For a long while now I’ve been dreaming about my loved ones who have passed on. I’ve been dreaming about my Mother, and my Nona; my Mother’s Mother, my Grandmother. Sometimes I don’t want to wake up. I know it’s a dream, and that they’re dead, but I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to leave. It can feel very real. There’s always a hint of panic because it’s a dream, and at any moment you can wake up. At any moment, someone you love could be gone from this world. I could be gone from this world. And that’s ok. There is a certain peace to be felt. Everything moves.

 

Your shadow is disarmingly beautiful, as are all your life cycle colors. Bare and geometrical, dazzling and wicked textures. If people were like trees. We travel within or upon entities to destination home, or we grow our roots, where roots already exist. Sometimes, maybe we feel lonely; or bitter, upon a shelf, aside a shed, waiting to be planted by somebody else. There’s many kinds, it almost seems crazy to think you could put it in one all encompassing book called diversity. The tree that appears unappealing to most eyes, appears beautiful to specific eyes, and contains wonderment until they cease to be upon this earth.

Many long pauses I take while writing down random, uncollected thoughts. A random thought that came to me was the term, “Steward of the Earth.” I didn’t know where it came from or the background; still don’t. I looked it up on the internet as one often does, and found this, “Stewardship is a theological belief that humans are responsible for the world, and should take care of it. Believers in stewardship are usually people who believe in one God who created the universe and all that is within it, also believing that they must take care of creation and look after it.”

I don’t know how I feel about god or religion so I won’t talk about that at the moment. There are a lot of other hits that came up, that one just seemed to be the most striking for the moment.

There are so many horrible things in this world that humans do, there are many more beautiful things and wonderful things we do as well. We are a part of this world, we have a symbiotic relationship that carries responsibility. I spend a lot of time running away from responsible tasks; I also spend a majority of my life doing what is deemed the responsible thing, however, it’s the invisible responsibilities that sometimes fall to the side of the road or as it is said the wayside. “The phrase ”fall by the wayside” refers to failing at something, discarding or ignoring something, rejecting something, or setting something aside. When something has fallen by the wayside, the doer of the action has either failed at the task or has just given up.”

I’ve seen two trees on the side of the road in the past week. One on the highway. What we call Christmas trees. It brings a moment of sadness to my heart. A beautiful life discarded on the side of the road, part of a family that is part of what gives our families life, to the wayside.

When I see the snow. I think of music, death, strength, wonderment, fragileness, fearsome unchallenged danger and wildness. Heavenly feeling. It’s blank. It’s solid. The snow you can see, you can see if death will wrap you up and take you away, or if such beauty there are no words I can find, keep you captivated and breathing. It’s home.

What is home? Is it base. A place to sleep. As George Carlin would say, “A place for my stuff.” Sanity, is like a Brother I have built inside me like a machine. That’s how I see sanity, who knows what the rest of the world sees, or what it is by other’s standards. Fuck it, it’s like another person, joined. Sometimes it’s off kicking rocks, and sometimes they’re making soup.

There’s a story in here somewhere, I promise I will get to it. Now, if you like it or not, that I can not promise.

Against the white of the snow, the fresh untouched snow, only slouched around by its self and the moving atmosphere. It’s still white blank canvas on the earth. Colors wash out, and become sharp at the same time. If I could call snow anything, to me… It’s entropy. And maybe one more thing… How can you beat entropy though? Right? Well…

One night, when I was a kid living in Incline Village, there was a big snow. I watched it for a few hours out of the window. At that time, we were lucky enough to be in an apartment and not living in the car. I didn’t have the right shoes, or clothes, I mean maybe I did. I don’t recall that part in detail. But what I do recall is making the decision to go out in the middle of the night and walk in the forest and walk in the snow. Stupid, really if you think about. But I was kid. Kids do things that we let slide, and then when we become of age we don’t let them slide any more.

