All hope abandon ye who enter here

Through me you pass into the city of woe

Through me you pass into eternal pain

Through me among the people lost for aye.

Justice the founder of my fabric mov'd:

To rear me was the task of power divine

Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.

Before me things create were none, save things

Eternal, and eternal I endure

All hope abandon ye who enter here

I'm not sure, but I think some dude named Dante wrote that. If anyone who happens to be reading this is tired of this subject, you're not alone - because I am tired of writing about it. Yet because it is an essential part of who I am - raw guts and all - then here it comes again, or watch out here comes the big one in the words of Frank Zappa - speaking about a male prisoner who is about to be raped by a very well endowed fellow prisoner named bald headed John. Like it or not, your family - the one that raises you - leaves permanent imprints for life. I know this - I know I am doing this as well with my daughter - and although I try very hard to instill confidence in her, I have a hard time keeping my cool when in the process of demonstrating what type of salt she has by pouring it into her hand, it ends up all over the kitchen floor - especially when I am on the irritable side. I know in talking to my buddy Kirk I am told that a lot of the dysfunctional aspects of my family are a lot more common than I may realize. I know part of it is my expectation that a family is supposed to be a certain way. But hell - my job involves going to people's houses - and when I was last in Salt Lake City I saw a house area where 3 grown brothers all lived literally next door to each other. And this concept actually shocked me seeing that my brothers are all a comfortable multitude of hundreds of miles from me. I see families - extended families - interacting - grandparents and all - and maybe these things happen on some level to test me, but when they do I think it is natural that the "what if" thought process starts "dancing in my head".

So let's go back - one more time - to this cruise. NOOOOOO - not again! But forgive my obsessive personality. My brother Dan has written his first book. Despite the fact that I don't consider the old house in Palos Verdes to actually be an A-frame in the technical sense of the word, or I have yet to ever meet a 10 year old entomologist - I commend him for writing a very well conceived and descriptive book, and hiking a monster trail that even in my most masochistic moments I would never even consider doing. Anyone who does something I can't do earns my respect, and respect is earned for these items, never mind that I was not all that respectful to him growing up. For some reason - I have now read 4 chapters - (and of course I had to track down the paragraph describing the "strawberry blond sadist" that left a strange sensation of burning in my soles) - every time I read the book I have trouble sleeping. First two chapters - boom - very bad dreams. My soul brother Youndy - upon my recommendation - bought the book and couldn't put it down - burning through 150 pages in a day or so - so I think - maybe I can handle this after all. Yesterday I knock down Chapter 3 and 4 - and here I am up at 3 in the morning. Maybe some might find it disturbing to read a book where the author describes a fantasy of a particular person (that being me) - being struck down by lightning as a delicious memory, but in all honesty - considering how I treated him, I really can't blame him for wishing that - despite assurances from him that these feelings are all in the past. I can even relate in that I so much wanted to avoid this God forsaken cruise to not take place that I found myself hoping for the convenient (but painless) deaths of certain people in the family, and if that wasn't going to happen I actually reverted to sick fantasies of adding more scars to my wrists (lightning shaped ironically) and getting the job done right this time - all so that I would not have to attend this gathering. When I would share these thoughts with my wife, she'd give me the old line of something to the effect like there's something really wrong with you (tell me something I don't know) and you really need to go back into therapy (like I need one more therapist staring at me bug eyed every time I repeat the sadistic details of how my my mother treated me, things I am not creative enough to even make up if I wanted to).

