Did you only need me for those three days

You say there's always gonna be this thing
Between us days are filled with dreams
Scorpions crawl across my screen
Make their home beneath my skin
Underneath my dress stick their tongues
Bite through the flesh down to the bone
And I have been so fuckin' alone
Since those three days
Did you only want me for those three days?
Did you only need me for those three days?
Did you love me foreverjust for those three days?

by Lucinda Williams

Is it possible to have PTSD from 3 days on a cruise? Dan wrote about having something like that after hiking 2600 miles - so why would 3 days on a fucking boat do that - unless it was exposure to the family that did it to me. But here I am - the summer - a time I normally enjoy - seems to be getting me down. Every day gets a little further away from the event, but every day is not quite far enough. The folks and I are back to not speaking to each other again - all of the cruise stuff I posted on My Space and I don't think they are too happy about it. They are pissed off that I am not grateful for subjecting me to this nightmare since they funded it. Meanwhile, all sorts of painful shit - like the stuff with my brother in the last post has come up - and the best way for me to deal with the majority of my family - is just to keep them as far away from me as I can - physically and mentally. How could have anyone possibly imagined a possible worse setting for a dreaded gathering to take place than on a fucking cruise line. It's like God wanted to make it as bad as possible. I got some pics in the mail from Edie yesterday (surprise surpise - I am not in a single one of them). It appears the in crowd was spending a lot of time together. Surprisingly nobody seemed to invite us to any of these gatherings - not that we would have necessarily wanted to come. If not for Sara running into them, she would not have been either. I just want to know - how 3 fucking days - preparing for them, and now recovering from them - could have fucked me up so much.

I know I know - gotta be like some and family who just let it come and go and just don't let it get to them. I wish anyways. Just not who I am. Still - every day it is a little further behind me.

The silent war that bloodied both our hands

Lyrics from My Brother Esau by John Barlow:

Esau skates on mirrors anymore...
He meets his pale reflection at the door.
Yet sometimes at night I dream
He's still that hairy man
Shadowboxing the Apocalypse
And wandering the land
Shadowboxing the Apocalypse
And wandering the land.

Esau holds a blessing;
Brother Esau bears a curse.
I would say that the blame is mine
But I suspect it's something worse.
The more my brother looks like me,
The less I understand
The silent war that bloodied both our hands
Sometimes at night, I think I understand.

Sometimes the spaces in between say more than the words on the page. Sometimes the words not said speak louder. My brother has just finished writing his first book. There is a lot to be impressed about. He has a publisher who has backed him and sent him to various places to promote it. You can order it on line as I did. It appears to be doing well for a book of its kind. Dan sought me out to warn me that there was a part in there that refers to me - but it was really not to be intended as a literal statement. The opposite rule works well with most of my family including Dan. Take what they say - take the opposite of it - and there it is. So when he says he wanted me to be struck down by lightning in his book, his attempts to diminish and distance himself from this only serve to reinforce it in my mind. I don't take it too personally though. He has basically shunned me for the last 20 years. I have been shut out. Being struck by lightning pales in comparison. My wife read the first two chapters and I didn't even know that certain phases of his life existed. The book is well written - I need my dictionary to look up some of the words. He paints a picture in a novel setting in a way that I would never be able to bring myself to do. It is quite clear that he reveals some and holds quite a bit back, but that is who he is. He does not lay all the cards out on the table. My folks never have, and he has inherited that from them. To toot my own horn here, I have always seen that as my ability. I respect those who can't do what I can do - I couldn't hike the Pacific Crest Trail and I couldn't write a book - or let's just say - wouldn't want to do either one. I am more of a short essay type - I spit it out and I am done. I don't want to revisit or rewrite it. Honestly I am not too interested - to borrow a Rutles line - in flogging my memory and filling in the blanks in the past for events I barely even remember from 10 years ago. I get bits and pieces, sometimes I write bits and pieces, but I just don't see a whole book in me.

But getting back to the biggest kick in the ass - it is in the two page thanks and acknowledgements section. Over half of the family is mentioned - Mom, Dad, Edie. Two people - I know - the two ASS-HOLES of the family - are left out. One being myself, and the other being Phil. The two mean older brothers. The two ones who never respected the baby brother. I don't want to sound egotistical, but I know I have had a big influence on him and still do. To not mention me - in the same way he danced over Amy's absence on the cruise by saying she was "sick" is just another elephant in the room. I was sick that week too - sick with emotional nausea. I could have gotten the doctor's note by saying I was having suicidal urges. But I went anyway- for my daughter's sake. She had a great time and even if I am scarred for life I did it for her. That's being a Dad for you. Otherwise no way in hell I would have put myself through this. I admire her for not going - for being the one person who was not going to subject herself to unnecesary misery in dealing with my folks. I believe I had a share in inspiring him to write this book - the way he mentioned those who told him he couldn't do the trail pushed him to show them he could. My biggest crime while being young was making fun of his writing. Well - FUCK YOU - I wrote a book - how do ya like them apples. I know I was part of it. To not mention my name was a way to specifically get another revenge stab back at me. That seems to be the silent jab in there. FUCK YOU - I am going to make it a point NOT to mention you. And if the intention was to hurt me - mission accomplished. I didn't have the best dreams last night. I had a dream something like there was this brief window of time where he could be open and honest with me, but that window kept closing in.

I don't remember too much of my dispute with Dan. I know it was ongoing. It goes back to my earliest memory - even being close to 4 - I was fighting with him. I don't know why. Who is to blame for this? Do I blame my mother for her constant psychotic rages? Do I blame my father for his unrealistic expectations of my mother, and his rages toward her, that in turn caused her to pass the shit down hill, until I in turn passed it down one more rung to my brother, and he had no place left to pass it down to? When I mocked him for saying how much he liked ice cream - yeah - that was pretty lame. Do I regret all this happened? Well of course I do. I am sorry that it happened. But how many fucking times can I apologize? FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME - I'M SORRY. Sorry - I am done apologizing. I think of the Michael Franti line from One Step Closer "I didn't mean to hurt you no, and you didn't mean to hurt me too - but it seems like we always do." But - I don't blame myself - not any more. I don't really know who to blame. What good is it going to do anyways? The past sucks, but I can choose to let it keep on sucking or finally say enough is enough. It is like this sick cloud of mental illness and dark rage and despair settled over my family and we all succumbed to it - every one of us. That is why going on this cruise was something I dreaded so much - because I don't really care to be brought back to it and my parent's delusional attempts to see us as being a close family just seems that much more desperate and pathetic to me. Don Miguel Ruiz says we can punish ourselves over and over for an event in the past that happened once. I have forgiven myself. I may have had an 18 month edge over Dan at one point, but he probably could kick my ass now. He is stronger, more muscular, and in better shape. And I do remember that although I was pretty mean to him, that it was not all one-sided either. He had his way of getting back at me too. He made it a point to stick the knife in my back when I came back from college in a depression. He almost seemed to be gloating and acting like I deserved it. Scoreboard - karma. He would mock me when I got high. He even had his way of nailing me when we were young. The scoreboard is not nearly as onesided as he thinks it is. Maybe I was winning the brutality game, but he got some pretty good hits on me in the process. He underestimated his own power. I might have been one mean son of a bitch, but he was a mean motherfucker too. I had one and a half years on him, but the older we got he bridged the gap closely. It wasn't all bad though - I made him laugh - he liked my twisted sense of humor. At the God awful boring religious services, I had him in tears a couple times. What is sad to me is that he still feels like it was all my fault and has blamed the whole thing on me. We spent a lot of time together growing up. In college we communicated some, but it got ugly at times. And then at one point, the door just closed shut - BOOM OUTTA HERE. It has never opened since. It is so big I am not sure if it can be opened any more. On the cruise he made it clear that he is over all of this, no longer sees me as the voice of his undoing, and no longer wishes me to be struck down by lightning. He is past all this now. Just like the line from Spinal Tap where Nigel says something like brothers fight, but our relationship is way past that now. I wished that I believed Dan. I just know that is not the way he feels, even if that is how he tries to present it. Actions speak louder than words.

I admit - I do want us to be close. I just don't see it as being possible. He fooled me last time I saw him at Mammoth Lakes - I thought he wanted that too. But I grasped like Charlie Brown at Lucy's football - SUCKER! It became quickly clear that I fell for the show, but that is all it was. I know better now. I came into the cruise prepared this time. We avoided each other the first two days. The last day he sought me out to be with me on the deck with my guitar. He said it meant a lot to me that I was there. I do believe him. I do believe he meant it. That is what is crazy about this - it is not all one sided. There is an incredible amount of rage and hatred he has for what I represent to him, but that has taken on a life of its own. I am not that person any more, but that is how he will always see me. At one point maybe I acted out the part, but my personality has changed. I am not a bitter 4 year old looking to bully his brother any more. Hell - almost 40 fucking years have passed. But he is still there. Yet in a way he looks up to me too. Our writing styles are kind of like opposites. His is poised, prepared, researched with picturesque and elaborate words, mine are more raw in your face unconscious exposure of emotions. Here I am - I am naked - my penis is dangling out to the left. What you see is what you get. If you put our two styles together, imagine what we could do. He did make an effort to come out and see me a few times - ironically shortly after his hike. Every time though something went wrong, either an exchange with Vicky, or I found out that I treaded on too personal territory by bringing up his mental collapse - never mind that I shared a similar collapse. He wrote to me in a fit of rage - don't EVER EVER EVER EVER - bring it up again. So I haven't. I thought it was something that could bond us. He saw it as an intrusion. He was enraged by my wife asking him how he was doing in his relationship. Way too personal. So when we see him now we watch what we say. If you have so many limiations on what you can bring up, than what is there left to discuss? So although the intent was there, we are back to square one. He says he may come out this way to see us. Honestly I am not holding my breath.