My Dad was sleeping, not sure if he was in a drunk sleep or not. My Mom, she might have been sleeping. I think it was a rare occurrence that she would sleep, and not pace the room and repeat herself. Maybe the snow calmed her down. Too bad, I won’t get a chance to ask her now. Anyway, back to the middle of the night dumb kid going out to play in the snow. And this was major snow, I mean, feet!

I went out. It was another world. It’s burned into my memory. Standing there in that ominous, opening between fir and pine trees. So silent. So soft. Terrifyingly beautiful. I walked around for a bit. Then I believe my Sister came outside to join me. I think I wanted to be alone, but at the same time scared to be alone. I can’t fully recall but we were running around, and as I did this. I fell. Falling is no big deal. Falling into a deep pit of snow that fully engulfs you, and you slide into the mountain of ice upside down. Well, as a kid, I knew bad words. Might not have been so precise with them, but I recall my heart and brain thinking something like, “Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!”

I came to a stop. Think back Kim, think back to school, what do you do? Where is up, what way am I facing, is the sky above my feet, is my head on the ground. Can I flip? I better spit. If you fall and tumble into a deep soft pit of snow, that fully covers you, spit, to find out what your orientation is. I spite, it went over my upper lip. So, I’m upside down.

I think I started crying and yelling for my Sister to come help me. I think she did get there after I crawled out. But I can’t be sure. If she heard me, she would have helped me, no doubt about that. But I think I wondered off too far from her. I can’t fully recall, because it is clouded by fear, but I think I somehow got myself turned right-side up, and climbed out of the pit alone. Imagine, if you will, quick sand, but instead snow.

There’s movie’s that depict individuals surviving long exposure to snow and cold water, when I see that in the movies, I think to myself. They’re going to be dead soon if they don’t… But perhaps sometimes it’s possible, if fear and sheer will drive you to keep moving. I was afraid. I kept kicking. Thrashing, compacting the snow so I could climb up to the top and crawl to where it wasn’t so deep. Somehow, I made it. I was lucky.

In Tahoe, when you go to school, they teach you winter survival, King’s Beach Elementary called it, Hug A Tree. Which, yea you should hug a tree for some warmth. Whatever you can, because the ground will just suck your warmth from you. There was nothing special about me getting out of that situation. What would have sucked, is if no one could find me in the dark and the snow. If I couldn’t get out, I probably would have bit the snow dust. Or been the unhappy beneficiary of much frost bite, considering what I was wearing was not the best for snow clothes.

Why do I share this “I” story. Fuck I don’t know. But I am. I’m captivated by snow. It’s one of the most amazing things my eyes have ever seen. I think that makes me a snow dork. If anything, it was all worth it to write snow dork. No, no there is something most wonderful that it does. It makes me feel home. When home is a place inside you that is safe, yet unstable, quiet, but so loud you sometimes want to scream, strong and undefeatable, but fragile and scared stiff. Home is a fucked up place for me. But it’s home, and I love it. Love it, in a way that you probably don’t see or think of love. Love to me, is blank, possibility, courage, this world is quicksand that will swallow you alive and suffocate you to the bitter end. So love, to me, is the courage to face the sand pits everyday. Perhaps in my case, the snow pit. Home. Courage. Snow.

Peaceful separation from the sky to the ground. You’re caught up in all kinds of branches, you head straight sideways down. And you make me see and feel home, when home is just emotion from the past. Dancing around with beauty your foot steps turn the ground to glass. Hitching a ride on the current of the wind, my eyes dazzled from your spin, I write a name in the snow, so it goes. So it goes. So it goes. A way.

I’ll see you sharp when I fall asleep. When you’re so close I don’t want to leave. Why do the dead always visit in sleep, when you could call me up in a different reality. My Mother she would call out for home, it took me many years but now I know. That home is a feeling an imprint of happiness in a dark place. I’ll write my name and place a stamp, wherever it goes. So it goes. So it goes, so I’ll go.

