Dream weeds

I'm going to meet a man I first met in my dream.
His name (in the dream) was Wheade Martin. Not totally sure that was the last name, but definitely sure it was the first.

Wheade.
Wheede.
Wheed.
Spelt different ways.
He was a surfer.

The man I'm about to meet is a 'pot activist'.
I think he's been thinking about me too hard.

Last night I went for coffee with friends in a cafe in Vienna while on tour. It was right across the street from the cool cafe, written up in the NY Times travel section. Our cafe was almost empty.
Thank you NY Times.

It's November 12, 2011

This missive is a first step back toward the space from which I'd previously written. I'm not in there yet (please forgive me), but at least I've taken the keys out of my pocket, knocked on the door and heard my inquiry echo inside.

Almost 2 years since I last wrote.

I've been becoming. Again.
Such a long trip.
Worth it?
Well there wasn't much choice in the matter. Grow or die. Ouch.

Now I can dream of a Future again. It's not just about Survival anymore.
(I smile)

Now Possibility is something I can contemplate again, a material to work with, an old, familiar modus operandi. What to do? Who to be?

Reading back over this word journey, I see my progression and most heartening, I see myself writing through the pain. What I don't feel is the mental emotional turmoil and excruciating physicality that was my existence 24/7/365 x 5. Oh, I'm so happy for that.

5 years since the crash. 5 years since that breath inhaled and held, waiting for safety to assert itself again before exhaling. Waiting for assurance that the spinning was done. Not unlocking the body until the coast was clear.

It never is.

We have to release despite the normal state of things. Which is turmoil. Perhaps the trick is in finding a point of view where the ever present turmoil just isn't front and centre. Where, while we're aware of it for us and for others, it doesn't block our view of The Good.

No.
Sometimes, one is just stopped dead. Blinded.
No matter how strong the will. Sometimes, things are just too terrible, too painful, too broken to stand up straight.

And then.

Well, acceptance.
That's what it is.


It's 5 years since the crash. 5 years of complete uncertainty as to what would return of my former self. As to what would reconfigure into new selves that would supplant and replace each other, replant and supplace, on their own private timetable, over the months. Years.

A willingness to see what wants to appear.
Who.

Who I am has become more stable. Not in terms of neurotic or not, but in terms of constellation of Self. Now, I notice how different I have become over the months, rather than over the weeks. The changes are less dramatic and less rapid.

But I'm still plastic.

I think we all are. And I hope that none of you are ever occasioned to realize this in such an, well, impactful way.

I've been tempered. My metal crushed and tested.
Hmm.
A passing grade. Grow or die.

Reconfiguring.
Growing.

Spin my magic Life.
Hold me close and breathe hope into my ear.
Pick me up and tell me, what's the shape of my future dreams.
Spin magic into my Life.

packing

I've packed and unpacked over 15 times in the past 18 months.

Throughout this time I've been pondering what, where we lay our heads, gives us when it comes to creating Self. Persona. What does my apartment, yurt, megahouse, do for my confidence, my ability to achieve, my view of the future? How does not having one inform me?

I'm now in an apartment of my own. No one here but this chicken. No one else's stuffed animals and art supplies. Or concert posters, ad infinitum.

Just me and my fresh detritus.

How lovely.

And how does this make me feel different than when I'm out wandering in the world? What shape does this homeallmyown take in my belly when I strut down the street? How does it flavour my step?

I feel me. I feel grounded. I know more who I am somehow. It's ephemeral this value-added component. Ephemeral but vital.

I know there are others who wander the plains with just their sandals tied to the back of their bicycle and they're fine. They know themselves to be complete and unchanging. But me, I'm a sponge and I'm a nester. It's part of my creative repertoire. To create myself in environment and to soak that mileaux back into myself. To see 'me' in physical space.

There. Look. That chesterfield. That's me. That's my personality. Light, yellowed-turquoise and bamboo. Clean lines with a hint of pattern. Here, this mirror, plain and square and solid, giving you back a straight ahead reflection: that's what I do. No frills. Just truth.

This teapot. The lines all working together to support the flow of tea in the most artful way possible. Form following function joyfully, beautifully. Kinesthetically delightful to hold, to pour, to look at.

