Tag: star

A Sprinkle of Wisdom

This is my Dad.

~Every generation Blames the one before~

I always heard stories of him working at a gas station, when he met my Mom. She use to pass by, because she lived a block away. He liked the way she walked.

She was fourteen when they married and he was nine years older. I know things now, I didn’t know when I was a kid. Things that happened.

I can look back now and know, sometimes, he tried to share his wisdom with me, but I couldn’t hear him. I was too angry. I was already lost in my own survival.

A Sprinkle of Death

 The Day That I Died

The day that I died was a typical day. A weekend day like any other for us. He had left the house with one of his buddies and had managed to steal some drugs from the local pharmacy. I was so upset. WHY? Why do you have to do that.

This was at a point in our lives, where I was the one that was going to keep him straight. I was going to keep him out of jail. We were going to have a good life. Continue reading A Sprinkle of Death

Looking Back

I was razed in a pool of anxiety

I swam laps in a tub of lard

I ran the race of neurosis

I won the trophy~

LIFE’S HARD.

I worked out daily at thinking

Lifted weights of anger and fear

I cycled miles of confusion

I grazed on cold cans of BEER.

I had no fault in my losses

It was always somebody else

Who tripped me

or clipped me

or nipped me

Til I fell in the dust on my SELF.

I rose up and looked in the mirror

The problem~stared back at me

It was me all along singing that song

ME~ ME~ ME

I turned around in an instant

Though it didn’t seem so~at the time

I look back over what lays behind me

And decided to write you this rhyme.

When we’re in trouble physically, mentally and or spiritually, life can be very tough and overwhelming.

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

Let it be known: I am aware, this poem has a sing song rhythm. However, I liked it, it’s my journal and I hope someone gets something good out of it.

A Sprinkle of Psychology

Child Psychology Works on Me

From the first time that I heard that drugs were dangerous, I wanted them. I had a teacher, a Dominican nun at the parochial school I attended, kindergarten to eighth grade.

She told us about having taught night school in NYC. She had students, who would sit in the back row and not remove their sunglasses. I was so impressed, I knew that was cool.

I wondered, “what do they do”? I romanticized these people’s lives. They’re in NYC, wearing sunglasses, inside a building, at night. I knew their existences had to be exotic. Continue reading A Sprinkle of Psychology

Fish Head

Can you guess which one is the REAL Fish Head?

Two days ago, I caught this fish. It’s a red bass. My first, big, red bass. The fish latched aholt (I think this is a Southern term.) of the hook and swallowed it so hard, it would have been difficult to loose. But I didn’t know that, at the time. I reeled that fish as it swam hard towards the rocks. It did everything to get away. That fish and I became one. The tide would pull it in and I would have to reel fast. The the tide would pull back and I could barely hang on. I was not going to let any slack in that line. I had to be strong to bring that fish on to the bank. I felt bad as it was drawing its last breath. It was so colorful; red and gold. It faded as the seconds went by and the sun set behind us.

Thirty years ago the Real Fish Head took me fishing. He latched aholt of me and like that fish I had no idea how set that hook was.

Detecting Sound

Radar could hear the choppers delivering the wounded to the MASH Unit in the Korean War. He had that sense.

Old timers on the trail west could put their ear to the ground and hear the hooves of approaching horses, be them friend or foe.

What do I hear?

I hear the chatter of distant cyber antics. I hear the past and the present.  I mean the future.  I mean the present.  Those two just won’t stay still.

I also hear the fan running.

A Sprinkle of Chemicals

I was asked to share about my old life. I care enough about the person that made this request, to do so. 

 I have journaled for many years. This particular page, Chemicals was written in May, 2011, on a day of reflection.

Chemicals in me. Chemicals in others. The ones I took. The ones they are on. The ones that become upset in our bodies due to our emotions.

