My Children

Although there is a small part of me that on some conscious level wants to scream at my children...."Avenge ME!"

The reality is for most of the time that this world is fucked! Our president is fucked! Racial, sexual, spiritual (and the list goes on) tolerance (intolerance) is at an all time level of ridiculousness.

So my advice to you, Nicholas-Anjolia-Micah (and by extended lineage Timmy, Ashley, Troy, Christian, Dominike, Teayana, Tierre, William, Mathias, Joshua, Lacey, Jeremiah, and Jared).... study for war, waR, wAR, WAR. It is here.

Now, my hope is that I did not die on the toilet an old man's pathetic death. Maybe I burned out in a blaze of glory, guns a blazin' on two wheels, knives a slashin! Cancer... I hate. Alzeheimers... I hate.

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Advice to My Children:

I am so glad that I went down in a flame of destruction, that is not your hereditary, it is simply a reminder that I once was alive.

So fast forward to my advice:

Fuck the motha-fuckin’-fuckitty fucks! You rock! Ballz to the wall, or in Anjolia’s case…tits to the bitches bitches. Don’t live to be 50 wrapped in mediocrity! Rage, rage, and rage some more.

Nick! I could not be any prouder of the man that you are! I love you. You may not know this but I was coated in transmission oil and other Ford Mustang fluids the day you were born! I love you, I love your wife, and I love the family you will one day have.

Anjolia, you are my homegirl… my angel… and my inspiration. You do you and fuck the rest of the world. Shine on!

And Micah, my little homie. Thanks for being my very best friend these last few.

I am so glad that I went down in a flame of destruction, that is not your hereditary, it is simply a reminder that I once was alive.

So fast forward to my second piece of advice:

Know that you are all shining stars. I fought demons so you wouldn't have to. So live, love, laugh, and love some more. All is good. I will always look down on you from on high.

The Ballad of the Bouncing Baby Boy

A dozen and some small change.

When I awoke the morning of the incident, none of my senses appeared heightened in the least.

I was a child, full of innocence and relatively unaware of my own mortality. Although memory is most often an erratic and unreliable scene setting, I confidently recollect that the mortality of others, like my own, had never even once crossed my conscious mind. Luke Skywalker’s mortality was of great concern to me, but none of the living or even the reality in which they lived, ever really occupied the paradigm of my insomniatic adolescence. I did not know too many unrelated people and shallow was my depth. Again, I was only a dozen and some small change.

HE was just a baby. A beautiful baby boy.

Dancing around the truth, if you have been paying attention, is a familiar pattern of mine that deliberately detracts from the celebration of self-awareness through self-disclosure.

The truth is out there! 
I will get us there, I assure you.

Meanwhile, the eight-track tape — as the magnetic sound-recording technology extraordinaire of its time, was nearing the end of its popularity. This now obsolete technology was alive and well circa the moment in question. It was 1979. Barney was not yet a purple dinosaur. Superfluously detailed to overly contextualize the character of the protagonist, this diminutive discourse demonstrably derails the focal context of the story at hand. 

Ponder this.  The sentence for involuntary manslaughter was likely longer than the melting of the snow beneath the rubber boots that I wore during my lonely walk to Longfellow Junior High. The walk itself was perhaps my single greatest challenge on blizzardy mornings — uphill for more than a mile — in the snow, both ways.

As the oldest male child I was the hand-me-down production artist, never the victim. Entitled was my middle name. Poverty was not my style but it was well known by the poor people that I lived with.

Bourguoise muah!

Proletariat deux.

Death knocks for all.

Death. Thank God you were not the final outcome of what I refer to as Exhibit A.

________________________________________________________

Exhibit A: The shit I have been painstakingly talking about.

Exhibit A: The alleged accident.

________________________________________________________

Cognizance of the time of day, the day of the week or even the day of the month, let alone the month itself is something that I cannot summon unto my memory, even with my heightened ninja-like ability to print a calendar and draw tiny circles around numbers and follow-up with arrows pointing to specific dates.  Yellowed paper makes this exercise seem all that much more authentic.