I have to think deeply into me to understand how 'home' makes me. Or to consider what not having my own 'home' does to my sense of 'me',my 'self' and 'I'.

All these quotes because now I know that who we think our selves to be, this solid thing we think we are: it's transient. It's plastic. Dependent on context. Relative to the space those around us grant us. We are watery, taking the shape of the situational vessel we find ourselves in.

And to resist this is to try to freeze time.

All you're left with is a cold breeze.

p.s. last night I had a dream that I was on the run. At first I thought I'd bring nothing. And then decided on my knapsack full of lightweight t-shirts.

Last night there was a fire in my old neighbourhood. An apartment building was evacuated.

Perhaps home is where we've invested ourselves over time. And even when away, even when we've moved on, our old neighbourhood remembers us and tells us who we are. And somehow, what we invested in it, still lives there.

coming up with air in my lungs

I'm breaking the surface.

Finally.

I've missed you. Missed our communion. Missed your witnessing. Of the co-incidences. The magicality that happens. The hope and resurrection that can only be identified in hindsight.

I'm wedging the nails from out my palms, wrapping tighter the adult, criminal swaddling, wriggling my toes and trying to figure how to get down.

Will I break my ankles if I jump? And what's a small fracture after all I'm been through?! What's a sliced through, clean through, so the light illuminates interior flesh, cut, after the epic hell of losing one's closest sense of self.

Ah, look, no question mark. Definitely rhetorical.

I'm breaking the surface and my hope, belief, deduction, money back guarantee that the sun'll come out (tomorrow) is proved dependable. A foundation upon which I can jump and reach higher. Jump and see over the wall. Jump and with new won wings, take off to be vaulted out of a past which (the words come slowly now) a past which includes complete and utter dissolution of Self, a re-building, not-for profit and an acceptance so deep and out the back of me that there's some relief in not caring whether I make good or just have fun and amuse myself from now on.

What is a Life for. After Tragedy.

?

?

It is used differently, let me assure you. Just in case you happen to pass through that slit second in which everything changes.

It is Lived. Differently.

More...preciously?

Who am I to say. To quantify. My ability to quantify and to stand behind my judgements has been rendered. Rendered down to. Rendered down. To a potency that can only make short term statements about the present moment.

"It is now"

"I am here"

"We are"

So career, planning etc., life purpose, etc., ambition (ha ha) etc., are all nullified in the face of "I can breathe. Deeply. Now."

Is this better?

Well, I type more slowly.

I'm happy with less.

I hope for nothing.

And I'm in something that has an unknown future but a certain present.

And for now, this is enough.

Something's come back. Parade please. And a welcome mat.

Something of me, that I hadn't identified as "gone", has ... re-surfaced.

Coming up from below and at the same time making anew, the top texture of the foundation.

I've broken the surface.

And breathing has never felt like such an opportunity for celebration.

Yippee.

the end to winter

it's been a long winter, my friends.

met and unmet.

My heart's still intact.

My brain is rumbling again, fishing in it's back pocket for bits to complete pictures I've been holding back until I had the strength to hold them up. Over my head. Proud of myself for seeing these stories, lying in the gutters. And certain that that's not ego. At least not an improperly aligned ego. One not taking the heart of the world into consideration, not that kind of ego.

I surely know now.

I've been tested. Tempered.

I've re-found the sunshine, the invincible summer that lies so deeply, so profoundly constant, within me. It's been covered over with capital T Terror. I've waded down and down and down. Letting go of so much that accumulated in a second and then was woven into armour over the months, years of healing.

I can type.

I can think.

I can now and once again I can type as fast as I can think.

And finally, after a circuitous route home to myself, I'm here.

I'm more resilient than I realized.

But then, after all, like you, I'm human.

It's a New Day

Tomorrow I start a new job. A new job and the rest of my life. The second chapter. No, the second Volume. Part Deux. 

I'm scared.

I'm anxious.

I'm employed.

Nothing's wrong.

All is well and has ended well.

And now, this beginning.

With this writing I'm putting a line under things. A line in the sand. A line across the page and everything below it will be after and every thing above, just above, will be the healing time from the accident.

