…and life goes on…

Friday morning, 10:30 am. My eyes open slightly as I lay in bed. I notice the time, shut them again hoping for a bit more sleep as I know it will be a long and active night, but my mind has other plans for me. It toys with me, letting me be just relaxed enough to think sleep may be possible but active enough to prevent that: “What do I need to do today? Ahh, my Dr. appointment.” I get up to check the time I need to be there and notice that this is the first one I’ve had in many months that falls on the morning side of the noon hour. I was supposed to be there an hour ago. I feel guilty for a fraction of a second for missing it, for not doing the ONE thing that I had to do before this evening, but that guilt is quickly rationalized away by realizing that I didn’t have enough gas in my car to make it there and back anyway. I’ll reschedule. Life goes on.

I begin to reach for my phone then remember that the service was cut off last night somewhere between 11:20 and 11:26, just as I was in between receiving and answering a text from L. I was intending to call my mother today as well, but I guess that will have to wait. Hell, I had to wait forty-five years to talk with her the first time, so I guess waiting another two weeks for my disability check is possible, or perhaps some other form of infusion of cash before then… but then, the whole process begins again at the beginning of next month – the constant question of “where will the money come from?”

I need to figure out a way to make ends meet. Write the book, tour, and HELP people. Create things. Perform. I have two of those down, performing tonight and tomorrow at the Edwardian Ball with Vau de Vire as a Living Statue and creating things to sell, though when I get paid for performing (and how much) I’m not certain, and what I’m creating needs to sell. So I can make more, sell them, make even more, sell those, and so on. I have two pieces made with lots of positive feedback, but for a bit, until that grows, most of the money that I hopefully make from them will go back into making more and simply using the small amount made on top to survive – get food for Ruby & myself, herbs, and the fuel to get around. Still, it’s a start, and much more than I had to look forward to a few short weeks ago when I was wondering what I could do. I’m thankful for that more than I can say, as it silences the turmoil inside that has been deafening me for the past few months. Sometimes wondering what to do was far too loud to let me simply be quiet and listen to the possibilities. It happens. My brain screams at me, gets all fretful and worried, and I can’t hear anything else until quiet happens inside, and I let things happen instead of trying to force them too. I’m not saying that action isn’t good – it’s great, unless that action is running around in a friggin’ circle, eyes bulging, heart pounding, and not seeing or hearing anything that I should be paying attention to. I’ve taught myself to be better at not letting that happen, but sometimes… yeah. It’s like drinking 20 cups of Peet’s coffee and being shut in a barren 8×8 room. Without the padding on the walls, though that would be fitting.


I’m becoming more and more inclined to write the book on my experiences over the two years I was in the hospitals, expected to die. I want to do it soon – need to do it soon while it is still fresh, but I mustn’t lose sight of its purpose, which is to help people, to offer them hope where there may not be any. It can’t be written well, I can’t hope to help anyone, if somewhere in the back of my mind is writing it for the purpose for financial gain. That’s the rub. It must be written for one purpose only; to give back all that I have been given, all that I have, for some reason, been blessed with. It needs to be written out of love.


Time now to take my wonderful little beastly out into the streets of the Tenderloin, let her explore the world outside this apartment and expel at least a tiny bit of her puppy energy, then back here for the Edwardian getting readiness.


And life, so beautiful and terrifyingly exquisite, goes on.

By the way, if you want a completely custom, made to order bookshelf, garment rack, or pretty much anything our imaginations can conceive, let me know! Here are some ideas to tickle your fancy: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151232068837965.455253.581812964&type=1

of being the fool

Take my heart in your hands. I’ve been waiting for someone that I could trust with it. Don’t hold it too tightly though, for nothing is certain and until I can say what I truly feel, it will always be mine to take back.

I won’t need to explain why.

Still, if that happens, I will leave you with a souvenir – just a small piece of it, something to remember me by, to remember what could have been, to remember dreams created so easily, when we once believed that they could happen. Or at least I could believe, being the fool that I am. The Queen’s fool.