From time to time, I still have the image of the LA bathroom flash in my mind. I can remember how I wanted to capture the moment. I wanted people to know about the intensity of that bathroom; as if it wasn’t me that was there. And everyone needed to know. I would be the liaison of information. I wanted pictures. I wanted to paint. I wanted people to know.

It was probably a 3 by 5 space. Entering into that bathroom to shoot heroin with people I didn’t know. People I had never even seen before. How crazy is that? How desperate is that? What was I thinking? It seems like there was a bare bulb that hung over my head. I know there was. I would feel that feeling and feel the rush in my head. And I wanted everyone to know what it was like to be a junkie. I wanted them to know that it was not what they thought. I was just a regular person.

There was nothing regular about me.

Living in East Los Angeles has to be one of the more crazy things that I have ever done in my life. It was colorful, fast and explosive. We moved  to Echo Park, my husband, myself and my daughter, along with our dog named Fido, in July, 1985. We found an apartment for three hundred dollars, which was an outrageous price for a tiny downstairs room. The landlady’s son lived on the top floor and we soon learned that he was on methadone and had been in prison for killing his father.

It was the summer of the Night Stalker. My husband and I, both got jobs right away and my daughter went to Elysian Elementary. He would go down to Echo Park and fish in the lake. My husband is an avid fisherman, no matter where he lives. There were dead rats floating on the surface of the water. A dead body was dragged out of the lake the day after he had caught a few fish from the bank. Only someone in the euphoric state of heroin induced bliss can accept this as an average daily occurrence. We didn’t eat the fish.

We bought two cars from a Mexican man down the road. One was a 62 Impala and one was a 63 Ford Fairlane. We ended up losing the Impala in Vegas, but kept the Ford and drove it all the way home back to Florida. What a great car. We pulled a trailer carrying our treasured washer and dryer that we had acquired from the side of the road in Hollywood Hills. They have the best trash there.

We were there from July to September, but it seemed a lot longer than that. Everyday was action packed. Over the course of those three months, which seemed like three years, I became a light weight junkie and knew I had to flee. We had gone to LA, running from a Mexican coke connection. I was always running. He wasn’t after us, like we owed him anything. We had become guinea pigs for quality control and I had lost it. With a Mexican drug dealer pumping your veins full of coke on a daily basis, you can become toxic pretty quick. In both Texas and California we lived in Mexican communities and we experienced the other side of prejudice. It was hard.

When we ran from California, we returned to the Island, where we discovered, we had escaped the influx of crack. I was filled with gratitude for my good luck. B E and K had come to town, filling all of our old friends pockets, just long enough to turn it over to the crack dealer. I always felt like I escaped the tragedies and hardships that so many others stepped in to. I escaped them by being “out of town”. I escaped them by being smarter than the average; independent person that I was.

It was all in my mind and in my perspective. My outlooks saved me and they were killing me at the same time. I was just a short time from death. A death that I would survive. Lucky me.

Good Dog ~ Bad Dog

My anxieties really took off in the first grade. I guess we all have to be socialized sooner or later. In some form or fashion, according to who we are, what region of the country we live in, and what religion we might be. I was raised in the country and bused in to a private, Parochial school. I’m from North Florida, which is the deep south and I was born Catholic.

In Catechism classes I liked the stories about Jesus, but everything else was terrifying. Sr. John Helene kept telling me that I had to be right with God and Jesus. Then she would tell me that the closer that I was to God and Jesus, the more that the devil would chase me. He would make me do bad things. I had to keep my fingers together at all times, because if I didn’t the devil could weave in and out of the space that was created.

If that’s not a recipe for neurosis, I don’t know what is. Continue reading Good Dog ~ Bad Dog

On the Road Again

I’m glad I had a day to surf ~ Following that day, I hit the road again. Last night I stayed with friends, Connie and The Man, in Charleston, South Carolina. Their home is a house in it’s own small forest, in the middle of a suburb. When I woke up to get my coffee, I heard what sounded like the rushing noise of fast, moving water. It was cars on the freeway. I couldn’t tell the difference. Continue reading On the Road Again