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.

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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

 

 

 

again, please.

Remember when *this* happened?

Kind of REALLY wanting to do it again.

http://youtu.be/as7SB2qciPA 

Fixing Holes/A Reason to Continue

I haven’t done this for a while.

This thing where I write – you know, just write, write what I think, what I feel – or not think, just write like I could back when everything I though was formed in a way as if it was already written, where I noticed so much more, where I felt so much more alive because of that and I put things down in my head in beautiful prose and all I needed to do was copy the pages that had already been written in my heart… all I had do do was shit down and rest the fingers on these little square things that make the letters and then the letters when put together well became words and when those were put together well it made the beauty I saw or the pain or the frustration or the joy or the love come out and it would just be here because it needed to be because when it was when it worked then I felt so much more alive so much more like me and it made sense when it made sense I was so much more in love with you and felt so much less alone.

It was there, simple, it was honest and it was true and at times it was good at others, scathing, but I really didn’t give a fuck what the words ended up sounding like because it was honest and if for one reason or another it was one of those times where I hated everyone then fine because there were words behind it that didn’t somewhere, many times there were the words that were written through the eyes I prefer to see through, and it was just me, just like you, when sometimes the pain was there and it was as real as everything else… but there was so much back then. So much beauty, pain, frustration, confusion; So much love for every fucking second. I was alive and I knew the world was mine and all I needed to do was figure out how to get it, how to let it know…

Everything was magical, back then.

But now, now. I don’t know anymore. Every single day is a fight, every smile forced and false. Somewhere along the way I was broken, somewhere along the way I made far too many mistakes, or just one, but at the time it seemed right. At the time it seemed like what I was supposed to do, so I did it and in doing so, lost myself. I created something that I thought was going to be beautiful, that I thought would be worth it, but all it is doing is ripping me apart piece by piece and I don’t know how many pieces I have left to give.

I need to dig down, find the answers. It’s not you I hate, it’s not me. It’s not the magazine, but what I have become as a result. It’s how fucking alone I feel in trying to make it happen every fucking day and trying to ignore the feeling that none of you really give a fuck about the magazine, about me, because I can’t find the line between them anymore, but that’s not it. It’s how fucking alone I feel, and it’s not your fault because I’ve always felt this way so there must, there must be something wrong with me, because I think I’m doing things right, but nothing ever works out…

and fuck, this isn’t want I want to write at all… but it is, maybe, because that’s what came, but these days for some reason I’m worried about what you’ll think which is the most fucking absurd thing possible because… because I at least want to pretend you give a fuck, and the last thing I want to do is sound like some whiny woe-is-me asshole but … but that’s how I’m feeling… but no, NO!, I’m supposed to be fucking strong, I’m supposed to be resilient, I’m supposed to keep on fucking going because people aren’t supposed to show weakness, not like this, not like this not whiny and self pitying because that’s childish bullshit but gods I feel like a child and I’m fucking scared and I fight back tears of frustration every single day these days because I need to get things done, as futile as it all seems I need to get things done but I’m fucking terrified and I don’t know why the magazine isn’t working the way I want it to and I don’t know why you never ask me to hang out with you and I don’t know why I feel this way when so many of you say you love me and I really don’t want to read any bullshit “it’s going to be okay” comments because what I want you to do is ask me out for a cup of coffee just a fucking cup of coffee where we can talk just you and me and be real and express our fears and be human and honest and maybe you’ll let me know you’re scared too or jesusfuckingchrist not even that just say “hey let’s do something, y’know, hang out” but that never happens and so it must be me something wrong with me, something wrong with me? Still? And I don’t know why half my life ago I fucked that guy or maybe that guy then got that call that changed everything (okay, just wait, just wait and it will all be over) but I’m still alive when so many others have died and there’s a reason somewhere there’s a reason that I need to get way down inside but I’m frightened but even though I’m frightened I am fucking strong but I don’t know how strong I can be I  don’t know how much I have left to give and I’m full of nothing but frustratiion and I want to stop looking at the full bottle of morphine knowing that’s all and I want to believe that I’m not that far gone but sometimes, sometimes… and I think the magazine is good but I don’t know if it’s worth it but I want to keep trying and I want to make it grow and I want to change the world because I’m not dead and I DON’T KNOW WHY and I can I can and I don’t want to stop making the magazine, I don’t want to stop creating my life, I don’t want to… ,

I just want to enjoy it again, and feel like it matters.

