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Cancer. Medical greed. A Space trip, seeking for the void, and for what's left of life. |
# . Please be kind to the following piece, what contines are brief blog entries, notebook scribbles, and lone bits I tied together to attempt to shape it into one coherent story. Some self-stick notes from when I was coming back from the stroke and I was learning to wite again It's autobiographical in structure but told in a fantastical, peppered with psicodelia, self-contemplation a blatant spill of consciousness. I do have admiration for Jack Karouak. Mostly, this is a thank you whom to read a few lines! SKÖL!! Hrafnar Árgeir Take x. Prologue A human footprint pressed into the sand, my breath wheezing out of me, exhaustion, with guttural grunts, all in a rhythmic effort of sorts. The utter silence, of your ever stalking shadow at toe. Dryness, bone dry. " No life! There's nothing alive here!" An intrusive voice in my head kept blurting out. I watched my white boot produce a withe wave of hot sand and agreed. An ethereal thread to life. The sea so infinite from my position as a human, standing in a warm breeze, so finite. I was just astonished, how quick the azure skies, seemingly endless over me, and in a instant can be taken away. I felt the void for the first time, soul tearing crooning from afar, a long viceral call, a realization of sorts, that my life has all been a crying waste. Revenant, silent shy as breeze gaining momentum to be invisible in the storm, so many thoughts come and go. My broken brain, aphasia, the damage done; three tumors due to a cancer, which blew my right kidney to shit, to finally settle by corrupting my lymph nodes. I'm no longer feel alive and at the same time I still tread on, swallowed by whirlwinds of gray. I am he who finds a way to return, even though everyone thought me lost. I welcome you , and appreciate you taking time to know about someone falling apart, in look of putting myself to gather, stranded in a third world reality, a psychonaut, left behind, to float away into the great big nothing. I launch into space, far far away from humans, see they wanted to profit off my death, drawing it into a long hole to go down just to suffer, or go progressively stupid. My bout with brain cancer, refusing any kind of chemo, just by the power of a plant, and a simple process anyone can do. Disappointed me even deeper. My wife, a slowly thawing type of creature were you suddenly find yourself in a sexless relationship, and barraged by demands. Then the become someone y used to know, to a text message from another country. Hi!... After the silence, the gut twisting anxiety, the radio began to pop, to slowly let way to the wildfire like sing of static. "Is there anyone, left out there?" Welcome, if anyone, anything can receive... "I'm still glad you are here, or not, it has been so long...", so much time speeding on and on, into unknown space. Objective, to travel on into the apparent nothing, far into the void, away from humanity, to prove nothing was out there. Gliding through a pitch black uncertainty. Far from the chaos I left behind. Day after day wondering at the speed of light almost, into a terribly infinite nothingness, it's been days, months, years, perhaps. Too far. Too far. I went too far out. Radio barely receives random bleeping. Too far Mike, for a quick instance I disassociate from reality, I’m suddenly standing on pristine white sand, squishing between my toes. A swift breeze blew across the dunes making the solitude cut deeper. An introduction. My intention is telling my tale, my experience with cannabis oil and how it cured my brain cancer. A tale with all its burdens, tragedies, joys and cherished moments in their fleeting nature. Amongst the chaos of life, and how finite is everything destined to disappear into the nothing, even us. A search uncommended, a long emptiness stretched through the cold void of nothingness, the sting of disappointment or disillusionment trying to pull me back into the black. A quest that will ultimately end in one of two ways, first, is the black just is too hard to break free from and death finally swallows me, second, I might find myself finally, the good parts lost away in childhood carelessness, slain by people's words, and become at peace with life. In love with who I am, at peace with the present, greatful, and a family member to count on. This is a fragmented story, of a severely fragmented person, I`m a Psiconaught, explorer of the inner space, where I lived most my life, where I wonder looking for answers in the pitch black coldness of existence. Uncertain to if there is anything out there at all. It's meant to written some kind of dim psychedelic hue, that same bit of despair you might experience on an acid trip, the chaos and the confusion. It blossoms from the deep disillusionment with humanity, the moment I found myself mortally ill, recently married, wanting a life, and faced with a machine that wanted me to come into their halls of death, for money, like just one more pig hooked ona line. Just like those pigs screaming at the end of a day on my grandfather's farm, its a sound that screeches across your soul like white crusty nails to the geen of some chalkboard, a being put to the knife. I hope to somehow give everyone a bit of a view into what's it is like to grow and become some kind of man, another clown tearing himself up on the inside, heartache, and all the other baggage, besides my mental health. How, being the son of a mentally ill mother, badgered by her own family, that always did her best, and sometimes just gave up, I don't dare judge. How some of us are left on the side lines of mental health, how we cope. Or how we end up lost and forgotten in a blood lusting world that doesn't care. To wrap this attempt of an introduction up, I've done my best to warn you the strangeness ahead. What is this thing? What's the point of this crap? All other sorts of questions are hoped to be answered to the best of my abilities or the effort I have willing at the time wrote this. So, certainly these are the last days of the rest of my life, lets see what comes of it. Introduction _ 2.5 Welcome, Whatever might have it been, your intent or by the whims of the cosmos lazily nudging you to happen by. Welcome, I thank you for your time, patients and interest. I humbly hope something here becomes of service, damage control wise, or motivation. We have made contact, most undoubtedly for a very good reason. Perhaps a close relative has cancer, you, your self on the quest to find a cure for your own illness, decided that the rude awakening, if attention is being payed, is on its way. I feel dreadfully the chase of time and my dwindling interests. Means a lot of me, so far away from everyone. I want to walk through how I beat brain cancer, just with Cannabis oil and change of diet, no chemotherapy what so ever. All in the frame of my family’s unhealthy way of dealing with our shared mental issues. And the ripples that spread wide touching so many parts of our lives. The ever present family mental health menú, depression, anxiety, megalomania, borderline personality disorder, all of this, all of it placed in a blender where it goes on and on. Profiled and boxed off, by the fact that I’m forty five and have achieved nothing in education, nor work. Life in general, was always a storm of chaos, change and wandering through oceans of time that funnel away and nothing is achieved. This is my understanding of how mental health seared through my family by never addressing it, and made everything worse. Mental Health issues that go un unchecked tend to become strange creatures that knit peculiar realities. This added to the humiliation of an education system, now forgotten, mix in a bit of grandma’s abuse towards my mom, how a bit of an unloving stepmother. It’s an honest account of what it’s meant throughout my life, absence of any mental treatment, this lead me down a dark winding path, wrong decisions, and grave mistakes. And yes, I hold myself as a Psychonaut, an explorer of inner space. Of love and my connections to all of them. I was done, then the whole having cancer thing, it’s painfully eye opening, a place where you oddly feel a dream like aloofness to existing, “ Wow! I am going to die...” , it hardly ever sinks in. Family eventually attacks you, wives grow more and more unstable beneath the skin, to eventually walk away with out a word, and to top it all off, this gargantuan, slimy, money monger, was part of my life, I was gazing into the eyes of who I expected to help me and realized all it wanted was my death for profit. This sort of laid down the foundation for me to wanted to I launch my self, metaphorically, far away, mentally, socially, in some way. A metaphor that fits. It fits with where I feel, I have been left. The wake of the cancer just shot me out of my own life, like an astronaut into nowhere, deep into the dark hungry void of space, with just a vague hope for finding something. Far from everyone, disconnected from the world, and lost. I felt completely hunted by the people who where supposed save my life. I wasn’t going to drag my resent wife, my daughter, my parents and family through, expensive treatments, the burns from the “ chemo”. Put my wife through my body falling apart as I am pushed to the brink of death. How friends, relatives, acquaintances, you know people, just decide to make some sort of sorry excuse and disappear. Yep, for sure nobody needs that kind of drama, right. My whole dynamic with people was changed, the three tumors that had popped up in my brain gave me a stroke with a side of aphasia. I was once a quick lad within the word, my life dream has always been to write a book some