I feel bad for him too. I get a sense he is not walking on solid ground. There was a pretty retarded review at Amazon condeming his book and he seemed consumed by it. He took it very personally. I tried to convey some of the Ruiz philosophy - don't take anything personally - believe in your work and fuck everyone else. Who cares. I actually felt a current of spirit going through me as I tried to discuss this with him. It was one of the high points of my trip. I guess that is one thing that separates us now - I just don't get too caught up in what others think of me now. With the wife and family it is a little harder to do. Obviously my omission in his book was a slap in the face to me, but in time that will fade too. At some point I will surrendur to the script of my life and move on. I am probably not reading much more of the book - I honestly find it too depressing to be reminded of the shut-out and how much of his life I have been left out of, but Victoria will find the lightning sequence and convey it to me. What am I going to do - hire a hitman at that point? For me - the most hurtful thing that happened was the excommunication. I have found his replacement - to a degree - in some of my best friends, Kirk, Youndy, John, Rich and Joe - they have become my brothers and then some. I can say anything to them. And I still have a bond with my older brother Phil. But to say it doesn't hurt - hell - I am lying. He thinks I deserve it and he will always see me owing him for what I did. I just don't see it that way. So here we are - so close but worlds apart. Like the song lyric says - both our hands are bloodied, not just mine - not just his - both. Can this ever change or are we stuck in this limited role playing for the rest of our lives? Hell - our time may be running out - people start getting cancer at our age. Michael Franti writes "It's never too late to start the day over". It seems like in this case it is, but if he ever wants to prove me wrong - I am here. I have a lot to offer. I know I do. But at this point, it is just going to go where it goes. I am not delusional though. It is dead and it is never going to come back to life. And quite frankly - as broken as he is now (however much of it is seemingly my doing) - I don't really see what he has to offer me anyways.

"Like a steam locomotive - rolling down the track
He's gone - and nothing's gonna bring him back" Robert Hunter

Poised for flight, wings spread bright, spring from night into the sun

(from Help on the Way - lyrics - Robert Hunter) This is intended to be a reading in a meditation setting - in the most relaxed setting possible - with some nice Loreena McKennitt style music and soothing incense. Today I am living in this moment and this moment is now. We forget about our responsibilities, our desires, where we want to be, what we expect from ourselves and others - all that is set aside and we can return to it when we need to. As of now, we breathe in - slowly and concentrate on every breath coming in and out of our bodies. We reflect on the miracle of this simple process - taking in the oxygen we need to give our bodies life, and we see that it is not just oxygen and air coming in, but the great an all empowering life force which some of us know as God or Goddess - she is a living being that is inside all of us and every object and being that surrounds us - all is alive and we reflect on the miracle of life, the simple miracle that we live at this very moment, in this very set time and space where we can breathe in, and have the ability to sustain life through water and food. As we breathe in this life force, we breathe in love as well - an equally essential nutrient that by choice at times we deprive ourselves of. As of now - I breathe in this breath and I breathe in life, love and I for this one moment take in and feel the joy of being alive.

Maybe this joy is not something I am feeling at the moment. Maybe at this moment I am immersed in sadness and pain. I came into this world with innocence and trust, and at some point along the way that innocence and trust was betrayed. I looked to the ones who raised me in trust and hope to love me and take care of me, but instead something else happened - maybe this is so painful that I cannot even completely take it in. This may have happened many years ago, but for ages upon ages I have chosen - consciously and unconcsiously - to relive it over and over again. Because it has happened, my world is a world of constant pain and grief. Everything appears to be hopeless and meaningless. I live in a continual state of grieving and I don't even know it. I even find the thought coming into my head - why do this right now - because what does it matter anyways - I will just return to this world of pain and grief and it is all that I know and all that there is. I wear my pain on my sleeve, and every day is a pointless and empty void inside of me that knows no bounds. Everything seems pointless, and yet I do this anyways because I have to. I have to go through the motions, be a parent, do chores and respond to those who love me, but there is no love inside me and I have nothing to give anyways. I am a fraud, I feel loathing toward myself because I am not what I should be. I judge myself and condemn myself to experience the past indefinitely because I do not deserve to be happy. At some point, every day there is a choice to experience happiness or sadness. I choose sadness and emptiness because I deserve nothing more. And yet if I look very deep - deep into the well of the emptiness, the void of lifelessness that seems to expand infinitely - forever and forever - I see a light that goes beyond the darkness. This light is the love that I breathe in now with this very breath. For this moment, I immerse myself in this light and love. Yes - I may have been starved for this love and light as a child, and maybe I was not able to quench this thirst or the hunger, but now - at this very moment - through the miracle of this breath - the life that the Goddess force allows us to live - I empower myself with the force and power of this all loving and all knowing Goddess force and I choose happiness. I know that no matter where I am and where I go, I always have this choice in my heart. If I pray for happiness I can make it happen, as impossible at it may seem. I do not need this from any other person, place or thing - all I need is the love and light that I take in with this very breath, the loving sweet breath of the Goddess herself.

I am walking through a beautiful forest. In this forest I see everything is very colorful and alive - the trees have faces that are powerful and mystical all knowing beings that have been here forever, the sun shines through the tips of the trees, the animals are speaking to me - all the colors of the rainbow are present in the living beings, trees, and flowers and this is the most beautiful place in the world. I am not alone here - all of the animals, trees, plants and flowers are extensions and living beings of the Goddess, and although I see no other fellow human beings around me I have never felt so present - so together with the life force. And then there is a shaded area where all of this stops. It is like a cave where all of a sudden this one spot is disconnected from all of this. I step closer and I hear the voice of a small kitten, and then I see her - she is small, helpless and my heart wants to make her better and save her. It appears that she has not been fed, she needs water, food - but more than anything she needs love. I have a responsiblity to take care of her, to give her the nutrients she needs, but I have been so caught up in my own grief, sorrow, and emptiness that I have neglected her and she is dying because of me - and I am dying with her - because in my connectedness to the world and the universe, I realize that she is me. I have created this separation from the beautiful forest around me because I feel safe here. I realize that through the power of the all loving Goddess that runs through me, that I have the choice to go to either place. I make this choice every single day, and although it does not feel like I am making the choice, it is in fact exactly what I am doing. There is an amazing all knowing spirit and Goddess that runs through me, but I shun her. I cut off her life because I don't feel worthy of her. I cut her off and retreat to this dark cave because I do not believe I deserve anything better. I choose a life of continual self-doubt, pain and sadness because I am choosing to punish myself every day for a past even that I can't even remember and was not even my fault - but I blame myself for this.

At this point I pray to God, the Goddess - the love and light all around me and I realize this one tihng - I can stay in my cave - cut off from life, love, food, water and nutrients and the kitten will die. My soul is dying in this state and the kitten as a reflection of me is dying too. Or else I can decide that I am one with the God and the Goddess - she runs through me and rather than reject her presence I beg her, pray to her, summon her and if I do this with all of my heart, soul, and intent she will arrive to me. This is happening right now. If I choose her, she will be here. I do not need to follow anybody. This does not need to happen with a church, religious instition, guru or group. I do not need anybody else to show me the way. The way is right here - right now - right in front of me - and deep down when I look to my deeper self, my deeper soul - that stranger who on some level has become distant, and yet as I look deeper I know she is no stranger at all - she is very familiar and very present - I know that I have this power. I can make a miracle happen at this very moment - I can choose to believe in myself. I believe in myself, I belive in the God, the Goddess and the miracle and then she is present and she is here now. As I believe in her, with all of my heart and soul, I look down at the kitten and I see a different being altogether. She is no longer starving and thin, but she is nurtured and full. She purrs with content, and she is coming to life as I believe in the possibility of this miracle. But the moment I choose to go back to the pointlessness, the emptiness, the grieving - she returns to the starving creature that she is.

