Life, Death, Dogs. A Rooftop Contemplation

The occasional whisper of tires as a car drives by below, an unintelligible shout, the scattered songs of birds. The only sounds at this hour. Only the crackheads & I seem to be awake. Even the sirens are quiet, sleeping.

It’s 4am & I’m up on the roof of my apartment building with a fresh cup of coffee, a cigarette, & Ruby. The clouds above reflect the city lights giving a faint glow, just enough to see by. A cool breeze plays with my hair, blowing it in my face then away. I wrap my robe a little tighter around me.

I sit on the short wall of my building, look down at the weeds growing in our forbidden & neglected back yard. Near the far right corner calla lily’s bloom, defying the otherwise abandoned and unloved desolation. With their beauty inevitably comes a warm sorrow as I’m reminded of when Striggy brought a gift of bone-white lily’s to my tent in Austin. With love & reverence I placed them on top of the pale blonde box I had picked up earlier that day, already made into an altar surrounded with candles, a picture of Bean propped up against the box that now held the ashes of the most amazing dog & companion I’ve ever known. She was killed by a freight train a few days before, found by friends lying between the tracks, her favorite stuffed toy a few inches from her head. Nearly 13 years later & the tears still fall for her.

I turn back facing the roof top, close my eyes, take in a few deep breaths as I find a strange comfort in this sadness. Now, it’s filled with love and warm memories instead of the anguish I carried inside for years, holding it tight, afraid that if the pain wasn’t there I would somehow be betraying her memory.

I know better now. I understand death better now.

I think of how exquisite this life is, how fortunate I am. Occasionally I still let the weight of it all get to me and forget these things, but not now. Not today.

I open my eyes and catch Ruby briefly chasing her tail. I chuckle silently to myself and somehow love her even more.

I think of the time I spent in Hospice. Months on end so close to giving up, so desperately wanting to stop being strong, and each morning having to somehow find just one reason to keep fighting. One reason to stay alive.

As impossible it seemed to be able to imagine at times, I needed to believe that I would somehow get better.

I had to know, with as little doubt as possible, that there would be mornings like this one to look forward to.

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Love & Promises

In a strange way, it’s funny. All wrapped up in writing, becoming again, and playing with a beautiful dog that though I am broke as fuck (.65 to my name) I missed walking down and picking up my pittance check, the illustrious weekend in front of me.
And not a bone in the cupboard to chew on.
I was focusing on work, and forgot to get paid for living.
(I will never understand that. past rent and necessities (phone, internet) I get $300/ month.
Only when you have so little that everything, *everything* is a sacrifice. Trash bags, toilet paper (gots to have a clean ass) good soap, the herbs I still live by, and when I have an extra $10 in my pocket, a toy for Ruby. Honestly, she should come first, but I do occasionally need to crap, and… well, need to make certain its clean, just in case anyone really wants to sniff my ass. (Yeah, it’s happened. No comment.)

But fuck me, I wrote through the small time frame to pick up my check, again the fool.
So here’s to a penniless weekend, again. Fuck this shit. I’m climbing out. In three months, I will host the most amazing event you could ever dream of. Saturday, February 15. The day after Valentines day. I’m Coming BACK

But fuck, this current scrapping shit wears so dreadfully thin. Here’s the rub – if you have felt this, feel it now. The desperation in a single day, the withering of the soul.

So I post this again, for now. Please forgive me.
Saving up for Ruby, but PayPal is immediate, and buys her toys – and some food for me. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/534079/wdgi/451145

A heartfelt thanks to all of you that have found it in your heart to donate – Ruby and I are working on something special for you…

To be a Dog

 

 

I strip naked to crawl into bed. It is an uncommonly warm night in The City, the few weeks of summer in the fall, and I prefer a slight bit of chill at the very least. Ruby has a tendency to snuggle, and by snuggle I mean to attempt to push me off of our bed.  She doesn’t just slowly slide up – she essentially falls down on me and expects me to slide out from under her. It is still my damned bed, to a certain degree. She has learned that when it’s time for me to get in, she gets off. I make myself comfortable, avoiding the edge that I know she will push me to (a head start) and when allowed, she then hops back on to claim her side/middle/the whole damn thing. Her simplicity is just one of the things I love about her. Primal, no bullshit.