day, and then I became a muzzled dog. Add loosing my last attempt to get a collage degree on my second year. The loss of a mother, who I loved with all my heart, and my very first person to open the doors of chaos to me. One day early in the morning, in my groggy fog I was rushed out to an airport. She had became the lady who abandoned me at her aunt’s house, a saddened stranger, desperate, the woman I would try effortlessly to bring back to life, make her smile, have a mom. I was a very bitter and long failure. All I wanted was to make my mother happy. She fell to pieces, an over controlling psychopath father’s egomaniacal deeds and cackling. It all became an matter of, containing my mother, neutralize her so she can’t drink herself to death, smoke crack cocaine, or some morphine. Some where to die off where she wouldn’t bother any one. But boy, was she funny at family meals, everyone got a good laugh at things she shared. I had just turned Ten, and in a dazedly stupor I was in a barrage of blinding airport light, planes, and just a few years before, what was home somehow became corrupted. A dark stain, festering from the gloom beneath the skin. Violence, unemployment, alcohol, drugs, and me standing between a grown man and my mother demanding him to stop. What’s next? Cigarettes and leather, was what mom smelled like, and anxiety, shroud in sadness, but, even for a ten year old, she was bleeding regret. Acting strange, pulling me inside an airport music store. “Get whatever you like.” Her face all distorted, in my tunnel sight. My hand tight inside a hand I haven’t known for eternity, I was cast to the four winds, bound by my big toe to an endless silver thread, though it always lead me home, the problem it wasn’t ever clear the place. Off it was then, into the great unknown. I was just used to getting as much as you could while things are going good, for so long it just took a drop of a hat for everything to go back to wearing socks made from some well-fare kids unwanted, Transformers pjs. It goes from chawing down on a happy meal, to a swift slap up side the head for failing to act like the poor you are, what’s rare, hardly ever happens, should be left alone. And obviously my experience with psychedelic drugs, from the failed trips, where me and my wife at the time, decided it would be a great idea to drop a whole square of LSD for our anniversary at a far away hotel in the hills of the Imbabura province? All fancy and with natural hot water springs that even go into our room, even had a private jacuzzi with a nice Inca face that spat out the water. Well, she never took that much acid, and now she is yelling at to top of her lungs, in a knee high filled jacuzzi, and kicking my ass outside. And receiving a nice earful of how she doesn’t want to be here any longer, and basically how much it sucks to be with me. And now with my head full of acid, I have to get her down the mountain, through six different towns, to get home. What a freaky strange trip home! With my wife losing her shit and me trying to keep the car on the road. A really colorful creep homewards. I sincerely hope that this comes full circle, besides the strange metaphors and oddities which are tentacles of despair, you know those things that come out from left field and slaps your very existence off keel. 2.1 Breathe. Breathe, again, eyes closed. Again, and again, and again... Welcome, Picture if you may, a forgotten watermill, high up in some sunbathed hill, in some manner waiting for the end. Inside a shaded crevasse, the onslaught of time. The ancient wheels, tall tired giants, ever churning an endless stream of chaos. Sheer chance, awkward instances, the numbers of probability, or just your intentions. Perhaps by the whims of the cosmos lazily nudged you and here we are. And yes, this is a cancer survival story, I was surprised mister inmortal found out he’s headed for the sea, but as ashes. A recovery story, twined with mental illness, growing up as a misadjusted child, and later a fouty-something that only knows how to plant cannabis plants. I appreciate your time, interest, and attention, I deeply feel great full. The way I fell from grace, tragedy never travels alone, left me so far away from home, totally estranged from my peers, stumbling inside a suffocating smog that barely keeps me alive. Transmisión number- 111-01-00-10-01 My directives are to sleep eight hours in a earth cycle, to keep up my deteriorating body f, coasting at mind numbing speeds piecing darkness for days now, there’s just nothing out there, through the spinning windows. I’m finally spinning in a can through the nothingness of the vacuum of space. I’m finally lost. Computer is still insisting on my twenty four hour earth days. Not knowing that on earth days can bleed into the next. Savagery to the mind, total absence of the soul that is aware time is running out. Meaningless days, rolling one over the other. Where you were is spilt across a white linoleum table, the places you have been, where you felt hopeful, and the people in our life just phantoms in silky gowns, wandering pointlessly through a foggy feast and drink of some sorts. I think of home, it’s never a clear idea, vague smells, comfort, a place of the soul hugging smell of homemade cooking. All those absent treasures, but there with the wrong people. Transmisión- 001-01-01-01-11-00-01 Gliding through a pitch black, terribly infinite nothingness, weightless, it's been days, months, years, perhaps. Too far, I went too far out. Radio barely receives random bleeping. Too far Mike, for a quick instance I disassociate from reality, I’m suddenly standing on pristine white sand, squishing between my toes. A swift breeze blew across the dunes making the solitude cut deeper. “You can’t be more lost. Wanderer.” The girls voice eerily said in the breeze. Azure sky, the simplicity in the brief moment made me feel she said truth. "Too far," she insisted child's voice from some unpinned point far away now, “estrangement", “you went too far." She repeats herself into distortion and stops. I'm alone again. Slowly spinning somehow deep into the indifference of falling apart. Time has become dreary, blurred in so many tones over who I never wanted to become, and now who I am smeared somewhere in all the chaos. Day after day is just the same. Time charging its price of a life you just might have wasted. All in good intentions, the best intent, honest soul trapping dreams, and the very passion of my life. All spilt down a fiery black trench, smoke bleeding from the dark chaos, glowing coals, the bitterness of waste that was going on, the land is dead, black branches reaching up through a sour earth, sorrow like the dust, everywhere. Nothing in my life was ever made into a reality. But yes it was some sort of delirious trip, dreamy, fantastical, and terribly sad, hurtful, pain, mostly filled with abandonment, my mom, my friends, women, my own family and recently an estranged wife with no explanation available. I see my fingers, now slim and somewhat wicked covered with some kind of gray matter. It's progressively becoming hard to recognise myself. I want to go home, Im just another stranded spaceman lonesome and longing... > > 02:36 am. SET > I don’t want to know if it’s day or night. You might be witnessing my breakdown as a person, loss of soul, that shimmer deep inside us is gone from the eyes, no love nor dreams for the future, just a poured out muck of chaos across the floor expanding slowly into nothing. There’s a way home. > > 3:14am SET > I fell asleep. I didn’t know my surroundings for a spell. All my life has been one big lie. All those hopes and all those dreams nothing but frivolous whims of a child. Nothing has made a difference, mostly I’ve been a leaf in the wind. I need to contact earth. It’s been so long. > > 17:12 SET > I miss my wife, barely remembering her touch, or who she was. Radio Transmission 0000001-0-001 Earth day num16,499 now reaches it’s end. A savage pun in an experience ending limerick perhaps, time is free, but it’s priceless. I was getting old, the ship droning one at a quarter, always forward, on and on, further into what looks like nowhere, lost, all this and more, all these Mission Objectives. Still stranded, no course set, nothing found. Speeding on with no destination, so fast you can feel it smothering the body. The certain deterioration it surely reeking havoc on some part of me or another. Apparently my oxygen rig is at the end of it’s miserable lifespan. No more parts for the last unit, no more bolts, no mores golden valves, no more new cards to slip them in. The end is eminent, no certain time can be calculated. Death is expected soon. I chose the endless darkness of space, I’d rather suffer the hardships and awkwardness of going to space than stay with people who have always been ass holes to me , leave the planet to stare into the void. The void actually appears to have swallowed me whole. > > 22:17SET I just release some times, and give in to the chaos around me. Centrifugal force rattling my brain with every tumble the ship makes. Time has lost it’s meaning, an endless hallway blinding white, smooth pillars withstand emptiness one beside the next. Days bleeding into each other, I see some one who is older, an older man who shows obvious signs of wear of an unkind life in the mirror, someone who I really don’t recognize as well as I once did. My social skill, is at its have decided awesomely. Back in reality, heartbreak after heartbreak, I can’t remember my mother’s last hug. The last time we went out for pizza together. The last time we got into a fight. > > 23:43 SET > I used to believe my journey to space was more of a matter of cowardice, to slowly turn around and wander endlessly into the the