Well, here we are on New Years Eve again. One of my New Years wishes is for WordPress to stick to one format for more than five minutes. Seriously, guys, I was just here about ten days ago, and everything is all different again. Give the old folks in the back a chance to catch up, willya? Oh, wait, nevermind, I just got thrown into some weird ultra cool alternate format you have in some obscure cyber corner. Well, quit it anyway. I am going to be hitting the half-century mark in 2012, and I have very little patience.

Anyway, I am going to keep it short.  Here is a rerun of what I wrote this time last year. What do you think? Too Cynical? Hit the nail on the head? Or simply too lazy to come up with something different?

Between us? I am going with door number three.

Pick up your remote, click here for your rerun, and Happy New Year.

It has been so long since I have even looked at any of my blogs, imagine my non-surprise at WordPress’s changed layout. Wander away from anything for four months these days and you might as well be starting basic math and English all over again.

Well, that’s really not the topic, here. Rapid change will be a running undercurrent of future posts, but I am not going to harp on it. I think most of you guys, your minds are pretty hectic right now, no need to induce a panic attack.

Rather than indulging in holiday food and beverage excess, I have taped, I mean, DVR’d (see?) and saved all of my episodes of this season of “Dexter” to stuff myself with.  We started the first two on the 21st, the Winter Solstice. It seemed appropriate to have our own sense of ritual to compliment the always meticulous, ritualistic Dexter.

If possible, I have been anticipating this season even more than previous ones, due to the fact that the theme is religion, God, faith – one of my all time favorite subjects.

It is not my favorite topic due to being religious or having faith – it is my lack of faith that fires my insatiable curiosity. I love religious humor, I am appalled by the atrocities committed in the name of God, I am disgusted and amused by the right-wing politicians who have taken the whole issue to a level of absurdity I cannot even find a word for. You’ve raised the bar on Christian based religious insanity, guys. A post for another day.

Lately, I have been feeling low. My cat has been diagnosed with Chronic Renal Failure at the rather young age of 13, and while he is doing well, my days now revolve around him – meds, feedings, subcutaneous fluids. It’s hard to really concentrate on anything else, and a basic good mood or any sense of joy has been dramatically reduced to the occasional decent laugh at something I find funny. It doesn’t last, it’s just a momentary chuckle.

We all know the news is a nightmare, no solace there. I could make the list but you already have it memorized, I am sure. Everywhere I look, well, it’s grim.

One of my favorite journalists, Christopher Hitchens, just died.  We all knew it was coming, but I will miss his writing, his deft way of being declarative yet still inviting. I did not agree with all of his views, but I appreciated that he offered me a seat in the discussion. His case for the idea of no God always made more sense to me than than anyone making the case for God. Maybe it was his humor, I don’t know.

I have spent a lot of my years trying to find a belief system that made sense to me, a place where Faith would leap up and Hooray! I would finally feel it, own it, be a part of the group. I have gone to almost every type of  religious service, checked out New Age and Wiccan, really enjoyed learning about Tarot Cards. Nothing has stuck.

I am not an atheist, I am a solid agnostic, the “I dunno, I think there is something out there, I mean, I hope there is, but….*shrug.*”  People ask if I believe in God, and I have to be honest. Ummm, no, not really. I have tried, and although the enormous sense of wonder at the scope of the universe has knocked me on my ass  more than a few times, it has never translated into “Faith.”

This is actually starting to bum me out. I am envious of people with true faith, they radiate such a soothing sense of calm. But I do not want to talk about God with them, because the debate is a hamster wheel for me, and I find I am a little bit tired . Plus, it depresses me. I have turned over every stone in my psyche and there is no solid belief to be found. And I am not going to fake it or force it, that feels shitty and hollow and disrespectful to those who have true faith in God. So here I am these days, with a deep desire to believe in God, and pretty solid evidence that I am never going to.

I have wandered back to my neglected blog to put this restless desire down in print, an effort to sort it out on paper. I doubt I am going to see the light or hear the angels, but it feels good to voice my discontent with my “I dunno” state, and admit that this is most likely never going to change, I think I need to just roll with it. Although I have to admit, I am looking forward to seeing how Dexter grapples with this issue. Therapy for the soul with a fictional character. At the risk of being stoned to death, this does not seem much different than the therapy offered by belief in God.

Happy Holidays, everyone. I may start coming back here more often. If I cannot find Faith in God,  at least I know a place where I can organize my thoughts, help settle the chaos in my mind and the ache in my chest. It may not be prayer, but for a little while it delivers me from the unforgiving silence that is always on the heels of the chaos.