She tests me. She pushes, I push harder, and very shortly after we both find sleep, my arm outside of the covers caressing her, in adoration listening to her breathe, feeling her puppy belly rise and fall, the occasional sigh. If only she could know I would do anything for her. I think that she’s learning this.

When we walk around the neighborhood there are many loud noises, many people, many things that she is still unsure of which cause pause for her. “It’s okay, Rube.” She looks at me, her leash goes slack as she walks next to my leg until we pass, then she’s off to exploring again in her zig-zag roundabout way, from one side of the sidewalk to the other, exploring everything. I walk behind her in more or less a straight line, but we both get everywhere we are going, just the same.

Though I love all animals, there is an exquisite pureness, faith, and loyalty in dogs that can’t be refused. In their innocence they trust that we know best, even when we don’t. When they look at us and their eyes shine in a big goofy smile, we realize that life really is beautiful, and even in our lowest times, there is hope.

They don’t care if we come home late, they are always thrilled to see us. When we drink a bit too much they don’t judge. When we pass gas, “HEY! New smell! WOOHOO! They don’t care what we look like, are excited about everything, don’t mind the garbage on the streets in the slightest. With Ruby I have free reign to behave like a complete fool without any concern about what other people think, though that has never been much difficulty for me. They don’t care what we act like, how much money we make, even if they live in a tiny apartment that they consider home. And have a bed that they can take over. All it requires is love and caring.

“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.” ~ Jack London

Yes, I will do anything for her. It is the very least for what she gives me.

This is something I read quite a while ago, in between Bean and Ruby, and it stays with me.

Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish wolfhound named Belker. The dog’s owners, Ron, his wife, Lisa, and their little boy, Shane, were all very attached to Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle.

I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn’t do anything for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.

As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane to observe the procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the experience.

The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker’s family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away.

The little boy seemed to accept Belker’s transition without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a while after Belker’s death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal lives are shorter than human lives.

Shane, who had been listening quietly, piped up, “I know why.”

Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me.  I’d never heard a more comforting explanation.  He said, “People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life – like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?”

The six-year-old continued, “Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.”

I know my time with Ruby is shorter than I would prefer.  It was with Bean, with Bear, even with Happy, the Sheep Dog who I was raised with who almost ripped my cheek off when I was a very young child… but it is never long enough, and I can’t ever do enough for them.

http://igg.me/p/534079/x/451145

 

 

 

 

To Live for Those Who Give Life

And just like that, something clicked. Or… perhaps it wasn’t instantaneous in becoming, only how quickly it happened. I’ve been working for this day in meditation and reading, but only listening to my conscious mind instead of my heart and subconscious knowledge.

Every year for seven years, before the anniversary of the closest friend and companion I have ever had getting killed, a being that was so incredibly full of light and love that she taught me more every day, I went to the store, got enough alcohol to let me escape in sorrow and feel every ounce of pain for a few days, and drank.

It is the anniversary of my beautiful dog, Bean, getting killed by a freight train, and being found on the tracks.

Something changed this year though. I had been drinking more and more as the years progressed, with the exception of the couple of years I spent in hospitals, and lately it had been getting much worse. Not every day, but whenever I had a little bit of money to spare – or just had money whether I could spare it or not, quite often I would drink, and drink to excess.

This year started out no differently. Early on the 25^th, I went to the store, got a bottle of the cheapest whiskey, and began in abandoned earnest.

When I awoke on the 27^th, the anniversary of her death, I, as usual, poured myself a large tumbler of whiskey to begin the day… but I couldn’t bring myself to begin. It sat on my night stand,, nearly full, for hours. Finally, later that evening, I looked at the photo you see above, placed my hand in the wax-dripped wooden box that her ashes, some of her teeth and jaw bone and some dried white lilies are in, and took a small shot – then poured the rest into the bottle where it still sits in my cupboard.