darkness of space. Cosmonaut shot off in search for hope. Turn away from people’s bull shit, not even my mother could shield me from the chaos. I walked away from so many good intentions. It is the result, mental health, constant rejection, and the lack of self-esteem. Radio Transmission # 0012-43-HHY Mayor power outage... - “The ship convinces me a bit more of how our use life is coming to an end.” I made an effort to give my last two cents, literally. Cold, essential part of the viciousness, to the void it self, - hypothermia was accomplished and finally through extended intense labor was overcome. -All port holes are frozen over, visibility cero. Familiar radio static gave an attempt of white noise, the familiar live popping, be by destination or circumstances, or just fed up and walked away; tired of the world, exhausted by apes . While cold eases up in my suit, time to fight for my life soon, slip to a place, where here eyes were easily swept up delightful abandonment through the galaxy. I was left with solace, I had finally met loneliness. Hurling at incomprehensible speeds across the galaxy, what a sight that must certainly be, but, I’m sealed in a windowless vault, safe in my tin can. … … Back in the 70’s My mom, beautiful un her blue, Corderoy, mac&cheese and corn dogs, she gave me some kind side stare, “When you were smaller, you were a nightmare! At the end of the day you had me in tears!” An amusing anecdote ? Family, instead of offering a kind helping hand, they preferred a subtle fuck you stance lathered in tones of witty hypocrisy. Just A Routine Spacewalk According to transmission 52-000-1-0 I have to go outside. I just wanted to fuck off, drift away though space, a castaway, and now I’m expected to spacewalk. Screw them, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what the hell I might do. It would be a leap of freedom,” Uuum, one small step for man, and one giant leap as far away from mankind…” and more nothingness, no boom of my boot slamming into the ship’s panel, and yep, I would have expected a bit more ruckus in the end. I might stroll my way to the cockpit, fasten my harness as I was taught, and secure it to the front of the ship. Checkmate, I left everything, everyone, and I’ll be shooting through the sky forever. The orders were, exit the ship and space walkthrough the fuel tank to replace a couple of valves that met their life span. My life span was in turmoil, I was sure I had dealt with it. The best way I could describe my mother was, she was born with her self destruct button taped, pressed on full destruct mode. I never understood it until she was gone. I let go of what deep seeded behavior we had come to share, only to find it, one last showdown. I’m a procrastinator, so I’m still fitting my harness a good 39 minutes from when they wanted to have my walk. It’s not like I’m going anywhere, I’m blitzing into a possibility. Uncertainty is a killer a vague fog across the cosmos, will I make it? Will I just become another nothing, forgotten a hundred years from now. I just don’t bother any longer, you drop hope, I decided I hook my safety line to the ship ladder, time seems slower for me out here, and I begin my climb to the bottom side of the tail. My own breath is all I can hear, white bar after white bar leading me over the embodiment of emptiness, solitude, the escalating self conflicts, the void. I can see my reflection in my helmets visor, a man I could barely recognize staring back at me, time had obviously laid its pale hands upon me. Was this journey worth it? Am I still young enough to make any defense in my life? Most of it is gone. I begin to loosen the old valves, and the solitude comes over me, a death like peaceful silence, the blaring white off the hull, the nothingness, so still, peaceful. A distant shimmer caught the corner of my eye. A shimmering far away within the abyss, If I had to say it seemed green, a ghostly green if I was forced to say. The workday dredges on, in the emptiness, the vacuum of absence just outside my helmet ready to kill me in an awful way. Again the green shimmer was just a spec from my perspective, it was just there, still. I turned my back to it, and I felt that cold wet finger down my spine. Was I feeling watched? At last the job was done, and the my aching body agreed. I did the whole procedure backwards to get back to the ship, but I stopped at the hatch. With a bit of effort I turned my body to starboard side, and it remained suspended there, a green speck holding its own so far in the abyss. I couldn’t restrain myself from staring into it, then a feeling of untethered guilt, I felt so soul wrenching bad for not being with my mother when she passed. Oxygen is running low, lower than I’m comfortable with! I see her dead face, bloated and purple lips, far from the mother I once had, a sullen sigh of who she ever was. Why think of this tragedy right now? My breath began to become a little more difficult, I tell myself that she wanted to die, she put herself that situation. I’m back at the farm house, it’s raining, it was a rainy sad afternoon, my mother was confined to sitting on one of her dining room chairs, where she spent the rest of her life. She had managed to convince her usual taxi driver to take care of a leg wound, that consisted of her not having skin covering the whole back side of her left calf. Mom just didn’t trust doctors anymore, plane and simple. “There butchers! How many times have I almost died because of those wakkos!” But obviously I knew it was serous, no skin, just a puss covered that seeped down her leg, and made a pool of puss around her foot if she didn’t have a towel beneath it. The particular moment I was in, it was time to clean her leg. Once they had her foot in a wide blue plastic tub, and plenty towels laid out. And the taxi driver began to wash all the puss down my mom’s leg with a syringe and some intravenous fluid. I was held hostage to my thoughts, and speechless. My mother had such low self esteem she didn’t want to bother with whatever it was that she had. Like an abused dog, who only knows life at the end of a chain, the pain of the rod, and the teeth of those who told her to be her blood, what does it matter. Some people after years of being over protected, enduring the blatant disregard of her own father, abused by men, some people just get tired. Then the cleaning with the swabs began, I noticed that the the poor guy was doing his best as gentility as possible, but she had no skin. What really shook me were my mother screaming in agony, even childlike from the intensity of the pain, her pleas for it to stop. It became nonstop, my mom wailing, wailing in a different voice than the one I always knew before her thyroid problem. I left the room, and stood in front of the window, the rain was still pouring down onto the ground, and nothing made sense. A tooth jerking headache, my eyes were blurry, my ears were buzzing. I was back on the ship, my lungs burning for air, I made an effort to open my right eye, and it was still there. I let myself fall inside and I passed out. Conceit there was unease, that feeling of someone or something watching me, they can see me. Not with their eyes, or it’s eyes. I’m so confused, disoriented, I feel totally debased. Whatever it is that’s out there, is the source for this increasing malaise. So I head in the opposite direction. …………… Two weeks later. The ship has been cruising through space, at a constant speed for days now. I’m not feeling any better, and I haven’t checked to see if that creature was still there. I guessed it was just time to know, what’s out there, following me. I could feel it out there some how, not only because of my general malaise but, I think I hear it in my head. The lights in the ship had passed to night mode, a tint of blue, and it feels hollow. I made my way to the back hatch, taking my time for some reason. And I just stood in front of the white latch that would let me see behind the ship. I felt an uncontrollable seed of terror deep in the pit of my gut, it was small, but becoming bit less controlable a little bigger every second. I set my hand on the bluish lever, took a deep breath through the rising fear, and opened it. Green, green shot through the window, and I slid down into a sitting position, my back to where the green lights blared through. I immediately get a gushing nose bleed, my vision shook and I was looking into my mother’s lifeless face. “You, you failed her…” a voice so clear in my mind, crass and aggressive in tone. I wasn’t done, I was held in a mental flutter, and feeling myself crammed through some kind of riff. My helmet was gone, I dare not open my eyes, I had no spacesuit, and the grass between my toes made the whole situation all most unbearable. A fare away breeze swallowed me, humid, countless scents of life; “ Home.” My mouth said but, without words. “Paradise...” a crass voice made a reappearance in my head, and some old drunk, who smokes two packs a day. Uneasy and untrustworthy, and my ignorance about everything to play against, “The Creature”. Open eyes see what they want to see, or never what they supposed to be observed, it’s easier just believe they are whoever might seem.Lush vegetation, sand, forests of fruit and sweet water. I don’t care to describe everything, but you should get the idea pretty clear. I wasn’t at all ok to be squished into a parallel universe, or drugged, or dead maybe, trickery. I was there, under blue skies, songs of birds, The Creature who was attempting to materialize something. Then all I can think of is, “ Damn! I am fucking naked!” Days began to compound into the days, I wasn’t even sure which were real. I could see a tall figure every evening at the other side of the river, toads, cicadas, and