______________________________________

The sentence for involuntary manslaughter 
would not become known to me then 
— now — 
or at any other time in my living history.

______________________________________

My baby brother. I loved him dearly.

My baby brother. I likely changed his diaper(s) more than any other sibling ever did. Probably more than even his mom or dad even did.

My baby brother. Lovingly held in my arms as I brought him from his crib, down the stairs, to the breakfast table, like so many other times before.

Why did someone put a blanket on the stairs?

Why did my left foot buckle as I lost my balance?

Why did my superhuman brotherly love strength fail me on the final step?

Why did everyone have to watch as I tumbled stair by stair, head over heal, in slow motion?

He lived.

I lived.

Live and let live.

Will he ever forgive me? Will his service as my eternal muse ever pay dividends that he will treasure as much as I treasure him?

                                                ______________________________________

Retrospectively speaking I understand fully why I was always visibly the least favorite among my stepfather’s many critical responsibilities. 
BURDEN
If you can not do the time  — do not do the crime.

Mi Musa y Mi Corazón

I once dug a shallow grave for myself because I was bored and had a shovel. 

“¿Cómo estás haciendo amigo de mi imaginación?”

“Et tu Snuffaluffagus?” I confidently replied.

In this very same moment, in my mind's eye, I saw myself simultaneously serving as both the pallbearer at my own funeral as well as the eloquent and elegant clergy conducting the ceremony.

Bammm! 
I kicked spiritual wisdom like a surfer on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with a brand new hackey sack. Consolation with the left foot, "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God," Isaiah 41: 10.

Gnarly dude, that's how I roll. Puff puff pass.

Semi-flip, left hand down as I poetically gain my balance. Right foot extended, connect. "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit," Psalms 34:18.

________________________________________________

There's nothing wrong with dying — a noble death is on my bucket list. Last item to be honest.

I always preferred black high tops — if I had to wear shoes that is.

I would have to take them off, however, if I aspired to come close to an accurate count 

of the many reasons that death and I were not ready to engage 

in that final passionate loving embrace. 

The fear of death has never been among the many reasons that life and I remain lovers.

_______________________________________________________________________

So back to Einstein. 

Not the lightly toasted sesame seed variety with the cream cheese schmear, but the scholar. 

While he danced among the living he allegedly once said, "Imagination is more important that knowledge."

Imagine this — if you will.

Imagine this — if you can.

As you rise to the morning sun in that period of daily bliss before your princess dawn awakens... as you settle into the familiar aroma of a classic blend of Sumatran Mandheling or Guatamalan Antigua... what is the story captured beneath your yawn? What do your sleepy eyes reveal?

Tu eres mi jefe, tu eres mi musa! 

You alone stand proud, uniquely Arabica in a world of Robustan mediocrity. 

You are my special blend and my very special friend. My Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.

For that reason alone, I will awake. Today, tomorrow, and forevermore. 

I will rise to embrace genesis.

_______________________________________________________________________

And when the inscriptions are written with faux personalization to the masses that pretend they somehow knew of my imagination... that they somehow knew of me...

Only you will know. 

And you will have no one to tell. 

Be sure to tell them, just the same.

Ku-Jo and the Dancing Fingers

O to the MG!

I figured out how to get back into this account. Dare I say I am a genius. Sure, who's to stop me?

I recall when the ritual of writing was a daily transcendental experience. Almost like meditating but with my eyes open and my thoughts unhindered.

Why do people blog?

I think there are many people that feel as though they have something to say. Perhaps they do. That is not my problem.

I think there are many people that feel as though there are people that want to hear what they have to say. Perhaps they do. That is also not my problem.

I blog because I have nothing to say and no one to whom I am attempting to say it to. So for me, the only problems that I have are contained within the mind that directs these fingers of mine to dance upon the keys that form the words that flow.

Flow free or not at all.

You know, it is kind of cool that I was forced to take a typing class over 30 years ago. I can almost keep up with my stream of consciousness.

Hooray for me!