I tried drinking more a couple days after, but the same result – a shot, but no more. Believe me, I tried!

I have been slowly killing myself with alcohol, drinking more and more as time passed, but – now I have a new pup, Ruby, and I cannot do this to myself, or her.  Or, to my friends.

I cannot die before I meet my birth mother, who I searched for essentially all of my life and finally found and contacted, almost exactly a year ago.

I honestly don’t know what transformed inside of me, but what happened doesn’t matter.

Things are changing for the better, and I like it. I feel alive again. I feel like me again, and I feel good. Now, it’s time to take Ruby out for a walk.

On that note, a reminder. In order to give Ruby (my rescue pup) the life she deserves until I get my feet all the way on the ground, I have started a campaign to help be the father I promised I would be, and give her the life she deserves.

Please take a moment to look at this – more things from this post might be answered, and there are wonderful photos and video of Ruby.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-a-rescue-puppy-live-the-life-she-deserves/x/451145

If you can, please help by contributing in any way you are able, and thank you!

This is still happening, and we need it.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ruby-needs-your-help-and-mine-i-do-this-for-her/x/451145

You can do direct help through Paypal, if you don’t want to read about hos beautiful a pup Ruby is. kSea@culturefluxmagazine.com is my paypal addy.

Ruby in her favorite place, after playing in the park.

as simple as…

9:30am. Up earlier than usual, I decide to do something to make the best of the day, get off to an early start. I pick up the book that was six hours earlier put down, and again I am lost in the beauty of words. It’s a lovely vacation, short as it may be, to travel through someone else’s mind and to see the world through their eyes. It’s a good way to open your own.

I’m out of coffee and milk, so eat a couple handfuls of dry cereal and make some Swiss Miss hot chocolate that was bought on special a few weeks back, in one of the rare times I had money and even more rare that I wanted hot chocolate. It comes with little marshmallows in the mix but I’m not quite certain why, as when the stirring is done and the powder is dissolved, so are the marshmallows. It’s a swindle, a deception. Only if you carefully pick the marshmallows out one by one and add them at the end can they last for any time at all, and perhaps someday I might do that just to see how long they last, but not now.

I must finish cleaning, packing everything, everything into plastic bags. The upstairs apartment has been found to have bedbugs, so all the apartments that surround him must get sprayed as well to cut off these little terrors at the pass. Gone are the days of the innocent rhyme my parents told me as a small child after finally getting me into bed. Now bedbugs are a nightmare as real as day. I’ve been fortunate enough only to hear horrid stories about them, but now they are here. I’ve been needing to clean and organize anyway, been meaning to, but didn’t want to be forced into it. Still, I’m not surprised that I am. I put the intention out there and am just being helped along by the Universe to accomplish my goal. There is no good or bad, just help and action.

I should know better by now. We create the world around us. Nothing happens by chance and there is no coincidence. It’s as simple as that.

Into this world the child is born anew. That’s the joke. We are all looking for a savior but there are hundreds born every second, free from prejudice, free from opinion, free from hatred. What do you want to be when you grow up? We create the child, instill in it our fears, our hatred, our ignorance. Not always the parents but most widespread the world around them, and they are always walking the fine line between freedom or belonging. Peace or war. Will you fight or will you succumb and be accepted?

This is what I was taught.

There is a choice, and it doesn’t need to be one or the other. There is no right, no wrong. There is only what was ingrained in us before our first breath; the awareness of love.

Most of life is the quest for this knowledge again, yet we search for it in so many places where it will never be found. We search for it outside of ourselves. We have forgotten where it originates from, and all we need to do is be quiet, and listen to the singing of the wind again. It will lead us to the time when our own hearts began beating.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to truly begin this day; take Ruby to the park, watch her play with the joie de vivre that puppies own – and listen to the wind on this beautiful, chilly grey morning.

reminded of why I live, why I Write…

• 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.

• 

  2:49am

  KSea Flux

  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.

Moving, forward.

Sunday Morning, August 26, 2012

I look around this room and count the days in my mind. Four and a half days to pack and move, one day to clean, and I’m gone. If I ever get my shit together that would be plenty of time.