There is no one being that needs to destroy the other. Accepting the miracle of the joy, love and beauty of the Goddess does not mean that pain and grieving are a thing of the past. The grieving woman - mourning in her black dress and head cover - can continue to grieve and mourn as long as she needs to. Maybe the pain is so strong that the grieving will take lifetimes upon lifetimes of sadness. But we remember one thing as we continue with this exercise - she is not the only one. On one side she grieves, she cries, she wails at how unjust and how unfair life has been. She doubts herself and her own abiltity to live. But she is not the only one here. On the other side is a being of pure light and love that brings color, connectedness and meaning to everything. She is an all powerful mothering being who is the mother we have longed for but never had, but she is here right now if we choose her to be. Every moment we make this choice. It is not a choice to relinquish pain and never feel it again, but it is a choice to medicate and soothe the pain and to realize that there is more than the pain. The pain is not all that there is. On the other side, there is the pain, joy and beauty in every aspect of life that we are all entitled to feel while we are blessed to spend our remaining hours roaming this planet. At this very moment - no matter what I am feeling - no matter how sad, hurt, angry or empty - I choose to embrace the love, beauty and nurturning of the Goddess force. And the kitten comes to life with every breath - as every breath affirming life comes into my body, I cradle her, nourish her, and feed her and I feed myself as I do this.

I'll promise you anything - get me out of this hell

(from Cold Turkey) I am trying to get in touch with this dream that keeps haunting me - you know dreams are somewhat evasive - but I'll do my best through the power of active imagination and recall to try to get in touch with this demon that has taken hold of my mind via the cruise experience. It starts with coming onto the ship. Everything about it feels wrong - it is like the smell, that deodorizer is trying to cover something up - I don't know - maybe it is the smell of raw sewage that I smelled throughout the actual ordeal, maybe it is death - the death of the environment, the living dead who roam the ship as vampires looking to pour blood into their empty souls via the alcoholic blood transfusion, but everything is screaming at me that I don't belong here and yet at the same time, here I am - and once I set foot on board I can never get off - sure it may seem just another 36 hours, just another 24 hours and 37 minutes (but who is counting) - but that is all part of the illusion - the idea that you can escape from hell is all the part of what makes it all the more hellish - because somehow you really do think you will be able to escape, and believe it but it is all in vain. Hell I am still on that hell-hole of a ship now - I can feel the room inside the house slowly starting to tilt back and forth, I can feel the faint trace of nausea in the background as the experience of returning to the scene of the crime comes back.Curiously absent in these dreams is the presence of my family - it is almost like they were never there to begin with - it is just the trick of my mind - though I can almost see my father in the form of a living corpse with skin falling off the bones with an empty smile stating - "izzzzznnn't thisssssssssss a life of lugggggzzzzzuurrry" (to live so pleasantly) as he is sitting inside a restaurant where barrels upon barrels of rotting moldy decomposing food are spilled all over the table, almost coming to life as creatures of their own, like slithering intestines swarming with maggots, creatures so completely nauseating on every level that it is hard to be in the presence of them without wanting to endlessly throw up - a throw up that cannot ever quite get the nausea out - and he is soon joined by other corpses at the table and he is hanging onto a few slime encrusted moldy coins that keep falling through his boney fingers and he is grinning mindlessly stating in a hypnotized vampiric bloodless tone as he holds them 'yewwwllll nevvvvver hafffff to work annnuuuutther dayyyyyyyy in yourrrrrrr liiifffeeeeee' and laughing as if these coins somehow or another hold the key to my future, and in holding these coins he holds that key himself.And then I walk onto the upper deck and everyone is setting themselves on fire and burning up, but they are not particularly concerned about it - as they seem to believe the very colorful beverages they hold in their hand will douse the fire and stop themselves from utter destruction - as it is a slow burn, but a burn nevertheless and although everyone seems to be smiling an imbecilic mindless bloodshot eye smile, they are quite in deed in fact slowly destroying themselves as they do it. And all along the way, a slow demonic voice is coming through the PA system saying 'last channsssssss to win BINNNNGGGOOO - it's a four thoussssssssssand dollllar jacckkkkkkpoottt and it alllll mustttt go" and he has said this every day for eternity, because this same day has repeated itself endlessly - over and over - the same day - as it will forever and there is just enough memory to realize that there is no real way anyone can win because to win means to leave and nobody - including myself - will ever escape from this neverending hellish misery. The crew keeps saying "goood morning" but underneath the bloodshot decomposing zombie eyes it is clear that in the respectful and polite friendliness there is in fact a desire to murder and eat the respected guests for dinner and they are waiting to see if you are maybe not one of them too and the only way to fool them is to smile smile SMILE - and act like you are having the TIME OF YOUR LIFE - and maybe if you smile too hard they might know, but if you don't smile at all they will realize that you are a real live HUMAN BEING - and descend upon the brains and eyeballs like thirsty vampires craving the food they have thirsted an eternity for.But if you want to leave the ship - sure - no problem - all you have to do - is find the MAGIC NUMBER - it is right in the middle of the card - the one that has the key to your jail cell quarters - but easy enough to find it - just find the one right in the middle - slightly left of center but a little to the right under the left and take that number and square it - divide it by 7 and multiply it by three and then find that magic number and it is all you need to get off the ship and then you can leave - you can really leave - they are even holding the door open for you with that creepy lifeless smile - and everyone believes it - they believe they are going to leave - you want to believe that you are going to leave but deep down - you know this mother fucking blood sucking life draining stinky death ship - the ship with that pleasant little deodorizer to cover up the blood, sewage and decomposing bodies - is the rest of eternity - because there really is no escape from that cheezy PA system - this is ETERNITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEE

You can check out any time but you can never leave

If you don't know what that line is from I can't help you. I can tell you I didn't think of it. You know I thought once I stepped off the ship it would end. For almost 2 years (I think I knew on some level it was inevitable I was going to end up on the croooooooooooooozzzzzzzzzz ship) I dreaded the encounter, anticipated it. It triggered dormant rage issues, it triggered yet another power struggle with the Gods who raised me, it triggered a dispute with my wife, a drama with my daughter, I am going to have to withdraw more money from my retirement plan just to cover my side of the trip expenses - for a trip that I dreaded and never wanted to do in the first place - I mean I AM NOT COMPLAINING (it may seem like it) in that I know this is all my KARMA - and nobody took a gun to my head or anything - even though a wife's pressure in some ways is probably worse - but what I am saying is that out of my own seemingly FREE WILL (if that really exists) I did agree to go on this dreaded outing - and during the trip - it really - amazingly - wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - thanks to the miraculous escape of Deck 7 and the ability for me to retreat with my guitar. The food - I'd give it a C+ - and the family interaction was about what I expected it to be - restrained, polite, distant. I just thought once I walked off the ship it would be over. But

IT'S NOT OVER!!! - I keep obsessively having bad dreams about ships now. I am stuck on one, I can't get off one, I am back to the scene of the crime and it won't leave me alone. Every fucking night I dream about a ship and this is haunting me and I think I am really messed up now. What's going on? This is going to screw me up. I may even have to do something really drastic - like quit my job, have my house foreclosed and show up at my parent's front door with a beggars' bag and see if they will let me move back in with them - because I can't get these dreams to go away. I am haunted now, I am branded for life - I will spend the rest of my eternity in a dream world as a prisoner on a haunted ghost ship and they won't let me off the boat. When I die and go to the next realm I know where it will be - I will be spending limbo on a ship. And I thought it was all over - but it's not - HELPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Test me - test me - Why don't you arrest me

This secret blog may not be so much of a secret any more - anybody who has read my shit somewhere else - I left great big gaping foot prints for everyone to track me over here. So this may not be a great secret any more. Oh well - nothing to hide anyways. I saw in the paper some people actually end up doing time over the pics that show up on their sites. Good thing my party days are long gone in the past - and that's the truth - and nothing but.

Mountains of the Moon - Electra - bow and bend to me

Twenty degrees of solitude,

twenty degrees in all,

All the dancing kings and wives

assembled in the hall.

Lost is the long and loneliest town

fairy sybil flying.

All along the, all along

the mountains of the moon

Where I live I get an incredible access to a view of an event that is pure religion from my limited "fucking perspective". From the kitchen side of my backyard last night I could see the moon rising over the Rawe Peak mountain range. At different times of the year she (I almost wrote it - my mistake) may appear to be rising from different portions of the mountain range. I knew where to look since it had occurred the previous night. It starts with a very faint glow of light - almost kind of orange, and you can't even quite tell if it is real or not because it is so faint, but the color and intensity slowly starts to lighten up until it turns a very distinct white. The white glows more intensely and there is an almost orgasmic anticipation of the rising of our beautiful lady of the night. And then just when it seems like it is going to take forever, the very tip emerges of a pure, beautiful glowing white light, just over the top of the left side of the range, and then slowly but surely she emerges - her glowing white face, pure heavenly light - the light that reminds me of the reported images of those who have claimed to survive a death experience and imagine they are being pulled to a light.