Any thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

Hey guys and gals -

What the hell is up?  First, I want to say, I totally love you guys.  You are my most faithful readers, my little blogroupies, my bragging points. Seriously, I heart you.

However, I am getting restless.  I feel all John Hughes teenage squirmy love for you, because you look at me all of the time, but you never say anything.  I know you are all up in my words, but you never word me back.

It’s starting to hurt.

I want to give it to you, like back in the days of Chertoff and Senator McCain, but I really cannot think of something that will make us both thrill and vibrate like we did in 2008.

Caroline Dierker chiming in was one helluva threesome, wasn’t it?  But, really, she just showed up out of the blue and gave us a full sense of renewed vows, didn’t she?

I will always love her for that.

I do not know what you want anymore, Homeland Security.  You keep coming home, but there is no political satire for you on the stove.  There are no musings on candidates and their private lives.  There is no doubled over, laugh out loud party central on Michael Chertoff, his demonic name and pathetic finger pointing.

I am not a threat anymore, am I, Homeland Sessy? Even my being in perimenopause causes no alarm, despite my rantings  “If I saw that motherfucker Eric Cantor walking down the street! – - – - “

I am no longer a viable menace, but you still show up. I love you for that. I love you for seeing me through my political exhaustion, political mood swings and political hot flashes.  I love that you won’t let me on a plane, because you are keeping America safe.

After Caroline, it was months before I heard a word form you, you one-night-stand-jerkoff. I cried.

But now you’re back.

What do you want to hear, Homeland my love, my everyday visitor?  Do you want to hear a Bachmann rant?  Oh sugar, you can get that on any street corner. You are always one click away from a Romney riot, or a Wisconson Walker tirade. It’s sad,I thought I was special. The political porn has gotten so slick theses days, and I am just an old fat amateur.

Do you want to see money funneled in the dead of night? If I had it I’d do it, just for you, just for your love, and for the thrill of watching comedians, journalists and pundits all across the aisles yak about…….nothing.

Like the nothing I get when you visit me, and the nothing I give to you anymore.

Ahhh, long ago and far away,  we had a good time, didn’t we, Homeland Security? We rocked it hard into the night.

These days we just quietly curl up cold on the ashes of prayer and promises, God and family, debt and the anti-christ, socialism and baby killing.

We will meet again in 2012.

Forever yours…….

I wake up lately with a list of complaints that have become the verbal sugar in my morning cup of coffee.  Politics, naturally. Paperwork, phone calls, laundry. The heat. Of course, the heat. The goddamned heat, which is ten degrees hotter than it should be, scientists telling us this is the new normal insofar as summers go so get used to it. I hate heat, I hate summer, I have no intention of getting used to it. I am going to bitch about it every unbearably hot morning. Right now, the heat is getting a lot of air time.

This complaint often supersedes the beautiful surroundings we live in, and as I am grousing about the humidity and demanding that it please start raining already or I am going to kill myself, once in a while I will look over at Tomas and admit that I am being an ungrateful asshole, as we could still be living in misery in Los Angeles.  I am pleased when I catch myself and wish I could do it more often.  Actually, I wish I did not complain at all.

Unfortunately, at forty-nine years old, peri-menopause has shown up very suddenly at my door, with a gift of non-stop hot flashes in…..the summer? Is this some kind of joke? The global temperature is ten degrees hotter than normal, my core temperature is shooting up another ten degrees, and now folks, the complaining has reached a fever pitch, pun absolutely intended.

I cannot sleep, I cannot stay awake, I have no appetite, I cannot stand the laptop on my lap for more than five minutes, I cannot concentrate, I cannot exercise, but let me tell you boys and girls, I can bitch, bitch and bitch for fucking hours.

I subscribe to a blog, Why It Matters, by author James Stafford.  His incoming posts are often the highlight of my week, and I temporarily stop the endless venting about everything my angry little mind stubs its toe on and settle in for a good read.

This week James took a detour.  I am still standing on the alternate route we went down, and I cannot seem find my way back to my familiar boulevard of complaints. When I think I see it and start to wander over, his story pulls me back.

I hope it might do the same for you. I am very grateful to have this story right at my fingertips, every time I reach over for that spoonful of useless verbal sugar to add to my morning cup of coffee.

 Loneliness Will Haunt You, Will You Sacrifice?