My whole life, entire life is now "before the accident" and "after the accident".  I hope that there will be a time that is "after 'after the accident'". Because I'm really tired of self management, of healing, of not being free to just be.

It may not be easy being green, but Kermit should try mild traumatic brain injury on for a spin.

Mild.

Traumatic.

Brain.

Injury.

I too had a car accident.

Self abortion?

Trying to be in with the cool kids.

But wait. I'm innocent. I was just sitting there being safe, looking both ways, accounting for unpredictables.

Then BAM

Well actually a more crunching sound, crumpling metal, but unrecognizable, because, well, that's the last thing I expected.

And it wasn't until after I woke up. After I'd stopped sliding toward the telephone pole. After I wondered where my seat back went that I realized, "Oh, I've been in an accident".

And here I was trying to write forward, about what's to come, about, at the least the here and now. Not about The Accident.

But I haven't put down a word about it here. My little catholic cubicle.

And perhaps I should. For me, not for you.  Although I'll endeavour to entertain.

The Accident.

I was hit by a car in the first hour of Saturday, November 4, 2006. Anybody see it?  He drove off after he ascertained that I was still alive.

I was at a red light, watching the cars coming from the left, making sure it was rock solid safe before I turned the corner.  I'd been directed by someone as I left work, to 'drive safely'. 

'Drive safely'

What inane instructions.

'Drive safely'

What a useless directive.

And empty talisman.

Drive safely.  

I did, goddamnit! For an hour and a half. 

It was when I was stopped that the damage was done.

Perhaps, 'stop safely' would have been more prophylactic.

Or, 'don't stop, no matter what'.  'Don't stop for a split second because THAT'S when really bad things happen'.

So, my brain was damaged.  And isn't quite back up to snuff. 

And I can feel it here, in my writing. It doesn't flow.

But at least my typing is better.

And so rather than frustrate myself, I'll end.

...or perhaps I can't seem to poetize the whole situation because I'm still 

because it's still

because it's too

because

to really write i have to feel

and to really feel 

what I feel about this whole escapade, depresses me and I've really been trying not to sink into things. 

I've really been flapping my feather bare wings, bucking up, pulling up my socks, looking up...

no wonder i'm so tired

The ground has been so desperately...and this is where it's destroyed, my capacity, the words just don't pop up like they use to

it's like what i want to say is in the other room

some other room

and I can't find the door, even though before, before the accident there were no walls.

So much has come back.

Typing, reading, speaking, joking. (I'm so tired of counting my blessings)

I even remember the first joke I made A.T.A, it was a triumph and the best thing in the world.  I think I knew at that moment that there was a possibility that I may become again.  A slim chance that I might be reunited with myself, whom i'd so carefully crafted. For so long.

What we are, it can be destroyed so quickly. What we are, what we think ourselves to be, it is so vulnerable, so fragile.  And what if what we are is snuffed out, and someone duller, slower, negative and in constant pain replaces us, you, me?

I won't even ask, 'how would I deal' because now I know. I am not a saint.

Because, when I sink down to the floor of myself, really be with what is, something really really devastating happened to me and it's only by tweaking the nerve, by putting my thumb in the blood pudding that can I write with any soul about it. 

And tomorrow, so much that I dreamed I wanted, begins. And I don't know if I'm up for it, after all these years, before the accident of being ready, now that it's here...

Sorry.

Excuse me, some questions.

I miss you so much.

My imagination hurts, aches, til I can't breathe it anymore.

How can you know love, recognize love, if you've never felt it before?

If you've never seen it, heard it?

If your parents were amateurs?

How can you know it, when it walks you around town until the wee hours?

How are you suppose to know to kiss something, someone so gentle, so unassuming, so hidden in their desire?

Is it my fault?

Will I be punished until I die, with a broken heart?

I miss you so much.

And to think that Praha seemed so far before.

Nothing is farther than death.

Nothing.

Not East Timor.

Not Burundi.

Or the Basque.

Nothing is so final as

"he did not survive the collision".

nothing.

I haven't finished grieving you.

It's been years.

I've wasted so many precious smiles.

So many sunny Sundays.

So many ice creams and tunnels.

And aimless walks.

I though there would be different signs,

like in the movies.