I was outside - singing the above listed Grateful Dead song as this even occurred, also turning to my favorite personal song that describes the interaction between an observer and a very seemingly spiritually charged environment - which I call "The Witching Hour" - with a tribute line "souring to a black cloud in the sky, with a full moon pouring through a flowing tide" (never mind that I got the flowing tide idea from a nearby dive restaurant) - and then of course - followed by one of my favorite lyrical experiences of the Grateful Dead - Help On the Way - and this way my own way of having a tribal experience with this event. I understand out in Reno they have all night drum circles during the full moon - a little much for a 42 year old who likes to get his sleep, but even so - I am out there alone with this experience - not entirely as I feel a connection to a Goddess force in the shape of the moon, and very much apart of God's world and when I experience this, I don't really feel alone - but I couldn't help but wonder why I was alone in my neighborhood observing this- with all the AC's roaring (like we really even need them at all - what the hell did they do before they were invented - I think AC's will go down in eventual history as the reason our species became instinct), and most people inside, probably watching some cheesy movie on their big screen TV's - trying to re-enact a little fantasy in their lives, when outside Mother Nature was putting on an incredible show that nobody even cared about. It made me long for the tribal days when that was the entertainment, when there was no TV or AC to turn to and the Great Mother Goddess in the form of the moon was the source of inspiration and light for all to see. What the hell has happened to us that we can't see the light in front of our eyes.

Even so - I stayed out enjoying this incredible light for as long as I could, and I felt so fortunate to be able to have this experience, to musically and spiritually connect to it with my voice and guitar, to have this soothing blissful light just pouring into my soul. I would like to try to put into words better, but "Statements Just seem Vain at Last".

Divine to define she is moving to define

Divine, to define, she is moving to define, so say so, so say so


The world moves on a womans hips


The world moves and it swivels and bops


The world moves on a womans hips


The world moves and it bounces and hops


A world of light...shes gonna open our eyes up


A world of light...shes gonna open our eyes up


Shes gonna hold/it move/it hold it/move it hold/it move it hold/It move it


A world of light...shes gonna open out eyes up


She is moving to describe the world


Night must fall now-darker, darker.


She has messages for everyone


Night must fall now-darker, darker.


She is moving by remote control


Night must fall now-darker, darker.


Hands that move her are invisible


Night must fall now-darker, darker.




From The Great Curve

I have had a lot of time to come up with my own religion and now I am going to describe it here, as insane as it may sound. Really the idea that we have come to worship a man who was nailed to a wooden object in the desert could sound crazy to those who don't know any better, so crazy is all relative. It is no great relevation to anyone who reads the stuff I write that the person who has had the biggest influence over my life the last several years is named Don Miguel Ruiz, and one of my favorite ways his philosophy is expressed is in this You Tube video which magically keeps showing up on the top of my favorites. How I do this - magically - is by continuing to add and remove it as You Tube has no way I know of to organize favorites differently. In my comment to the guy who assembled this video - beautifully set to two songs from Loreena McKennitt and with very fitting slide show images on top of it - I wrote : "I've already been in but one more time expressing my gratitude for this video - it is my favorite on on this site and I have come back to watch it several times - it is like drinking a glass of cold water on a very hot day", shortly following some guy asking someone else to suck his cock - as these types of primitive comments seem to show up all over You Tube. Ruiz writes very much to the point - no real big words - no need to show off how smart he is or how much knowledge he has - in fact he seems to think knowledge in itself is a weakness, as also pointed out by Ram Dass - my very close second influence behind Ruiz.

I was introduced to religion through Judaism, which being my first date so to speak, is something I have stayed with. I still believe in the idea of one universal being described as God. The idea that this being chose any one group of people as his people to me seems ridiculous, and believing that one individual as a person or group is better than others - unfortunately - sets up all sorts of horrible events such as gas chambers and mass executions. I am not saying we as a people were to blame for the Holocaust, but I do think such destructive mindsets can lead to bad things and made us pretty obvious targets for a desperate group of people looking to blame their own problems on someone. That is the problem I have with Judaism - we are chosen and you are a bunch of Pagans who need to be destroyed - as spelled out clearly in The New Testament. Now that I have some beliefs which fall into the realm of Paganism, I kind of have a problem with this. I also - wondered as I sat in this empty silent building known as a temple, why God happened to be listening to our prayers here - here only, as opposed to the prayers everywhere else - what gave us the right to be his sole petitioners. I had some of the most torturously painful and boring experiences of my life at a synagogue, and to this day I will never believe any type of building from a so called religious institution of any kind has the answer for me. Attending a communion here in town at a Catholic church, I was relieved to know Catholic services are just as torturously cold and empty as Jewish services. I also wondered why these folks from thousands of years ago were the only ones allowed to experience God directly, while all we could do was read about it.

At some point in my life I started having thoughts come into my head that I did not recognize as my normal everyday thoughts. They were magically inspiring - I had them in my home town, and often at times at college - and somehow in the face of all sorts of anxiety, depression, and self-doubt I found something inside of me to reassure me that despite all of the obstacles to success and happiness - that seemed overwhelming and impossible at times, that I was going to get through it and get to the places I need to go to. This voice seemed to be like God speaking to me. After much going back and forth about this, I am now convinced it was. I am not the only one who has the ability to speak to God - we all do - it is just that some of us may have these things happen more, or be more open to it. Obviously someone with a very scientific mindset is going to see this as the voice of the self, id - or whatever you want to call it - a deeper part of the brain that can all be explained by chemicals and atoms. That's fine - maybe it's that too, but that just is not going to be where it stops for me. At some point I have to surrender myself to my own intuition to think as a religious being as most of us are, and say whatever science has come up with does not rule out God and the spirit, even though I have a great respect for science and scientists.

The Grateful Dead - obviously the greatest musical force in my life - their concerts were a place where this force of God seemed to come out very strongly. I believe part of this was the music, and then part of this was the energy of a very charged group of artistic and creative folks, with a little hallucinogenic magic on top of it - and you had the recipe for a great source of inspiration that I could never find in the building of a religious institution. I could experience this either under the influence of some of mind altering substances, or not - and I would often find that it was hard to tell the difference - as I had some amazing mind altering experiences completely sober, with nothing but a contact high with those who were ingesting those things. After 120 plus Dead shows, 30 Phish shows, and God knows how many other shows I went to - I was into a local reggae group called the Cardiff Reefers in San Diego that I saw a bunch also - I believe that you take this magic and it stays in a part of your soul somewhere. I remember my friend Kirk who I saw more shows with than anyone else - telling me that he saw Dead shows as a kind of school, and at some point we were going to graduate. Graduation was forced on me with the very sudden and tragic death of Jerry Garcia, but my life changed as well. I believe the spirit of these concerts, and even a part of Jerry's spirit, lives on within me and I have stored it up somewhere so that when I play my own music it comes back out.

So cutting fast forward to where I am now, musical experiences still remain as my pathway to God. God to me is the sum total of everything - which all living beings are a part of - and together we are this entity - kind of like Jung's notion of Collective Unconscious. I don't adhere to the Bible's notion of a particularly pissed off old man up in the sky throwing down lightning bolts at us and sending us to hell when we don't do what he wants. That makes no sense to me at all. I have a higher regard for God than that. God to me is a being that transcends sexuality and even to a certain degree - existence in the form of any living being I can relate to. I can say he since it is a little more flattering than it, but it is only for reference, espeically since I mainly relate to God as a female Goddess being. I am presently reading a book by Deepack Chopra called How to Know God which honestly is a little hard for me to follow at times, but essentially talks about how God can be experienced at so many different levels - from the pissed off old man in the sky I described before, to a much larger and all embracing figure of love and acceptance - which is more the notion I buy into.

I make no claim to have any predictions of the after life. I am leaning toward believing in some form of it, but I wouldn't bet my life on what is coming next. I just know that to have faith in life and God as I do that whatever is coming next is the right thing - whatever that may be. What I have to work with are the days in front of me as a mortal human walking this planet, so those are of greater relevance than what is coming next. Somehow I think whatever that may be coming next will work itself out when the time comes. I am not believing in God because I believe it gets me preferential treatment, or a key to the doors of heaven - I believe because this is what I feel.

So let me just cut to the chase now and get into my religion. My religion is interactive. In the last book I read by Don Miguel Ruiz - at least a co-author anyways - a beautifully inspiring book called Beyond Fear - he said that the earth is a living being. (I see some people at Amazon just flat out didn't get this book and gave it bad reviews - and that should be encouraging to my brother that just because someone doesn't like a book there it really doesn't mean shit.) I actually posted my one sole Amazon review there saying I loved it. I experience the earth as a living being. I know all of the faces I have seen - from the faces in the cliffs at La Jolla, to the faces in the rocks eveywhere , the trees in my backyard, the mountain next to my house which seems to be magically alive - seem like living beings to me. While reading this section of the book on the flight to Nebraska, I looked down to see some incredible rock formations that seemed to be bursting with magical life and spiritual energy. Under the right amount of hallucinogens everything seems alive - but I no longer have to take them to sense that. To me the great Mother Earth is a magically alive being. I don't discount a "tripping" experience - if anything I think that "tripping" is the gateway to a new and magical reality that our present spiritually deprived awareness has a tough time taking in. Once this is experienced and you see Mother Earth as alive, you find it sad to see us as humans treating her so poorly, and it is heartbreaking to see all the smog, and smoke from fires, and the gradual destruction taking place to our beautiful mother, but I think that is a whole side point for now. When I am outside with my guitar and feel particularly inspired, I experience the wind as a living being that responds to my presence. The wind picks up at times in seeming response to what I am playing or feeling. I know - this could also be descrieed as random coincidence, but after enough of those random coincidences take place - that what if the wind is really alive notion takes over, and I believe as an element of the living being Earth that the wind is a part of this and she really does talk to me in in her own beautiful way. I don't care how irrational it sounds, this is my experience.