You can sing it or hum when you walk along. Pictures make life look the way you want it paired with a song. I’ll listen to them sing and hum along, I’ll keep walking until I’m gone. Until I’m gone. Until your gone. Until it’s all gone.

“If you’re truly dedicated to your work, then focus! There’s no room for ego.”

I hear office noises. Keys clicking, people sniffling and coughing. The steady rumble whooshing of the air circulating through the ceiling vents. When you subtract the sounds the humans make, it almost sounds like you’re inside a sea shell. The human made noises make me anxious. The door slams, someone opens the door, and it slams again. I jolt with startle. Somebody sneezes and it makes me pause, still like a deer caught in headlights.

I ate something today that caused me to have an asthmatic reaction. The phlegm and the coughing wouldn’t subside so I kept hitting the rescue inhaler over and over again. No patience, I have. I also have a cold, and took cold medicine today. In conjunction with the albuterol and pills, I got the jitters, uppers and shakes. For every action there is a reaction; guarantee, this one’s going to be a panic attack.

The debilitating seizure like pain, convulsion, freezing your guts and heart, I feel like my heart is burning and motionless; stuck. I can’t move. I want to cry, scream, but I choke it back, no noise. No sound. My face, from this resistance turns red. My eyes look empty, but at the same time full of fear, rage, confusion, and a subtle certainty that I’m the toughest nail in the world, and I will slam through anything put in my way. But still I can’t move and eventually the gasps and tears start to stream down my face.

It was the unfortunate event that this occurred at work, and I only had the woman’s restroom to retreat. Having a panic attack in front of others who know not what it is, or whom have never suffered from one, make me feel embarrassed. I feel like a weirdo here. Yet, when I think about the people that I don’t particularly like here, the first thing that springs to my mind is, “They’re weird.” Of course to me, weird is defined by being exhaustingly normal and the typical average personality; common. That sounds pretentious. Sometimes we all might be a little of that. Sometimes, there’s room for the ego to pull up a chair and stay for a drink.

I should be working at this moment, but I needed to write. Perhaps if only for the eyes and inner sound in my head, me myself and I, it’s soothing. I am sentimental. I am callous. I am full of love and dying to share it. I am mixed up and alive inside my own head, and meek to the world around me. I find resemblance in the heroine and the villain, the broken. What becomes of the broken hearted? They make top hits for Motown, music for your soul.

Jimmy Ruffin – What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

 

 

Life is short. People say that a lot. Perhaps because there’s some truth to it. It feels like a year or so ago when I was twenty-one. But it’s been ten years. It actually feels very strange to think about where I am now, and where I was then. Some people are good with words, and I don’t think I am one of those, and I don’t prescribe that there’s much meaning here for you or a reader. But maybe writing it out, will help me later if I look back. It seldom does, as I have before looked through old journals and ramblings on folders long since accessed, but here it goes anyway, because I need a reminder. A reminder not to give up, or to give in to feeling helpless and meaningless. Lost in a sea of humanity. Such poetry to lament, heavy words, that become me. Heavy words become me.

I don’t think we ever forget a love that we had for a person. We might think we have for a few years, months, days, whatever measurement you want to give it, but then if you dream, if you can dream and you have that dream, that reminds you of the love you felt when you were with that person. You remember. But, the person doesn’t exist anymore, and when I say that, I mean that version of you. They’re gone. The person you were when you loved that person, the person you loved, that version of them. They’re gone too. We grow. We forget, then remember, tuck away until a dream pulls it out from your memory. We fall in love. We fall out of love.

I like to pretend I am a song-writer. I like to pretend I am an artist. That I can draw pictures. I like to think I am a grown-up. But every time I dig deep into the worldly topics and politics that grown ups dabble in, I feel like a small child that is sad and terrified, and all too often angered and frustrated. Therefore, the normal action is for me to avoid the world. Hide away, until I can figure out a better way to cope. In the news, it’s always death and destruction that I find myself pulling through. I forget the good reads, the hopeful advancements in all fields of science. The good reporting. The perseverance. The internet, a wealth of information at my search. Plugged in and connected. Connected, even if you try not to be.

