Where It Changes

It Is Time.
For too long I’ve been away for too long we’ve been separated too long apart from each other and in losing them forgetting them I have forgotten myself and in a life that never felt real it is in them that I existed in them that I found myself it is in them that I can both escape and find myself believe in myself belong to myself. In the words I write I can weave myself out of what was, what might have been, and what is because even today even tomorrow I’ll need to try to unlearn goodbye as the first lesson I was ever taught.

It is time.
The world and our lives are made of stories; the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we dream, the stories we live every day. In not having someone to tell them I have to write them down, as if I don’t they shatter and the words left over eventually fill my head as if it were full of buzzing and bees and I can’t hear can’t concentrate can’t find the peace I knew when I did write and the noise inside my head was quieted as if the bees turned into words and with each one written the buzzing and the confusion decreased and I would wake each day knowing who I was and within the knowing I found my strength, and I knew that nothing could stop me.

It is time to come back.
To start writing again, as the words are my therapy, my solace, my serenity. Only in writing can I find myself again, and I have been lost for far too long. Even when I don’t know how to begin I need to find a way, and even if it’s only a few sentences I need to say something, even if what is said makes no sense. I need to find myself again. I need to write the stories, even if they are stories that should have been written long ago.
I need to remember that I am here, that I exist. I need to remember that in some way, I mattered.

It is time.
Time to clean out my head, to finally find the peace I once knew. I need to create the space to think new thoughts or think nothing if I choose.
At times I will bounce from first person, as writing in third person offers in a way a certain protection, as well as lets me use a different language – a different style, a freedom to play.

This is not where my story begins or ends, only where it changes.

Advertisement

closer

Some days it’s hard to go on. To keep fighting, keep working towards being healthy again. To get out of bed. To remember how strong I used to be, and to believe that I can get there again.
But I have to. I must keep fighting, even when I have no energy to. Even when it’s so hard to give a fuck. Especially then.

I firmly believe that there is a reason that I’m not dead yet, though by all rights I truly should be – and I’d like to believe that reason is to help people.
I have an advantage when it come to that, as few people alive have actually *been* through what I’ve been through, kept fighting, kept dreaming and made it through. I’ve been homeless, been a junkie, a meth-head, a drunk – and I’ve fought through 18 months in hospice to surprise everyone and walk out the door, instead of carted out in a bag, another secret in the night, the only thing left of me being my name in a book they kept by the door, so people could write their memories and say good-bye.

But I’m still here, and whatever the reason is, there is one – but again, I need help. The energy it takes is draining, and not being able to afford the herbs I need by myself weighs me down with stress and anxiety, but there is no way around it. I desperately need YOUR help to purchase the herbs I need – as well as the abdominal binders, compression leggings, nutritious food, books, and all the other little things that help me keep moving *forward*.

I can’t express how much your help has meant to me, how much it has *helped* me. Without it, I can’t honestly say that I would be alive right now, but without question I would be in much worse condition, likely wishing I weren’t alive. You have given me hope and strength to go on when i needed it.

And as much as I loathe it, I am forced to ask again – as I again need your help o get the herbs and other things that I desperately need fo my health and for the surgery I’m trying to get.

If you can, please – send whatever you can afford. The herbs are many and expensive, and I can’t do this without you. If you think that someone else will take care of it, I can assure you – they won’t. The past three times I’ve asked only a few people were kind enough to give – and I know how weary you must be of this, of me asking for help, but believe me – I would much rather not have to at all. Thankfully, your generosity gets me closer to being able to get back to work and not having to ask at all – and instead, being able to give.

So please, give whatever you can afford, as I go through the herbs quickly and always need more. The more you give, the more bottles I can get to carry me through.

My paypal address is casey@kseaflux.com – and yet again, thank you so much for anything you can do!

With love and immense gratitude,
~ Casey

All I Needed

I lay in bed and think of the things I need to get done. The night before as my bed called insistently to me I made the promises, knowing deep inside that I was lying to myself again but like a victim of abuse believing that this time, it would be different. All I need are the words and the pain will go away. This I know to be true.