Music or a change in the lighting or something.

Something.

Something more...romantic, obvious.

Telling.

But it was just delight.

De-lightful.

Delightful like a smooth curl of your hair around my finger.

Delightful.

LIke chocolate ice cream after it melts enough not to hurt your temples.

The warmth of your hand under the table and the taste of maple syrup on your finger.

Delightful like skipping after the age of appropriateness.

And falling behind the others. Always. Getting lost in each other and the adventure, not noticing until we came upon them again.

I'm crying now.

And though it hurts, perhaps not so much.

Perhaps not so much that I think it will kill me 

(although then I would be closer to you)

Perhaps this is a sign that I'm healing.  That I'm far enough from the shore where we left you that I can't see you waving mournfully anymore.  Wishing we didn't have to leave you behind. 

In time.

Perhaps now, you've lifted off from that spot and fly, freely, where you will.  Is this why you can visit me in dreams, when I cry for you in the orange afternoons?

You always come.

(Will you come tonight?)

Is this why I can cry without dying for you?

Perhaps there's hope then that the memory could become just that;

Memory. 

A memory without the wrenching ache.  Something that only happens in my mind, not in my heart, so much anyways. Something that makes me smile.

I love you Petr.

So much.

I think I may never have loved anyone before.

Never like I love you.

Enough to let you be as you were, are, were.

So

What are the good things?

That I can love that much.

Number one.

Number two.

That a human like you existed.

Number 3,

that a human like you existed and I knew you.

Even if it was only for 23 days.

But I suppose I'll know you forever, 'til the end of your life.

And love you forever.

And when I die, promise me ice cream.

Warm chocolate ice cream.

the profound mundanity of Love

I'm In Love.

And the best part is farting without fear of rejecction and sleeping in a place, his arms, where Total Acceptance exists.
A first time for everything.

after a long bath

...spring is inevitable

bodies on the doorstep

It's been a while
and a difficult difficult passage

Most massive surges of emotion I've been able to withstand. Breathe. Drink water. Breathe some more. Fall to my knees. Breathe. Immitate Jesus on the cross, that forsaken bit. And yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of yada yada. And no that's not Hebrew, far s I knw.

But this one's been, well, the most crushing surge, mega surge, I've ever endured.
And even when finally coming clear of it and surviving the car accident, yup just to top it off, my Bosnian friend had the gall, and thank God! for her, to say, "well if that's the most difficult Autumn you've gone through, Life is pretty good".

And you know she's right.

Even after 2 months of what most sane people call 'depression', Ha! more the fool they.
But what I call a complete and utter dissolution of Self and a dis/re-manteling and then a hefty rear ender at highway speed and a headache that's lasted for, oh 60 days.
Even after all that, yup she's right.
After all she had to step over dead bodies in the doorway in order to get bread at the shop.

So in answer to your question, and Thank You So Much for Inquiring and for the Compliment
...away.

Inside.
Deep deep inside.
So deep inside that I didn't exist in this place.
After I'd finished Grieving for my Life.
Such Terror.
I think it's something that we all live with, but only feel if we're quiet and still long enough to sink down into the silt of our Selves.
Into the mud at the root of the Lotus.

And the way down is lined with Grief.
And on some days it feels the crying will never end. And the lungs burn and the chest aches and the throat is rough and the eyes red and swollen.
And this is Love.
This is the Look of True Love.

And no prayer, no god, no drug can relieve or diminish it.
And it's hard to believe we keep killing people every day, because this is what the ones left, the ones who loved them, are left to feel.

It's six months since Petr died and even today I woke up crying.

But if one keeps a finger to one's lips and keeps quiet longer, stiller longer, you will find yourself sinking right through the velvet mud at the bottom.

And it's only in the stillness and the quiet, that the sweetness can be tasted with the Heart.
In that place beyond Self.
Beyond Life.
Beyond Love even.
Where even dead bodies on the doorstep smile.

clear vision

I see now that I have absolutely nothing to lose.

I have become dangerous.

reversing the flow

So I've decided to change the direction of the flow of my Life. I don't quite know what this means, in totality. I must admit I've been following a string of UFO videos this morning; part interest but mostly procrastination. So bare with me.