When I was in high-school, I was into Harley Davidson apparel. I wore a hat with the logo on it for almost the entire year. I thought it was cool. I thought it showed that I was into tough things, that maybe it was a reflection of the tough life I had. We children dress ourselves in the strangest things to reflect what’s going on inside. If only I felt I was a strong hero, I would have worn a cape all sophomore and junior year. Truth is now, I can’t stand the Harley Davidson themed clothing and marketing. I don’t like muscle bikes. I like speed bikes. I like dirt bikes. But I don’t like, or shall I say, the history that goes with Harley Davidson or muscle bikes as such; as pointed out to me by the late George Carlin, these Harley Davidson and Indian muscle bikes associated with Hell’s Angels, not glamour or tough. Violence and drugs. But if I was dressing to reflect my past and the fabric that was my history as a kid, violence and drugs… That was a part of my childhood.

I have a job that assists in the investigation of people, entities, subjects involved in certain fields of crime. Sometimes, I might get to do some of the digging. I also have a problem that is called PTSD, although, I think I have a very good handle on it, while I am awake. Picture, a convenience store on a corner in a high intensity drug trafficking area, high intensity financial crime area, adjacent to a gas station and a Days Inn. I see this picture on Google Earth Maps, and I am brought back to thinking, “I wonder about the stories of that Days Inn. The drug use, the crime that takes place in the rooms.” It made me think of my experience in a Motel 6. The night as some say, “Shit went down!”

My family and I were living in the Motel 6. The family living in the room next to us did a lot of drugs. Or so I remember. I actually don’t remember what is real and what I made up. Most of my childhood is like that. I still feel this way, that it’s all one big dream and I might wake up. Wake up and my parents aren’t dead, I have my life together in a happy little manner, perhaps I am in love and married with children. But no. That’s not real, and at this point in my life I don’t even know if that’s what I would want to be real. What is real are feelings.

The feelings I get after I dream, when I wake up. The toughest times in my life now are when I wake up and when I try to go to sleep. I need medication to help me wake up, and go to sleep, the same medication. What can I do to change it? Write a song, a poem, draw a picture. I am afraid of people and love. I am afraid the world will keep tumbling into an ugly unbreathable and unbearable heartache. You won’t find uplifting banter here today Sir. Only thanks that I am warm and feed. I have technology and a working vehicle. I have friends and family that help me and love me. They love you. So stop worrying about it. Stop waiting for the world to end.

I want my life to be, not waiting on bad and to believe that someday, most of us; humanity, won’t just be taller children.

I placed a refill for my medication a week prior to when I knew I would be out. Kaiser even gave me a confirmation the request had been submitted. Time passed and I noticed, no emails from Kaiser, no calls stating a prescription has been mailed to you. I started to get worried because this is a medication you can not just stop. If you do, withdrawals will ensue and can be serious or life threatening. I emailed the doctor to submit it, later finding out that he said a mail request never went through. So, what happened? I ran out, and I went through a night of terror and a morning of back to back convulsions, and severe over heating. I am thankful for my dear friend keeping me cooled down with ice water and wet towels, and to let me squeeze the hell out of their hand while I felt my heart and lungs were going to explode, it’s hard to go through that alone. So, I’m grateful I had someone there to help me. Not everyone does.

The horrible shaking went on until I finally received my medication that night. Even now, I need to take it at strict intervals to avoid the shaking coming back and the jerking body movements. I missed it by an hour last night, 0400 instead of 0300, and I woke up feeling like my heart stopped, sharp pain. Whops. The point of this intro, is, to give a little background on the following. I wrote the following while in a major withdrawal period. While I could still use my body to do so. While in this mode, I think I got a little extreme and a little too far inside my head. The following banter writing is a little weird and, strange, for lack of better words, but I wouldn’t say that it’s not spot on when it comes to something very much loved, music.

