I loved him. And he still helps me love me.

I've had three long, or longish term relationships as an adult woman.  Each helped define me, term, label and mark the consistency of otherwise un-named or recognized parts of me. I otherwise took for granted: Oh, this reminds me of camping with Brandon, wow he really, really brought out the nature-lover in me....or  Oh, there I go again setting aside my decision making power just like I always did with Grimaldi, how I wanted him to be my dad....etc etc...  Dynamics of ourselves are deeply rooted, so much so that it's easy for them to remain just part of our natural landscape and not even notice.  Even more interesting is how I will learn something about myself, inspect that newly recognized aspect, then watch as it gets reintegrated back in to the whole of who I am anyway... Life is funny--changing but subtle in its evolution most of the time and most often how it all circles back around--which is why I guess that it means so much when someone comes along and really helps me flesh some new understanding or experience of me out.

Last week I was on a roll writing, literally delving bravely forward into subject matter that once evoked usually puts me in a testy place.  It was Tuesday, I was on the back porch of the Pines just me and my laptop and the forest breathing.  Late hanging red and brown leaves still leaf-talking their funny crinkly leaf-talk ways.  The ground all rich and moist and aerobic in how it expands on the air.  One of those amazing fall days warm and full that backsteps all fast to the summer again, so that it's full life and full death all at once.  I stood to take a coffee break and then a message come through from facebook on my phone:  my first real love and first real relationship, the guy I was with after highschool died. I met Joe right around age 20 and was with him for a year and a half and got my heart broken by him in the end, which was the reason I decided to apply to college on the Eastern Shore to just get away...

God damn did that news turn me on my head.  I was kind of a ravaged wreck, but as I said I'd literally just finished writing about some painful subject matter involving my own battles with drugs and alcohol and loss and without meaning to I slipped on that slippery crevice, that place where, it's been said, we dance on the rim with the duende hand-to-hand in combat  in hopes of not falling.  Well, I. Fell. In.  Thank god thank god thank god I am older now and have learned to reach out and scream HELP, to be honest, to pick up the phone and be a fucking hysterical mess, thank god I have good friends. 

I went to the funeral and Mandy came too and it was awkward and also beautiful and we were in the back against the wall because as customary when someone dies too young there was only standing room.  It was the day before Thanksgiving and the day after I had to be back in the Pines to start my new job.  And I am here now, working which equals writing not Java-ing, on the most beautiful spot by the Bay on my day off.  Happy to be alive and happy for Joe and sad as hell for his family and grateful as hell for awareness and just the little things that mean fuck yea, I am living and therefor going to enjoy this my precious precious miracle life.

The sky was so big the night you flew

So I struggle w my experience and how it relates to what goes on here. And by here I mean the Internet, and by the Internet I mean that pinhead of the pinnacle experience of what it means to be human: where culture-readily-creates-art and vice-versa, where art-creates-culture.

I've always hearkened more towards the art-creating-culture side. This is the rebel artist in me, the antic spirit that craves and comes alive at underground movements, at the change on the periphery edge that minutely, than wholly, affects society. The post punk-rock riot-grrrl in the eighties that preempted the nineties Decade of the Woman when I came of age; the Diane diPrima pre-beat fifties near the village and suffering outside San Francisco that grew Kerouac's poetic-expressive-BOOM; the black folks in country churches and a thousand nameless preachers who finally found their name in King and the movement of all movements that continues to this day; this experience, this movement through our words and our voices which is the force of Triumph, and all of the work that comes before the momentum is finally built and the people, thus Society, finally tips....The Underground stuff. The reason we keep the journey...

But I LOVE in a neurotic obsession kinda way the culture-creating-art thing, too. I mean let's be honest here and look at the art that we as dominant Western Society most venerate. It's easy found on TV--Access Hollywood, TMZ, Entertainment Tonight. I voyeur with my tongue hanging out, or contrastingly with my tongue tsking in judgment, but either way I cling on pop-culture's "edge" to the extreme. I may not go so far as to emulate superstars in my lifestyle choices, like who and how they vote or what their "crib" or "ride" looks like or if they are going green or whatnot but let me just tell you, my fashion-diva, that secret-hidden loud-car-singing inner-pop-superstar trapped inside me absolutely goes wild over the sexy fashions, the highlegged boots or lowback spaghetti straps that I see on TV or in the pages of the magazine...And I'm allright with this, I've learned how, in my adult life, to be loving of Kelly in all the different, if not funny and seemingly at times conflicting parts, that make me go....