But getting back to this passage, reading this stuff is just one more reminder to me of how broken our family is. When asked if there are any regrets, I used to think why have them because it does no good - and that is true - you can't change back the clock. Still - Victoria points out to me - as is the case with her older siblings - that my younger brother needed me - looked up to me as an older brother - and I betrayed him - every time I was critical - especially of his writings of all things - which to some degree - was really the worse thing I could have ever done - and I see that now - to mock somebody's creative input - regardless of what shape or form it is expressed - truly is unforgivable. And yes I was a real ass-hole. I do regret it, but what good will that do. Although I was described as a sadist, if anything I was really a masochist. I hated myself - and after countless hours in vivid details from a screaming raving lunatic disguised as my primary caregiver, telling me exactly how fucked up I was - with no defense I had no choice but to believe it. So I hated myself - to the point that I couldn't ask out a woman in my high school PE class who clearly was interested, because I wasn't good enough for her - and then out of my complete lack of confidence and paralyzed inability to move, I hated myself for not having the guts to do what I was beaten - psychologically anyways - down into doing. I know - the fact this caregiver only hit me once makes me a real pussy in the eyes of some- because if I had been beaten it would have been a lot worse - but please - don't tell me screaming like a maniac into your helpless child's ears for hours on end is better because it is an upgraded form of torture - because that's just rationalizing bullshit. So because I hated myself, I clearly didn't like him too much either. He was a threat to me - just his very existence, and my earliest memory even at the age of 4 was tormenting him. It was a side of myself I am not proud of, but nothing I can do about it - shit rolls down hill, I was treated like shit and passed it along. In some ways it is convenient for me to be the perceived demon, because then it frees them up to be the good guys and his relationship with them is far better than mine will ever be. I would like to think that when I attemped to end my own life, a bad part of me died too. Whatever you want to call me now, sadistic is not on the list. If anyone would know my wife would, and she has called me every name in the book at one time or another, but sadistic has not been named. Her first husband who called her a "piece of shit" and other lovely names, really was - and even at my most angry the best I can do is something like "shut the fuck up" before slamming the door and running out of the room. The point being - what I was I am not now - I consider myself very conscientious of the emotions and feelings of others. And yet at the same time, you cant' turn back the clock either - because thanks to my actions - despite the fucked up environment that enabled them to take place - my relationship with my brother is permanently sealed, and like it or not, I will always be perceived as the sadist to his dying day. That was very clear to me after I talked to him on the boat, and then again after reading the passage in the book. It can't be undone - it just is. Ironically - maybe because I was the shit thrower, the predator so to speak, I have some good memories with him- laughing to the point of crying at the God awful boring religious services, taking naps listening to our favorite records in the dark so we could stay up and laugh ourselves silly watching SCTV at midnight. That to me is the tragedy in all this - that what maybe could have been a close brotherhood in a better environment, became the doomed and fated cursed shell of a relationship that it presently is and always will be. But as I've said - that's bigger than both of us now. Just the way it is. Part of the difficulty I have in reading this book is seeing a whole life out there he has lived that I fell out of the loop to the point I didn't even know it was going on. Upon reading I "feel a little lost cause we've drifted away so far" in the words of Lucinda Williams.