crickets hold the darkness hostage in the barrage of matting calls. I watch him and his hollowed green eyes stare not only at me, I sense it’s peering into and through my head. I knew it was The Creature, but, I also knew that as we pace our ways in opposite directions, the malaise was gone. Strength or weakness? I was pushed through a kind of string theory, a pocket universe, by Rooster, a replica of the house where I finally lost, myself, my wife, two dogs, and my dear mother. All in the context of my cancer, cured myself, a stroke, and one kidney less. For an instant, the Roosters malaise was gone, and a foggy awareness of what happened to me. I could be dead for all I know. Or In my head. Well, all I know is I still exist, or I exist on some level. It’s not that I relate too well with humans, I might have never had in common with everyone else it’s always been awkward. I don’t know if I’m married, I never managed to get my psychology degree, my Business degree, I don’t have a house, I don’t have a job, I am a shitty father. I didn’t have it in me, to go meekly into the languidece long faced crowd, shuffle on through the motions. Education, finding a wife, a career, kids, a status worthy career. So how all that crap still gets on my nerves, I can’t reasonably asume after life is gone, your body becoming no longer of use, any of that crap can possibly matter to me anymore. I guess I was fought to much about what I wanted to be as a kid, besides that I was in mental pain at such an early age, and the evident chaos they had me living in. Mom coming home from work at her daddy’s office totally degraded and in tears. Besides this madness feeding the flames of chaos, they found themselves fit enough to tell me what I wanted to become. They never knew me besides a problem child, crazy ass kid, drunk little shit, they never took into consideration I never wanted to be dragged down to South America, apparently I was better off plugged into mediocrity where I can’t cause more heartache. All though My mother was right when she forbade me to be a stuntman at eight, just like Evil Knievel! The kid, who wanted to learn the arts, his soul dream of the become a writer. “Well, son, come here, (I walked behind my grandfather Korean War submariner, trying emulate his steps, we walked into his library)see all these books? Everyone one of them have a hell of a better education than you have. Son, (I replied with a yes Sir., see I couldn’t call my own grandfather, Pops, grampa, my only option was Don Ed, I sure as hell wasn’t pet his ego), you’re just gonna starve.” I love my daughter, she was my gift at seventeen, I love her in the best way I’m able to, what I have learned from, absent moms entranced by paper back love novellas, a stark old man who was full of himself, moms that abandon you though try to reconnect, emotions have overwhelmed me, a thirst for relay ability and love. Mommy was the first to show me about just how deep pain can go, she left me alone in a strange land. If I’m nothing, none of this would matter. Forced to learn another language, eat strange food, and as I got older I realized so many opportunities unavailable. Unavailable because I wasn’t were I was supposed to be. Rooster left, gone, so long, so long I begin to think of time so many days melting into each other, time waisting, a gush of water/time gushing out eventually spilling into or death across the floor, not after it’s made you know what sickness is, sorrow, contentment, happy blips, death, you get my drift. A downwards spiral, down, down reaching into a great vast nothingness. A precios commodity that man made, just a glimpse of a vast world we barely grasp. We have a moment A sunrise, a fortunate trip, Cliff side to the sea below. Effort in peering into eyes once loved. ===== You know, how as a child’s mother tends to make sure her little baby knows just how special the boy is, nothing but false rambling, or other moms aren’t able to relate and we become a problem child, “ You were a holy terror to raisei!” and mommy just couldn’t handle an unusual kid. “I would end up in tears at the end of the day.” A talented boy, smart and introverted; thus no one looking into it at all, it was just easier to mark me as hyper active problem child. A brat. It has become harder and harder acknowledge the barrage of days, time, that eventually became years off my bottled angst, failure, on, and on into a shit show of a life. === Having established that I do in fact exist, the crappy house, trees, nothing out the front door, is some kind of quantum bull shit pocket, a forgotten corner of the quantum fabric. I’m certain I will open my eyes, and even more years will have gone by. I want to go back home. If I am still here somehow, I can still fill my lungs with air, my heart keeps pounding in my chest. I acknowledge that I am nothing with out the other, and gives sense to all this. *******Banter, solitude is not to be taken lightly. Rooster expelled me here from the garden, a house of some sorts, poorly designed. I have a small patio with grass and a few fruit trees growing despite the neglect. The gut wrenching screams of dogs I can’t see flood the nights with rage and fear. Three times a day I listened to the raw unchained violence, teeth gnawing into skin, and the the bleating cries of an animal suffering. Scorching soulful cries only death knows. And the despair you find with another species, an animal you can’t see, empathy is shared like stale bread. I am not supposed to be here, it all truth, I have no place so far away, risking a eminent death, in the most miserable drawn out manner possible. I want to go back to earth, I really want to learn how to “ Socialize“ Be who I really am. ==== Man, I sit down on my bed, angry winds shuffle around the half a dozen curtains I scrounge up, one behind the other, and I keep it out. I see what many of you might be motivation, a new day, and even thank some god for it, to me it has been warped. Daylight was a painful ordeal, a long old wound awakens fresh anguish. I know it’s time for me to be out there, apease existential of pillar of a functional life. I have worked, since I was sixteen, but with the family. When I got a job at a five star hotel or Traveling Agent, I felt the rawhide of the collar brushing around my neck. Anarchism has always run in my veins, a perpetual foreigner, even my school teachers in the States gave me my fair share of crap, heavy big ass girls would beat me breathless in second grade, and Ecuador wasn’t any different, I just transitioned from a poor brown spic clothed in well fair clothes into a rich kid. I can go on and on… I was never a big ego guy, I felt just as good when a friend came off on top, but I caught on pretty quick what being an employee was all about. To be looked down upon, barked at, a little cog oblivious of just how dispensable he is and the wastefulness of his futile effort. Old perverts asking you where he can get a “Fuck, fuck!” while pumping his pelvis in the middle of the reception of a five star hotel in my direction, see only I knew how to speak English. I sat down, at the foot of a Bullfighter monument, after a midnight shift. This was 1996, Pink Floyd as loud as it went on my disc-man. 17 years old, with a little baby girl somewhere beneath the sleepy blankets of city lights. An after work beer, and I took out my Pink Floyd postcards for a teenage thrill, and was not supposed to be in the middle of a national monument. Police tended, I told them I was not doing anything. I went to take a piss, and they left, and I sat right back where I was, and gape at a city not having not a clue what to do. I felt so, so trapped, and therefore I saw what I had understood to be a no future, a loose apathy in a pitch black world, it was worse. It was punk in nature. I sang it so many times, and my generation was tangled in it. And to make things even better, in this place my mom brought me, if you’re related to some big cheese, if you’re not hooked up with important people or just inherited their money, you will have a difficult time getting ahead in life, if any. I just wanted to learn how to be a writer, I wanted to recite my poetry, I wanted to learn how to draw and maybe paint, in a country where they didn’t speak English. The sky has no clouds, just blue, blue skies tomorrow, and no chance of rain! I sit down on the grass just past the washing stone, I sit there amongst objects I know are foreign to me, used to it, ( You see an absentee father is never replaced by a frustrated alcoholic who wasn’t able to hold a blue collar job, nor a household full of women, grandma, you get the pattern.) Where ever I might be it’s an endless, flee from something I could never understand? On and on, country to country, shabby town to another, a major city perhaps? How about Texas, with a racist old lady I barely knew, where I was back in to my fantasies, making an awl out of a folded sock, I felt so much loneliness. Abandonment always leaves me with a hole, the raw gore of it drives you to obese with how hollow it feels, how to fill it, doubt in your own identity, and believe that nothing can be more important than filling it, somehow. === For the first time in a month and a half, the whole area changed to a soothing pale blue lightings, and the cosmos was swept over by a ghostly reddish aurora boreal. I closed my eyes, and pondered. Night laying all powerful over everything, I opened my eyes. Wrapped in darkness, my eyes were useless, and the realization that I was actually as much a part of the dark as I was with the grass, the sky, my fucked up house, and the nothingness beyond its doors. Rooster’s hollowed out eyes, woke in a fiery green flame, a few steps away from me in the black, that deep green