****

I need to write. My brain is racing. My heart is pounding. My lungs feel like they’re caving in and I’ve rubbed my gums with my tongue soo much I can taste the blood! I’m clenching my jaw, my leg is bouncing out of control and I feel every muscle tightened to the max. Why? Because of contact, contact with a story that captures something I can’t get out. Something I struggle to explain, something raw, beautiful, passionate, crazy, crazy as to I am not making sense. Connection! It’s connection to seeing something that hits home fucking hard. Seeing something portray what cuts me down, cuts me deep. Depicts why some sit in the audience and some sit on the stage. The depression, the anxiety, uncertainty, self-doubt and redemption, anxiety, anxiety, perfection, accomplishment and lack of, strife!

There are gifts in this world and it can be a relationship. A relationship between us and appreciation with the creator and the receiver. Obsession! There’s been a lot of loss, a lot of pain in my life. It’s put me on medication and in therapy. It’s made me hold a loaded gun to my head, but never have gumption to pull the trigger, but given me the strength to not. The pain inside, broke me, yet builds me. I remember a night it was raining very hard; I opened the window to listen to the rain beating down in conjunction with the release of the slide lock release on the gun, over and over again. The percussion. The sound of devices and vices. Water to ground, from sky to earth, metal to metal… Just one click, “One click away and I’m losing all I’ve made regarding the place I call home.” Everything is rhythm. My fingers beating my keyboard, energy! Madness! Life! What the hell am I rambling on and on about? Music! If you know what I mean, you get it. You get it, or you don’t.

I just watched the movie Whilplash. Great film. I’m in love with music. I always have been. I always will. I’m self-absorbed in an unhealthy way. In a way that at times isolates me to living inside my own head, trapped. What can pull me out? Music. What can keep me locked in like a prisoner? Music. I would take what music gives back to me over any drug or kick back. I had a conversation with a person in the breakroom at work the other day, regarding what sense could you not live without. I said sound. I need my hearing, because I couldn’t go without hearing music.

As soon as that statement left my mouth though, I thought of how music wasn’t something I take in with my ears. I feel it in my heart. It’s heat. It’s my heartbeat. It’s visceral. I say this, and in the same breath say I’m a phony, I’m a fraud. I’m a musician, but not an artist. Maybe a poet at best. On a good day, few and far between.

Watching that movie, seeing the blood hit the drums, the sweat reverberate off the cymbals, held me captivated. I am a listener. I am the appreciator. Curating my own private radio in my head, the soundtrack to my story. Everything resonates at a specific frequency. Everything vibrates. Depending on the speed, renders you your molecular state.  It wasn’t just the context of the movie, but how it portrayed those who deliver it. The conduits. Everyone has their opinion on what is great and what is shit. And that’s part of the beauty. Is that music to me, is to me. It resonates with me, so whatever makes me feel. Feels pretty good. Whatever saves my life; is great. When I can connect with someone or something, it has a tendency to save my life.

Ending Scene from Whiplash Drum Solo

Films are stories. Just like novels, photographs, songs, and what pulled me in most intensely with this film is the story. The characters. The mental part of the flick! So, with that, on the topic of movies I switch quickly to another one that has one of the most romantic scenes I’ve ever seen in my life. American Hustle. When one character meets another character. Some people are into sports, painting, reading, woodworking, etc… They have passions, hobbies. Some people, we love music, and with some, it saves us. Being raised Catholic, I say, “It delivers us from evil. Amen!”

Scene: Jeep’s Blues Amican Hustle

Irving Rosenfeld: [voice over] So I go to this pool party, in winter.

[we see the people enjoying themselves at the party]

Irving Rosenfeld: [voice over] My friends.

