Holy shit, it rains a lot in Hilo!
This is 3 minutes away from where I live. (This is an older image but holy beer guzzling redneck Christ! it feels like what's going on right now).
I haven't left my apartment in 3 days because it's relentless. I can't even check my mail because I'll have to swim to get to the mailbox.
I want to buy groceries but I refuse to go outside.
Can someone send an ark to rescue me?
Moving into my apartment I discovered that there are no ceiling light fixtures. I can't use my chandelier. I was sad but ah well, life changes. I decided I'd sell it and move on.
But then I got it here and started cleaning it and all the wonderful feelings it evokes were still there. But I can't use it. So I listed it. But I keep looking at it and thinking how good it would look with the colors I'm bringing into my rooms. So I texted my brother and asked if we can somehow turn it into a plug in lamp and hang it? And he said we'll make it happen.
And I'm so happy. Because for the first time in a very long time (which might be ever) I have a style. An honest to God actual style which makes me comfortable and happy and expresses my heart: Bohemian. I love the colors and the layered textures and the riot of pattern.
It's expressed everywhere I look. My bedroom is already coming together with colors and patterns. And my chandelier once it's hung, will draw so much of the living room into it. The bright yellows, the pillows I plan to make.
Oh yeah... I need to make pillow covers and curtains. My entire being is screaming for color. And how can I not keep the chandelier that is the centerpiece for my expressing me?
This is Carlos. The baritone of Il Divo, the cheesy showman who honestly twinkled and could sing the panties right off the front row. He was how Carolyn and I met. He was the catalyst in my life from "I'd really like to be a writer" to "I just wrote a 60,000+ word story called The Cheeky Spaniard all about Carlos."
Carlos Marin. The little Caruso.
I don't even listen to Il Divo anymore. I listen to K-Pop and women singers. The only Il Divo still in my life is Carolyn's ringtone. But I followed on social media. I forwarded occasionally to my friend. And no matter what, it was Carlos who inspired me to write the damned book instead of just wish I could.
He was vaccinated but Covid didn't care. It got into those beautiful lungs and killed him.
All my love, Carlos. Thank you for the dreams.
I made a new friend yesterday. I've known her my entire life and have had a love/hate relationship, mostly hate. But as I looked at her yesterday, really looked at her, I realized I didn't want to give her anything but love anymore.
Avoiding mirrors is like an Olympic sport for fat girls. Who wants to face the double chin, the belly rolls (sounds like a dance move) (or a pastry: I'll have a belly roll please with strawberry jam). And age makes it even harder because I've avoided really looking at myself so studiously that now my own face is a little bit of a stranger to me.
And yesterday I looked. I really, truly looked. And I talked to her. It was time to treat that woman in the mirror with more love, more acceptance and understanding. Time to stop seeing her as a failure and recognize that she's worked hard her whole life and done her best. She's failed but she's also succeeded. She has resilience out the ass. Life has flattened her multiple times but she's always gotten back up and kept on her way.
And she is well loved. She has had an abundance of love from friends and oh! those friends. We have had some serious laughs and shared some hard tears.(I got my Christmas cards out yesterday and not only did I use the whole box up but it felt so good to reach out to women all over the world and say 'I'm thinking of you'.
What a blessed life me and that lady in the mirror have had. And we had a daughter we would live and die for. And that daughter, that star, that person who radiates from the love she's been given -- she loves me too! We are each other's number ones. I'm so well loved by that girl that I'm humbled and reborn by it.
So that woman I started talking to yesterday, she's all these wonderful things that I admire. She's strong, she's a fighter, she is loved and maybe finally, she's learning her own worth. I might really learn to like that old gal. And if I'm lucky, we might learn to love each other too.
So I have a confession: I didn't move out of the house because my brother called me "that bitch" and let his love for Trump devalue his relationship with me. I mean, that was certainly a factor but the real story...
Shortly before that night (like one night before) we were talking about some old family shit and my brother referenced the time I was pregnant for the first time at age 39 with twins. I miscarried in the first trimester and was inconsolable. And here's the truth: when I lost those babies I lost a piece of my heart that I never got back.
More truths: when women choose to have babies or not have babies those decisions are fucking huge. It's not like deciding whether to dye your hair blond for the summer: it's deciding whether or not to alter your life for the rest of your life and never be the same.
It's a decision akin to amputation. You can't walk back from it.
So anyway... my brother said that when I was pregnant he did a little research and saw that first time pregnancies at the age I was and with twins was almost a guarantee for miscarriage. So he figured that I would miscarriage and nothing would affect him(our mother was demanding he pay her back some money because we had babies on the way) so he went along his way and I miscarried and his world was fine.
My world shattered and he was okay because he didn't have to pay our Mom back and the heartbreak that literally stole my life was not a big deal because according to my brother, it was something he was prepared for and it let him off the hook.
And the thing is that I know my emotional devastation meant nothing to him. It meant nothing to anyone but me. But if you love me, if you like me, if you consider that I have any worth at all, maybe recognizing that something so major to me isn't something to shrug off. Maybe being blasé about someone else's heartbreak isn't something to share at the dinner table.
Anyway, nothing will change with him. As he ages he becomes more like out father and less like someone I want close to me. And the pain in acknowledging that is big. I didn't know this was coming. It hurts.
I started writing a post about how much I hate too much noise but as I was writing, I felt like I was copping out from writing something a lot deeper. Saying I dislike extraneous noise isn't what I'm really feeling, not the deep inside feeling. And that isn't what's going on either since I moved. Yes, there is a lot less noise now that I live alone but it isn't really about the noise at all.
It's never really been about the noise. It's about the absence of noise. About the absence of distraction.
When the conversations are done, the TV is off, the K-Pop not playing and a person is alone in their space with themselves. That's when the work is done. When the inner voice isn't hushed and the questions, ideas, emotions are given a playground to come out and frolic. When a person is alone with themselves.
When you aren't distracted from yourself, what happens?
I haven't had this sort of silence in a long, long time. It's only been a week so I don't have any great discoveries or break throughs, I just have silence.
There's dissatisfaction because I'm lacking furniture and enough storage right now. My walls don't have color/decoration and I feel the lack. But there was that moment last night after dinner was eaten and Netflix was turned off when there was just me...
Anyway, I don't have a lot to share about it. I've been craving this and I have it again. I look forward to seeing what comes from it. Will I find my hidden muse and write? Will I paint? Will I bury the past or understand it better? Where will this silence lead?
I'm excited to be back on this path.
Thank you everyone for attending this sad occasion as we lay Lord Sebastian FishGuard to his eternal rest. The reception will be held on the 27th Street Roundabout where we will circle endlessly for an hour and then meet later at Burger King.
Lord Sebastian was known for his flamboyance in his everyday wear. Purple and blue were his go to colors with a bit of red fringe. He was fashionable at a time when men's fashion has hit the dregs of lumberjack flannel shirts and the ubiquitous, romance novel favorite, Henleys.It takes a special man to swim against the current and Lord Sebastian was that man.
His later years were marred by a series of moves that disrupted his simple pattern of swimming when possible and hiding in the schoolhouse when tired.
Lord Sebastian is survived by his sad caretaker and those who knew and loved him. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you "just keep swimming" in Sebastian's memory.