Changing the flow; from outflow to inflow

Yesterday, my first day of experimentation.
I decided I needed more of an inflow of money.

I went for lunch.
As I approached the cash register I saw an old motorbiking friend of mine. I had a moment; pay for my lunch and then go talk to him, or visa versa. I really, in those seconds, considered the two scenarios and all their possible repercussions.

Talk first and then leave and forget to pay. Suffer the humiliation of the really nice cafe owners thinking I'd dined and dashed.

Pay first and then in my advancing middle age forget to talk with my friend.

Breathe.
And.
Act

I went and talked with my friend.
That's what felt the most fun. And the most fun usually turns out to be my best guide.

We had a lovely conversation, he, his co-worker and I.
Then came time to pay.
I was at the register first and realized I had no cash and that there was no other method of paying.
My friend said he'd pay. After all he had his lunch covered by his company and the prices at this particular restaurant were so low that even with the 3 of us his per diem was more than enough.
And besides that, it was his pleasure.

So $11. "Made" just by going with what seemed like the most fun.
And isn't reality how we decide to organize it, what we decide has meaning to a large extent.

That evening I met my friend to go to a play and for drinks.

We arrived at the theatre and before leaving, knowing I had no cash I grabbed the $100 bill that my father had given me for my birthday. At the theatre box office; I asked if they could break the bill. Nope. And so my friend steps forward and offers to pay for me. I'll get the drinks I suggest.

We adjourn to the bar after the show. Conversation. Drinks. And then the cheque. She throws down her credit card and I offer to get change for my $100. Nope. It's my birthday present, she says. How wonderfully sweet.

So $15 (play) + $10 (drinks)

As well as the regular work I did I "made" an additional $36 in a way.

An interesting way of looking at things.

this happened to me

I was reading an old email from a couple of years ago.
Sometimes when you're going through the thing you don't realize how remarkable it is.

Reading this entry, I realized that sometimes I live at quite an epic level.
And it all seems quite normal. Exhausting, but normal.

from 2004...
"What a trip I’ve been on.
The circus was incredible
we worked so hard. We had one weekend with 6 shows in 3 days. All I did was eat, warm up, have epsom salt baths perform and sleep for days on end.
We sold out most shows, with standing ovations after every performance. It was like being rock stars. Sometimes people even applauded on my entrance, which was pretty spectacular in a low rent kind of way; I was pushed on on a 10ft staircase, keening at the top of my lungs with our 7 piece band pounding away! Glorious!

So I went on a motorbike holiday.
I was up around where you were and I didn't even think to write you to let you know. I went to Armstrong to see the Caravan show and then on to Winlaw about an hour from Nelson and then I rescued a friend in Princeton and we hung out in a little town called Cawston.

Lot's of swimming in rivers, eating, drinking and sleeping out under the stars with NO TENT! my first time doing that ever I think. It was fabulous.

So now I'm enjoying time with a bit of money, a bit of work and a lot of free time. Glorious. I'm even still relaxed from my holiday. Something I want to try to maintain for, well, the rest of my life really. It just feels so good to slow down. The city is just way to urgent."

death on my shoulder

on the summer solstice I stayed up til 3:30 swimming with friends
lying on the beach naked
looking at the city through the flames of an illegal fire

at that moment on another facet of the earth people were dying
how many died that night i don't know
but only one mattered to me

in my dreams i heard him leave
a short, sharp grunt as he parted ways with his body in the deep velvet silence that's death's bosom.
"that's gotta hurt" I thought to myself

2 days later the anonymous grunt was interpreted for me
again in the middle of the night
after living as far into the evening as felt good and satisfying

email can be so brutal
when it's there, fluttering, 0's and 1's to tell of such a passing, of such and event
it took a week for me to really understand one sentance
the one that said he "didn't survive the collision"

I wandered in the wilderness of my apartment for days
asking
"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!"
"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!"

didn't
survive
the
collision

What is a collision?
How can he not survive it?