So now I slowly make my way back to the words and lyrics listed by David Byrne at the beginning of this post. I understand these words are a reference to a Goddess religion of a tribe or group of people who believed in a great mother female force and saw the world moving on a woman's hips. My connection to the life force, to God so to speak, is actually through the energy of the female or Goddess. It is no coincidence that I am a male and the female force has made me what I am. The perceived lack of loving female energy took me into a horrible depression, and knowing that this potential always exists, I see it as my task, both spiritually and emotionally, to constantly summon this force. Victoria and I have now been together 12 years - ironically the 12th anniversary of our relationship was the day I with great relief walked off of a cruise ship with an enormous sigh of relief. 12 years together comes one day after the 80th birthday of my mother. I got Victoria 12 peach colored roses (one for each year) with a note saying thanks for the best 12 years of my life. Not that it has not had its struggles, conflicts, and disputes over some of the lamest and dumbest reasons for a fight that ever existed - it has. I have had to redefine my desires - emotionally and physically - from the time when it seemed like the passion was happening constantly, to present times when being older and having a child to take care of, there was also an adjustment to an opposing desire level which is not always on the same page as mine - but I still believe my life is much better with a woman in it, than without. I love my wife, would miss her very much if she left for whatever reason that might happen, but I also have faith that if that were to happen I would be able to adapt to it. I do love her, want her, and have a need for her, but I don't need her to the point my life depends on it. I love her, but she is not essential to my being. I love her, but give her the freedom to do what she wants and go where she wants, even if she has to leave me altogether. At one point in my life that would have shattered me, but now - I know it would hurt and I would miss her , but I would be able to get by

And this in part is due to the "other" woman in my life. I am convinced that this woman - the woman so beautifully described by Jung as Anima - is a living being. How do I describe her? The first woman I ever experienced gave birth to me, so naturally the mother force as lived out through her shapes and influences this being. I wrote about my romantic experience of females in one of my songs that I recorded in Utah on my You Tube page (This is a song that...) - and I listed out names of women I have all been in love with - starting with Cathy - the flute player in my high school band. The subject of projection is interesting. I fell in love with a complete stranger, and filled in the blanks, imagining she was also in love with me. I believe she may have had some kind of attraction to me, but whatever it was - it was not enough for her to accept my nervous invitation to come to a dance with me. My projections of the feminine force go in both directions - the very beautifully all embracing love I experience at times, to the more ugly reactions to rejection ("you fucking bitch") - sometimes I here myself muttering the "bitch" word without even realizing it, and I see that the negative wicked witch feminine energy is taking over again. (I know there are good witches too) When I ask myself if these women who have brought me in tough with the anima - starting with Cathy in junior high, to Tracy in High School, and Christina in college - all women who I never experienced anything with other than fantasies - even if they were incredible fantasies - are these women real - the answer is yes and no. The Goddess force experienced through falling in love is the other person, but is also more than the other person, and sometimes completely separate from the other person altogether. At some point there is the realization that this is a human being after all, but without the face of a human being, The Goddess has a difficult time existing on her own as we relate to her as human beings through other human beings. So the best answer is yes and no when you want to know is that woman you are magically in love with really the one you think she is - because she is those things, and she is not at the same time. Any woman I interact with, from my wife to a woman I have sexual fantasies about - will become both sides of the experience of the feminine I have - the loving, accepting, warm embracing being on the one side, to the cold, cruel, hateful, critical, rejecting being on the other. That is my experience of the feminine - the yin and yang. One of them can bring me great joy and happiness, while the other has the potential on its own if unbalanced to literally bring me to depression and even suicide. So they seem to have to balance each other out. If I went too far into the ecstasy direction, "get too much you get too high" as the Sweet song points out, that could have consequences as well. Being in a full state of mania makes the basic essentials like holding a job and paying bills a little difficult.

So trying to sort of get back to what I was starting at from the beginning, this feminine force of love that I need as an essential to my being - just like I need exercise, food, and water - is the being that I summon now when I play my music in my yard. Sometimes she arrives, sometimes she doesn't. She is a real being which almost seems like a ghost, but I know she is real. To call her nothing but a figment of my imagination just doesn't cut it any more. Last night for example - I was playing certain songs that are like invitations "Crazy Fingers", "Help On the Way" by the Dead are too good ones, a beautiful romantic song by Syd Barrett called Terrapin, one called Broken Arrow that the Dead covered - that focus on love - and then add on others of my own like "Behind Me" and the one I wrote about "now's the time to treasure every precious breath alive" (whose title is constantly subject to change) - and one which I intend to You Tube soon called "The Witching Hour" - these are summoning songs. When I was experiencing the bitter cruel feminine rejection energy in the early 1990s, I would write very depressing songs to capture my experience - ones like There is No Love, hopelessly waiting for a love that would never arrive, or stuff like God damn I hate being alone and this really sucks (to paraphrase) and then that became my reality. The songs I write and sing now focus on the positive experience because that is what I need to have more than anything, (especially after 3 days on a fucking cruise ship). So yesterday, when I summoned and she came and I experienced the Goddess energy - it filled me up and made me feel very alive with love. Then I bring this energy back to my relationship here - I am not a desperate being seeking fulfillment from my wife, but I am a being glowing with love and I want to share this love with my wife rather than seek it from her, and I even concentrated on this notion during our intimacy last night (yes it still does happen from time to time) and even though I was obviously getting something out of it, I was not just taking something to get my rocks off, but I was focusing on giving back too - and I actually received a rare positive review of the experience from my wife. This to me is the key to relationships that Ruiz so beautifully nails down in Mastery of Love - when your cup is full - as stated in Ripple - may it be again. When you have something to bring to a relationship - something to offer - than you can share that without having it be the life end if it does not come from the other half. So even though sex can be a beautiful experience, I have to be willing to give it up for as long as I have to, so that I am not an overwhelming burden upon my wife, who may not be in the same frame of mind I am, and then have that faith that it will happen again when meant to, and that even if it is a long time, that I am still loved and nourished through my experience of the Goddess. Buddhism describes this in the emphasis on freedom from desires and giving up attachment. That way, when a real woman cannot be present, the woman of the Spirit is always not far away. She is experienced as the Virgin Mary in Christianity and other religions, and McCartney described her very well in Let it Be - she comes to you when you need her "in my darkest hour she is standing right in front of me".

When I am fulfilled - when my cup is full - when the Goddess energy is there, I feel love for human beings. Even with my parents - who I have every justifiable reason to despise - and I could go back over every single hateful past incident, or think about how much of a pain in the ass they can even be in the present, especially the way they treat my wife - I can still feel love for them in spite of it all. It helps though to not get so locked into the parent-son role - as Ram Dass talks about in a couple of books - and just see them as people. I was wondering if I had it in me to hug my mother after all the negative emotions and past experiences were stirred up in my head from the events leading up to the cruise, but it came naturally to hug her at the end, and to sing Happy Birthday very enthusiastically. I can go in either direction - the hate can be summoned very easily and I have every reason in the world to justify my hatred, but in the end - it just doesn't do much for me to hold onto it. Sure I will get angry, sure I will not be necessarily be happy with the way I was raised or even the way they continue to treat me, but I can love them even in spite of all this - just because they are human beings, not because they are my parents. I don't expect a damn thing from them and in a fit of anger they can cut me off any time they want to - cut me out of the will, cut me off of communications - and I'll love them anyways. I may not like what they do, or the way they handled this God awful cruise experience, but I love them. They may not like the way I write about the cruise, or see me as some ungrateful ass-hole for not gushing the experience with praise as some may have done. That's fine too. Some positives even came out of this - my sister Edie is going to come visit us and see Sara, I have been in touch with my nephewJosh, got to have a good talk with my nephews who I had lost touch with up to this time - and our family did need to come together in its own strange way, even if we spent a great part of the time avoiding each other - that's just who we are. Part of love is just accepting what life is, and who people are, even if on one level you can't stand them or feel disappointed by their actions, because once your cup is full, it really doesn't matter what they do. You love them anwyays, because your cup is full and you have love to offer. It then becomes an offering - I have this to offer you, and whatever you want to give back is fine - even if it is nothing at all.