And then this came in my email literally just before the end of the last “paragraph”, before the last line above, wne I already knew what was going to come out of this fucked up head…

It fucking blew me away, as the Universe usually does at times like this – but seldom so directly.

Hi… I’m sure this seems kind of weird because you don’t know me
(well we’re facebook friends, does that count? haha), so I’ll
introduce myself a bit. My name is ***** **** (name removed by request) and I’m a circus artist
and dancer. I’m mexican but soon moving to Buenos Aires to train in
order to enter a circus school, after years of struggling with what I
wanted to do with my life. I first fell in love with circus at about
14, after discovering the Cirque du Soleil. Then, there were no circus
schools, classes, or teachers in my city, so I applied to Montreal
school. I was rejected (which few people actually knows), and decided
to forget about that dream. For the next 5 years, I did many kinds of
dance (but mostly ballet), until I lost my ballet teacher, and with
nothing to do, decided to enter a silks class (now there are some
circus classes here). And then contortion. And acrobatics. And
handstanding. And aerial hoop.
I was amazed. I found what I thought I had lost, I felt alive, and I
knew this is what I wanted to do, because it makes me feel happy and
alive as nothing else in the world.
Yet, I’m 21 years old, and though I’m flexible and more or less
strong, this is a really late age to start. I have lots of things
against.  I actually started Graphic Design, but dropped out after one
semester. Then I started Fashion Design, which is cool but not what I
really love. Then, a month and a half ago, we weren’t able anymore to
pay for the place where we trained, and became “homeless”. And then I
realized I was fooling myself by trying to “play safe”.  During those
days my best friends were out or unreachable so I was really face to
face with myself. And then I decided to go for what I really want.
Buenos Aires was my choice because it’s a city with lots of circus
opportunities, great schools and definitely more affordable than San
Francisco, Montreal or Europe. I’m lucky to have my mother’s support
(my father thinks I’m wasting my time),  and I was able to get a
ticket to Buenos Aires, where I can stay with a cousin. I’m training
all year to be ready for the school I want’s audition in 2011.
Truth to be told, I’m terrified. I’m really afraid of not making it,
of not being strong enough, of failing, of… wasting my time. But I
feel deep inside there’s no really another option.  Everything else
would be fake.

I’ve been following you and Culture Flux for some time now, and I’ve
been reading your facebook messages. I know your going through hard
times, and though I can’t do much, I wanted to tell you what you’re
doing is inspiring and definitely worth it.  I admire you for going
for your dreams and fighting, standing even in tough conditions. I
wanted to tell you that you’re not alone.  I guess this sounds naive,
due to my age and life, but we’re really in this together. Us and
others. These aren’t good times for dreamers but that’s what we are
and I think it’s worth a try to go for our dreams. I send you an
illustration I made for you, to show you in some way my support to you
and your project. I hope it helps in some way. I’d be glad to really
send it to you, if you agree.
Sincerely,

***** ****’

>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<

Morning now, still amazed at what she sent to me at just the perfect time. Always amazed when things like this happen… and christ my hands are cold but still I don’t think I’m done here, not yet, because as perfect as this is there is still an emptiness inside – though the will to go on, at least, is much stronger.

I don’t know how to fix it, where to start. I look back trying to find answers, clues as to who I was when I was who I wanted to be and I wonder if I ever have been that person. I know I’ve been close. Close.

One thing I do know now, without question, is that I need to continue with CultureFlux. I need to continue because one person cares, because one person is inspired, and I can’t let her down – for a million reasons, and because of what she has given me.  We give our strength to each other, our fears, and through that they are diluted. Through that we can walk a bit taller, feel a bit better, face the world even if we are terrified of it, and maybe even smile because we know how strong we are deep down inside. We just need to be reminded from time to time…

and not feel so fucking alone.

I need help with CultureFlux though. I don’t know what… but I need people. Good people. People I can tolerate. People who have beautiful dreams and believe in this one. I want meetings on how to improve it, market it, figure out ways to bring it to print, have it make money. I want a fucking office, because I’m sick to death of the cafe. There’s a great place called ActivSpace right across from where I park my Motorhome where they have private office spaces for only $400/mo., and I want one of those. They’re cheap, and have a window. I’ve already talked to the manager, move-in would be rent + $500.

All I know is that after almost two years of doing it almost entirely alone, I don’t want to – can’t – anymore, and I need to keep it going.

Maria has made me realize that this dream has come true, but I want to reach even more people so it needs to grow and I need, perhaps, you. I sure as fuck need someone.