There was a time, lifetimes ago, when the writing was all I needed. I would shut down my mind and the words came out, scraping the walls of my mind and heart and briefly taking with them the loneliness and frustration of a life that holds on to so many things left undone, like slowly pouring sand on a wet piece of paper until it rips through, crushing the peace and serenity gathered and piled and so fragile underneath. I search for the words again, calling them to me, trying to open up and let them in, let me out.

I started “writing” when I was 13, 14, 15 – somewhere around there. I was the weird kid. The page was my friend in the absence of any others. I wrote when I needed to. The page would listen, and understand in its silence.

I stopped the day I moved out of my motorhome and into the hospice. Though I had come to terms with my death and written about it many times, it was always death at a time of my choosing – and that day I chose to live. I wasn’t ready yet. I still had far to much to do, too many ways to help. So I fought, and in the fight I forgot the words.

Now, by brain gets cluttered with the constant need for help to buy the herbs – herbs that will heal me so eventually I won’t need to think about them anymore. I can come back to the page and know serenity again and, as I was lifetimes ago, I can be happy, I can be healthy, I can work, and I can help.

Weaving the Warrior

I’ve been away from the words for a while, but my mind has been far from idle. Now, it’s time again to start writing. It’s the only place I find solace, comfort, answers, as if I was sitting outside on an old wooden porch talking with an old man or woman who offered their wisdom, who made me think. It’s the old black man sitting in his rocking chair that I created as a child – someone to go to in my mind all the times I had no one else…

I’ve been thinking about what I want, what I have *always* wanted, and realizing now that, for the first time in a life that has been spent looking for something secure and solid yet at the same time being afraid of anything that was – I now have that. At least, I have the possibility and option to make what I want in this life finally happen – a creative business that knows no end to growth, that can make people feel better about themselves and empowers them, and through my past experiences, I have something unique to offer that no one else can – the strength I found inside of me from fighting for my dreams to fighting for my life – and that strength goes into every piece of jewelry I design. Through my business and the direction I see it going, I want to empower women. I’ve seen far too often women trying to make themselves as small and unnoticeable as possible, walking as quickly as they can with their arms wrapped around their chest and head hanging down, doing as much as they can to get into a fetal position while still moving forward.

I want them to remember the strength they have inside of them, to understand how powerful they truly are. I want them to celebrate their beauty, and hold their heads high.
I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.

I’ve taken a long look at my life, what it has been and what it could be, and a decision has been made.

I know where I’m going, and I’m going to call upon the same will, determination, and courage that I found when I was fighting like hell for my life in the hospice to make this into what I know it could be. What it WILL be.

It’s time to make my dreams into reality again.

 

Deciding to Live

It’s time for everything to change. Again.
I’ve become complacent, undisciplined – and I need to come back.

I’ve read countless books on motivation, habits, procrastination, visualizing, raising energy, and anything that I thought would help. Some were crap, many got me inspired – for a couple days. I could never follow through like I used to. Something inside of me had broken, and I didn’t have the constant challenge to survive to inspire me.

That is, as strange as it sounds, what I think I miss the most. The fear. The adversity. It’s what inspired me to act on the first day I walked down to Fisherman’s Wharf alone, in full statue dress & makeup. It’s what inspired me to create an online magazine when I didn’t even know the first things about creating a website.
But it wasn’t just the adversity that inspired me. It was the love. The love I had for what I was doing, and the love of walking through the fear and feeling like I did something that mattered on the other side.

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out what it was that made me jump into things that I had no idea how to do, and when I realized the answer a few days ago, it was so simple it was absurd.

The one difference, the only thing that will ever create a lasting change in my life, and let me take my jewelry business from more or less a hobby to what I want it to become, the only thing that is different from those things and this is:
I made a decision to do them.
That’s it.