So again - I am all over the place and not even quite sure if I accomplished what I originally set out to do in the first place - but hopefully I got something across here. I think I did. And I close with one of my favorite summoning Dead song lyrics from Help On The Way:

Paradise waits on the crest of a wave her angels in flame
She has no pain Like a child, she is pure She is not to blame
Poised for flight Wings spread bright Spring from night into the sun
Don't stop to run She can fly like a lie She cannot be outdone

Tell me the cost I can pay Let me go Tell me love is not lost
Sell everything Without love, day to day, insanity is king
I will payday by day anywayLock, bolt and key
Crippled but freeI was blind all the time I was learning to see

Help on the wayI know only this I've got you today
Don't fly away'cause I love what I love and I want it that way
I will stay one more day Like I sayHoney, it's you
Making it too Without love in the dream It will never come true

See the world

This is an age where gas prices are going up - up - up - up - just like the line from Shattered by The Stones. And although I don't like paying more at the pump, in some ways I'm glad because maybe it forces people to stop their excessive wasteful ways that are slowly beating the shit out of our beautiful planet Earth. Maybe it ain't so cool to cruise around in a gas guzzling RV now that gets 5 miles to the gallon. Times are tough - I understand. So I have it figured out. How can you see the world? We all want to see the world, don't we. How can this be done in a way that we can afford, that does not screw up our environment, contribute to global warming, or allow tons of toxic human waste to be dumped into the ocean from an excessive glutonous wasteful display of excess known as a cruise line? How can we get from one place to another without flying on an airline, which apparently also contributes to global warming. You know - the answer may not be as complicated as it seems, and it is pretty inexpensive too. Ready?
Here goes - open a fucking window - walk out the fucking door - and there it is - there's the world right there! How can it be anything else than the world. It may not be the cheesy glamorous world you want with fancy waiters walking down the aisle catering to your every need, and it may not be some exotic place that makes you revel in your cheesy ability to traverse the four corners of the globe - but I'll tell you what - maybe it is another world. Maybe it is the world you are trying to run away from - maybe it is your own world - your inner world. What the hell is wrong with facing that world and taking a good look at it while you are still fortunate to be alive. Who knows - maybe you even find out that once you take a good look at that world, it isn't so bad as you thought and there is less of a need to leave skidmarks on a trail behind you and run away from it.
Call me one twisted fuck but I like the world I live in. I like every minute of the desert air around me, and it actually kind of irritates me to have to leave it. When I sit down and really take a look at it, and look inside, do a little bit of a musical meditation and tune in, I am no longer in one spot - I feel like I am everywhere - looking at everywhere from one spot - and I feel like I become one with everywhere - and then I am everywhere - and once I am there why the hell do I need to get onto a plane and go to some cheesy place like - oh I don't know - BALI - for example? I'm already in Bali - I'm already there in my mind and I don't have to get on some gas belching airplane to make it happen. Maybe the world around us we see every day we are spending so much time trying to avoid has an amazing infinite realm of possibilities that we aren't even bothering to try to notice. I see every day I wake up and walk around there is so much to see that surrounds me on a daily basis, and I don't have to spend a hell of a lot of money or waste any gas to get there because I am already there. Call it mind travel if you want - the only way to fly.
To each his own - if you need to burn through every corner of the globe to say you've been there, knock your socks off. It's just not the way I choose to go about it.

To twist a Zappa song be a cruise slut and see the world. Just remember - I ain't gonna squash it and you don't need to wash it.

I love my work, if u don't fuck u - & pollution from cruise ships

Sounds kind of blunt - but that is the way it has to be. I have a confession - I must be my biggest fan. I have read and re-read my last writing over and over and every time I read it I make myself laugh. I think it's funny, and it is real at the same time. These are my feelings and I captured them. I captured my experience of three days aboard a cruise ship, and when I read it I know it is real. When I read it to my wife, we are enough of the same mindset - she was there too - that she also knows that is the way it went down - for us anyways. Maybe others saw it differently. Great. No matter what you say, you can't take away that this is my perspective, and that is what writing is all about. I don't care about style, grammar, techniques - once I know it is me that is all that matters. I know - laughing at my own jokes sounds pretty self absorbed - but I do. The fact is I like what I write. I don't need to hear it from anyone else. If you like it too - great. If not - well - I already like it already, so that doesn't really matter. I am not a slave to the opinions of others. Same with my music - I write it to sing it over and over again and some of my songs I have sung close to 100's of times and every time I get something new out of it, like it comes to life and has a life on its own. I love to sing it, play it, and listen to it because it takes on a life of its own - something I may have given birth to in some ways, but something above and beyond me in many other ways. Some may be offended by my writings - but they are real. If I don't feel it, I don't write. They come from me. This is who I am. In some ways I feel like I am not actually writing any of this - like I could really think of this - from my ego - and sit down and make it happen. I couldn't do that. I am just like a vehicle and the force comes through me, and there it is. Somebody else may have said it before, and I don't claim to be original, but maybe nobody has said it just the way I did. That is what I think the key is to creativity and I highly recommend this approach to someone else who possibly may be reading this down the road, who seems to take it very personally when someone criticizes his work. Two word s- fuck 'em. Fall in love with your writings, and then once that happens, the bad reviews aren't going to matter. Not if you already love your work. Once that happens, nobody can take that away from you -no matter what they say or do.Oh - and by the way - just in case you are wondering how much cruise lines fuck up the environment - check out these stats from this site:"Cruise ships - the largest of which carry more than 5,000 passengers and crew - are floating cities that produce enormous volumes of waste. A large cruise ship on a one week voyage is estimated to generate:210,000 gallons of human sewage,1 million gallons of gray water (water from sinks, baths, showers, laundry, and galleys),25,000 gallons of oily bilge water,Up to 11,550 gallons of sewage sludge, andMore than 130 gallons of hazardous wastes.Most of this waste is dumped directly into the ocean, some treated, some not. In addition, luxury liners spew a range of pollutants into the air that can lead to acid rain and contribute to global warming. They can also spread invasive species by dumping untreated ballast water in coastal zones."See this site for information about Royal Carribean:http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnN1cmZyaWRlci5vcmcvYS16L2NydWlzZS5hc3A=In 2001, Royal Caribbean admitted in court it had installed special piping to bypass pollution control devices and pleaded guilty to dumping toxic chemicals. Royal Caribbean was levied fines and penalties totaling $33.5 million to settle dumping complaints that occurred between 1994 and 1998. Apparently Royal Caribbean has one of the worst pollution records out there. You wouldn't know it by reading their Save the Waves link on their website. California is one of the few states with a "no dumping" law, but something tells me Mexico doesn't have one. I wonder what we were doing spending so much time floating around their waters. What a bunch of horse-shit. It sickens me to know I was on one of their earth raping vehicles.

Cheese, Splotch and Elephants on a Ship of Fools

The bottles stand as empty

as they were filled before

Time there was and plenty, but from that cup no more

Though I could not caution all

I still might warn a few:

Don't lend your hand to raise no flag

atop no ship of fools

Ship of fools on a cruel sea

Ship of fools sail away from me

It was later than I thought

when I first believed you

now I cannot share your laughter

Ship of Fools (words - Robert Hunter)

At the time I started writing this I was half way through it. The light was at the end of the tunnel. I can now say I have been on a cruise and I can safely say it has lived down to all of my expectations. I am concerned now about the human race. If human beings can actually desire to pay to be on one of these massive cheesy boats and look forward to the cruise experience, spend their hard earned money on this type of experience, than I think Frank Zappa is correct when he says there is absolutely no hope for humanity. It is nice though to see during the life boat drill that the cruise line is so concerned about the environment to ask people not to throw their trash overboard. Never mind the thousands of tons of carbon put out into the atmosphere from the tons of fuel used up, just don't throw a can of soda pop in the water because a fish already choking from the fuel spilled on the water might be hurt. How conscientious. And speaking of pollution, I think we now deserve the full effect of global warming. Send in the hurricanes, tornadoes, floods - you name it - our species is so completely pathetic that I now realize we don't deserve to be on this planet. Cockroaches - take over - it's all yours - you can have it.

Our family has done well. Nobody killed or physically attacked one another. No instead we split off into our respective camps and pretty much did a good job of avoiding each other, or keeping contact to the bare obligatory minimum. At the time I started on this writing, I may have exchanged about 5 sentences with one of my brothers, and on my way to 10 at most. We did manage a full on conversation about the last full day. There were several elephants in the room that members of our family were all doing a great job of pretending to avoid seeing. So many elephants that they were all on the verge of suffocating each other. You can't come out and say look at the elephant because then the classic reply is "what elephant?". I used to, but now I've learned. I observe all the elephants, so close they are practically shitting on my face, and act like they aren't there. It ends up for the best that way. My laptop finally crashed - there was no technical reason - but I am convinced it just simply could no longer handle the weight of the elephants one moment longer. Our family is like a bunch of magnets that basically repel each other in different segments. We have done a great job of staying the course. This has been the greatest union/non-re-union ever conceived by the Jehovah like God who arranged this. Thanks Jehovah. I don't know how Jehovah did not have a heart attack with all of the neurotic attempts to control and orchestrate this entire endeavor. Some never learn that the more they try to take control the more out of control everything becomes. Maybe that's why he was shaking so much. And he thinks I am the one messed up in the head. I also see the dark, ugly, hateful rage in all members of the family - including yours truly - to be something like a Medusa that you cannot look directly in the eye. Most of us drank excessively to avoid looking at this Medusa. As for me, I minimized contact - and eye contact especially.