Dear Clarence -

My name is Kelly Mahan Jaramillo.

I was fifteen years old in nineteen-seventy-seven, and I was the only teenager in Los Angeles wearing a “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” tee-shirt, to the intense taunting of my peers, who were smoking cool in their sunburned bedrooms papered with Led Zeppelin posters.

My goal was to replace you, as I felt you to be the old guy in the band and really, you could do so many other things, so get out of the way, thank-you-very-much but wait, I had a lot of practicing to do. It took a few months and much wrangling of my grandfathers sudden kindness and my father’s scattered tolerance to jolt me into realizing that I was playing an alto, and you played a tenor.

I honked my way through otherwise nice neighbors yelling out their windows in vein popping rage, through landlords regretfully giving me thirty days to vacate, through taking lessons from a man who would later write a letter to my father: -

- Your daughter has such talent! -

Suddenly aware of my puffy cheeks and stupid intensity,  the Silver Mark V Sax in the corner glowing in the haze of a junkie, thinking I could be Charlie Parker this way, watching afternoon dust settle on the tired rosebush outside.

Now I am almost fifty years old, all that silly shit behind me – you are the Big Man – you live forever in your bandanna sweat while the rest of us grow old. You have no business being in the news.

I am pretty sure my brain is struggling to come back to life, and this makes me happy. still a little tired though.  Performing life-saving measures on a brain is no easy task, and I am exhausted.

Tomás and I have been working on two films at the same time, along with a few other projects, and a rather bizarre Twitter adventure which I had no intention of getting involved with.  Another time, people, another time.

This is simply a quick update on the short film “Dawn” that Tomás scored.  Just click this sentence to read the whole story.

Also, to let anyone who still might occasionally wander over to this poor neglected little page know that something of interest just might be written someday.  Maybe when Michelle Bachmann officially runs for president in 2012 I will have some choice words of high hilarity to put down.

In the meantime, since life is being dictated by the Koch brothers, my choice words are so foul and angry I am not sure they can be found in any dictionary, and I could very well be thrown into WordPress jail for breaking some kind of commandment.

And that’s just no fun for anyone, now is it?

I am alive, but as of yet, not quite able to wrangle thoughts to keyboard.  However, I wanted to share this.  Enjoy!

————————————————————————————————

IF AIRLINES SOLD PAINT

Customer: Hi. How much is your paint?

Clerk: Well, sir, that all depends on quite a lot of things.

Customer: Can you give me a guess? Is there an average price?

Clerk: Our lowest price is $12 a gallon, and we have 60
different prices up to $200 a gallon.

Customer: What's the difference in the paint?

Clerk: Oh, there isn't any difference; it's all the same paint.

Customer: Well, then I'd like some of that $12 paint.

Clerk: When do you intend to use the paint?

Customer: I want to paint tomorrow. It's my day off.

Clerk: Sir, the paint for tomorrow is the $200 paint.

Customer: When would I have to paint to get the $12 paint?

Clerk: You would have to start very late at night in about 3 weeks.
But you will have to agree to start painting before Friday of that
week and continue painting until at least Sunday.

Customer: You've got to be kidding!

Clerk: I'll check and see if we have any paint available.

Customer: You have shelves FULL of paint! I can see it!

Clerk: But it doesn't mean that we have paint available. We sell
only a certain number of gallons on any given weekend. Oh, and
by the way, the price per gallon just went to $16. We don't have
any more $12 paint.

Customer: The price went up as we were talking?

Clerk: Yes, sir.   We change the prices and rules hundreds of
times a day, and since you haven't actually walked out of the
store with your paint yet, we just decided to change. I suggest
you purchase your paint as soon as possible. How many
gallons do you want?

Customer: Well, maybe five gallons. Make that six, so I'll have
enough.

Clerk: Oh no, sir, you can't do that. If you buy paint and don't
use it, there are penalties and possible confiscation of the paint
you already have.

Customer: WHAT?

Clerk: We can sell enough paint to do your kitchen, bathroom,
hall and north bedroom, but if you stop painting before you do
the bedroom, you will lose your remaining gallons of paint.

Customer: What does it matter whether I use all the paint?
I already paid you for it!

Clerk: We make plans based upon the idea that all our paint is
used, every drop. If you don't, it causes us all sorts of problems.

Customer: This is crazy!! I suppose something terrible happens
if I don't keep painting until after Saturday night!

Clerk: Oh yes! Every gallon you bought automatically becomes
the $200 paint.