I could read thousands of books, watch hundreds of Ted talks, listen to podcasts until my ears bleed, but that is little more than mental masturbation – letting me feel like I’m doing something of value when nothing could be further from the truth. It’s just very clever procrastination.

Because I am afraid, and for some reason, I’m now letting that get in the way of doing what needs to be done. But that’s another something to look at and figure out another time.

I know that as much as I love making jewelry, there will be many times when I don’t. When I can’t find the right words for the “About” page, when I can’t think of what to write for a post on my site blog, and when I’m just not comfortable doing what needs to get done in order for this to grow. Without a solid, unwavering decision to do what it takes, I’ll never get to where I want. Never be who I want to be. Who I AM.

So it’s time for everything to change. Now.
It won’t be easy, not at first. I know that, and I’m expecting it – but eventually, as long as I show up and do the work, it will get easier. I just need to show up, and do the things that I need to, regardless of how uncomfortable I am with it or how afraid. I’ve been here before, and I know that, as long as I do what I need to, day after day, it WILL get easier.

And another thing I know: When I show up, so does the Universe – and doors that I’ve never even imagined will start opening to me.
They always have.

If you read this, please feel free to comment with what you think – and especially, call me out if you ever see me flagging.

Because there aren’t any excuses anymore. I’ll deal with the physical pain when it comes, and I’ll work through the fatigue. The time of floating is past, and it’s time to fly again.

I’ve made my decision.

 

Dying tends to take a lot out of you, I guess.

Early morning, finally a night that ended before the sky started to glow with the morning light. It almost wasn’t by choice – after a week of no more than three hours of sleep a couple times a day, the weariness of my body and mind revolted and actually took over my brain, making me think that 8pm was a fine time to go to sleep for the night. Under the condition that it let me wake up at 4am, we came to a compromise.

It was nice to shut my mind down, I’ll admit. to stop thinking about why I love to make jewelry so much, what my goals are, who my ideal customer is, mu core values and my “why” – all things that I need to consider, as apparently “because I like it” isn’t enough.
Of course, it is a reason, but it’s a safe one, one that doesn’t make you dig deeper inside of yourself for all the smaller reasons that make me “like it” – and without those, without digging down to the core of why I do what I do, and why I am growing more towards a particular style, it would be like Picasso answering a question of why he painted his wacky faces with something like “Well, I thought it looked cool”.

But it’s been a long time since I’ve truly questioned things like that, the strange thoughts swimming around inside of me, and why I am who I am. It’s like the time in the hospice took something away. As if the years after it have been far too placid, and all I needed to do was float along, slowly disappearing with only the memories of who I was left to fade in the minds of others as my own existence, my heart and mind, and my dreams – were slowly consumed by the grey fog of an unchallenged, dispassionate life.

It would have been easy to succumb to if I hadn’t tasted the beauty in the chaos of my life before the hospice, but now I find myself as a bird born into the wild might after it was caught, clipped and caged – every day looking out to the sky, its beautiful colors fading as it longed to again stretch its wings…

This is all over the place, this writing – but it’s necessary. With the words I’ll remember who I was, remember the chaos and passion that is still inside of me but muzzled by my own complacency.

It’s time to create my self again. To give birth to a dancing star.

To ask why, and remember the warrior inside of me.

out from underneath

It’s all in my mind.
I keep telling myself that, doing my best to rip it away, rip it out and discard it like I did most of the memories of my childhood, but it’s tricky. I tend to hold onto things.

I can almost trace it back to the exact time it started, this heart-hoarding. 1986. A call, telling me i would be dead within a year, or maybe a few months longer in excruciating pain if i wasn’t lucky. 19 years old, and all of the sudden all the time I thought I had wasn’t there anymore. I needed to remember it all. I needed a reason to die smiling.

Everyone else was doing what they should. I read the papers, heard about the vigils, and everyone else was behaving as expected, taking their last breaths in a timely manner.