Gods, I’ve gotten lazy.

Kerouac once said that “If you own a rug, you own too much.” As my eyes go from the dresser to the bedstand to the coffee table to the loveseat, the kitchen table that I never used as it was intended, the desk-thing from Xenodrome that Victoria gave me and finally, the rug, I am certain that I have acquired far too much for the simple life I wish to lead. It was so much more fun when I could pack everything I owned into my motorhome – just hang the clothes and costumes in the closet, pack the tools and other things in the overhead compartments and make do with what I had. Strange what is seemingly required in order to be able to call an apartment a “home”.

It never really was a home, but it certainly kept me apart.

In a few says I move into Victoria’s house. I can’t believe how quickly this month has gone by, completely catching me off guard as each day for most of the past month I’ve been practicing getting my talent at procrastination perfected. Downsizing to just one room of my own, keeping only a few pieces of furniture – the bed, dresser, nightstand, and of course, the Xenodesk-thing – and selling the rest. I’d like to somehow keep the coffee table, as it *is* pretty nice – dark wood, a good sized horizontal surface for collecting everything that ends up on it, and a couple of drawers – but that is yet to be seen. Seeing as the rug is only a hallway runner found on the SF streets and fits almost perfectly in my motorhome, I’m keeping that as well. It will go nicely in Vic’s hallway. My hallway.

There’s a level of excitement in the move, not only for the pain reason that Ruby will have a beautiful yard to play in, getting away from the sewer sidewalks of the Tenderloin, but for the first time in years (not counting the hospital & hospice stays) I’ll be living with other people; creative type folk. I can practice my archery & knife throwing in the backyard & garage, maybe even set up an easel in the space to try my hand at painting, seeing what comes out of this twisted noggin’ of mine…

It’s been over two years of focusing so much on staying alive, that I’ve let slide the reason that I wanted to. I am so fucking far from done. There is so much that I want to do, so much I want to create…

so much more that I want to be…

 

coming back to me

6:34am. Peet’s Coffee, a couple blocks away is the street I once lived on in my motorhome. A cup here today as I didn’t have time to have one in my apartment, just throw on my clothes, grab what I want for a couple hours and fly out the door. It could be an easy rush when I just needed to avoid the street sweeper, but now I have a puppy and those eyes looking at me, depending on me. I tell her I’m hurrying but she doesn’t understand, and we all know that feeling – every second an hour when you need to contort every muscle to hold it, just a minute longer. I knew I wanted to write today so the laptop was already packed up.

Is it possible to be homesick for the streets? The tight space in my RV, the sound and the way the motorhome rocked a little as cars went by a little faster, a little closer than they should?

Is it possible to be homesick for the uncertainty of it all, the adventure, the way every day changed?

It must be, because I am.

Because all of that is *who* I am – or at least who I was happy being. There’s a strange sense of freedom that I feel like I’m missing living in an apartment.

 

There is little peace inside of me these days. An insistent feeling that I didn’t fight so hard to live for a life like this; a mind that not that long ago – only a few years – was quite active and pleased with the constant challenges, even through a fog of constantly being drunk. Hell, maybe that’s what made it fun; trying to keep the gears turning and coming out with new things to entertain myself and others when the oil was so thinned with cheap whiskey… Alas, I sure as hell can’t go back to the three liter plus a week habit that I had – at least not until I’m done with all this and *really* want to write down the story of this life with no holds barred and the brutal honesty that is so under-appreciated and misunderstood by so many these days.

Fucking Facebook & Twitter. Fucking texting. Fucking lazy people (myself certainly included) that don’t bother to use creativity to make the twist of the blade more pleasurable to the people who feel it, instead accenting every idiotic thing they say with emoticons or the ‘lol’ and it’s cousins that have poisoned the English language. Fucking swearing when it’s not absolutely fucking necessary.

I feel that there should be a test before people are allowed to use social networks, and everything else mentioned above. That is the only thing that might save us; save people like me from being so disgusted with what passes as language that they go off on rants like this when I was thinking of something else entirely… jeezus.