Customer: But what are all these, "Paint on sale from $10 a quart"
signs?

Clerk: Well that's for our budget paint. It only comes in
half-gallons. One $5 half-gallon will do half a room.
The second half-gallon to complete the room is $20.
None of the cans have labels, some are empty and
there are no refunds, even on the empty cans.

Customer: The heck with this! I'll buy what I need
somewhere else!

Clerk: I don't think so, sir. You may be able to buy paint
for your bathroom and bedrooms, and your kitchen and
dining room from someone else, but you won't be able
to paint your connecting hall and stairway from anyone
but us. And I should point out, sir, that if you paint in
only one direction, it will be $300 a gallon.

Customer: I thought your most expensive paint was $200!

Clerk: That's if you paint around the room to the point at
which you started. A hallway is different.

Customer: And if I buy $200 paint for the hall, but only paint
in one direction, you'll confiscate the remaining paint.

Clerk: No, we'll charge you an extra use fee plus the
difference on your next gallon of paint. But I believe
you're getting it now, sir.

Customer: You're insane!

Clerk: Thanks for painting with United.

==
A slightly modified version of the original.
Printed with permission.  C Alan H. Hess, 1998.
All rights reserved.

Okay, I got nothing. Well, not exactly true, I have a ton of nonsense banging around in my brain and partially scribbled on scraps of paper littered around the house, but gathering everything up and carving out a coherent post?  Nope, not today.

However, Tomás stumbled across a piece written by a sixteen-year-old girl named Alexa (for those of you on Facebook, you can appreciate the irony), and it is so good I feel compelled to repost.

So, until I can gather whatever non-earthshaking thoughts I might have, here is a fun read from a young woman much more mentally organized than I. Enjoy!

Okay after the last two posts, I think I have my sanity back.  Stop laughing, you.

The emotional outburst of the last post has me a little flushed and embarrassed. I almost deleted the whole damned thing, frustrated that I could not wrestle this particular subject to the ground. It is a mess that I cannot seem to clean up, but just as an exercise in getting a little more comfortable with my messes, I am leaving it up and moving on.

It is New Years Eve, Tomás and I are going to eat warm pumpkin pie and watch something very silly on television, nothing fancy. As I was puttering around the house it occurred to me that every year without exception, everyone always says,

“Thank God this year is over, I am ready to be done with it! God, this year sucked, I cannot wait to start the New Year!”  Or “Man, I do not want to THINK about this year anymore!” You know, some sentiment along these lines.

The more I think about it, the more odd it seems.

Why? Let’s just take 2010.  Like every year, there have been some great moments and some horrific ones, both globally and personally.  But what makes people think that 2011 is going to be a daisy fresh romp in the park with unicorns and fairy dust?

Let’s face it, 2011 is going to be worse than 2010 and here’s why.

The 2012 presidential campaign is going to start in earnest.  You think the talking heads drove you nuts this year? We are all going to be permanently cross-eyed by the time New Years 2011 rolls around. And everyone will be saying they are so glad 2011 is over, only to realize that we are actually going into 2012, and, well, I cannot even go that far without wanting to hurl myself off of a cliff.

The Kardashians are not going anywhere. Nor are The Jersey Shore’s Snookie and JWoww, Justin Beiber, The Housewives, LeAnn Rimes and Eddie what’s-his-fuck and other assorted flotsam and jetsam that grace the covers of the racks of rag mags yelling at you while you stand in the checkout line.

Sarah Palin’s Alaska is going to be renewed due to high ratings because everyone loves a train wreck. She will not be running for President.  Enjoy this moment of looking forward to the upcoming year.

And….Buzzkill!

Michelle Bachmann is running in 2012.  DAMN, you are going to want to be back in 2010 if that bug-eyed batshit crazy ass bitch is our next President.  Whoa, Whoa, Whoa! Please somebody get Christopher Lloyd to hit the clocktower, please.

If you have a job, it will be a miracle.  If you are making the same wage that you made in 1995, it will be a triple hot-fudge sundae with a fucking cherry on top miracle.

Arizona’s “Ethnic Studies Ban” starts tomorrow.  Lucky Arizona!  The rest of the countries racist asshats have to study all races and ethnicities. But those people are also saying “Woof, thank god 2010 is over!” Unless your racist pig face – Hi Rush! – lives in Arizona, I would think you’d  be kind of bummed out. Or maybe you are planning on moving to Arizona in 2011.  Good. Go Now. Happy 2011, don’t let the door hit you in your drunk racist ass.