A year passed, then two, then three, and every day for over a decade I would wake up and wonder if that was the day I finally got sick.

every single fucking day, when my mind was left to wander for even a few minutes, I remembered – I couldn’t forget – that every second mattered, and shouldn’t be forgotten.

It’s hard to break a habit like that, but I need to. I need to crawl out from underneath this shadow that has kept me from believing in any kind of future for myself.
Things need to change. I need to change.

It’s all in my mind.

pain and beauty

It happens when we get older, and know things that might have been better left unknown. We’ve had far too much time to build walls, now

and I miss the pain and beauty of love.

Flood Warning

It has been a long time.

The story resumes.

My story, searching endlessly for… for something. Peace of mind, success, purpose, recognition, validation – do we ever know exactly what it is? What would happen if we just stopped searching? If we just decided to be happy? Would our passion for life fade, or would it be made more solid?

Over these next few days this blog might not make much sense. There is a purge needed, a cleansing. I can’t move forward without letting go of the past, and, for me at least, the only way to do that is through writing – spelling it out, setting the thoughts down on paper or a screen is the only way to get them out of my head and move on.

For years I’ve noticed my thoughts – and as a result, my rare writing, has been growing increasingly unclear, like trying to look out at a familiar landscape through a train’s foggy window. I know it’s there, but I can’t see it clearly enough to follow – and the less I write, the thicker the fog gets, the less I see, the less I am clear enough to write the thoughts away.

I need to wipe the words out of my mind. I need to write, regardless of what comes out – and hopefully soon. Something might make a bit of sense again.

Writing has always been my best therapy, the only way that I’ve been able to take things down to their true meaning, find the real answers for what I need to do to move forward – and writing has always brought its own magick into my life, in one way or another.

Welcome to the purge. Should be interesting, if not fun – and if I do it right, if I’m able to rip away enough layers to get back to the way I *used* to write – it will probably piss a few people off.
And considering how completely fucking whiny the world has become due to so many people unable to take responsibility for their *own* issues, it’s almost guaranteed I’ll “offend” quite a few, as well.

I don’t give a fuck. If you’re offended, don’t read it – but don’t come moaning to me.

Dancing Backwards

11.26.98

I met a woman tonight
whose name should be bliss
could be love
will be pain
And I think she wants this dance

This girl
who appeared out of nowhere
that I believed in anymore
this girl
who sees so far past my eyes that
she makes me feel again
this girl
who makes all of
this
seem so much more than it ever did it before
this girl
who isn’t afraid to know me
to dig around inside of me looking for the pieces
left alone for so long
they had been forgotten
this girl
who tells me “I wished for you.”
not realizing how many times I have done the same
this Woman
who so completely consumes me
in such exquisite pain
who appeared out of nowhere that I believed in
anymore

who opened her arms to me
and gave me back my wings
who smiled
and reminded me how brightly I could shine
who kissed me
and lit the fuse to what we both know cannot last.

This woman, Katrina, who I must go see now
Because I know, as short as it will be
I know, with all the pain that it will bring
I know
that I want

this dance.

Because I need to keep believing

Yesterday
I saw a building I hadn’t seen before, though I had walked by it at least a few times a month. I stood on the corner for three lights, while we caught up on lost time.
I heard five people’s voices rise in pitch as they walked by me, saying “puppy!” I looked down at Ruby and thanked her.
I bought a man some food so he could eat, using money a friend loaned me so I could.
And I looked into the eyes of everyone I could, hoping to feel a new friend, or love. Hoping my soul might see her and kind of say “Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
And it would feel like two people finally meeting each other
after a lifetime of not meeting each other.

digging my way out

I try to step away from the constant gnawing distraction, the thoughts that tell me what I should be doing instead of being here, now, writing – but they are insistent, demanding. 