glow I associated with decay, I felt the sickness. His holes looked like gnarled flesh, rotten, that are burrowed unusually deep into black, a painful ordeal. “Aaah, wasn’t baby boy all nice and cozy inside here? Hiding from the world, from disappointment, far away from those pesky people you never could understand, and (his glowing eyes raised back in a silent cackle) you seem to be pretty safe from failure out here! I mean, how further do you have to fall to finally become nothing?” “So many years you have decided to give in to the pain, you wander like a lost little boy trying to get his kicks when he can get them along his way.” I take a deep breath and sighed it out, “I am very aware that I don’t have many days ahead of me, and almost every one I loved has gone, I never really did anything or learn something through the mess and the fog of my life. I preferred to exist in my fantasy world, a behavior I learned as a kid to deal with the chaos of my environment. Eventually, you can’t tell the difference.” The sickness, of Rooster’s presence made me sure that he is out to snuff me, devouring my emotions, feeding off my anguish, my despair, all my rage. Resentment. Everyone who just up and left, all those times I was shoved around from house to house, just didn’t stimulate my potential. I had a serene, quite peaceful reflection of some sorts, a vision of sorts, I was sitting three meters across from me. I even noticed him enjoying the blades of grass between his toes! The same as I. “I can’t say if a life can be summed up on decisions, wrong decisions that are made by a flawed person, in someone else’s eyes, or” , he scuffed as if about to laugh, I knew it would be a another half crooked smile without bothering to look, “ And of course, all those who decide correctly feel free to push their weight around.“ “Rooster, this is not where I’m supposed to be. I want to go back home. I want to reconnect with people, find some place to call home. “I’m lost! I have no idea what the fuck you are, whom, damn it your just something I came across!” I gathered my self, “I lost my self, get it! What ever the hell I believed I was pulverized. All the pain and grief have lost all their meaning to me! “Whoever I thought I was, just stopped to be, bit by bit since I was a kid. Then, all of the sudden some prick in a white lab coat says to me, hey kid it’s game over, you got cancer, and it pretty much looks like it’s it’s in your lymph nodes, so good luck with that. “I had just gotten married a few months earlier. We left Argentina and psychology to come to my home and carve out a place for ourselves. A few weeks later I had a stroke! At thirty eight! “Three tumors were in my brain, affecting my language center. So, I said bye to my god knows how many times I tried to get my degree in business, and eventually to my job. “I was blessed with aphasia, making it harder and harder to communicate with my wife. She eventually left me, the dog died shortly after. My mother died on a Tuesday.” Rooster materialized into the crooked reaper like figure. He tilted his head to one side like some confused predator, his hand was showing, the cracks and crevices let the green light out. Unnecessarily long fingers and vicious unkempt nails. “Oh my dear friend, I have known you for decades. I am here to help the limp of spirit. I, feed on anguish, sadness, sorrow, pain, fear, sickness… (he paused for a second) despair.” I said, “ I a son of Odin, a wolf of Odin, I come from men and women made of steel, my life has always been about letting my ancestors down, yes, and I still have breath in my chest, the blood of my of those who came before me, and a true Viking keeps on fighting to the death, to become worthy. “I am not done yet.” I gave Rooster the sternest stare I could muster up. The black rags of this grim figure caught the draft, shooting out like black tentacles, flickering, and it was hard to deny, Rooster appeared as a crooked, ill, and corrupt sort of angel of death. His hood was over his eyes, pacing in a square, a black kind of blue gunk seeped from his lips and onto the floor. “Your time is almost done.” Rooster pulled his hood back over his boney shoulders. He was hideous, all decay, rot, and a hideous crooked jaw, drooping open, wet, purple black, gushing out black muck. “A life wasted, look child,” , the Rooster sat down, with his legs crossed, at his feet a deep indigo fireplace, pop and crackle. “You wondered in search of mother, lost because someone left you, and you needed to fill the hole. Fill it to feel complete!” He broke out into a degrading cackling fit. “My time is mine, how much or how little of is my burden, you worthless cunt! I get it, I’m connected with where I am. “I am not a limp soul, I am better than this, forget your maimed human to abuse, humiliate, self-sabotage. I am not that troubled sixteen year old that slit his wrists, tired of feeling so sad, inferior, anxious, in general my family just wrote it off as alcoholism. No more, Rooster, you fuck! “Make a decision, kill me, out here in this cold black nothingness, I would have died out here anyhow!” I stepped up to his gros face. “You can’t kill me yet! (I was in a fit of laughter, mostly relief.) you have to break me into nothing, a husk of who I used to be.” The Rooster knew I was right, there are certain rules that must be observed to keep the chaos flowing. I saw his putrid stinky eyes tremble in frustration. The Rooster’s voice grew deep, stern, you could tell the violence brewing inside of him. “Very well, you little shit, let’s have it your way. Keep one thing in mind, (he stepped so close my organs felt like they were imploding) when this is over, and you finally go over that edge, I will make you suffer.” Just like that, I was naked in a corner of the ship. Close to hypothermia, and the blue gunk all over me wasn’t helping. I acquired a blanket, and planted my wet cheeks on the freezing bench where I could see through the main window. There I was just enjoying the nothingness of deep space, watching nothing, nursing a profound feeling of sorrow, longing for someone who said she loved me. Buff humbug, everyone eventually leaves, even your own mother. Back on Earth and the cancer deal. **** Apparently I’ve been stocked with terabyte over terabyte of log space to log onto about my petty little shit. I’m expected to drone on into this thing about what’s on my mind. Mental health issues. We’re kind of late for that now. ^^^^* When I needed it, mommy, as often was the case, was the one who had the problems, she was this fallen pariah of some sorts. No time for the little latino kid, ripping into his forearms with stolen wood carving knives from work shop at a ridiculously expensive school my mother agreed to pay even though we really couldn’t afford it, you see, he’s just a bad seed. Or my favorite: he just wants attention. ^^^^* I had just gotten married for the second time, we decided to go to Ecuador to look for a life for us. And as soon as that we were at odd ends with my grandfather and nothing was panning out for us. On a cool evening I went to urinate, well, I felt a ice cold finger run down my spine. There I was, standing over the bowl head tucked straight at it, with my penis still out. The toilet was full of blood. My eyes gazing at a definite turn in the road. What’s the deal with this, what is next? It turned out to be a tumor, occupying my right kidney, with the possibility of it having grown into some lymph nodes. Once I had wrapped my mind around the fact that I was going to die soon, there wasn’t any time Alcohol and free base cocain, wimpy pills that become life rafts deep inside of the soul asphyxiation of , deep realization you have wandered into a cold place where sight tumbles down emptiness, the feeling of utterly alone despair The Well Pt. 2, "The Tower" A shy voice shrilled out of the quietness, with a dying effort his fractured voice filled the decrepit tower, "Read me, find me a voice in your head." The Rooster all of a sudden, seemed the phantom of the being I met. "Give me just enough existence to tell you what I have to say.” His robes, black as space, of rough knit strands, with strands and barely materialized of it flailing around him. "Words can be anything, so mine are steps, stairs, black with purple shimmer, sinking down, down, tumbling down to the void. A spiraling staircase that fades into pitch black nothing. Round and round, so old but, elegant one day, so long ago." The tower was decrepit, dirt, dust, whole sections completely destroyed, we did not go up but down. Cobblestones over run by dark green moss, the smell of rotting wood suspended in the heavy air. Our footsteps echo off the deep nothing, though it might be correct the other way around, going, going down, to the dark, where a void plays with the light, a sort of companionship down where those shy pale blue blades of light, deeper into the cold uncertainty that crawls up on your heel bit by bit. Let’s go down, further into this our damp dark destination of course. Loneliness tries to plague everything, barely, the trivial things that are the same there or not. Then you begin to find it in music, a conversation. It follows you home, brief images of sad, sad lives, through some public transportation window, down the line you will have to confront him. He’s always there, ever present buried in the dark, during the little minutes, the petty hours when sun rays stand lethargically still through drapes, making a oval shape on a eighties brown plush carpet back in 1981. While lint floats through the silence, through the solitary beam of light, otherwise it’s presence would simply not be, the feeling of crippling boredom is there some where, a weed creeping all over everything you ever