Let’s get back to where I was, yes?

I need to break out of this haze. I need to start creating again, getting my mind back from its little decay vacation. Amazing what almost a couple years in a hospital & hospice can do to a person. It doesn’t matter what you go in there with, if you are strong enough to get out, it seems like that’s where the fight really begins…

the fight to remain human. The fight to bring back the person you were when you went in. It’s lost somewhere if you aren’t meticulously careful, watchful, aware. Lost with having every tiny freedom, every small responsibility taken from you, making you feel over and over and over like they don’t believe that you can take care of yourself.

Lost in the way the time fucked with your head, lost with saying goodbye to each friend you made that didn’t make it. For every candle lit by a book that has a few memories and farewells in it, for every room or bed that is empty when you wake the next day.

I am not who I was.

I’m angry. I’m tired. I’m bored as hell – but now I see it, now I know it, & now I am aware of what I need to do.

 

I just need to figure out where to start again.

a new chapter

Sunday, August 05, 2012

Outside my window, three floors down, the rattle of hundreds of aluminum cans and clink of glass bottles begins, and will probably go on most of the day if past experience dictates today as well. It’s that time of the month when the little Asian lady sorts, and spills, and sorts her spoils from her work a couple buildings over.

Ruby is looking at my fingers, head cocking from one side to the other as she lays with me on the loveseat and tries to figure out if this is a game or not. It’s almost overwhelmingly adorable. She decides either that it isn’t, or that she’s just too comfortable to move the few inches to my fingers to bite them with her barracuda puppy teeth, and resigns simply to rest her paw at the joint of my right wrist and hand.

I’m falling more and more in love with her every day, and she, I believe, with me. It took us both a bit to get here, to this point, and admittedly at first I was concerned. When we first met and for a few weeks that followed, I did love her – but it was a guarded love, incomplete, with walls built by the past preventing me from giving all of my heart to her. Perhaps she felt the same, but with much less of a past.

Is complete love something learned?

I wonder what it’s like for domestic animals, the majority of them taken away from their mothers, as I was taken from mine. Do they feel the same loss? Distrust? Emptiness? I anthropomorphize, but in a way it brings me closer to them, regardless of what they might think or feel. I invent what I need to.

I invent because I need to. Adoptees are self-invented as a necessity. There is an absence, a void at the very beginning of our lives. The first few pages of our existence is violently gone; instead of being aborted ourselves, our entire family was. The entire world is ripped away, everything we know, trust, find safety in – her heartbeat, smell, voice… The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves, and it can’t, and it shouldn’t – because something *is* missing.

It depends on the child how we use this; having no one to dictate who we are or who we become, we can use it to destroy our lives (and in many cases, the lives of others) – or create them. We make it up as we go along. I decide who I need to be, with no lines to tell me where the color should or shouldn’t be. I trace the space of what might have been in an imagined Braille like welts raised on the flesh. I rewrite the emptiness. I add color or take it away. I become who I need to be for a time then become someone else. Cats and their nine lives ain’t got nothin’ on me – I’ve lived that many and more, taking the pieces and people I like from each one and storing them in my heart as I continue, hopefully forward. One piece is simply a coffee mug that I keep from a girlfriend I had ten years ago. On it is a blue wolf with a golden crescent moon, but inside it is full of beautiful and tragic memories.

I keep the bones of past lives in small boxes, the ashes of who I was, Once Upon A Time…

There is no end to the change, and I would not have it any other way. Sometimes I leave who I was behind willingly so that I can become who I need to be. Other times it is not so much my choice – at all. I am, however, one resilient bastard if ever there was one – and this is one of the things I truly love about myself. It’s all just a game, and I don’t play to win – I play to keep playing. To keep changing, to continue, to always become yet prevent arriving as long as I can. Take off on new roads, jump off of higher cliffs… re-create and find new passions.

