Taking Inventory

This isn’t going to be pretty.
I left all of it behind; wealth, glory, health, sex, status, freedom, and comfort, all, because even with those achievements and blessings I thought enriching my life, ones many never experience in a lifetime, I grew deliriously unhappy with my lot. Unbearably so. Even with all that appeared to be the proverbial pot at the end of the rainbow, I couldn’t exist in that suit of clothes one day longer. I was nothing short of hog-tied miserable. So I didn’t take it. Not one more day. I chucked it all away, all of it, and I walked.
Here I am today...
I’ve not had a paycheck in over 6 years.
I’ve been without a job for 7 years.
I’ve never gone totally without, but if life is a high tech light show, I’m in the dark.
I used to perform for 25,000 people a night. When opportunity arises I now see little clusters of smiling faces -and that’s a good night.
I almost died during this process and my near death continues to take its toll.
I’m now a diabetic because.
I’m quite literally losing parts of my feet, my instrument, due to injury after bewildering injury.
Genitalia has a mind of its own. Poor guy.
Life as I’ve always known it is over, now I must exercise cautious discipline for just a smidgen of the qualities of life I used to take for granted.
I’ve not had a girlfriend in years, no one there to give me comfort, solace, support, or love during this rebuilding process, this trial, this tribulation.
I’ve not seem any of my blood kin in over four years, and my musical family is scattered to points all over the globe, cut loose and set adrift by a recent passing of one of the most important people in my life, and theirs, too; his flame snuffed and gone while we continue to wander the Earth trying to get a grip on just what it is he’s passed on to us.
I am now officially old (even by my standards), and considered ancient by my peers. The young ones don’t know nor do they care who I am, what I’ve accomplished, or continue to accomplish.
For many years I regularly traversed the entire globe. I haven’t traveled beyond the state line in 4 years.
I live in an efficiency apartment with two dogs. One is crippled and I’m unable to properly address her health concerns which reduces me to abject nothingness, an overwhelming, helpless guilt constantly lashing me, rending chunks of my flesh with each murderous stroke.
Some bills must go unpaid and I agonize. I’m still a fugitive, unable to afford insurance for a driver’s license. Life’s emergencies stack up, unpaid. Every bill for basic life necessities takes an exhausting amount of energy and effort just to pay. Forget casual spending money, money for any thing else really, and I do mean ANYTHING. Horrific.
I lose a piece of myself each day, consumed as I am by this soul crushing duress of a seemingly never ending struggle.
Joy is a distant friend. Laughter is fading. I’m threadbare and dented.
I have been reduced to this.
But, and this is where I differ... far from lost and hopeless, I am well on my way. I don’t know where, and that is okay. A little beat up, worse for the wear and tear, yeah, but I am wiser, well on my way. This I know.
And I am happy about that.
Despite all these hideous, problematic hells, I am happy.
Verily, I am happy.
Almost happiest.

I wouldn’t change an iota of this road less traveled. Not one iota.
A very courageous woman, Bernadette Devlin, said, “To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.”
I made my decision without having read her insightful words, only finding them during this sojourn, and since undertaking this journey further into the unknown I’ve found her words to be a beacon for me in the darkest of storms, and there have been many. Smelling the coming blooms, sensing the light ahead, I’m reassured her words speak the truth. This I know. So I am happy. Despite. And laughter will return, laughter that will have all new meaning in the glory of morning’s dawn; a dawn that is now cresting my horizon.
Almost happiest. Almost. But for now, I continue to hunker down and keep me wits best I can, what is left, that is, after a thorough cleaving away, what’s left repurposed and refocused for what lay around the corner.
This is where I am.
Not the prettiest of pictures, but one glorious in design, and getting more aerodynamic and enchantingly mysterious by the day.
Far from done I am here. I am. Here. I. Am. Far. From done. I. Am.