You thought 2010 was all kinds of upside down in the weather arena?  Studies show that it is going to get more extreme in 2011. Hot Dog! We get to alternately bake and freeze and flood when we least expect it. I guess we just look at the climate change as a type of camping indoors. Sportsman’s Warehouse, here we come! Oh wait, we’re broke. It’s not sounding like much fun anymore. I miss 2010 already, don’t you?

If you have kids, they are outgrowing their clothes faster than you can replace them.  They need all kinds of new techno/gear-crap while you still make do with your old 2004 iBook G4.  If you have a kid in college, the next year of tuition is due. Ouch.

Twitter will become too much effort, some tech geek genius will introduce ‘Tweaker’ where everybody can communicate with emoticons only. He will become a billionaire, and Hollywood will make a movie about him with no actors or dialogue in it.  It will gross billions and garner rave reviews. You won’t understand it, but you will smile and nod and agree that it is a brilliant film, all the while secretly missing 2010.

I could go on but my pie is getting cold. I guess the biggest confusion for me is why is everybody so happy and excited to leave the old year behind and embrace the New Year, when the only thing really going on is that we are slowly slogging towards our own demise?

I don’t know about you, but I kind of wish 2010 would stick around awhile longer, stave off the inevitable.

Of course, for those of you who believe the world is going to end in 2012, I have a feeling you may not be all sweaty and drunk and happy that 2011 is over.

After all, it would be kind of rude to your last year on earth to kick it to the curb before Armageddon hits on Dec 21st, 2012, wouldn’t it?

Unless you are one of those Rapture folks.  YOU guys are all excited, so getting rid of this pesky 2010 – I get it. You are itching to board the Rocket to Heaven, and are super excited about the rest of us burning in Hell. Don’t let my musings rain on your parade.  I totally support your Party of Parties in 2012.

Me, I’m going to miss 2010.  It, like every year before it, was packed full of life. I’m sorry to see it go.

But, we must not be rude to our incoming guest, 2011.  Let’s pull out the fairy dust and champagne for another year filled with more chaos, idiocy, and mayhem.

And may a hell raising good time be had by all.

Happy New Year, everybody!

*I am very nervous writing this. I am worried there is some secret ‘writer’s code’ that I am breaking by sharing my experience with a book that needs an important part of the story told to make it understood. Well, I will keep it posted unless someone tells me otherwise.*

On we go. Remember, I have warned you about spoilers! Plus, I recommend reading Part One, below, otherwise this post ain’t gonna make a lick of sense.

May, 2006. As I lay on the couch in our rented house in the horrible West Valley in Los Angeles, my head swaddled in giant bandages, fifty-seven stitches running diagonally from the right side of my forehead, down through my eye to my chin, and half of my right ear sewn back on, all that manages to break through the floating sea of painkiller purgatory is, “What are we going to do now?  What are we going to do?”

My husband Tomas and I had been struggling to make ends meet, our most dismal time in Los Angeles was just having to live in the flat, hot smog of the Valley, far away from our few friends, rents ridiculously high, jobs drying up, and now me, incapacitated on the couch.

I picked up “Not By Accident” again during my recuperation, reading it paragraph by paragraph, in between the twilight doze of painkillers. There is one line, God touches us with a feather to get our attention. Then, if we don’t listen, he starts throwing bricks.

Samantha Dunn, in her accident, nearly loses her life, and comes perilously close to being an amputee. As I read, I am thinking about her “Brick” and this, my own “Brick” –  what is it telling me?

My dear friend Bob Madigan asks me, “Why the hell are you two staying in Los Angeles?”

I yell at him, “Do you think we want to be here anymore?  We are over it, we want out, but we are fucking trapped here!”

Dunn’s accident profoundly changes her life, as does mine.

It takes two years, but I finally receive my settlement from the angry, speeding, yelling-on-cell-phone asshole who ran a red light and slammed my car so hard the muffler was found two blocks down the street. My fantasies of laying in wait and beating his face to a pulp in the dead of night are replaced with the reality we can blow this shit hole Right. Now.

We pack up and leave Los Angeles for good, choosing to live in Pittsburgh. Tomas had grown up an hour and a half north of Pittsburgh, and his whole family was still there.  My father had died six years before and Tomas had been with me every step of the way, from receiving the news to the years of grief which still stab me to this day.