[At the party Irving sees Sydney for the first time, she smiles at him then later as she goes to grab some food he grabs her wrist which has a huge bracelet on it]

Irving Rosenfeld: Is that Duke Ellington on your bracelet?

Sydney Prosser: Yeah, as a matter of fact it is. He died this year, you know?

Irving Rosenfeld: I know. I doubt anyone else here knows or cares about it.

Sydney Prosser: Well I care about it. He saved my life many times.

Irving Rosenfeld: Mine too. Which one?

Sydney Prosser: Jeep’s Blues.

Irving Rosenfeld: Jeep’s Blues?

Sydney Prosser: Mm-hmm. Jeep’s Blues.

Irving Rosenfeld: Oh, yeah.

Sydney Prosser: Yeah.

Irving Rosenfeld: You uh…you wanna hear it?

Sydney Prosser: Right now?

Irving Rosenfeld: Yeah.

Sydney Prosser: Sure.

Music has saved my life many times. As always, I don’t know what point I am trying to get at or make. This writing is for me to vent. I watched the last scene in the movie Whiplash with a feeling of suspense and eagerness. The point? Perhaps none, after all I’m a little weird. Chaotic words and thoughts jumbled up in my head, unable to verbally make their way out. The cells that build me, they vibrate, and they are unique. Your cells, you are unique. We all have our very own them song, genetic bio-identification. Keeping it together as so we may never understand, waiting for it all to fall apart as we figure out how it comes together. Like I said, I don’t know what I mean. So perhaps I will put it in a song, or find one to which I can hum along.

When I was younger, I’d like to think it was over the age of seven and under the age of nine, I had my first encounter with the foster youth system. It was in Tahoe, Truckee to be exact. All the events in their entirety of that night are walled off somewhere in my mind, perhaps forever gone or just tucked away, waiting for whatever trigger will release the memory like a bullet. But I do remember a few things, moments, feelings. Some important emotional aspects.

I remember hiding behind a car in a parking lot, perhaps because I got out of the cop car; cops put the kids in the car, kids wonder out of the cop car if they don’t lock it, or even if they do…

From behind a car I caught a glimpse of my Mother being handcuffed and taken away. Her only crime. She was crazy. Well let’s be more socially and medically accurate, she was mentally ill. In one of her violent fits, I saw my small petite Mother thrashing around, screaming in the cold night air like it was the last battle of a war against suffering, one that eventually would take her life in the end. But this was not the last battle, but she did make a good dent in the hood of the police car and, sadly when I did see her again, the cuts and bruises on her wrists were so deep they were pits from the cuffs gouging, almost like the handcuffs melted into her wrists then were removed. Handcuffs like a waffle iron.

That night, after all was said and done, my Mother taken away to the Truckee hospital emergency and psych ward, most likely, and my Father off to the county jail, my Sister and I were taken to a home in Truckee in the middle of the night. When we got there. I don’t remember much of the first night, but what I do remember was walking up a winding staircase, these stair case styles seemed popular architecture in the 90’s for mountain homes, into a small room with a bunk bed. I got bottom bunk, Kristina got top. After the short, hand off, “Hey it’ll be ok, you’re safe, let’s get you into bed now,” spin. I got into bed, at a strangers house, in a bed that who knows how many kids slept there before me. What was their story? What is my story?

I started to cry. My Sister never cried, and if she did, I never heard her. My memory clouds, but I think she would try to stop me sometimes, but mostly if I recall, she didn’t usually try, or she just ignored my crying. Whatever the reason was, I don’t care or hold anything against her. She is three years older than me, and at the time, going through her own emotions. I started to cry loud and hard. I couldn’t keep it in. I wanted my parents. I wanted my stuffed animal that was a wolf, I called him shadow. I wanted my Dad. I wanted very badly to be in a freezing car with my family rather than this strange place. Eventually the woman of the house came in, and tried to comfort me. In the end, I fell a sleep.

