posting another ‘click “like” if you’ on facebook… but this isn’t supposed to be a facebook rant. Just, if you read this, try saying more than five words that came from your own mind. Quality, baby – not quantity. I would rather receive three heartfelt wishes for a happy birthday than have to bear the weight of ten-thousand lifeless souls.
But I digress…
The fire is being rekindled, the discomfort of complacency is prompting me to act – but there lies the fodder of confusion – I want to do EVERYTHING, and wanting to do so much leaves me at the place of ‘Where to begin?’ What, exactly, do I do now? Do I begin at the beginning or at the middle, like I would if I finally decided to get CultureFlux going again – and *if* I decided it was time to throw everything I am back into CultureFlux, what would the personal return be? Would I have the same passion for it? If I decided to choose the beginning of something, what would that something be?
What fresh new dream can I make happen?
As always, the road calls – I need to figure out what is stopping me from simply getting back on it, and going – going… any direction, every stop I wish to make in the middle of nowhere, be it looking out at the sunset over a beautiful valley or in the middle of an exquisite forest, or hell, even to Slab City for a bit – anywhere but one place for too long, and I’ve been too long here.
Here. Here met with quite a hiccup in my plans, but I was exactly where I needed to be in order not to die. Funny how that happens so perfectly, regardless of what I want to have turn out, every single time.
I need to learn how to listen again. I need to remember to see. I need to make the best of what I have, here and now, and wait for the winds to blow me where they will…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
But I must wait. I must have an address to find my mother.
Fuckit. I’m tired, going to sleep, and waking in my reclusive day.
of Petals & Thorns 