“You need to be working. You’ve saturated the circle of friends, they’ve bought what they wanted, and if you don’t figure out how to let the world know it will all end. You’re broke, hungry, borrowing money from friends just to survive. Your business is falling apart, failing. The fight is going out of you. YOU are failing…”

But I need to be here. This is my medicine, my solace. This is where I come to make sense of the things I need to – to make sense of me. Somewhere long the line I’ve lost who I was and I need to find that person again – that person who shined…

But that’s not correct, is it? I haven’t lost that person anymore than when you bury a body in the ground you’ve lost the body. I’m still here, buried alive, and I need to dig myself out. 

I saw someone I’ve known for a while at a party this last Sunday. I felt a lightness, a peace to her that hadn’t been there before, and I commented on it. Her father had died the month before, but he had been sick, hanging on, a shell of who he had been for the six years prior. When he passed on, she was released from his pain as well. For the first time since I’ve known her, I saw her.

I saw the lesson for me in that. There is something that I am letting corrupt who I am, and I need to find it. Bring it out, name it, and let this weight go. Shake off the dirt.

The other day I happened upon things people had said about me in the past – testimonials I had asked for to liven up a resume or project, and some things written simply because they had a desire to express their love to me. In reading them, I cried for the person I had forgotten – and vowed to bring him back:

“I keep a little picture of you I stole from the interwebs in a frame, and recently she asked about it. 
I said, “this is the man who taught me how important it is to write, and use beautiful words, even for ugly things. He is one of the most amazing, most special people in the world, so that’s why I gave you his name.”
“kSea walks the walk, talks the talk, and is more amazing in ten
seconds than most people are in a lifetime.”
“kSea is what happens when you decide to live your dreams. His unstoppable passion to live is breathtaking.”

For years I’ve been looking at the shape of my life from before I went into hospice. Even before I created the magazine. (culturefluxmagazine.com) I remember the adventure, living in a van & on couches yet still, nearly every day, going to perform on The Wharf. I remember working with The Dresden Dolls & being a mentor & friend to so many beautiful young artists & performers who were just starting out; living on the road, going wherever I was needed then moving on – and I remember how pure my happiness was, how much joy I always felt.

I’ve made the mistake of thinking that my happiness depended on getting back on the road, that it was the mirage outside of me that created the pureness and the shine inside. We all seem to fool ourselves of that – that we need something besides ourselves, whether it be a great job, a house with a fenced yard, a fancy car – or in my case, the adventure of not knowing what would happen, where I would be from day to day. I longed to somehow recreate those times. Then I would be happy again, then I would be me again…

But happiness does not exist in the illusions outside of us – or at least, it’s not found there. The joy we feel or have felt only can come from inside, and if we depend on the world outside of us for it we are sure to forever be disappointed. All over the world there are people who exist on nearly nothing but the barest of essentials, and the honesty in their smiles, the depth of their joy, is something that could never come from possessions or circumstance.

It is now time to look deep into the mirror, scrape the mud mask off of my face, and see the truth – the truth in me. Turn up the lights, look down at the person on the operating table and see that it is myself – and that writing is my scalpel, my medicine, and my bandages.

I’ve had a taste of how beautiful life can be. That is what kept me alive in hospice, and that is what I will again use to heal my soul.

I’ve had a taste, and I want more.

(And now back to work. 😉 ) By the way, if anyone is looking for some beautiful & unique jewelry, come on by my web-store – and please, spread the word! http://chainstore.kseaflux.com

 

therapy

I begin again, again not knowing what the words will say but hoping they find their own path. A trail that might at least lead to a cleansing, if not peace.

I made the mistake of thinking that writing was an option for me, that I could put it off for other things that I misguidedly deemed more important.
I was wrong. They don’t go away, won’t leave me when left to stay in my head. The seethe, grow, scrape at the walls of my psyche, stripping it away piece by piece until I’m fragile and afraid, a terrified child again. They need to be let out, turned into ink and drained onto a page where they can no longer do harm to me. This is what I know now. I don’t have the luxury of choice in this. Not this. I can live with that. I have to.

They’re all I have that I trust will never go away – as long as I don’t leave them again.