No.
I revisit that moment, over and over
maybe I shouldn't
but it's a key into my broken heart
not just lovers break your heart
sometimes the world does a bang up job

the day he died a thought came to me
Look into your heart and find all the fear there
and empty it out so you can really Love

Which I did
Which felt really really good
and with that email, slam, shut

and now it hurts
and the only way to feel peace is to soften it
but then I cry, sob, weep, helpless to do anything else
where every I am
beyond polite
beyond composure
beyond caring

And the depth of this weeping
this body shakeing wailing
makes me understand so much about poetry
about love
about definite ends of things
of people
that I love

things I know today

It's good to live fully. It's good to love, to clear your heart of fear so love can flow through. I've done this, do this have been for years. Which is why my life can be so crazy, so interesting. It's good to do these things. But now I know that even though one does, even though there are few regrets, people I love still die.


http://www.czech-invasion.cz/lorenc-en.html

realized

I see it now.
This is how it is.
I will have to be satisfied with the wind on the back of my neck.

If only Life could be lived backwards.

John Ormerod

Your name on this wall means you're Dead.

And I can hardly move myself to look at it.
Again.

These years I've contented myself with thinking of you off in some fabulous life, too busy to call. But the rusted metal that outlines the particular combination of letters that point to you; there it is on this wall. Your name. Amid a list that, end to end, would stretch a block in small print. I come across it, surprised by it's expected appearance and instantly I grieve for your absent brittleness beside me.

But all I have of you is this wall, that picture, the memory of this time and that said and a crack in my heart everytime those letters fall together in that particular way.

I'm here and you're Dead.
My grief is in the small print.

long hand

My friend says I have a long hand. It takes time to show. It seems men are looking for a game of animal snap. I'm more like bridge.

Although I've never played bridge, this is what I imagine myself to be. A slow reveal, something not obvious, which calls for patience to come into full focus.
An ability to withstand anticipation is required.
A slow warm burn.
A layered building up.

I think sometimes that most men are looking for women with the depth of betty boop. 2 dimensions represented by 3 numbers (36,26,36) with a black line drawn around the outside to keep the messiness contained.

I'm sprawling.
A luxurious expanse of character with an indefinite shape.
I'm always in process.
Until the period of my death;
the beginning point of the black line drawn, finally, around the shape of my Life.

on my lack of fame

it's okay.
the people that know me know.

into the deeps

Right now is a time when the depths of me is asking for attention.
For quiet and consideration.
The foundations need to reconfigure. And re-adjust to the new ways of being that have been laid in, in their infancy. A new openness needs to be practiced in the privacy of my own home. Where, in fact, it's feeling remarkably peaceful and roomy.

I've rearranged this place so many times in the last 10 years and now, this configuration is the most spacious ever.
It's always a reflection of my inside.
As above, so below.

This play has really de-calcified something in me. And the gall stones are being swashed out, mostly out of my scar(r)ed and battered heart. I think it may be a time to sit still and be quiet. To let the new settle. Like in a bugs bunny cartoon, when the house is blown up and falls from the sky and reassembles itself as a toaster. or something.

Like that.

That's me. A new toaster; shiny on the outside and warm and toasty inside. Useful and aesthetiquely pleasing. You don't really notice it but your morning is lost without it.

Toast - the default food.
What Oprah craves.
A support structure for Nutella.

Yup that's what's being born.
A foundation for all that's sweet in life.

Love is a multi-splendored thing

Sometimes Love doesn't quite take the shape one (me) wants it to.
Sometimes it doesn't even near the colour, shade, fragrance nor function I have in mind. Sometimes it isn't even made up of those components.

And so sometimes one (me) just has to accept, hopefully without resentment, or too much resentment - I'm not perfect (yet) - the configuration that it does come in.

Live like Water.

Especially when it comes to Love.

So there's this guy...
Fuck if only I had a nickle for every time I said that verbal mal mot!

Love and Fear.
Chicken and Egg.
Two sides of that proverbial coin.
Like white on rice.

So there's this guy...
And it seems so good on paper...
And if only...
And maybe he will...
But when?

And "accept", as it says on the Japanese watch I bought in the Chinese-run dollar store of a small Czech town.
Accept the shape it is 'cause being fully with what is is the only way to ride the magic train to what will be. Otherwise you have to walk. And it can be a long circuitous route in a bad pair of shoes.

