I'M WORRIED ABOUT things.
In fact, they eat me up. This is the roughest month we've faced since we've been here, and if you know anything about our story, you get what that really means.
Wendy is tense, I'm tense, everybody is tense. Well, not Dare, but he ain't supposed to be tense for a few years.
I know better things will come soon.
This morning, one of the first things I did was clean up a a mess made by my mother as she (uknown to me) tried to balance the receiving appararus of her "potty chair" on her knees as she wheeled herself over the carpet to dump it into the toilet. She made it to the bathroom door, but not in time to miss the carpet.
My so called brother has decided to visit (!) today, and will be here this afternoon. The last thing my mother needs is for us to try to talk in her presence, so I plan to be elsewhere the minute they arrive. I've no intention of being the target of his judgement or the recipient of his "advice". I know you have no idea what I mean, so just know my complaint here is having to clean up this dumpy apartment in between taking my mother to dialysis and picking her up.
Don't know how I'm gonna pay the bills, she goes in for another surgery monday morning, my infected teeth are driving me insane, and well.. nobody is having a very good time on any level.
But while all of these things (and a ton more I don't have time to bore you with) are having my spinal cord for lunch, the one that's tearing me up the worst is that Wendy isn't happy. I can take a beating, but I can't stand it when Wendy isn't happy. And that she isn't happy is my fault. I promised to make her happy, and I'm failing. That I want to more than anything just isn't good enough for me.
I don't want to do the things I have to to take care of my mother, but it's one of those things that just ain't about me. I hope I can keep the balls in the air a little bit longer, and move towards a better time. I know I can if Wendy can wait just a little more.
I hope she waits, just a little more. I love her more than anything else, and that's all I wanna do.
Tags: LOVE
THE NOTHING DOOR
(PART SIX)
a repost from a while back, cause I ain't got much time
_________________________________
From an old blog:
Near the end of may, 2007.
" I plan to close the presses temporarily (I say "plan to"
because it's possible- not likely- that I might have an unexpected
burst of inspiration at any given time) to kill the cockroaches in
my bloody suitcase and head left. This portion of the east coast,
though picturesque, makes a John McCain press conference look
like a rave. A mile away in any direction from Duke University
( in North Carolina, hospitals are the State Bird ), Durham is as
empty as a book store in Arkansas."
I'm not sure why, but it seems like I'm always saying goodbye.
It also seems like I'm always going in circles- start here, go there,
and back again, even if it's only sorta. I guess the biggest mystery
to me is how and when I left getting lost on the freeway for getting
lost on dirt roads. One can become accustomed to the 405 (and even
the one-way surface street wasteland that is Long Beach), but how
people learn to ignore bombed out trailers with cars on top of them
will forever confound me.
It's been a very long time since I woke up happy, and I've always
been one of those 'grass is always greener' people. But everything
in me tells me Wendy came along for a reason, and second guessing
it would be foolishness above and beyond even me. So soon I'll be
saying goodbye again, however windowless and tantrum free.
Few people my age are still having this kind of aimless adventure,
and I'm grateful for the things I've learned, as usual. But I will not
miss "New" Mexico. Of course, I said the same thing about Kentucky.
If I've told you any of the following before, I apologize.
In 1978, as I was getting ready to finally go home to California
after a dismal high school career in Kentucky, I enjoyed several
months of unemployment checks, getting high and playing guitar
18 hours a day, surely. All of my dearest relationships were also moving
on, to marriage or college or working in their dad's garage and such,
so any melancholy was futile, which is standard anyway, I suppose.
One fine day, a strange little man I sometimes bought dope from
knocked on my door (it's bewildering how a knock on a door or a
ringing phone can be the first few seconds of dramatic change in
your life), and I opened it to find him a little dazed and holding my
dream guitar, a 1969 Ampeg Dan Armstrong six-string. "What the
fuck?" came to mind before "Hey, how ya doing?", but he didn't
seem to notice.
His name was Junior.
Junior lived in real country poverty, with his aged, creaky grand-
mother, in a very large house of blackened wood. If he wasn't home,
she would waddle to the bedroom on her hand-cut cane to fetch bags
of pot for his customers. As I recall, other than food stamps, bags of
Window Box were their only source of income. Well, if you
don't count stolen guitars.
