Three days, for better or worse

Forgive me, my dear WordPress friends – as much as I have wanted to, my writing mind has been completely saturated with thoughts of my campaign, and when I find I actually have the time to post to my blog, I just don’t have the mental tools to write something good – even as much as my head is SWIMMING with other things.
they aren’t able to find there way here… yet.

Rest assured though, on Thursday at 8pm PST when my campaign ends, I WILL be back, crawling into your loving arms.
To tide both of us over however, here’s something I sent out earlier today. Please read it, check out the campaign & video & the *incredible* project – if you wish – and I look forward to coming back to you soon!

Believe me, I have missed you – and especially these pages – dearly.

~ Casey

Hello again, my Friends, Family & Comrades!

There’s a bit of magic happening in the final stretch of my campaign, & we have but only
THREE DAYS LEFT!
54 Hours and counting at the time of this writing, and we’re coming up from behind.

With a dramatic leap yesterday of nearly $2000 in only a FEW HOURS, I’m on friggin’ Cloud Five, with a definite hint of Cloud NINE peeking out from just over the horizon!

My dog, Ruby, absolutely loves the extra hugs and play she’s been getting as a result of my boosted mood – although she doesn’t seem to be to hip on the dancing part.

That jump was made possible by only a few friends (and a bit of me) who simply realized that in a circumstance like this, the possibility of annoying a few people with posts & emails temporarily is WELL worth the hundreds of lives this book can inspire & improve *permanently* – not to mention entertain the HELL out of them with the wild stories!

Imagine what would happen if the interwebs were thronging with *scores* of people who believe in the power this illustrious & (soon-to-be) celebrated book will have in reigniting the spark of wonder in countless eyes, the blazing fire in innumerable hearts, and the ecstatic dance in feets that refuse to drag any longer. Just IMAGINE!

NOW, take those few people as a wonderful example & do what they did – email friends! Post to Facebook groups! Send private messages – and above all, get creative and have FUN doing it!
REMEMBER – all it takes is reaching that ONE PERSON who understands how powerful this book will be, and has the finances to fund it. It’s far from uncommon – we just need to find her or him!

http://bit.ly/NGGKickass

And lookee here! To save you time & energy, I’ve even included below a helpful cheat, something you can easily just copy & paste when you share the excitement of the campaign! Of course, feel free to change it in ANY way you feel appropriate, and THANK YOU!

With ALL of my love, gratitude & determination,

~ Casey

And HERE is your ready-made blurb! Perfect for emails, private messages, billboards in very slow traffic areas (like *all* of San Francisco), Group & Page posts, tattoos (temporary, of course) and anywhere that your beautifully creative mind sees fit – I would LOVE to hear of something

***Listen up people! There are only a few precariously short days left to help one of the most amazing & unique memoirs make the leap from dream to reality, and the world is depending on you to help make it happen! They need and *deserve* a chance to read it!

This guy, Casey Porter, has lived a wild & inspiring life, a beautiful testament to what we can do when we don’t give up.
He was living just an average, ordinary life until 12 years ago – then changed *everything* & has since lived as a circus performer, busker, worked with The Dresden Dolls, volunteered for Katrina refugees, created & published the first circus performance & arts magazine EVER, and he’s even fought back from the brink of death when even his doctors didn’t think it was possible.
This book will not only wildly entertain you with his unbelievable (but entirely true!) stories, but inspire hundreds, maybe *thousands* of people – and on top of that he’s really nice!
He’s still fighting for his health, so I’m asking you to please – support & share his Kickstarter to get the book finished & out to the world while he’s still alive to share it. You’ll be SO happy that you did!***

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A life for a life

 

I look at this page & it stares back at me, a subtle, defiant edge to the font that would likely go without notice if I wasn’t looking for it – but oh, it’s there.