(FYI: my watch also says "Water Resistant" and "Quartz"; omens to be deciphered at a future date, on a need-to-know basis)

And I know that if I'm fully here in the beauty of What Is (even if it's crappy and weird), I won't even care in that moment about What Will Be.

What Is will reveal itself to be so glorious that The Future, or in truth, my suggestions to the Powers That Be for possible Futures, will not seduce my mind away from What Is in the least. Not to mention the added benefit; I'll be right there to luxuriate in every delicious particle of What Is.

I suppose the difficulty I'm having is this peripheral Feeling of Inevitability. Which, and I'm quite open to this possibility, might just be lingering neurosis on my behalf. Or vivid imagination, with which I'm epically blessed. The feeling that "This is The One" or at least "This is The Next One". Which could still be entirely true and all this What Is I'm struggling to graciously accept are just developmental processes at work.

Or not.

And it's "Just Friends" for ever and ever and ever, as far as the eye can see.
Like Yertle the Turtle.
Except with frogs.
Frogs all the way up.
And not a Prince in sight.

wave effect

So much.
What it does to your body. We're all withdrawing. Each actor's process is unique and perfectly suited to their mental/emotional configuration and journey through the play. I ran into L, one of the rapists. She's having more nightmares now that during rehearsal and the run. And depression.

Me, my dam broke on Saturday right in the middle of a party. It was, I must admit, quite scary. A more ferocious torrent of emotion than I think I've ever experienced running through my body ever before. And unlike while acting, I couldn't seem to control it. IT wanted to come out, to be expressed.
Ex - pressed out. Pressed. Pressure. Aaaaaaaand release. Soon I hope.

The force of the e(nergy in)motion was so great that I was moved to call for help. This was the Revolutionary Act that I think this whole experience was set up to accomplish. A series of experiences that made it impossible and unsafe NOT to reach out to another human being. In order for me to realize that I am not self-contained, shouldn't be and can actually harm myself when I keep myself hermetically sealed.

This may not make any sense or may describe you, dear reader, to a T.

When you've never had any one to turn to for certain activites, emotional sustenance and support, that sort of thing you learn to fend for yourself. Until there comes a time when what you've got (I've got) to work with is beyond my solo capacities.

I'm alright. Don't worry. But the process hasn't run itself through, by any means.
I can feel it at the edges of me, welling up its energy until it's accumulated enough critical disturbance to spill over into another wave (an energy transport phenomenom), a disturbance that moves through the medium (me), leaves the medium in place and yet somehow altered by the event.

Waves of Profound Grief.
Me mourning the characters' fates.
Mourning which the structure of the performance prohibited.
My natural response to the situation rather than one crafted in service to the text of the play.

What scar issue will these waves break up?
What calcifications will be pummelled and flushed out by these tears?
What space will be opened for new knowings?
New ways of being?
New beliefs?

Stay tuned.
In key.
This is my advice to myself.
Sensitive to the song that's slowly playing itself out on the stringfibres of my Self.

after opening night

I think I'm a good actor.



I'm a good actor.




I know.

sleep apparel

Sometimes going to bed with your coat on is just the right thing to do.

epihany before coffee

I just realized; I'm the one who'll get out of here alive.

outbalanced

the need for Love is now greater than my fear of the havoc it will wreak in my life.
my need.

it's all this mutilation, murder and rape.
all this pretending-for-real.
it's getting to me.

opening night is sold out
i know it will be worth it.

but right now i just need a warm hug

a deflated valentine

Now that I think about it. Now that it's the end of the day. And nothing in particular has happened. Except for it, for that. Now it seems queer. Unusual.
Hollowly significant.

I was unloading my whites from the washing machine this morning. They'd been in there for a couple of days. I have a tendency to forget about laundry. Done and undone. Once everything was cleared out, I looked down, just to catch stray socks before they slipped down into wherever it is they tend to disappear to. And there it was. Dark and rumpled. I didn't recognized it at first but it didn't look organic so I fearlessly reached in a pulled it out. Rubber. A balloon. Or more like, a fragment. A party balloon that had somehow made it's way from some long over festive occasion into my washing machine.

There was white writing on it.
"Happy Valentine's Day".

I kid you not.