When you walk onto the ship before anything happens, after you have cleared all the procedures to show you are really not Juan Jose trying to smuggle into or out of the glorious U S of A, the first thing you notice is a stale musty smell in the middle of the ship. It kind of seems like someone has ripped an enormous mold encrusted disgusting fart, and to make up for it they have sprayed a whole bunch of odor remover, but the odor doesn't quite go away. The fart is so odorous and strong, that maybe the farter died in the process, because it also smells like someone has just died. All the reason to crank up the deodorizer, but the smell of the dead farter never quite goes away. After a while you kind of get used to the smell - almost - well maybe - not quite. And then the cheese attacks from all directions. It is so overwhelming you almost can't quite take it in. It is beyond Godlike. You almost have to bow down to it. And then there is a constant sensation of having a phallic like object stuck up your butt, and no matter how much you try to avoid the sensation, you can' t get rid of it. BOHICA - bend over, here it comes again - courtesy of a caller of the Jim Rome show. Where to start. Well - let's see - how about the music. You are greeted by a cheesy synthesizer and a lady trying to sound Latin - to go with theme of heading down to lovely Ensenada. Other groups perform completely watered down Reggae versions of Everything's Going to be All Right and Margaritaville out by the pool, while quite appropriately people are getting wasted "wasting away" - drinking their sun exposed asses off and having the party of their lives. It seems like everyone on the boat is engaged in constant sexual activity - all except myself - unless self-gratification counts for anything.

Let's hear it for the food. It is a luxury experience as described by the Jehovah who arranged the gathering. Let me try to describe the food. Imagine being in a futuristic space ship where magically you can have anything you want - all you do is tell the computer. And then SPLOTCH - out it comes out of a little faucet - but it is a just a couple chromosomes away from what it is supposed to be. SPLOTCH - give me a steak. But instead out comes a shoe - with about the same texture and consistency. Luxury dining at its finest. The orange juice is delicious too - imagine a can of left over concentrate that has been in the refrigerator for two straight weeks, and then so much water is added to it that it almost is a stretch to say an orange ever gave birth to it to begin with. OJ on the house - drink as much as you want. Anything else - cough up the money - because if you don't feel like lemonade, iced tea, OJ, or mutated apple juice - its gonna cost ya. I will say the food improved toward the end, and that quality was definitely better away from the taste bud Jammer cafe buffet. The coke and bottle of water they kindly place in your room - boom - two bucks each you are told - and that is after you have already downed a couple of them. Toilet paper is complimentary - at least for the time being - though I am sure that is subject to change. I was almost afraid to wipe my ass. It seems like just about everything I ate at the buffet was a SPLOTCH version of something it was supposed to be, mutated away and just could not arrive and ended up in a bland wanna be version of what it was and never quite arrived. But there was plenty of food - eat all you want. Eat up - the space aliens want you fed well so they can eat you for dinner - ala TO SERVE MAN - a Twilight Zone episode. The way we were herded into the muggy kitchen at the beginning, I almost felt like they were getting ready to round us up for a mass execution and throw us into the gas chamber or shoot us once it was done. And eat up - as much as you can - stuff your face - if you can't just throw it away - never mind the beggars rotting away in the Baja town awaiting that would sell their souls to even get a chance to eat the McFood that you have the luxury of eating all you want of - if that is grammatically correct - if not - well - oh well. But seeing it was a short little McCruise to begin with that was okay. I am not complaining though. Even a short cruise was far too long for me.

The sleeping arrangements are like Sting's "packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes" you almost bump your head on the ceiling on the bunk level as it appears the residents of the adjacent sardine units are all loudly screwing the daylights out of each other and bumping into your box on the way. The constant motion of the waves provides the sensation of a constant feeling of nausea that never quite goes away as your mind plays trick on you for your close to near sleepless night to welcome you aboard to the cabin. I had one decent night of sleep. The last night I was awakened to the sound of a drunken female lush singing that her friend Ashley never takes it from behind. Being back home now, I thank God constantly I am no longer in that sardine box, and I don't have to pay for a drink of water from a bottle. The little things we take for granted in life...

And the crew was so friendly - good morning - good morning - good morning - to the point you want to go like the dude in AIRPLANE - who starts punching everyone in the face who comes across his path. Shut the hell up - just let me enjoy my God Dam good morning without telling me how f-ing good it is. Shut up - but the cheese continues - the cheesy sounds of the crew telling you the latest cheesy event coming up, or the waiter dancing away to the cheesy disco music that they are dancing to as the "meal" comes to an end. So much cheese - it comes from all directions - there is no way to avoid it, so all you can do is surrender. For the last time, I don't give a flying rat's ass about how much is in the bingo jackpot. Find another way to take my money - you have found plenty already - and I wasn't even the Jehovah funding most of this thing.

But - there is a cloud behind the silver lining. I can now say I have survived a cruise - once I made it to the finish line - and 3 days seemed like 3 years. It was nice - kind of - to see some elements of the family - especially the ones I could actually have a somewhat honest conversation with, the ones who are willing to open up a little and not constantly try to act like the elephant isn't in the room, or that the thing they just told you five minutes ago does not completely contradict what they have been telling you for the last year(s) in Orwellian double speak. And I have had some very spiritual experiences here, amazingly enough. The guitar sessions under the lifeboats, where I could get away from everyone and I probably spent a good 3-4 or so hours a day on average were particularly inspiring, especially at the sunrise and sunset portions of the day. An oriental lady doing what looked like Tai Chi did some weird chant while I was singing Misfits by Ray Davies and smiled at me - it was somewhat bizarre but nice. It was fitting to finally record "Everything is Cheese" on such a cheesy venue - and it is soon to show up on You Tube. I had a nice talk and singing session with my brother Dan there, even if I may not see or hear from him for another decade or so - it was still pleasant and I take that with no expectations of any kind for the future. That's the way it is with my family - now you see them and now you don't. Many times we flat out avoided each other. My daughter couldn't understand why. She was baffled by the lack of interaction. My wife was astounded by this, especially at the beginning when we separated off to our cabins, and at the end when we were dumped at the airport almost 7 hours before the flight without an invitation to hang out or come to the house. I was constantly reminded of how much warmer her family is. My daughter is now heartbroken that the family she was so close to for a few days is now long gone and makes absolutely no effort to stay in touch with her or follow through with the empty promises to come and see her. But for me - I have no expectations, and that is why I didn't feel the same empty misery I felt at our last gathering in Mammoth Lakes, even if that venue was much easier to take physically. (For the next gathering if one is proposed I suggest either an Alaska Iditarod - we all get our own dogs, or a re-enactment of Dan's book hiking across the Pacific Crest Trail, with a detour over Donner where we can all eat each other for dinner). I have come to terms with what I would like our family to be as opposed to the clear reality of the distant being that it is, because I have made my efforts to bring us closer and now I resign myself to the fact that it can only be what it is. Nothing more or less. I have pretty much come to accept what it is - it is kind of like a ghost family - it no longer seems real to me. It is clear after all the demons passed through me a year and a half from the time I found out about it, all the way up to the days before, where I confronted some major emotional baggage on the way, that the most difficult part was all of the mind fucking leading up to the cruise. The actual cruise, though not particularly pleasant, was kind of anti-climactic. No one fought - my wife and mother in law did not come to blows, we all smiled and took the family photo - which I couldn't bring myself to smile for but I endured anyways. We are not going to kill each other over the $250.00 jackpot of an inheritance that will be left for us, but we will never exactly be in love with each other. That's okay. I just for now - thank God constantly that this ordeal is over and I am back - home sweet home - where I belong.