Some reading this may think that it’s my imagination, that I’m creating it in my mind, that the certain lean, the extra hint of teasing, judging serif in the font is something I’m making up so I can blame something other than myself for the distracted words that my fingers put on this page, but I know different, and besides, what you may think of my sanity has no consequence.
On with it.

I part the dense fog that has surrounded my mind ever since I began working on my Kickstarter campaign, the words listening for the passage that will allow them to avoid the sharp rocks in these treacherous waters & lead them safely to this page. From the tattered pages of past writings I tear away the tangents I had followed when the Sirens of Kickstarter took away my will & made the words whine and shove those in my ears, muting the songs of the campaign. I prepare my mind to find itself again, to write what’s been pushed back – but never forgotten. The thoughts still storm, and it’s time to dance in the rain again.

I will succeed. I will triumph. I’ll do a happy dance!

As profoundly important as the success of this campaign is to me & my life, as much as I know it can and will change the lives of others, I need to remember that somewhere not far behind the ever-present thoughts of dong all I can to make my campaign succeed, there is a soul, forgotten & forlorn, who still has things other than the thoughts necessitated and consumed by Kickstarter to say.

And that being said, there is only a little more than a week left of my campaign – and this book needs to be finished, published & given to the world!

Please – pledge, SHARE, and understand the profound importance that this dream holds for me – I have never done anything that has meant more, including saving my life.
The goal of writing & publishing this book is what kept  me alive – what gave me something to fight for.

This book kept me alive – and now, it’s time to let my book live!

Click the link below, contribute & share – please – and thank you!

http://bit.ly/NGGKickass

behind the smile

Where do you say what you can’t?

They tell you to be buoyant. They tell you to be enthusiastic, strong, confident in the words you write, the words you share and hope the world will see. When people visit or hear about my Kickstartercampaign, they don’t want to read my woes or worries.

For now, I put on a plastic smile like a McDonald’s server and don’t show the terror. For now I don’t say what I am truly feeling.
People don’t want their bubble popped. They want to feel confident in my project, to be lifted higher in the buoyancy of my words, as forced & manufactured as they may be at times.

I want to make them happy. I do care. I try to give them what they look for, and I hope by writing the words I will also be lifted.

I can’t write “If this campaign isn’t successful I’ll probably die before the book is finished”. As true as it is, threatening people to support my campaign probably wouldn’t go over too well, y’know?
Still, boiling in this head is the knowledge of what will happen if this campaign doesn’t succeed. The things that only I have known.

Until now.

THIS is where I can scream. Most the people I know on Facebook don’t take the time to read anything over a few sentences, regardless of what they say. Here I find a sanctuary, either real or imagined. On WordPress.
This is where we ALL can be real, be vulnerable. This is the shower we sing in.

My book is all I have anymore. All there is left in me to give. Due to the way this disease works and what it’s done to me I can’t really perform, can’t work. I don’t know the days I’ll be too exhausted or in too much pain to do more than pass the day in bed. Though those days are less, they still happen – and the rest are filled with such a growing hatred for the life I’ve been living since I was released from the hospice that I know with certainty that it’s something I can’t go on with.

The book is/was/will/would have given me a reason, a new breath, a purpose. To go back to living each day worried about getting herbs, to go back to each week with the only thing I can focus on is begging more friends for money to afford them is no life at all.

Every waking moment I’ve had the thought of how my life would change to keep me going, to soon be able to live a life that matters, to have a purpose for each breath.
To enjoy life. This is what the success of the campaign would offer me.

I have envisioned myself a thousand times or more waking up for the first time in years with the excitement of living, of having something I needed to do besides beg for more money. I would sit in random café’s writing, sipping coffee for the flavor and remembering with clarity the amazing life I have lived, smiling to myself as I lifted my head & turned to look out the window and knowing that I’m doing something good. That I once again had value.

I would sit at my Mother’s dining room table, facing the back yard wo I can watch Ruby play, run in and out of the door with the dog my mother and I would find for her in a rescue. She says she wants one and I could get it for her, help her take care of it. Help take care of my Mother. She would come home and ask me about my book, and I would share the stories I had written that day. She would get to know me and I her. We have 48 years to catch up on.

