I’ve only known you for, what? A week?

And already, I can tell from your eyes, I can tell from my trembling hands, you are changing me, evolving me, coming close to me in a way I haven’t let anyone in almost a year.

In just a week:
magic genies
water park
making out
new music
planning, planning, planning

and

“you inspire me.”

and

“i’m…really happy i met you.”

and you’re beautiful
and i’m a little scared
but not enough to run away

i can’t wait to see you again

Do you know that I STILL dream about you?
And that in those dreams we always dance around the idea of tearing into each other again?
I destroyed your heart at one point
What I did drove you to near alcoholism

It wasn’t all my fault. I have to remind myself of that. I gave you many opportunities to prevent me from doing what, in later years i realize HAD to be done…it was written in cosmic calligraphy…the stars still sing echoes of it over my head

you were one of the most beautiful people i have ever known!
you showed me the desert and freedom and mushrooms and sex and music and art and how to make beautiful things from driftwood

you showed me Waking Life and how to make key lime pie
and then…you lost me.
because of spain and a sword. and you sent me into the arms of a magician.

i’m sorry i caused you such pain
but look where you are now! in the arms of a beautiful new love, in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

in the end there are no regrets. only colors woven in fabric.
thank you for everything you gave me.

to think…
i was your first lay
and love

happened together, you see

college
ha!

you wore all black
all
the
time

you were a song writer in the fashion of mike doughty and thom yorke…you even LOOKED like thom yorke, you weirdo!

i nursed you through a vomiting episode that…i guess defined you
unable to deal with joy, happiness, luxury, looniness
without some taint of sickness
i rode with you to the hospital
waited all night
slept in your bed
and when you came back, you never said thank you
you NEVER said thank you

but i loved you with an intensity that i was just understanding…i have loved many since you…and with a much deeper passion…but you were my outlet for despair and cynicism that i learned once i was away from my spectacular safe bubble in california…head and heart first into the dead winters of massachusetts…writing epithets and fuck yous in the snow during one of our countless treks into the night

how many dawns did we watch, my former love?
dark knight,
bullshit artist

i don’t miss you
but i’m not sad i loved you

E for…
Eccentric
Extra Sexual
Euphoric
Electric
Energy
Evil

you redheaded spitfire….
you quintessential demoness
your cat tried to claw out my fucking eyes!!
you tried to cast spell after spell to insulate you in your own desires for sex, conquest and leadership
and yet…

your smell
your eyes
your ineffable charm

who could EVER forget you, fire spinner?
did you think we ever would?

dragons
fae

the marriage could never be sanctified

every time i think of you, the universe takes note

be well
but i doubt our friendship will ever be reforged
not even dragon fire can melt those shackles

you came into my life at a time where i desperately needed you:

-put together
-full of life
-full of laughter
-full of sensuality

we were always an odd pairing: a hippie and a jock, a spiritualist and a realist, an aspiring yogini and a cutthroat soccer, hockey and football player

nothing went wrong per se
we didn’t fail
i had to tell you that

for what it was worth, it was fantastic…i saw wyoming with you, i danced at more than one wedding with you…you gave me that eye gaze and i blushed and giggled away from it

you were 10 years my senior…i didn’t notice it until the very end

there are some patterns that one can never break
some demons we just refuse to face

i will miss you…

you were in love with me for six years
and i said no to many of those kinds of advances

we’ve still managed to make out, see each other naked, and talk to the Divine together without it disrupting this incredible friendship i’ve managed to forge with you over the past 7 years now

no one understands me like you…no one

you out of everyone else understand why i react to music the way i do, why i think certain things are funny and why i feel…so…much…

we are scorpios…we are soul twins in a lot of ways
we are finally coming back together after almost a year of separation

viva la resurrection!!

you are the twin brother i never had.

I wrote out the names but so many of them are names that I do not want go on about here.

It’s done.

I have been working on the list to post and then an individual entry on each person after that.

It’s a tough list to make. Do I focus on the recent people or those from my youth? Both have made an impact but at this vantage point it’s hard to say which have made the bigger impact.

Anyway, the list is coming.

Perhaps it’s true when they say that every single experience you encounter in your lifetime has something special and positive waiting for you to grow into.

My people that I have met may have not been positive all of the time and I may have lost them, but I have gained that much more because I’ve looked, have stopped looking and in those quiet moments it just sneaks up on me.

Feels good to finally finish this!!

43. Father

There’s no way around it-my father has been a great source of pain for me in my life. As a child, I believed that Dr. Jekell was my daddy and that Mr. Hyde was something evil that overtook him. I had a hard time being able to tell when Mr. Hyde was going to come out although I seemed to understand on some level that he wasn’t my father when he was drunk and he wasn’t my father when he did those things to me. In Al-anon I learned that during my father’s “sober” times he was a “dry drunk” and that was why I had a hard time telling the difference between a sober father and a drunk one.

I knew that there wasn’t something right with my father because he didn’t act like any other father I had met or seen. Right from the beginning he was to go against that traditional illusion of “what a father is supposed to be.”
They say that growing up a child normally experiences illusions and self-limiting beliefs from society passed down to the parents. My father created an environment full of lies by being an alcoholic. Every word spoken and every act done when he was drunk was from a place of his own pain. Okay, I’m trying here, so that means since there is an abundance of lies and since I’ve kept his secrets for a long time there can only now be the same amount of truth waiting for me.

Since he quit drinking-it took me six years but he and I have had chats about his drinking, how it affected me, how I felt, etc. and I’ve been the only one to do this in my family. He hasn’t really found the root of his shame so the chats usually stop abruptly.

I attempted to go through a process of trial and error by trying to prevent his wrath. I searched facial expressions, noticed body language, listened to tone of voice, watched his walk, etc. anything that led me to believe that I needed to hide. I realized that for 12 years I witnessed unconscious behavior for what seemed like at all times in the life of my father. Little did I know this actually refined a skill and I got good at it. From my father’s influence I can still notice unconscious behavior in people and denial the most. I notice other feelings as well. My father taught me a lot about human behavior and emotions.

He taught me something that I can’t quite place, but imagine that an egg is about to fall off a ledge and you’ve been granted a slow motion view of this. At first you go “ah! omigod, omigod, omigod it’s gonna fall” and you say this for a while until you notice the egg is still falling. I noticed many eggs still falling. After a while a certain sense of calm comes in. He taught me about the illusion of control. No one is ever really in charge of you and no one can ever really protect you. Unpredictable things happen and unpredictable things will probably always happen.

My father has things to teach me. Through the fires of rage, empowerment, confidence, assertiveness and the biggest challange of forgiveness. Whether I needed to learn them or not, if this is why those things happened-I don’t know. I just know that I gain knowledge, wisdom, and grow from things that were not my fault and that seem to take my life in an area I feel deeply drawn into. Perhaps the greatest gift he gave in which he never meant to give was the anger towards God and realizing a long forgotten faith in God, in my own time through a process, that people would talk about and I never believed would happen.