City of Legends

I have sat on this story for some time, but I’m letting it out now, just because I feel like it.  I am sorting through bits and pieces for a new hack at my memoir.

A while back…no "circa" to this story, as it might reveal too much, I was head over heals in love with a woman who was the same with me (well she said she was, and I rarely argue with that compliment).  I sent her a present, a signed copy of one of my books (actually, I had sent her some earlier, this was one I just did not have in stock at that time and was looking to complete her set) and knowing she was in tough times, but too proud to ask for help, I sandwiched a substantial amount of money between the pages of the book.  Substantial.  Buy a used car, pay rent for several months or take a long trip to visit someone special kind of money.

Well, sometime between the time I mailed it and the time it reached her, the relationship went south.  I’m no scoundrel to be asking a gift back (I have lost a substantial portion of my worldly goods over the years to gifts), so I just wrote off the money as something she needed and something that, when she got it, at least she would not think badly of me.

Months passed, and I never heard even a peep about the gift.  I do admit a certain personality quirk where I am predisposed to be cross over people who do not at least say "thank you" when you, oh, save their life, or nurse them through a major illness or give them all the money you have in the world, so I did feel a little perturbed at her (I actually imagined that she had thrown it out without opening it…meaning the money was lost to both of us, forever).

Five months to the day I mailed it, it appeared in my home mailbox, having been "refused" and somehow knocking about FOR FIVE MONTHS through the postal system.  The packaging was intact, the book was in fine shape (I have it here, beside me, complete with my autograph to her) and the money?  The money was safely tucked inside.

That weekend, my car decided to have a major breakdown and the money more than covered the repairs.  I guess the gods of love do work in strange and mysterious ways.

Gnight kids.

I dug into the untouchable files today, the files I had put away and promised myself not to revisit.  The sealed stuff, destined only to see the light of day after I am gone and one of the three people I have trusted the master password to stops laughing long enough at the second key to actually open and read.

I’m talking about two documents, really.  The black catalog, those poems too twisted and dark to be unleashed while I am of this world, and the memoir.  I keep promising myself I will destroy it.  My little run in with KFS, the Mad Gypsy, convinced me that while my memory may be pretty solid, it isn’t perfect and most people would rather I forgot everything.  I actually thought the piece I had written about our breakup was incredibly complimentary, she thought it made her look heartless and cruel.

My love, without the random definition of cruelty, babies would not be born, their umbilical cords would never be cut and toilet training would be banned.  We are all cruel things, when the necessity is upon us.  I have learned to be wary of anyone who says "I would never do that, that would be too cruel".  That is a first-act line designed to be remembered in the third act right after the actions of the character unfolded in the second,

My daughter has told me before that she feels she inherited "the cruel gene" from her mother.  I don’t find her mother particularly cruel.  A trifle vindictive, but I seem to bring out the arch in my archenemies and archangels.  We know when we have been cruel, and we often beat ourselves up for it, but that is counterproductive.  To anyone who has ever felt they treated me cruelly, be of good cheer…I’m still standing (forgive the cough, I think I am edging the cliffs above a new round battle with pneumonia) and plan to be around for a few more decades.

But I started contemplating the next chapter of my memoir, chapter 37.  It is to pick up in early April of 2008 (it has been that long since I opened this file!)  a time of grief and rebirth.  It has seen me fall nearly as far as I ever have, seen me write a mountain of new works and give some of my best readings ever, after canceling the most ambitious reading tour I had ever planned.  I have loved, and loved after disillusionment, fallen on my sword, risen to wipe it dry of my blood and replace it in its scabbard.  I have reconnected with old friend, lost a few, dealt with as crippling a case of self-doubt as I have known, nearly died of food poisoning, and seen my Rock of Gibraltar, my grandmother, slowly begin the descent into twilight.

It has been life.  Maybe not as notable as the Panther era, as erotic as the age of Brigit, as eye-opening as personal involvement and professional work with addicts, but perhaps even more universal, themes of death, life, hope, failure and will.  I am excited to be chronicling these past several months.

Then I will lock it away until events fill me with the need to record again.  I don’t go back and rewrite, as that increasing the possibility that I will tamper with the purity of my recall and the history.  A bad thing, to my way of thinking.

Who knows, perhaps a new star in the heavens will rise, I will write something startling even to me, someone will pass into or out of my life forever. 

It will be life,
in all its beauty and pain,
purity and stain,
angelic refrain
and cry of despair,
I am there.

Selah.

Rough night. For some reason or other, kept waking up (may have been the storms, but usually I sleep well through those, so maybe I was restless for other reasons)

No exciting email this morning…Brigit may have done her usual surface-for-a-day-then-go-away-for-months routine. argh. Well, at least unlike some people, she at least surfaces. No word from JIllian on her books (or Jezz just writing to be Jezz).

Four weeks until the release of "The Morgantown Suite" and the buzz is…er…there is no buzz. Some of that is my fault for having spent so much energy on the P’cycles and "INVOCATO"…part of it is the incipient apathy in Morgantown for anything that does not have the word "beer" in its title. (chortle-snort-snarfle) Regardless of what they think of it, regardless of whether or not ArtsMon really, really gets behind it (hey, they get all the royalties) it still is coming out. If asked to talk about it, pimp it or read from it, I shall…if not, at least it goes in my credits (book #7…there is a book #7, isn’t there?)

I had run into an interesting fellow the other night at Books A Million. At the end of the long discussion I gave him my number, in case he ever wanted to talk later…he called yesterday, when I was in the middle of twelve things, I told him I’d have to get back to him…he gave me his number. And…I think I lost it. Damn. Well, maybe he’ll read this. As a pet peeve of mine is people who slowly or never return calls (riles me to no end, bad business, you know, and besides it leaves the initiator wondering if you ever got the call or if there is a reason they are being ignored) I hate it when people think I’m ditching them.

Considering a March, 2006, release date for the memoir "Wings as Oft Leathery as Feathery"…updated to modern times. Part of me deplores kiss-and-tell books. Part of me is just so damn tired of the lies I have allowed. Lying to me is a sign of disrespect. Lying about me is a sign of betrayal, especially if I have done nothing to harm you. Invoking my own sense of loyal nobility to have me participate in your lies, only to throw them all on me when you get caught…well, you can imagine. Somedays I feel like those cheesy computers on old "Star Trek" episodes, where all Kirk has to do is tell them they are behaving illogically to get them to blow up.

Okay, back on focus. Will slip on the headphones shortly, program a track of Warren Zevon (Lawyers, Guns and Money; Mohammed’s Radio), Matthew Sweet (Girlfriend), A3 (Woke Up This Morning) and Amy Grant (Good for Me)…hey this is my brain, not yours…get a life…and work on completing either of the pipeline books.