Look how I jump through the hoops, look at how I make you laugh. Pick a card. Adore me for my tricks, laugh with me, at me, until the night is done and I am alone again thinking that I forgot to bring something with me from the performance.

yes, my heart. That must be why the hollows of my chest hurt, why I scream while alone, why you cry pretending you’re me.


The words I am careful not to say to you, these words I question. Of course I do. It’s easy to say until it is meant in a different way, and then everything changes. The most common words in any language; “I love you.”. Why is it so much easier to say when meant lightly? I can say these words to dear friends and mean them with all my heart without a second thought, but to you – they can’t be said without again reaching inside and ripping out my heart, offering it to you on a tarnished silver platter with the words, those words, as garnish. You already know what you’re getting, but do you know what I’m willing to give?


Strange, the seasons. Years of barren fruit on the vine, but when you came with the cold and rain it blooms and my heart remembers itself. My heart remembers itself and they come. We laugh, play, dream, but underneath I do everything I can to fight it. I am not a weak man but in your arms I surrender. In your arms I will fight until death as long as I know that they will be wrapped around me one more time… but there are others that beckon. Others that aren’t stopped at the door.


How long should I wait? How long can I? You compromise me because I let you. I could be everything to you if you let me, but that’s the hitch in this dance – you need to allow me to. If you do, I can only promise worlds. Worlds created in an instance of weakness and strengthened over time.


I will forever be the hopeful romantic, but I’m weary of being the fool.


I don’t need to explain why.


the fabric of dreams

Something that an old friend found of mine and reminded me of the other day, written for her in ’04

It’s the dreams
the fabric
threads intertwined in fantasy
that we wrap ourselves in
tighter and tighter
to protect us from the biting cold
of what we might see

what we might see
what we might feel
when our drapes have fallen
folding to the floor
and we are standing there
naked to the world
to ourselves


unprotected, all we can do
is accept
or run and hide.

it’s up to us.

We can hide forever, if we want –

but that is not life, for in our hiding from
the pain
we forget the warmth
in the fabric
that weaves the beauty
inside ourselves…

Hope is bullshit.

Hope is bullshit. Hope is actually a kind of fear. Fear is control. Chaos is love. Live in love. Marry the girlfriend of 5 years. 5 months. 5 minutes. do whatever you want, all the time. Whatever is fun whatever is amazing. Go for the comedy every time. Make things work that are impossible. Strive for high ideals. Do your dishes. And at the end of the day, be whoever you are fully. Villain or hero. Genius or idiot. Do this and you have lived your life as art. Which means you have touched the divine. Therefore, be full of gratitude in all your moments. Quixotic, alarming, confounding, inept, hilarious, humble and free… no one is doing it better then you, everyone is ‘fake it till ya make it’. everyone. In the end there is no right or wrong, no good or bad and the only way to win is to not play. So make as big a mess as possible.

~~ Chicken John

through the door, find me

“Always be careful in the beginning.”

Through a muffled haze of consciousness these words, reminding me, reminding me. Through this simple wisdom they all come back, inside, sounding like many but only all because that’s what I wanted to give, wanted to and did, and for those moments I believed in the light again, foolishly, my heart turning to it like a flower to feed from the sun it so needs, opening, showing how fragile it can be.

I am not a flower, the sun now burns. This is what I need to remember – that the brighter the light, the blacker the shadows.

Where should I stand? Perhaps I know, but choose to ignore the safest place. Just for now, let me remember how much I miss romance. Just for now, let me believe in what could be. Just for now, remove the bullhorn that stands at the door to my heart keeping you away. You offer your arms but I want more, I want more because for those few brief moments everything seemed perfect and I was able to forget me. I was able to forget me and everything was perfect and you let me forget.


I need to remember. This time, you are the apparition, the illusion. Still, I see you. The world is slippery. Here, take my hand. Take my hand, hold my heart. If you can, if you’re strong enough.

I see you.

Walk through the door, you are welcome inside. Walk through the door, I’ve been waiting. Walk past the door, there are worlds beyond it. Leave it for all the others to find… or stay there, leaving us both in our different worlds of what could have been. Let the beginning be where we open, not close. There are new lands to shine our light on.