But shifting back to this cruise, maybe it's because I am the sensitive one in the family that I had the deepest and most advertised dread of the event. In using our dysfunctional family as a case study, there are different ways of approaching the past. There is the "rah rah" side of the family, that smiles just a little too hard, cheers just a little too loudly, every time there is a family gathering - acting like we are just one big happy group - always have been. I can understand the look on the bright side approach, especially since it is not one of my strengths, but to me it often comes across as flat out avoidance and denial. Then from my perspective, seeing it gets me even more depressed. That's why certain factions of the family I will also never be close to. I kind of come across like the gloom and doomer for calling it out for what it is - at least how it appears to me - and quite honestly, it is quite difficult to get overly enthusiastic about a cheesy picture of my mother in honor of her 80th birthday, when I am still filled with rage and resentment - not only for how I was treated, but in how I continue to be treated - especially in terms of my marriage - as it seems like a lifetime of shitty upbringing wasn't quite good enough - she had to get once last grab in by doing everything possible to sabotage my marriage. I can envy Victoria's father - even though he was physically abusive, violent, and even lecherous as a drunk - before he died he actually owned it - apologized to her for his past - even though it couldn't be undone - there was actually some accountability. As for my mother, once in a while I get some little note from her like she finds it offensive how I portray these things, and I have to bite my tongue and say - YOU - find it offensive - when YOU - were the one who made my life a living hell? I was the one who lived it, I am just trying to work though it. So her perceived offensiveness for calling a spade a spade - I in turn find equally offensive, and her condescending belittling of my wife - even if it is out of her own tragic and pathetic self-loathing and insecurity - is a present problem to add to a massive list of past problems. At the first lunch meeting on board, it seemed she hid from all of us long enough for my enabling father to have us all come up to her and approach her as the Queen, although I just saw it as the cowardly hiding from years of backstabbing most of the inlaws in the family. So forgive me if I have a hard time getting excited about her 80th birthday or an age old picture of her, for that is not the association that comes to mind. And part of this fucked up drama leading up to the cruise was all the bullshit that came down on the way. I knew it was coming - part of why I didn't want to go - but since it was my fatherly duty to not deprive my daughter of such a grand event, I had to. My wife could have gone for me to spare me, but no - that was not acceptable to them. We all had to be there, right? Although when it was proposed maybe I would go without her, I guess that was okay.. - sound a little contradictory? How about this - a year - a whole fucking year ahead of time - when I decided to go, it was made clear we were not to stay at their house the night before. Too much going on - too much pressure - which might have made sense if that applied to all of us, but then I found out Dan and his wife were staying there. Then I found out we were even booked at a ratbag hell-hole hotel so we wouldn't have to stay there. But when I found out about the condition of this hotel, what were we thinking - I was told we had been WELCOME there all along! See I think I'd respect them a little more if they just came out and said - well we can't stand the bitch you're married to because she doesn't bow down to us and cater to us while we openly stab her in the heart, so we don't want her here or you either. But all this lying, blatant, ridiculous lying to the point where it's an insult to the other's intelligence because it isn't even a good lie - was all part of the maddening process of this trip. I was told so many times she was coming on this trip because she is "family". Well we lcome to the God-damn family. When she innocently asked my father on the cruise where we would meet them in Ensenada, he in so many words said get the hell away from us - we aren't hanging out with you. Basically other than seeing us at the dinner table, and having us at the ever so important photo op, he didn't want a thing to do with her - or me for that matter. Which makes it all the more bizarre to me that we were ever invited to begin with, but hey - it's a look what I can do matter - I can bring the whole family together - look at me - look how powerful I am. The powerless always seem to need to assert their power. Yes - I hate to say this - but somebody had to represent not being there to call out how messed up the whole thing was, and whether this person had some rare form of the African Measles - whatever the hell the reason was - it makes perfect sense to me that a perfect home run was just not going to be hit in such a neurotic and twisted setting.

So fast forward about 2 months after the cruise now - and asking myself why did I have to suffer through this, why did this have to happen, why did I have to blow money on putting up the animals in kennels that could have been far served to a better purpose - why as a matter of karma did I have to go through this - the answer is clear to me now - and maybe why I needed to do this. Basically to come to the unavoidable conclusion that is so crystal clear to me now - there is no hope at all for us as a family. The cruise ship was like one big floating coffin. Some I may never see again, but even worse, whether or not I do almost seems to make no difference now because we're all doing such a good job hiding from showing "a little bit of emotion" that we don't seem to be there even when we are physically present around one another . If that was the best we could do, have our father spend thousands upon thousands of dollars (hey complain all you want, it sure as hell wasn't my idea) in a forced and unnatural gathering, all to have the majority of us avoid each other most of the time, and then tell "sweet little lies" for the times we were, then the dysfunctionality is a permanent factor and we are all basically just fucked. I know I sound negative here to some, but I am just calling it for what it is. My life ain't all bad - hell - I think I believe in God now for no other reason then I can't see how I did not turn out to be dead, in prison, or hopelessly hooked on booze or drugs - because I had no foundation at all growing up. Really I shouldn't be here - relatively together for a broken person (we're all broken - that is crystal clear) - able to hold down a job and lead some sort of spiritually fulfilling existence through my music - on paper I should be dead or one of those fucked up people dependent on the state or others to take care of me. Logically I don't see how this worked out, but it did. So yes - I am bitching on one level, but calling it for what it is on another because my family and the way we have treated and will treat each other will haunt me forever. I can't get away from it - I think of them all the time - I think of Dan constantly. In some ways he never left me, but he just became a permanent ghost in my head. You can't break away from the past, but the rah rahs don't work for me - I have to call it the way I saw it and the way I see it now. Hopefully - some day (every thing's going to be different) I can move past this dismal viewing, but it's the only way I know how to take it on. Life is a mixed bag, because even in the midst of somewhat tragic circumstances, hope can flourish. I have a beautiful family, I don't go hungry, and nature and music continue to blow me away all the time and give me the constant reminder that the spiritual void I experienced for the first half of my life, is now filled in a way it never was before. So count the blessings along with the curses, I'll take what I can get.