He realized his own parents were getting along in years, and we wanted to be close to them.  I wanted to give him the rock solid, unwavering support when it was his turn to go through losing a parent that he had given me.

What, you must be asking, at this point, happened last night?  Get on with it.

Okay, here we are.

A month ago, I pulled “Not By Accident” from my bookshelf yet again, two and a half years living in Pittsburgh, happier than I ever though I could ever be in this life.  I wanted to visit my old friends Samantha and Harley, read it from a new perspective.

I wanted more, and finally, finally I ordered “Faith In Carlos Gomez – A memoir of Salsa, Sex and Salvation”. I was itching to dive into Dunn’s own Part Two, where we pick up seven years after her accident.

She is walking just fine, although she is a self described klutz with a titanium rod in her calf, but for all the wrong reasons she decides she wants to learn how to Salsa dance.

Written in her wonderfully unique voice, this book is very different from “Not By Accident”.  She can move again, and the pace of her life is not the pace of her life when bedridden. We open up in familiar territory, she is abandoning work to go ride Harley.  Excellent, we are off and running.

This is fun, a beautifully crafted romp through the Los Angeles Salsa scene, a scene I was involved with when I was in my mid twenties, working at my best friend’s restaurant and nightclub “Miami Spice”.

Unlike Dunn, in her late thirties with a tricky leg and even more tricky self-esteem, I was not brave enough to try the Salsa lessons at “Miami Spice”, even with two good legs and (at the time) a decade younger than she. I am in awe of her all over again.  I cannot put the book down, and I start subjecting Tomas to endless talk about Samantha and Harley, Samantha and Harley. He is a patient man.

Her routine in life starts changing as she immerses herself in the Salsa nightlife – she gets up every morning late, rides Harley, then it is all about dance, dance, dance. She was not supposed to have ever been able to walk again, much less dance.  This woman is a goddess, completely unaware of it.

So, here we are, Christmas Eve., 2010 for me, 2003 for Dunn. I am closing in on the end of the book. Dunn has been sweating it inside and out, learning how to dance Salsa for almost a year. Her mother is out to visit for Christmas. Dunn describes the night of the 23rd, having gone to a Salsa club, where she dances as her mother watches, their complicated relationship inching a step closer to each other.

I smile, ahh happy ending, happy ending.

The next morning her phone rings.  It is the stable, Harley doesn’t feel well.

No, I think.

Mind you, over the years I have assumed that Harley has passed on. In my world, he died a peaceful, old man death. Quiet, tranquil, painless.

I am about to be badly hurt, I know this. I put the book down and press the bridge of my nose.

“NO!” I say aloud, causing our white cat Vinnie to look up from where he is on the bed next to me, his little fox face saying, “What? I was sleeping, I didn’t do anything.”

Even though I have not continued reading, I feel my version of Harley’s passing slipping away. It does not matter if I stop reading this very moment, reality is rumbling up the street. I pick up the book.

Dunn and her mother are speeding down Pacific Coast Highway, Dunn’s cell phone wont stop ringing, it starts pouring rain just as she is pulling into the stable no no no no no no please god no

“….but the fact is that the goddamn rain really does fall precisely at this moment, and in the very next instant I really do see my beautiful horse – - the being who has been my companion, my secret keeper, my guru showing me the way to a better life, and, most of all my love, my absolute love – -I see him collapse in the wet earth.”

I am wrecked, sobbing, every loss seems to culminate on this page. I hear Tomas coming up the stairs talking to the cats, and I am unable to stop.  If anything I am almost wailing.

I cry and cry, while he comforts me. I am like a child, insisting through tears and snot that Harley was not supposed to die in the rain and mud, a catheter filled with painkillers jammed into his neck, some fucking unknown neurological issue suddenly deciding to kill him, she rode him yesterday, he was fine, this cannot have happened to her on Christmas Eve. seven years ago, and it cannot be happening to me on Christmas Eve., seven years later.

We wake up this morning, man, I had a bad dream last night.

Over coffee, my hands are shaking slightly, and tears are randomly dripping, as they are doing now.

I can only go back to the “feather and brick” line from “Not By Accident”, and look at the last 24 hours as a feather, a light touch from somewhere, a reminder to hold those I love both dear and fearlessly, don’t shrink away from life as it can be gone faster than blowing out a candle, and just do my best to make peace with the curve balls, no matter how cruel they may seem.

It will turn out to be one of the greatest Christmas gifts I have ever received, I am certain.

Thank you, Samantha Dunn and Harley.

Yep, from your number one fan.