"Where did you get this?", I asked as I took it from him. "The high
school", he answered, "it belongs to the band. They ain't got no guitar
player so it just sits in the damn room, they ain't gonna miss it." I figured
somebody would, but that somebody was undoubtedly one of the idiots
that had made my life beyond difficult for years, so I didn't care much.
It was a Dan Armstrong, and I knew what he was about to say.
"Wanna buy it? My mamaw needs some money real bad."
I had 75 dollars. So of course, I said "I have 75 dollars". Sold.
Junior took that money home to his mamaw, then went to the bridge
at Laurel Lake, and jumped to his death. Sometimes, I still dream about
it.
That instrument changed my life, and most assuredly changed my playing.
The way it came about did too, on both counts.
I miss it, like a friend.
Tags: weirdness THE_PAST
IT IS DIFFICULT
to believe that my mother has been in the hospital since December 2nd.
I've been taking care of her now for about four years, at the expense of my own life. Halfway through it all I met Wendy, and I have no illusions that it did not save my sanity.
All our dreams seemed right around the corner when I caught that train to the east, and I think we both believed everything could only turn out right.
Nothing did, except for our certainty that we belong together. The list of trials, though they would seem like everyday weirdness to most, were made more incredible by my mothers hospitalization, which added a layer of strangeness that colored every move we have made.
It stifled my possibilties, it put a strain on our freedom, and has kept us at the beginning of our lives together for a very long time.
Today, she comes home. Everything will be new to her, even though we have been here since mid-October. She was so sick the first several weeks that she spent most of it in a state of confusion, so life in North Carolina quite literally begins today for her.
I hope that also means it begins today for us. I'm very nervous about it all and can't seem to get my head around it, but I'm trying to cultivate some hope. Being near Wendy is all I want at the end of the day, but it would be nice to paint it a bit with some of my music, some (more) laughter, and a little less stress.
Fact is, the world has been on a mission to test us since I got here, and it hasn't had one ounce of progress in terms of creating second guesses. I love Wendy more today than even yesterday, and that pretty much sums up every morning in my life. And she loves me. She loves me too.
Can you dig it?
Here we go, baby. Chapter two. Finally.
e
Tags: family
I must say, it is wonderful to have someone special in your life.
It feels really nice when I walk into a local shop here and the first
thing people say is â€Where’s your other half?†And it happens
every time.
North Carolina has been interesting so far. I’m still quite aware
of not being in California, even though I spent a couple of years
in New Mexico and a year before that in Durham- which is south
of here, I do believe.
I knew my move back to NC would be a step closer to a better way,
but I didn’t know how much better it would be.
We don’t have much, very little in fact, and I’m sure most of the
time I drive her nuts with my dark rooms and ocassional silence.
My mother has been in the hospital since December 2nd, and I
suppose I’m not always a ray of sunshine.
Things are moving way too slowly, and have been for four years.
I guess you can’t take L.A. out of the boy. Or something, maybe.
I know she wonders about things, and that I’m not always the
easiest read. I do my best every day to tell her how much I love
her, but I think there’s a part of that that she doesn’t get.
The truth is, I’ve never met a more amazing girl.
She’s always laughing when I do a double take at goats in peoples
yards, miniature horses, leaning buildings… the list is long.
And when I end up in a conversation with someone she knows,
in her shop or at the store or something, I can tell she is ready to
laugh. Not at them, but at me. Of the two of us in the conversation,
believe me I’m the one who deserves it.
Wendy laughs at me a lot, but probably not much more than I do.
Let’s face it, I am a little lost in the world.
But I laugh at her too. And with her, more often.
I used to think about how wonderful she is, and how wonderful it
will be when we are together, and a thousand things would cross my
mind.
Dumb things, like being in the grocery store together, or dropping off a
water bill.
It all seemed like it would be new to me with her by my side, and it is,
even more than I imagined.
But the first time it hit me that I just didn’t even get how wonderful
she is was the first time we dropped her kid off at school.
As we were pulling up to the building, she started giving her little
recitation, and I realized it was something she did every day, and
I never knew it. And she does. Every day.
She says, “Dare, be a good boy, don’t disrupt the class, pay attention,
do your work neat and quick, do your very best. I love you very much,
and I’m very proud of you.â€
We can do this, my love.
No me without you, and all of that.
I love you very much, Wendy. And I’m very proud of you.
Tags: my_love