As a little follow up post script - if it sounds like I am completely over this - I'm not. Just moved a little closer but not there - that's why I avoid family gatherings because at some point the depression inevitably kicks in. I didn't get thoroughly depressed about this during the actual journey - which is a plus, but it is slowly creeping in now the more it all starts to slowly sink in - how completely impossibly hopeless the whole situation is with my family relations. So no - I have not risen above this by any stretch. Many demons still remain. To quote the author originally cited at the beginning of this:

Any which way you are tempted to roam

It's a long long long long long long way

Way to go home

Already home

In a remarkable shift of energy here, I bring you a somewhat positive writing. The idea for this song came from my head while I was doing my CAT duty in Nebraska - I had Joni Mitchell on my mind so the melody came from thinking of her songs - I can't say which one in particular - coming soon to my You Tube site - I just put it together this morning

Already Home

From another time zone, another hotel, I find myself here now today
Home might be another thousand miles from here, but this time it's not seeming so far away
Familiar faces I'm seeing in strangers I feel like I already know
You're here in my heart, no matter how far apart, I find home is wherever I go
There's no place to get to, no place left for waiting when in my heart I know
That I'm already home

Maybe I can't see you and I can't touch you, but still feel in my heart like you are right here
Maybe unknown places are lying awaiting, but in a place of pure love there's no place left for fear
I'm hearing the sounds of the crickets and birds singing to me that I'm gonna be all right
The sun's beating down at the peak of the day, but I dream of the cool breeze of the coming sweet night
My family and friends are all right here, say now where else could they possibly be
Cus I'm already home

BB's got his Lucille, I've got my own Lucille, my sweet honey she always travels with me
My hands massage her neck, and she's wrapped around mine, and then where else can home
possibly be
Singing her sweet notes, and I'm singing with her and this empty hotel room's coming to life
Music will always be my path to God, my sweet guitar here's always been my wife
Singing in bliss and I'm in harmony, and even if I'm a bit out of key
I am already home

Once I had a little game

Once I had, a little game
I liked to crawl, back in my brain
I think you know, the game
I mean I mean the game, called 'go insane'
you should try, this little game
Just close your eyes, forget your name
Forget the world, forget the people
And we'll erect, a different steeple
This little game, is fun to do
Just close your eyes, no way to lose
And I'm right there, I'm going too
Release control, we're breaking thru

(Jim Morrison)

Patience runs out on the junkie
The dark side hires another soul
Did he steal his fate or earn it
Was he force-fed, did he learn it
Whatever happened to his precious self control
Like him I'm tired of trying to heal
This tom-cat heart with which I'm blessed
Is destruction loving's twin
Must I choose to lose or win
Maybe when my turn comes I will have guessed

from "Victim or the Crime"

Yesterday I felt like I was cracking up. I have found there is a down-side to Sam-E - it is like a prolonged cup of coffee - which is great for staying awake - I relied on it to get me through my marathon of roof inspections in humid Nebraska, but it also has a way of planting a doubtful anxiety bordering upon anger seed in my head - and it did a good job of that yesterday. The daily countdown to the Voyage of the Damned seems to give me plenty to write about. And dealing with my parents to an outsider would border upon the assinine and absurd, and if it wasn't in my head like the parasite Don Ruize writes about it, maybe I could laugh at it too if I wasn't cracking up so much. It was already a year ago when I agreed to sell my soul and embark on this voyage that my father already let me know we were not welcome to stay at the house the night before. The reason at the time was it would be too much. But then it turns out Dan - my writer/brother - and his wife - would be staying there. And - the story then changed that in a house where there are 4 bedrooms downstairs and probably close to 3,000 square feet total - there would not be room. I guess Dan and Amy were staying in separate rooms and had a room a piece for their luggage - in other words - it was bullshit. They didn't want Victoria to stay - and as stated in the last post were going to put us in a rat-hole to compromise. So - after I called him - it turned out to be okay to stay there after all - but of course - Victoria already had the message she was not welcome and if we had stayed there it would have gotten ugly, so I made a reservation for the LAX Holiday Inn - plane flight sounds and all - instead - and as it turns out it was an online reservation that couldn't be reversed. Meanwhile my control freak of a Dad said this was out of the question and implied we were welcome all along. I also let slip a much more mild version of the last blog post on My Space (now deleted) implying in so many words that I couldn't wait for the cruise to be over as I was on the verge of losing my mind. So he calls me to complain about that post and tell me I don't have to go and why am I staying at the Holiday Inn - and it is the perfect storm in my head where I finally went to the screaming "leave me the fuck alone" as I hung up and threw the phone into the side of the house, causing the battery to come out. So - then Victoria calls back and basically asks him why we were never welcome in a house with 4 downstairs rooms (and of course he doesn't know what to say) and tells him that we are in fact staying at the Holiday Inn despite his demand to the contrary - and then she manages to hang up on him too. Two hang ups in 15 minutes - not bad. Since he complained we were "out of the way" (according to Map Quest we are a full 19 miles from the port where the cruise will be) she says we will take a cab. Finally he calls back - I have calmed down by now - he agrees he will pick us up at the hotel.

But it is just starting because then my wife questions why I have to lose it on them. She has stayed cool, calm and collected during her portion of the pre-hang up call - so why can't I - and basically what the hell is wrong with me. This behavior is not "normal". Please tell me what behavior is. Mabye it means I am going manic - she suggests. I calmly tell her there is a significant difference between one loud display of anger, vs. mania which is a complete personality transformation affecting sleep patterns and overall behavior over a period of time. Do other members of my family flip out when dealing with my parents? I don't know - maybe you should ask them. But in so many words - it doesn't take a therapist to know she is not comfortable with her own anger, so clearly disapproves of my loud display of it. After all - I have scared Sara. I guess her physical lashings don't scare her. I guess the time she pushed my daughter's head into the cabinet door in response to my daughter throwing something at her, or slapping her in the face when she was a brat in the grocery store - somehow is better than my intense scream and throwing the phone. So I go back to the old - well gee - I guess - you never get angry - and then she tells me to go away - and then to cap it off there is an ugly dispute about when to turn off the air conditioner. Just a day in the life of marital bliss here. As fights go, that one was almost as lame as the one with my parents. Two hang up calls in an hour to my Dad from two different people, and two different fights in that same hour. That hour must have been quite proud of its self.

Really if you take a step back every fight is pretty ridiculous - the problem is sometimes it is hard to do that. I am all for Thich Nhat Hanh's approach to anger - don't let it get to you - don't go off - stay loving and kind - and I really believe it is the best approach. The reality is though - sometimes that parasite is going to win and then it is just going to come out. I don't care how much God-damn anger management or therapy you have, this takes years to overcome. I am better. I don't stay angry, I don't hold grudges, I actually slept some last night, and I did apologize to my Dad for raising my voice - and I am not angry at him now, even if he has been lying his ASS off - and maybe like Kobe I am starting to find out what it tastes like - but even so - that is who he is. They are never going to get along with my wife, and because of that I will never really get along with them. I know Phil and Vicki - have 12 years on me - and they seem to have found a way to not let it get to them. I just am not there yet.

So once you cross over to that point - what do you do? Thankfully I do not resort to violence. I imagine there are some who experience what I do and then start hitting their wives or children. I do have anger issues, and one of my neighbors once thought my loudness was a pre-cursor to violence, but it hasn't happened and I don't see it happening. As a counterpoint, I also do believe "anger can be power" as stated by the Clash, and I used it to end a destructive romance and sometimes it does create a little needed distance - as was the case yesterday. Is it the ideal way to deal with a problem - no - but at the same time - as long as nobody is hurt - I don't see it quite being the end of the world either as my wife does.

I've experienced just about every emotion out there. I have been through full blown depression, I have experienced seething rage, anxiety to the point where the world is caving in, bliss, love, intense self-hatred - have hallucinated to the point where I believed I was dead and the afterlife was not looking all that promising, have been through Shamanic types of trance states from singing in my back yard and/or drumming - I've been through the whole spectrum. Some states are pleasing, others are hell. I am sure in my most extreme states I was perceived as being crazy, self-destructive, imbalanced - but I am proud to say I am functional despite all of that. I know it is a cop-out to blame the past, but objectively speaking I am amazed I even still function after all of the rage and hatred I was subjected to by my borderline mother. And who knows with genetics - what chemical imbalances might be in the mix. But I have said it before - I sang a whole song about "it's gonna go away" and that is the key. Emotions are like the weather - they are very intense, it seems to the point where they are going to destroy everything, but then they pass. When I fell into the abyss at the age of 20, I didn't see a way out - and knowing that I kept on falling. Now I do know it will pass - and ideally the extremes wouldn't have to be experienced at all, but the sad reality is that it just is what it needs to be and I go through what I have to. So where my wife may be the voice of the what the fuck is wrong with you parasite, my response is - I am doing the best I can - even if I do flip out once in a while - and be patient if at all possible - because in a matter of time I'll be back on my feet. You can react to my emotions however you want to, but your reaction is just that - yours. I am sorry for any inconvenience they cause. If you want a guarantee that they will never come back, the only guarantee I can give you is that if you leave my life you will be guaranteed you won't have to be around it any more. My wife was not particularly thrilled with that response, but it was the only one I could give her. I used to go to that groveling I'll work on it - I'll change - anything but please don't go - and now - to borrow the line of my ex - it is more like don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. I love my wife - but can I survive without her? Absolutely - no doubt in my mind. I am doing the best I can - going back to the "Four Agreements" and that is the best I can tell you. I still travel upon the fringes of my emotions from time to time, but rather than saying oh my God I'm going crazy, it is more like - oh yeah - that again. When it comes down are you going crazy? Sure you are. Will you stay that way forever? Only if you believe you will. And when you approach it like that, at some point it just bounces away. It passes. Just like the Monarch of the Seas boat ride will pass. I just have to earn it - and slowly but surely - I will.