loved, it all suffocates in the end. Loneliness never dies, it becomes part of you, how you deal with that is the rest of your day’s. The fear, I can’t turn it off, an everlasting dread, is out there, as a snake it flows about here and there. Behind the veil of tomorrow, in wait to take all I might hold dear. Fear for the future, what’s just beyond the veil, what’s next? Being alive hasn’t been a pleasant experience. To call it a confusing shit show is an understatement, I say, the best I can, for time hasn’t been my lifelong friend. Never lie to yourself, learn to listen to yourself, trust flows from here. There are poisons, poisons that apparently numb the pain, but rot who you ever thought or wanted to be, unthinkable concoctions they are. I suffer from a black malice, frost across the mind, dread of the deepest variety, most intimate corners of me, my death suddenly in thin white pieces, a daily tea party. A poison that kills the pain, the pain of partners abruptly leaving, the soul wrenching pain of those who drew their last breath. It’s been too long, “Too much Micky, too much, you took too much dumb shit!” A female voice scolded from nowhere. To be nothing, the void that everyone saw, there was nothing left to be done. Vast endless sands have returned, to take my bones away with a sudden breeze, scattering what’s left of me, forever. The ledger didn’t add up, life actually was important, to fight was important, so my bone like fingers drew ink to go on. “How are we today Sir? Jolly jolly to see you here!” A female voice prompted in a heavy British accent. Pristine white tea cups glare so white I can barely see where I am. I can see the poison barely a cross the bottom of the cup, brownish thick syrup of what was my bad blood. A far away waiter hollers out from nowhere, “Make sure to come back again Sir!” Also British. I’m wrapped in a filth, a sloppy darkness that I can hardly move, struggle with every breath. My steps are frail, my bones barely hold up the ghost of who was once there. As some kind of knight, starved, hopeless inside the very thing that was supposed to keep him alive, the muck getting in the mouth, A stranger, of dark stare, like we both know something, he continued his paces further away from me, and I long for him suddenly. Unsure if it’s possible to ever find him again, it’s time to die, the time to step through what was, what cut deep, the comfort of the hole I’ve dug, through the fear, through the people who are just gone, that is the WAS. The vail. That my dear boy, is how far down we must go, step after step, down we wonder into the pain, the abandonment, down past places you’ve forgotten even hurt. Or it could be just babble. Too much silence. He was a figure draped in rough wool rags. He was right that his awkward steps, how slow, was were effort was sadly constant. Rooster was different some how, the voice, spontaneous cringing of his face. His walk had become one of decrepit man. Besides the dark purple lesions he tried to conceal all down those skin and boney arms. The way he held himself, I felt for him. Down, down, down we went, deep into the wet, darkness to the very foundation of the tower of Sorrow. Rooster seemed to age the closer we got to where he wanted me to go. “ People, find in their selves, a certain amount of darkness, cruelty, even aggressiveness. People try to push it down deep into forgotten stuff that apparently disappear. “Humans Finally there was a well, the water was dark, it was a brick circle, sad and dusty. Time made it seem so fragile and crooked. T H E W E L L Pt.1 My forehead's meat, is squashed into a wrinkled blob, against the shower tile, red blood of cells pushed away from the surface of the skin, really my head's, squashing into a stranger's mental notion of what a shower tile shout be, the impression of something he'd never seen. Sadly I find it too personal, love, true care, a genuine interest in a child's up-bringign, Some totally random human's best rendition, just his experience, or criteria of what a bathroom tile should be. I feel the water running down the skin of my cranium, water, warm water, fingers of appeasing heat running down my spine, down into the shiny metal drain. I'm obsessing, with the idea of being able to go home after so long. If, th If, there really is a possibility that this voyage will finally draw to an end; a job I sincerely took in search of death, I wanted to be swallowed whole into the fold of absensse, far, so far away. Where my disappointment I really want to go back. Drifting for almost four years, days, all the months, deeper and deeper into a vast black nothing. My mind lets all the chatter fade away, and my mind rushed straight back to one of my fail days as a Dad. Back to a sad little girl I always have trouble to see that rainy nightfall I actually have a little girl, when i was a lost wandering PUNK want to be, uf seventeen years barely, forged day in and day out in the brick oven were ANGER, an over potective mother, and my old friend SORROW made sure i turned out a quite Peculiar sort of a kid let loose bore my time a DAD/Teenager/ANARCHIST/Castaway. The time we spent, was a slow sweet death. I would still give my life for her as i was the first time I saw her. My relationship with the one and only human being i happened to bring into this world; something I never dared to repeat; feels thin, two employees in drab office ataire just laying on the pleasantries hand over fist, someone eventually growes tired, perhaps of too many times Meli is her strange agreeable self, never argues, and feels like truly we made a place of our own, a Dad and Daughter zone.. The swell "Casi cinco años, kilómetros sobre kilómetros de tanta nada..." >"About five years, mile over mile of so much nothing... "< Each time I try to picture my Meli's face, wandering has drawn what matters into a stretched cheese like blur of sticky pie white mozzarelle, makes it harder every time i want to see my only girl, any how, between divorces, this once young highschool dropout, with an extra helping of hormones untamed; mixed with the absence of any father figure worth listening to back then, yes i was an Ass-hole, and never being around as my father before me, ended up pushing us apart. If this is the voyage HOME will I ever build a bridge. Bridges, I was an unstable person, I had no reference to draw from, I was an abandoned kid myself, any way I still didn't behave as the MAN should. A father, needs to be around... I might ask for another, chance.. Stepping on the heels of Mr. Death, nothing achieved, and an endless emptiness that left me with nothing more to show than a broken body. A soul recklessly stuffed way past any limits of other people's hang ups, pain, disillusion, my own dark desires, Sorrow, and rage. Although this ship makes it back to earth, Mr. Death comes along with no doubt. He wears a fancy suit only on the last game, days i woke beyond my self and logically my number had been called, the days I slam into pavement after a large taxi driver shit whipped me with a crowbar in the back of my skull, see Mr. death he comes down for the end game. Poor raggedy SEÑOR MUERTE, he has been here to take me since i was a babe, no not even falling from a fourth story window onto some snobby hag's Mercedes Benz, yes I've been shot, ran over by a interstate bus. Gang beaten shortly after an evening while I was still on crutches in the pouring rain, gritting teeth, my cheek against the drenched asphalt. The tire in my face while I was my secret talent to seek out WEED was at ammateur level, I got a respectable Afro-Colombian snot kiking and the fact i still had my bicker jacket they laughed me off. Check Mate , the day the bastard through CANCER my way though. Can it be true? To come back, find a place were I FIT in, while avoiding an tempt to act out a painful kind of eighties sit-com type of re-run. Exploiting what debris left in the edges of my cerebral cortex, packed tight in remote creeces that cover my brain, my fear to be alone, or my basic human urge to seek out what's known, comfort, safety. I watch how a thick bareley liqid sort of darkness consumes me in to emptyness. God, will somebody make my head stop! Obsessing, obsessing every day. Sorry. I am not one of those Clean Freaks, Stale, scratched, black and white film, drab stage, sad attempts to achieve security where it might og been at some point, only to fail, fail, fail. to life by going home. An end to pointless wandering. Will I ever find an end, peace at least with all the chaos that put me here? Grow-up, acknowledge I'm pushing fifty. Learn to take care of myself. Be useful to other humans around me, instead of resentful and disappointed. I went away, far away from what feeble ideas I might have had dreamed up for myself. Far from who I claimed to be me. I was unable to speak, Cancer opened my eyes, a bit. Nudging me a bit ways further from my concept of reality, they just want to put you through hell and with a droopy half attempt at showing empathy they'll say they did the best and by the way where's their check. >A female voice in full histeria, "There was nothing more we could do!!".