CLIMB OUT?

So here I am two days before the 9th anniversary of my father's death. What has happened to my perspective I could never have predicted in a million years! Friendship has taken a turn towards alienation. Upon helping a close friend I've learned quite a bit about what is real. I put myself in a position of unconditional giving. I gave all I had at a time when my own life was in pieces. It was a void of the heaviest kind and then a total burn out. I will no longer be the same and the value on friendship has changed. How a person can place so many demands on a friend who has given all he has is beyond comprehension. All of my rational capacities were desperately trying to figure it all out. My conclusion? - Nothing computes! And I mean NOTHING...

More time has passed and I am almost entirely disconnected from music. I hang on to the one gig that is worth anything. The one gig that allows me to make creative music...The one gig that keeps me from feeling that the past fifteen years of struggling in the piano trenches is not forgotten.

Then another force enters my life. She has brought me to a place of smiles and living life, feeling the lifeblood flow through my body like never before. It has been a beautiful ride thus far, although not without its challenges. After losing a life that was built up over ten years, navigating into a new one is anything short of frightening. Here I find myself questioning everything. Trusting nothing. At times believing that all is doomed. The stronger this new life gets by way of connecting deeper and deeper the less often that black cloud appears. Nevertheless, it is upon me still. It lurks like a terrible picture of a thousand horrors. Will I end up on the couch again? Well, one thing is for sure...I better know my place in this crazy life. I must keep the desert in sight at all times and remember that I can tough it out to that minimal place of desolation.

I'm in the beginning of starting a food business. Fuck art and being a pauper. It's time to do something that yields at least a potential for some type of living.

It has been almost six months with her. This is much longer than I thought possible considering the state my soul was in. Connecting with a being on such a level is most certainly universal in scope and beyond the powers of denial. Therefore I must move with it. Help shape it. Learn to better understand it. But there is that pain...I cannot handle it again. I do not want it again. I will work to keep from it happening.

Who knows? Maybe she will, too...

R.I.P. Joe Blanco - died Feb 25th 2002