Tonight, over 20 years later I can’t sleep. Every time I go to lay down I start to cry. My skin gets flushed, my temperature rises, and I just get overwhelmed with grief and tears. I was laying on my left side peering down the hallway, and I was instantly brought back to that night in Truckee when the county “Officials” put us into temporary foster care. I’ve been in many foster homes, good, some bad, some just different. Some of the families that took me or my Sister in, I still keep in contact with, some I don’t, as the same for the many foster Brothers and Sisters I had. Like all people in your life. They are here, then they’re gone.

I spent my teen youth in one particular home, from the age of fifteen to the age of twenty-one. They’re good people, and the story of them and me is one for another write. They were the home I was at when I was going through all that horrid teenage stuff that teenagers go through, or, well, most? It was an important place to me, and this past week the man of that house, my foster Father passed away. It was Wednesday, June 24, 2015. June 25^th, is my biological Father’s birthday, he passed away in 1996 of cancer, my biological Mother passed away last year, and it will be a year come this Tuesday, June 30^th. It seems like this is a cluster of time, which is a cluster of loss.

There’s a highway half way around the world, they call it the Highway of Death and it’s between Kuwait and Iraq. It’s officially known as highway 80, as I’ve seen noted in a few places. If you click on the link, you can see the history behind the name. The link I find, is the 80. My own personal reference, is out North America highway, I-80. I-80 was a passage that mapped my childhood in one facet, from the cities of the bay area, through Sacramento and up to Lake Tahoe and Reno, Nevada. I spent many hours looking out a car window traveling on I-80, and when we got to the granite pass, (This is what I called it as a child, but I will include hyper-links to some sites that have wonderful pictures and good content) I felt like it was what the end of the world would look like. As if we traveled through the places no human could master. So naive, the fantasies of a child. It almost felt like death loomed out in those mountains. The Emigrant Gap, and the Donner Party, they seemed like the celebrity ghosts, but over the years, I’m sure death took not only human life as the wind smoothed the stone, all of nature in it’s wildness.

When I discovered the historical part of highway 80 in the context of 2003, I made a slight hum noise and pondered. At the thought of each 80. One to the mind of a child, me, who found her highway 80, this passage to be magical, haunting of wilderness and freedom, the gates and walls to the place she called home. The other, representation of humanities folly.

I don’t know where or what point if any I’m getting to, but it’s almost five in the morning and I can’t sleep. I’m thinking of my Mother, My Father, and the man who stepped into be my Father for a time being. I’m sitting in a bed typing right now that is not my bed. I’m house sitting for friends away on a trip. When I am done house sitting, I will go back to a place that I am temporarily staying, that is not my home as well. Many of my things were damaged in a recent event, and what remains is packed up in plastic crates. My anxiety is always high when I think about what remnants I have left in those tubs soaking up the smell of melted molded plastic tub. I’m thinking about home, what it is to me, and is it strange to think that home could be in a persons arms, or standing on a cliff facing oblivion? I feel homeless again, like I did in that age range somewhere between seven and ten.

But it could be worse, these woes I lament. I know I am not dust on The Highway of Death, or gripping at a hopeful sliver of stone on the great mountains of my dreams. But still, it is relative. And I always devalue my pain by simply stating the obvious that it could be worse. Some times its not the best to do. It could, it can, and some day it might be, worse. I’ve lived through a lot, some people who have been there since I was young, wonder how I am either not a drug attack, messed up (Well I’m pretty weird), in prison or simply just have not committed suicide. To myself I say as I cry, I cry so hard. I say be strong. To all you lonely people out there, that cry or sit silently in pain or are lonesome. Find a story to take your mind out of the depths from the rise and falls, mountains of life.

Links to see some pictures of the Norther California Sierra Nevada https://pantilat.wordpress.com/tag/tahoe/

http://www.calexplornia.com/destinations/sierra-nevada/the-crystal-range-and-the-crystal-basin/