< We’re definitely deep inside the wide yawn of the ever falling terror of the abyss, calling each of us down the very gullet of nothingness. An endless silence, a slumbersome waiting void of sheer emptiness, black nothingness, a free fall into darkest nothing, wise would be to not forget yourself in its jaws. A kind of nothingness that paws and grabs at the mind, a soul wrenching suspicion. Planting seed of doubt, what is real, what was just a sweet illusion, the truth, a simple but true Risk, emotional damage, injury, illness , fleeting moments of happiness, and endless flow of fortunes not with our wellbeing in mind, for there are wicked teeth down deep in the black nothing. We are created, then after short period of knowing nothing, then the clock marks with a huge metallic clank the countdown begins inching towards your Expiration date, still without a clue. "A common latino saying states, we enter this world alone and with nothing, we leave the very same way." finding old age gnawing at your edges, one day you're greeted by an unattractive face trying to recognize you in the morning mirror. People finally get fed up and leave you, mothers, friends, wifes and a good amount of husbands with lost staring eyes wondering how someone who was his world could just up and leave. Age, things accomplished, so much that wasn't, uncertainty shrouds us in doubt; some sort of epic belly flop splash into the chaos. Existence feels like a game with no manual and it's time to run. Nothing new, just humans, an expiration date looms over all our heads the moment we came into existence. Finding death is probably a miserable affaire, either surrounded by loved ones, or a nice quick automobile accident, or perhaps all alone. Alone, how some The body falls to pieces no matter how well we are at seeking out endless consumer products, or force feeding ourselves their cute lies, burdening our days with another festering lie to try to ignore. You see, in this fleeting comet of a life, no one knows exactly what their doing. Some people with sick and bloated egos wander blindly their own lies, oblivious to the human condition, in the chaos we stroll, and finally lay down on tired abused feet to die. >>> Rooster says we are in a pocket between realities, neither here, nor there. I can't take my eyes off the velvet purple top hats streaming one after the other across a gap of blue sky left between towering black buildings, pimp style top hats, rolling one after another. Picture a cosmic yarn ball of parallel universes nihilism in floating down the absolute black of nothing, - off, done. the absence of consequence, amidst the obliterated will to care, nothing ever matters in the end. part of the void, the state of consciousness where nothing ever matters, stem from nihilism as so much more does. A long winding blackness or a yellow brick road for others. Sweet almost hypnotizing, temptation to walk down that victims road. "Hey! Hey, Boy. Perhaps a wasted life has you there, hidden behind those suede black curtains' shadow? this far away." "LEAVE ME BE! " i rolled over and showed him my back. Rooster, cackles from a shadow somewhere in the direction of my feet. Stone walls leading nowhere, vines, dark green and white highlights, smother it into a soggy dark mess. That eerie green hue peeking out shyly through his garb. I sat up, cupped my forehead and ran my fingers through the stubble I was allowed to call my hair. Thought to my self, "Is shit real? Living in the middle of chaos? Thick colorfull threads, but not theads at all that dissapear into the depths of noting. A point of departure, or crushing solitud. Countless balconies, libraries, so many to sink under the black freezing dark waters of Sorrow and Anguish. the titanic tower, old, forgotten, and dying. Tall into the sky, still white and glistening. An impossibility of many white rooms, dark corners, lavish pristine white pillars of flawless marble. I.> Time unavailable. I woke to realize I was in a haze, a familiar one, I knew too often over my life time, my demons incarnate, my shame, a bout where I come back to life enjoying life with medical marijuana, coke free. Cocaine an all out brawl between the substance and my authentic Me! At least my best effort of who I am. After a drawn out binge, after all my gnawed flesh, bloody nuggets of shattered teeth, too well, i felt stretched out by downers till I no longer recognize me and cocaine, in some momentary lapse of reason one of those that finally make me stop a 3 day cocaine storm. Despite being in pieces I still kind of doing me, but barely involved. Burnt fingertips, stained thumb prints, boney cheek bones over a tattered beard and somehow I feel estranged from myself. While the part that is essentially me ebbs off in dark waters, where i will be tested. Drab tired, at least curtains kept the sun out, I sit up to realize the bed was half the size of the whole room, I threw off my blankets. The bed was made, appears as if someone who promised to never do something and did. my reaction, I also just sleep on the bed apparently. How long has it been? What, the hell happened? I might be home in a way, though I've made it into this place of life threatening sorrow, madness and death being taunted on a regular basis. Nightmare comes to mind. Tangled in the chaos of an addiction. “Wa, Wu, What’s the point of anything.” Rooster’s voice sprang into my frontal cortex, it was a broken voice this time, revealing something was off with the moody phantom , he seemed sick, or literally falling apart at the seems, as i was. dragging the first letter into what he wanted to say "FF, fai, Face your problem boy!" he bellowed as the wind blew the curtains about. With an almost dispective sass in his tone and manner . "Soon I'll finally be nothing more than matter seeking another form, now you, gutless little fuck-up! You better have that little fact wrapped around your mind! (This cosmic prick, practically some sort of demigod, has one major flaw, "Over Inflated Ego"), "You, failure is all you sorry curr has to show for more than four decades of life... Waste of Time! Can't you just sit somewhere and think!" "Acknowledge the dope! You sorry excuse for an orgasm why the hell is it so impossible to ever have seen anything through? Mmm, or let's talk about how you just swept your Aphasia under the rug just because no one knew, baffled, or simply didn't care." The old man with a foot in a grave, was right, it has been too long, Alcohol at twelve, cannabis when I was twenty one, then free base cocaine (Crack basically). Trouble, agony in a cold blade sadness, terror, and the horrid sound of my life, daughter, a decent future thanks to a wealthy family, to realize me, all, all of it creaking, uncertainty picking up a chilly gust, falling into ruin by the seams, with a stern wicked snapp! Thats crack to me. It was a thing I did when I was deeply hurt, and there was no shortage of that. After a good stent clean, well my wife decided it was better living with her dad in Buenos Aires. And that she married me too soon. I do not have a healthy relationship with cocaine. After my wife left, my inner wino was full fledged, free base was relatively under control. The fear of going out alone without her, because she did help me communicate with my aphasia. Mom died late on a Thursday, all drama behind us, I found a point where I was able to tolerate Mom and for sure as hell she probably felt the same. Being abused throughout the days, soft vanilla sunsets, and even enrolled her up in a school for the mentally Retarded. An uneven keel is useless when taking to open waters, abuse in the many faces it might take. A mother resentful for mom not being a boy, her legs twisted inward, all the crude indifference all living female beings on planet Earth, Woman, a doe, birds, tigers, horses, is spilt upon their "offspring" in wate of death to just erase it all away. THEN SIMPLY CARRY ON. In the end, who knows my grandma's hardships? When it was all said and done, Don Ed flew to Texas from his tropical paradise to take the small ones to Disney. A six year old girl, another five year old female, my mother, and the baby Eddie. Don Ed even brought his mom, bye, we will be back soon! They're gonna have a lot of fun in California! "Betty, say goodbye to your babies!" either my grandpa or his mom probably said something of the sorts. Time will come I am sure, in a dark, warm comfy corner, through the rainbow of infinite strings, light ribbons snug to a parallel way things could be. In the proverbial nut shell, I ended with the mom I got, that was fine with me, it was difficult and fun at times, besides the fact we were speeding so fast it was a blur, strait off the bridge and down, down, down into chaos. "Hhhm, humm, its hard tell you this bud with a strait face! But your sorry ass likes to be the human opposite to discipline! Huuugh! You, are so beat down in life cause ya fucking never use it!" I'm broken, pushing fifty, nothing less than excuses left where I should have achieved at least something. "My fifty year old boy, another one of Rooster’s corners of reality. Bitterly true, I was stung by shame. What’s the point of doings this I thought to myself. Punishment, to not feel, die for a while, and I do know the truth. Free Base cocaine is just a slow way of suicide, let alone I have just one kidney, I had Brain cancer, lymph node cancer and a fucking stroke. "Common sense... run, hide, self isolation, working a fuck job that end when you croak, "suicidal" (Rooster shook his head bent towards the filthy seventies shag. I saw his flesh, all pale, long lines chujjof black filth xencrusted within the wrinkles, old wounds, new black scabs, fluorescent puss i guess seeping from the ones that never heal, and from his thick purple-black lips blood?) just because the, world you thought,". then he stopped talking to me, and i went to the window. " What ever you had thought you made was nothing more than an illusion? Or simply your vague life plan blew up in your face?" Rooster "You're www - wife leaving your sorry ass, mommy dies, oh no!" One moment he's definitely dealing with something serious, and then he was mocking my life tragedy, how ridiculous it really is to take life so seriously, one of the few things I like about my one and only companion. Rooster's wheezing was something from the dead, besides causing my soul to cringe and quiver, it was a dry faint final scream. None the bother he just had to carry his ragging on, "Oh! Oh no Maxi too! (his raven like kakkle blaring out, intoxicating and tranishing every corner.)