Almost Empty

I am financially poor. For too long. This experiment, this vow of poverty I chose provided some of the most extraordinary lessons of my life, but for now, years later, the strain of poverty is sapping my essence, wearing me down, wanting to rob me of my spirit, silencing laughter and choking joy, and I am concerned.
How poor, you ask? This is how poor... this is how ridiculous.
I cannot afford flea medication for my dog. She has fleas. I know it. I watch her scratch all day long. Not to the point of causing psychological or physiological harm, but admittedly she’s got a few fleas.
One evening, quite unknowingly, I devised a plan to help her plight best I could given my numbing, nefarious, ever encroaching lot in life.
Lying next to her, momentarily retreating from my woes, I draped my arms across her, inadvertently attracting the fleas to some new, warm blood. And they came. Oh yes they did.
Alone there in the dark I would eventually feel the telltale prickling of the hairs on my arms then I would sit up, quickly turn on the light, and there it would be, tangled and negotiating its new host. In turn I’d snatch it firmly between thumb and forefinger, leap up from the bed, then scurry to the toilet and flush the pesky bugger to the hinterlands! This process went on for several hours, becoming a game. A necessary game in some sad, twisted way, too, once I realized I was providing her relief in the only way I could afford! I don’t remember how many I vanquished, but a goodly number. That evening color me a scurrying, flushing fool, achieving satisfaction on a most tragic, pitiful scale, but satisfaction nonetheless. Despite my current state I was able to -at the least- bring relief to my faithful companion in the only way I could, giving of my time, my efforts, my body, doing so with a love of her with all my heart.
It is my wish without hope that someone would do the same for me, extend unconditional love, provide me a feeling of temporary calm and relief, if only for a moment, just a simple tender heartfelt moment, relief from the pressure of this road less travelled whilst I continue to hoe my row ...and make no mistake about it, continue I will, relief or not.
On this occasion I’m reminded of the words of Jean Paul Satre’ which ascribe you must recognize your aloneness in this world, depend on nothing or no one and you’re one step ahead; bleak words, bleak words I don’t or can’t totally subscribe. But at the heart of that statement, I will admit, he’s right, because without you and you alone taking charge of your actions, your destiny, one can be assured not a soul on Earth will lift a finger. Not one. But one will and does, and he is currently present and involved, though not of this Earth, and it is exactly that one in whom I trust.
As tired as I’ve become, I shan’t give up... Hope remains, so does faith, a belief in myself, and for now those are all I have in the world. In that, I am rich, the poorest rich man I have ever known; the bank’s walls bulge with my brand of currency.
My dog isn’t scratching anymore, but yet again, despite my bulging walls, I’m short on rent. And I’m not fucking laughing.

That Garza Boy

As one casts a longer shadow on this spinning orb you find yourself ready and waiting, even anticipating the most innate moment of stillness in each passing day, a stillness in which you feel blessed to occupy that space in time, to be alive, truly alive, cognizant and humbled, appreciating the gift as it enraptures your conscious, a tear shed should you be so finely tuned. Tonight, after a day fraught with gnawing angst, where I’d given up hope for a day imbued with purpose, meaning, or beauty, that moment unexpectedly arrived on my doorstep, and I was moved.
Frustrated this day, merely existing in the howl of nothing, I chose to rise and explore with a recklessness, forcing myself to emerge snarling from a pit of stagnation and nebulous non. Eventually snaking down a rabbit hole I found sublimity, a sublimity that returned the grandeur of life and the living of it, a sublimity that was a song. “For Keeps” -honestly written and elegantly performed by my friend David Garza- unveiled a fragility that spoke to me ...and I wept. A vulnerable tale, the unvarnished sentiment struck a chord in the emptiness of my emotional drought, saturating a pale drabness with rivulets of scarlet majesty.
For he and his efforts I’m eminently thankful the gift of hope, for infusing blood with purpose, reminding me the gentleness of our spirits, our capacity to love and cherish should we so choose; human qualities that are in short supply as our struggles intensify, human qualities that are, however, the very air I must breathe.
Here again was that Garza boy, touching me as he’s done since the day we met. Thank God for he and those like him similarly blessed, yet transfixed. Where would we be without their particular struggle? Perish the reality.
Tonight, after a hollow day, a day without color or beauty, I was shaken to my bones by a man’s reaction to his muse, not an easy feat in this the day of confounding exigency and top water.
And then, still basking in the glow, as if receiving a kiss from a most beguiling stranger, a train’s horn mournfully beckoned in the distance and my world was born anew.
The struggle continues... and it is good.