And for the rest of the day, nothing particular happened.
I guess it was just a 'hello' from the gods.

Thanks guys. Because, for the rest of the day, well. It just went along. In no particularly epic fashion. Still. Not yet. Nothing. And now it's time for bed.


I suppose there's still tomorrow.

volunteer imagineer

I love my work.
If only I could get paid for it.
I've spent my day working. At home. The wind howls and tries to tease the cedar fence from it's moorings.
It's unnerving. Yet fitting. This unrest.

I'm at work, imagining rapes and mutilations. War and murder. Emperors and punishments. I just realized why D&D held no interest for me. They weren't nearly serious enough in their pretending. Snakes and Ladders compared to Shakespeare's game of Risk.

I love the mental gymnastics required to untangle the code of thees and thous and thys and twisted epic sentences and the thinking/feeling on a dime.

To watch myself progress; from barely holding onto three words in a row, let alone a wriggling sentance that compares blood gushing from a severed tongue to a bubbling fountain stirred with wind; to finally riding the music when I know the course intimately enough to just submit and fly. First comes an astounding relief, followed by a God-like High.

My body doesn't know the difference between this pretend-for-real and real-for-real. And because of this, Life lived at this altitude of Drama becomes comfortable and everyday. The usual personal confrontations pale in light of revenging an virgin's unjust rape and mutilation.

Way better than playing horsey.

curfew

My phone rings.
I leave it to announce itself. I'm on the toilet and need to finish. "You can wait", I think. Leave a message, I'll call back.

I finish and run eagerly to check my voicemail, always longing for contact with the world outside my window.

It's my friend on the other side of the planet. The bottom half.
I email him, "I was PEEING!!!".

20 minutes later he phones back.
Ah, to talk with someone you love.
If only that could happen every day.

We muse about our respective romantic comings and goings. He's just finished, I'm hopefully starting.
We talk about work and destiny and war and the complexity of the human condition.

And then he announces the time.
10:40pm.
Not too late I think, even though he is still at the office.

He must run.
Curfew's at 11 and he's 20 minutes from home.

This radical difference in our present environments slices through our conversation and renders this intimate, unified Now into two.

This will not be the last time we talk.
This will not be the last time we talk.
This will not be the last time we talk.

There's power in 3's.

marching toward progress

winter

in dark of winter
lots of stillness required
for death to finish

the last year of my life

We will all die.
You do know that. Don't you?
Every last one of us. Dead, probably within 100 years.
150 years; all new people.
Sure.

We will all die.
Please don't be so cavalier about withholding your I Love You's. It's something you have in infinite supply.

We will all die. It's inevitable. No amount of anything can stop this inexorable event. Nobody is exempt.
And if you live with this ever present in your mind. Then what? What kind of a Life will you create? What choices will you make with this flag raised, full and billowing red over your left shoulder? Who will you keep close? Who will you walk away from? Who will you kiss late into the night, expectations jettisoned, only the soft pillowness of their open lips and how yours can stroke them in fresh new ways in every moment; this your only concern.

We will all die.
I will die.

I will die.


There's a relief in knowing it's something I can't stop from happening.
Not my responsability. Something that just is. On, and then off.

I will die.
Me, no more.

Who will regret not knowing me?
Who will claim they did?
Who will find my passing of absolutely no consequence?
Who will find it catastrophic?

Will the Sense of my Life finally become apparent?
A run-on sentance finally punctuated with a period.

This is the last year of my Life. I don't know how long it will last. What is Beauty in this case? What's imperative to accomplish? What, finally, can be seen for what it really is; irrelevant?
And what in this The Last Year of My Life also needs to be capitalized?



And more...
I am finally satisfied that I am living an interesting life, a life I will be happy to have lived when viewed through my final breath. I wish to have the courage and energy to keep it up. To choose the path that leads through night to sunrise. To say "Yes". To know the difference between Fear and Discernment. That Envy is a nasty indicator of Desire. That Loving, like Forgiving, is a choice to be made a million times a day. To understand that Quiet is not Depression. To have eyes for the Beauty in the Grotesque. To know all people as Friend, met and unmet. To really understand that I live on a Planet not in a country. To have Compassion when I don't. When you don't.


Happy Christmas, Love.