I would hold my head up, a smile glinting off the green in my eyes and hinting on my lips. People would know again. I would know myself again. This is why I am. This is me. I would be full and in love with life. It’s been so long, so long – but I woke, rang the bell above my grave and purpose came to dig me out. I sucked the fresh air into my lungs and this empty heart was filled.

They would read my stories, my life laid bare, naked for them to see and they would see themselves. They would find the parts, the lines that made them stop & look up with a sudden spark of understanding that it only took a decision, that the past didn’t matter and all the smallness they felt would be washed away in the ink of my words staining their face with a determined grin. They would mark the pages, underline sentences, read it again and maybe buy a copy for a friend or two. They would write to me and I wouldn’t feel so alone anymore.

This campaign needs to succeed. I need to write my life, give it away.

The heart inside of me is weary, vacant. I say I love people hoping that in the spoken words I will remember how. The smile on my face is an advance taken from when I can feel it again, when my heart fills with the knowledge that my life has changed from the barren desert it has become. Beg for money, get herbs. I’ve been kept alive by the possibility of the book, the knowledge that when the campaign succeeded it would be written. Take it away and I have nothing I need to live for and I need a reason.

I try to write with an empty heart and find all I can hear are the sucking noises like those a straw makes in a cup that’s been drained by a ravenous thirst.

Also haunting me is a thought.
In September 2010 I walked happy & full of energy into the hospice/respite that I was supposed to spend only three months in. Up until that moment I worked every day on my magazine, setting up interviews, making the site better, writing reviews and each morning stepping out of my motor-home with a smile. Even though my legs were bleeding, swollen, leaking the poisoned fluid my liver couldn’t process and in extreme pain, I still walked with purpose and pride to the café knowing there was something I was needed for.

I wasn’t able to work on CultureFlux in the hospice. I had been doing fine (relatively speaking) before I walked in, living in poor conditions with no money, food, and only enough water to wash my face in the morning – but I had a reason to go on. I loved being able to help other performers through the magazine and I loved giving them a voice.

Within a week my body began to shut down. My skin began falling off, hair coming out in clumps, and I was barely able to walk. One week.

What will happen if the campaign doesn’t succeed? When I don’t have the dream of writing & publishing the book to keep me alive anymore?

The herbs have kept me healthy, but it’s purpose that keeps me alive. From the edge of death in the hospice to the 4.5 years following, I had two things to live for: Finding my Birth Mother and giving this book to the world, hoping my life will inspire theirs.

I have found my Birth Mother.
For anyone who reads this, thank you for letting me vent, and don’t get me wrong – it’s not always like this inside my head. There are still many times when I realize it’s only the 6^th day with 5x that more to go, and anything can happen. Hell, Oprah could see it and announce it to the world! It could go viral on Youtube! Anything! The most important thing I need to remember is to NEVER GIVE UP, even as much as I want to and as hard as it can be to dredge up the energy to go on. WE DO NOT GIVE UP.

http://bit.ly/NGGKickASS

I’m going to keep on fighting like hell for the success of this campaign, to make this dream a reality and again have my heart filled with purpose and passion.

It IS possible, and I’ve come from behind to achieve my goal more times than I can count. I mean hell – isn’t that what we do with EVERY dream we realize? We are WARRIORS, and this is what we do!

For anyone interested what all the above is about, here’s a link to my Kickstarter campaign! I wouldn’t mind at ALL if you supported it by making a pledge and/or shared it as far & wide as you can – you would be my new favorite person!
Just – don’t include the above, okay? (winky face)

And when you go there, please take a second to check out the update – I was *amazed* with what people said and want the world to see it too!

To all out there in WordPress land – thank you for being here for me. And thank you for not charging for my therapy.
Any comments of support or suggestions on how