There are times I forget that this is what I need, and when that happens I can rely on my heart to speak up – I become inharmonious, antagonistic, uneasy, what I think I should be happy with conflicting with what I require. When I finally remember to hear what my heart is trying to beat into me, inevitably it is due to a passionless existence. I need to create. I need to perform. I need to delight, bring wonder, bring smiles to others’ faces and hearts in order to fill my own.

It is not enough for me to stand by and read the lines already written.

I am the author of my life, I create and re-create as needed, and now,

this is where the story begins.

Again.

 

 

Gifts of Home & Living

It’s been a long time since I’ve been here. As always, if it’s been long, it’s been too long. Too many things felt, thought, and unsaid to start from where it ended.

I never know why I stop writing – or for that matter, what lets me start again.

Perhaps it’s knowing what I wrote in the past, and judging myself by that, always the fear, the shame, of the possibility of it not coming like it once did.

Perhaps the need grows so strong to write that I simply can’t; there is too much to say, there is too much I need to let pass through my mind, to my fingers, to this page and release – like the pressure holding a plug against a drain so that everything is kept inside.

Perhaps I want it to be too perfect

or perhaps all I really need to do is slide the plug just a bit away from the drain, so the pressure slowly relaxes, so I don’t need to worry, to care anymore – just write…

So anyway, now that about 98% of you have stopped reading, I continue. To hell with how it comes out.

I will never stop being thoroughly amazed at how The Universe, Source, The Great Shoobeedoobee, or whatever it’s called always hears, and always answers. There *must* be some magick in this boy somewhere. There must be… something. Belief, knowing, trust – but inevitably everything always works out, and for the better. Lately I’ve been feeling a need to get back to work, to perform again, and as my strength grows, so does it.

Then along comes Ruby, a new puppy into my life after the many years it took to get over Bean, and months searching rescues for a new companion to love, to offer a home to. I wasn’t looking for a puppy, but a puppy I found – exactly one month ago today. I couldn’t be happier wither, but as puppies do, she explores the world with her mouth – and living in this neighborhood, with the crackheads and drunks, with the syringes, human feces, and everything else on the sidewalks, I live in fear every time we go for a walk. She picks up almost everything save for the feces, so the stress involved is ridiculous when taking her for what should be a relaxing walk around the place I live, always fearful that if I take my eyes off of her for a fraction of a second she’ll end up with something else horrible in her mouth. She seems magnetic in a way – doesn’t slow down, hardly lowers her head, and before I know it she’s chewing on something. I needed to get out of this neighborhood, for her and me both. Hell, just a couple weeks ago as I was walking quickly by some stupid crack whore, the CW came after her and actually picked Ruby up – then dropped her.

We *needed* to get out of here… but I didn’t see any way. All I could do was ask the worker for the organization who got me this apartment and pays most of the rent if there was another neighborhood I could live in – but then I would have to somehow come up with a new deposit on the place as well, and money is already incredibly tight…

Enter The Universe.

This past Tuesday – two days ago – I decided to go to CellSpace with Ruby and say hi to Mike & everyone else as they rehearsed. After a short while there, an incredibly warm welcome from Mike and a few hugs to the scant Vau de Vire crew that was practicing, I was on my way out the door just as Victoria was walking in – or hobbling in, as she’s on crutches. Vic & I have been trying to get a performance together for months, but due to our schedules it wasn’t really working out – that, and it’s not really a good idea to practice throwing knives in the apartment…

Anyway, Victoria tells me that she has a room opening up in her house – her house, with a huge back yard for Ruby and tons of space to rehearse together, for only about $150-$175 more than I’m paying here, and amazing people who live there.

I had to think about it – $150 is a hell of a lot of money for me these days, and if it wasn’t for a very kind and generous person that has been making certain that both Ruby & I are taken care of, not only would I be starving, but – having Ruby in my life simply wouldn’t have been possible.

I gave my 30 day notice here yesterday, and move in on the 1^st of September to a beautiful house, with a huge yard, a wonderfully creative atmosphere, and a neighborhood that isn’t saturated with crackheads and drunks.

Money will be tight as hell for a while, but it would be truly foolish not to accept this gift, so needed and so wanted, simply because of a little money.

Hells, yes.

Life is good.