Me.

There once was a boy from Ambrosia
Where everyone's mom and dad knows ya
A witch and her child
A man's soul beguiled
None for rest when there isn't no closure

It's funny looking back at what rhymes on the East Coast. The Bridgeman's Limerick. I guess it's gibberish, but it was the said to be recited as the lift bridge operators measured time between switch-pulls.

It came back to me today. A lot of things did.
I also checked my PO and the first really startling check was there.
But it's pretty meaningless. Make for a good drink, I guess.

Still, I find I so desperately mean well, or want to mean well, but people... what are they? Tools? Obstacles? Pain?

So I wonder about life and get a little more worn out by the day. Hm. "Nun fer rest when thur isent nah closia".

Home, James.

I don't know.

Please forgive me if I ever said to you anything pretending that I knew what you should do, 'cause I don't know what I was saying.

I don't know me anymore.

Epilogue

Dear Constant Readers,

I took a long walk this morning. I visited my sister, my uncle Shea, and my buddy Bartram Milton. As always at "the museum of what could have been", the artifacts weren't very talkative.

Cemeteries are the wealthiest mines of unrecoverable riches, don't you think? A waste heap of lost potential. Books that were never written. Songs that were never sung. Paintings that will never hang on walls.

And it's not just those who died young. So many people go to the grave misspent - either leveled by fear or locked away by a lack of guidance - running in circles, telling themselves life is just like that. Or maybe they're just ignorant of the fact that they have so much to offer the world.

Shea was a writer. He wrote these amazing stories which were pure fantasy, but somehow compelled you to believe they MIGHT be true... somehow. And maybe that's what stories are for. To give us alternate truths.
He died of lung cancer at 49, despite never touching a cigarette. It might have been the print-shop chemicals or the New York smog. He never blamed anything. He claimed he was lucky, getting notice. A chance to set things right.
Laney told me he once was speaking with a nurse who asked him about his condition. He told her he had cancer.
She asked him if he was terminal and with a sly look he replied with a question.

"Aren't we all?"

I wish I'd been there. Yes indeed, big old world. We ALL are. It doesn't ease a guilty conscience that screams the names of those that beat you to the dirt, but it's a fact. A brilliant, shining light in the haze of a planet covered in bullshit disguised as proverbial wisdom.

Nevertheless, there might be something to realizing all of that and starting again. Or trying.

So I will. In a little while. First I'm going to spend some time thinking. Really thinking, not carrying on like some kind of whiny little bitch who can't shake the ghosts of his past.

If I happen to disappear on you guys forever, I wish you well in your lives.
Joe, thanks for everything and I'll be in touch as soon as I find some light.
Rob, keep your sites on the ocean.

Everyone else... don't flinch.

Trouvaille d'amour de mai vous, bien que j'aille ma manière.

Brody

Fallen from the world .

If I could ever breathe in the air maybe then I wouldn't suffocate.

Creative flow, where did you go?

I've been wracking my brain trying to decide what's next. Small bursts of conversation with real people aside, I feel isolated. I guess that doesn't work to respark the thing.

Dad's dead. Laney's dead. Ronnie's dead. I pushed some people too hard for art. Ok. Life sucks. I can't change it. If I could, I definitely would, I'd change a lot of things. Who wouldn't.

I've put people who care about me through the gears. But maybe care is a term we use loosely anyway. Screw 'em.

How do you sigh on a blog?

Anyway, be safe. I've got some business to take care of. The business of finding the way things have to go now.

And call sometime. I can't always get it, but I'll try.

B

Cell Phones and their Sicknesses

So imagine it. A cell phone with a voice changer mod you CAN'T SHUT OFF!!

If you get a minute, give me a call, because I'm just not in the mood for email. You'll have to deal with the borg or whatever the hell sound it is.

Music, Music, I Hear Music...

Well, the mid-winter blues are here, aren't they. Back and forth, of course, not just sad or happy. That wouldn't make sense.

Flies and Blue Skies and all that. And what I wouldn't give to cry king's x, but the past isn't meant to be changed, just to teach. And it's a harsh teacher, isn't it?

The beach is amazing, but I heard a song I just had to look up. And it's caught in the pit of my gray matter. Like a sad, reminiscent ode...

Ronnie, let's laugh in the face of death, ok?