Flailing American Plans

Instagram is a language for nigh upon decades, which, for all intent and purpose, was essentially the same formula one has been doing with this blog since the early aughts. Or earlier? Why would one ever return to this esoteric corner of the intrawebz?

One could suppose that it’s more private. Thereby befitting of more private meanderings. 

So what “private” thought has predicated that one returns here to dispose of? What burden will be recycled today?

Let’s start at awakening.

When your walk to the espresso machine leaves bloody footprints, you know the recent past has been soul-destroying.  Don’t mope, just retrace your steps and keep rinsing the sponge out. It doesn’t have to be a ruckus. 

The ruckus is within one’s heart, you can’t photograph it and post it online with the caption: “feeling like death, might delete oneself” You know the rules of the heart!

No. 

It simmered at the dinner that your guests left you at. It had a chance after a decent night of snoring. A flicker of redemption. But as the the twilights between raven and dove (as the Hebrews term it) began to descend, so did the thin fabric begin to un-web from the flame. 

Cast forth from vitriolic curses and weekends spent on freeways. The only compassionate voice you hear is from Siri, Alexis, Tesla!

They are but children, why can’t you know that? 

From the ashes, like an eerie / silent battlefield. 

DP

Pure White Light

Hey my friend, I am pleased to see you. It's been a while. You look nice, healthy. How did it go with that guy? Oh no, I am sorry to hear that. But to be honest, I saw it coming. Inevitable.

It pretty amazing how they could piece me back together. I am fucked for life. But I have life, my appendages. "The Idiot" still works pretty good.

To say that I am very, very fortunate is an extreme understatement. If there's such a thing.

Tell me how you think, sunbeam. I've spent a lifetime trying to wrap my head around it, and I'm always so surprised.

Show me how you move. But don't force it, be yourself and move the way you want it.

I am a jaded, judgmental prick. No doubt about it. You have no idea. But with you. With you. I only see light.

Pure
White
Light.

From the ashes, like an eerie silent battlefield,

DP

lookers

pumping, un-forsaken
none of this goes with us
just the looking
the looked at

none of this
fortunately
unfortunately
not even the feeling of what is fortunate
unfortunately

goes with us

From the ashes, like an eerie silent battlefield,

DP


From the ashes, like an eerie silent battlefield,

DP

Never Forget 02/13/15

Pain Is Now

We go back into the hospital, tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow they carve into us, for the seventh time. They bring us back, disoriented and shaking. Without a shadow, we aim our wheelchairs straight into this; pain upon pain upon pain.

But none of this, excruciating and screaming it may be, compares to the emotional pain we felt in another life.

From the ashes, like an eerie silent battlefield,

DP

Lunar Super Moon

We have seen three lunar eclipses in our lifetimes, each one encircled by our specific, situational mists. The lunar part of tonight was less impressive than the vivid figure whose circumference consists of points equidistant from its center. And the bath which we absorb from her majesty, a bath of doomed hope. Forever chasing her one true love, of whom she will never capture.

From the ashes, like an eerie silent battlefield,

DP

X Rays

Despite feeling light years better than I have in 7 months, and absorbing all the radiance from family, friends, unknowns, and new love, it's become clear to me that I am still vulnerable and raw regarding recent events. I'm sure it's to be expected- how often does pain dissolve overnight?

It's mostly due to "triggers" found commonly in popular culture. What I read and watch. Triggers is an apt term that I really like- an accurate way to describe how it feels after the trigger is pulled, and who or what is doing the pulling.

The biggest hurdle is trying to overcome the absolute viciousness and zero concern for my healing my displayed by my ex since immediately after the incident and continuing to this very moment. I shouldn't be so surprised, but I am.

I'm happy to cut people like that out of my life, definitively, but I still long to develop a healthy co-parenting relationship. And to forgive her, for the past and for now. But who can deny the pain of sharing a decade with someone I was deeply in love with, who birthed our two beautiful children, only to have it all end like a helicopter crash. Like a scab that someone keeps scratching off.

But instead of saying, "Dude, what the fuck are you doing? That was healing!" which would be entirely appropriate, I have to keep my mouth shut for legal reasons and just hope that they will realize on their own how their actions affect others.

But narcissistic sociopaths don't follow predictable trains of thought like that. That is their own curse and their's alone. I realize now it's not something to fight against but to sympathize with. I have my own curses and the people that truly love me help me through them.

It's impossible for me to completely reject the mother of my kids, so I keep her name on my arm. As a past life reminder. That time is 100% over and will never repeat itself, but it existed.

The trick is to not dwell too long on such things and be effective in the moment. Jump one obstacle at a time. Hold onto the hands extended to you. They will help you over.

From the ashes, like an eerie silent battlefield,

DP

[EDIT: Never mind, I decided to get her name removed from my arm. I need that spot for my third kid!]

REUNION

I couldn’t sleep again last night. But this time it wasn’t from anxiety, it was from excitement and happiness.

In 3 hours and 45 minutes I will be with my children again!

I have had dreams about them, I spend evenings looking at old pictures of them, I keep their handwritten notes and drawings made for me next to my bed. Not a moment has gone by when I haven’t fantasized about hugging them, holding them again.

It hasn’t even been that long. I have been on tour longer than this. The crucial difference is: there was a time not long ago when I was absolutely sure I would never see them again.

I had farewell letters written for each of them on my person when I jumped.

It’s truly a miracle I survived. It’s a miracle I am healthy and heart-beating as I type, instead of decomposing in a box in Kentucky. If one event had been altered by even a second, I would not be here.

But the true miracle, for me, is that I was gifted another opportunity to love my children again.

And this miracle occurs in only 3 hours and 40 minutes!

I can only thank every one of you- family, friends, strangers- for propping me up, strengthening me, helping me to heal my mind. Your kind words of support and love, no matter how big or small, has helped me to find the crux of my second life: DO WHAT IS BEST FOR THE CHILDREN. 

This is what I am here for. This is the signpost that I use to navigate through the madness. This includes healing myself so I can be a present and stable father for them. I have self interests, but they are secondary and exist only under the umbrella of serving my children.

All I do, all my choices, in my second life is done for their benefit.

I am grateful to each of you.

The Dance

The sun seemingly falls only to rise again. Music, the laughter of children, intellectual conversation, is but the rising and falling of sound waves we interpret as vibration. Ocean waves rise only to fall, withdraw, and rise again.

We fall, to the absolute bottom, only to pick ourselves back up.

It is the ebb and flow of life in its pure form.

But this motion is joined by one thing. My fingers are attached to hands attached to arms attached to my body which is governed by my brain, in the center. My fingers mirror each other on opposite sides of the body, but they are connected by a single source.

It is that which joins the polarity of rising and falling that gives us meaning. We give it names like God or consciousness or particles or life. Vague words whose definition we debate, but are only arrows that point towards something that can never be articulated by language and mathematics.

Rising and falling is the dance of something unlimited, microcosmic and macrocosmic, that we struggle to comprehend.

We dance while we search. Without realizing we are searching, without realizing we are dancing. Without realizing we are that which we are searching for.

From the ashes, like an eerie silent battlefield,

DP