What all this comes to is the fact that I want to be edgy here. On the Internet where I, like trillions, have something to say I want to be cool and looked at on this blog w the same eyes that look so lustily, either in judgment or covetousness, at pop-drama. I want you to come here and for me me to have the latest scoop on the flyest site for vintage fall mini-dresses and brand new wayout leather boots and I want to cue you in first cuz I'm the hippest to the best underground house that's on at all the Baltimore parties and throw a thing or two in there about how the same stuff is being touted right now in the lounges of Berlin where, by the way, suchandsuch is the best tapas food that they are currently eating... And Politics! I want to be smart and funny and savvy and one step ahead of the latest convictions to subscribe to and showing off what an activist's heart and intellectual mind I've got and also I want to be able to name drop and lead the way among the who's who with the what what from within the scene. I want my sassy redhot spirit seen and to be known!

But ahhh, I the Fool. I have to remind myself that the edgy choice I can make HERE is to be honest from the truest parts of me, and write about my Truth, about what I believe matters. And trust in my voice both gaining and giving strength to the Authentic Function of Things as we go on....

All that said, my friend Charlie died last night. I loved him. And he is done suffering now. Five years ago in the middle of a doghot summer I was all fucked-up one night cuz my holmes Mike had just committed suicide. This guy, Mike, he used to tell a story so good that it made you laugh out loud again later when you were looking back on and recapping the night. And his stories were always full with lies. So how could any of us have known that it was true what he said that he was facing real prison time for violating probation the second time he supposedly got caught w lots of drugs...Hell we thought the first time he supposedly got caught coming "through from Eugene with all those dirty hippy heads" was nothing but a juiced-up story anyhow! So Mike killed himself instead of prison. It took me years to get through that, survivor's guilt. By the time Mike died I'd been clean three years and was trying to learn the boundaries of good friendship while being protective of my sobriety, too. With him and I, at the time of his death, it wasn't going so well. So he died and I tortured myself and ran from that torture and hurt a whole lot. That same week as his suicide, this man Charlie who, while I was getting clean, had become like a grandfather-mentor to me, saw me out one night and took me aside and said here, I got this for you. Charlie didn't know about Mike's death but for some reason he called me over and tucked in my hand a little metal token that had an angel on one side and the following on the other: Guardian Angel Protect us all, Giving Strength When we might fall, Watching, guiding, Lighting the way, Thru the night, and every day. I couldn't cry yet when Charlie gave that to me cuz Mike's death was super fresh and I was still stunned and with shock and partly with the anger but later when I cried a ton I put that token in a medicine bag and hung it around the rearview mirror of Bran's truck and that's what guided our way when we went travelling, and I running, in 2004.

About a month ago, a little more, I found that token again when I was insanely cleaning my house and sweeping cobwebs with kittyfur from the hardwood floors and out of the corners under the beds in all our upstairs rooms. The token was under my bed. It was the same week that I had to accept that cancer was going to take Charlie, my wise and more, my wisecracking mentor and stable guide and friend.

I don't understand Life and what works and how it all goes and how life is life but life dies but also how Nature shows that all that dies, grows. What I do know is that grief breaks your heart but only so that your heart can grow even bigger where the hurt broke out. It's how we flesh out and become even more whole, even fuller versions of our self. My experience in this life is it's not what we say, or what we like, or even what we claim. It's how we be. And also, that there is this big force, not apart from me but of me and I of it, this force which is steady there and which also creates me and I it. Life. I believe in this force. I found some good words for it just today:

For moments I belong
to the pure and poison ocean;

I am powerful, and helpless….

by Kathryn Lomer from the poem The way the world sleeps

I love life. I love this sacred mundane experience, love it so much that I love it on TV, I love it in my friends, in hot fall boots that I shake and get all inside lusty over, I love it in working too many hours in a new job that never seems to end. I love it in the corn getting cut down and the music on the radio and the obscure music and shows I find on the web. I love it sobbing on the backroads of the deep shore of Maryland with dark trees and an orange sky. I love it. I love that I get to live it. I love that I get to write about it and that writing about it makes me love my love even more.

Here is what Charlie asked me to read when his life is honored and remembered and he is officially laid to rest on Monday. It is called the Prayer of St. Francis.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

God bless you my friend! You did so good. Travel well my angel. I love you. Amen amen amen.