." You know that feeling you get that the air has become scarese from simply listening how fro someone, exhaling has become an effort. To be honest, its been a recurrent issue for far too much of my life. Mom giving into Cocían and Morphine , after an impressive alcohol run. My isolation, and absence of any clue what "now" in life added to a broken heart pp ii ñ CHAOS always came on since I was 7, crumbling stones, Dark cracks like a Witches fingers choking across the gray concrete damn, a godlike sized WALL of white water; and I usually became, nothing. Home, Earth, I got to say, on my own personal run, let me tell ya, me and all that avalanche of bull-shit, racism, dicrimination racially as well sexally. Where I learned to fight over endless after school ass beatings I was promised to receive. Yes I was small, brown, not a Mexican, bi-raciañ kid, my house was a violent place, I couldn't lose mostly because everyone else was white and I made sure I never did. >FLASHBACK I was standing in the doorway that led to my Great Grandmother's drab leather living room. Everyone in the family called her Grandma Evans, I was 7 or 8, Grandm's hands were huge to me, rough and toughened threw hard work (a later adult realization) and she had each one tight around each sholder. Grandma Evans, > Mary Hellen<, is besides my time with her was short and maybe just a fond part of me, was a BADD-ASS. She survived the Great Depression with four boys, one of them my grandfather, was serving meals at the bread lines, was a skilled truck driver during World War II. I was forced into her Blue eyes, she began to give me advice that has become a part of me, I really am grateful. "Now Boy you listen to me! Pay proper attention, son, you are a latino person. This means, boy a lot of people will want to disrespect you .. ch.1 and it all came to this, Ch. ... Perhaps, despite that we all roam unique roads throughout this life, despite how different we might be, we might have one thing in common, a thing we all might share in our lives, might just be how somewhere along the way, comes death, abuse, may be a car accident, something happens, a tragedy, death of a relative or just being confined watching cancer officially terminal illness with no chance of dignty. Perhaps, besides haw infinitely diverse, roaming each unique journey, In a way, we live, while parts of us continuously expire, in a dreary manner, some parts of us like places, people, things we were sure that made us who we are, just seem to fade away like everything else; there are days we die, and then we live again. It was a big change, my soon wife to be and I decided to move to Ecuador, college was just another thing unfinished, I guess. The wonderful promises from a good willed old man, were what kept us captive even though the answer every Saturday was always no. My wife received the call from Argentina, not two months earlier, her mother after ten years of battle with so many cancers was on her deathbed. Again back in Ecuador, we were scrambling to find a forever home, were we could settle down, not rich but able to travel a couple of times per year. I was thirty eight, healthy according to me, one night I stood in front of the white toilet boll and pissed blood. It wasn’t the first time, I used to fight often. But this would end up with my Aunt Terry scolding my ass over the phone and me going to a place in Santo Domingo to have an echo done. After being stuck un a hot smothering room, post war style, I was led through the garage and it was done. We went for lunch, and came back to the same stuffy waiting room to get our results to a concerned radiologist. She made her way out of her shabby ultrasound shack to grab my arm, and in some sort of urgency in her voice she demanded I go directly to my physiologist, she insisted on this in a way we were instantly distraught. Sure enough sitting face to face across a green fiberglass table, I found out I had kidney cancer, living in a third world country they hardly name what you have, and reality suddenly become bleak. But, in some things the stairs actually do go deeper, chaos isn’t done yet. May, came along, I was looking into cannabis oil, my plan was to use it along with the chemotherapy to lessen the bad effects. I sat down with my wife to watch a movie, suddenly I was unable to change the channel, in a snap myself was ripped away, soon I couldn’t speak and writing followed. Distance college good bye and god knows what’s coming next. After blaming the oil and my incompetence in the lab, I found out I was blessed with three tumors in my brain. Leaving me with aphasia, which took me a while to look up, disappointment I guess. The kidney tumor was too large and passed to my lymphatic system, so pretty much all my body is game. It was a change, me and my wife to be, decided to move to Ecuador, college was just another thing unfinished, I guess. The wonderful promises from a good willed old man, were what kept us captive even though the answer every Saturday was always no. My wife received the call from Argentina, not two months earlier, her mother after ten years of battle with so many cancers was on her deathbed. Again back in Ecuador, we were scrambling to find a forever home, were we could settle down, not rich but able to travel a couple of times per year. I was thirty eight, healthy according to me, one night I stood in front of the white toilet boll and pissed blood. It wasn’t the first time, I used to fight often. But this would end up with my Aunt Terry scolding my ass over the phone and me going to a place in Santo Domingo to have an echo done. After being stuck in a hot smothering room, post war style, I was led through the garage and it was done. We went for lunch, and came back to get our ecos to a concerned radiologist. She made her way out of her shabby ultrasound shack to grab my arm, and in some sort of urgency in her voice she demanded I go directly to my physiologist, she insisted on this in a way we were instantly distraught. Sure enough sitting face to face across a green fiberglass table, I found out I had kidney cancer, living in a third world country they hardly name what you have, and reality suddenly become bleak. But, in some things the stairs actually do go deeper, chaos isn’t done yet. May, came along, I was looking into cannabis oil, my plan was to use it along with the chemotherapy to lessen the bad effects. I sat down with my wife to watch a movie, suddenly I was unable to change the channel, in a snap myself was ripped away, soon I couldn’t speak and writing followed. Distance college good bye and god knows what’s coming next. After blaming the oil and my incompetence in the lab, I found out I was blessed with three tumors in my brain. Leaving me with aphasia, which took me a while to look up, disappointment I guess. The kidney tumor was too large and passed to my lymphatic system, so pretty much all my body is game. Mister Dead, a character that Im not sure I’m fortunate to have met in infancy, he almost killed me when I was a baby, sent my mother off in some blind purpose scavenge back to San Francisco, and I guess it must have grinned. A life long companion, some sort of relentless shadow, object of laud pretentious chest beating boasts, false pride, and ridicule. Teenaged self mutilation, the self destruct button glaring faint, dirty black electrical tape curled up at the end, out of reach. Mr. Dead had definitely been through my mother’s life also. Something I came to realize in her death. From a broken forearm, me and Mr. D ramped it up, four story fall onto a car, gun shot wound through the hand, thrown into the bushes by a speeding interstate bus, well instead of drawing on I’ll stop on the point, after time it became evident, I was essentially on self destruct. I was able to recognize him, though the years, even in my own deeds, eventually in one captivating instant, I can recognize his whisper drifting like fog faintly dancing about everything. Mom, died soon after my marriage fell apart, I never forget the dancing reminder and it’s drab truth, how thin and finite real moments, actually are in the end, he is the reminder, that everything ends, love finds it’s death eventually, with its manny names an idea that just tripped into a forgotten memory, sleep, betrayal, passing away, rest, it’s yours to choose because it doesn’t change a thing. Every person's story has a series of rare impossibilities that find each other although they were never looking to meet, it becomes what makes you, you; shaping us all uniquely, wonderful coincidences entwined with bad ones; people, place, as well as to the place you were born, the family you were stuck with, the monsters that finally unveiled their masks, it all boils down to the road. long, hungry, and empty but full of potential at the same time this moment, all you ever really have. It was November, my mother-in-law had passed, at the end of a ten year tour down cancer lane. One more cog into the machine allowing it to perpetuate, some kind of beast crazed by hunger. Some kind of a creature, twisted by fifty and some years of corruption, eventually growing upon his skin, it took the form of mange, able to drive the best of us mad. A filthy lucre. One quick trip to the bathroom, and a stream of blood mixed with urine, and I realized a line was drawn. A line were nothing will ever be the same. The difference between what was, nostalgic, so frail threatened by Family is crucial when you become ill, they become links to life, living proof that you existed al all, |