(come on baby, gimme your) Meat

Okay, so here's something...I just sent my brother a facebook message telling him straight up about the way I feel he and his wife disrespect me in front of the kids.  Now, before you go, "uh oh...", there's a bit of a lead in -

April 20th, known now to many as national pot smoking day, is my parents' anniversary.  This year, it was also Yom Ha'atzma'ut, Israel Independance Day - double bonus.  Since I was feeling nostalgic and missing my dad, I posted some pictures and Israeli folk songs on facebook, and I even sent a copy of one of the pictures to my brother, asking him if he knew where or when it was taken.  He sent a nice response, telling me what he knew, and added a question about 'where have I been' he hasn't seen me around lately.  I took some time and thought about how best to tell him how I feel without placing blame, and to say that I have been thinking about solutions, but I'm just not sure how deep I care to get into it.  I thought it was a fair note, and nicely written, and I don't know whether or not to expect a response.  So there.  I said it.  I should put it to rest, at least on my end...

I've been remembering to turn on music while I screw around on the computer, and I've been listening to my Pandora station called 'Robyn Hitchcock Radio', although it plays all kinds of other great stuff, too (Golden Shoulders, Billy Bragg, Smog, Pavement, Radiohead, etc.).  Anyway, it was on the other day, and this song I used to listen to back in the early 90's (yeah, way back then) came on, and I lay back on the bed to channel that feeling of being in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and my cat, Mr. Spats jumped up next to me and it was just like how Delia (my cat back then) used to, and in my mind I visualized a scarecrow, a Book of Saints, and the work space I'm carving out in what we call the playroom.  Then a Syd Barrett song came on, Giggolo Aunt, and I wanted to call the BF I haven't spoken with in weeks out of that burst of playfulness that song reminds me of, of a time...of a time.

It's been really hard to not have him around, and it breaks my heart sometimes, but it really is the right thing for right now.  I know without a doubt, I'd be using him as a reason to not be doing my work, and I can not do my work all on my own.  I feel terribly isolated, though I still have B who stays in pretty regular touch - and it's actually good to have my mom out of town, I don't like being in the habit of calling her every day, and more than once is just sad!  Love ya, mom  : )  Facebook's gone crazy with all the weird privacy / application things, it's a time suck, and it generally pisses me off anyway, so I'm trying to stay off there and foster more personal and meaningful relationships in my daily life.  Just another baby step in the process...

Which leads me to my point here - how many time do you tell yourself something is 'enough' before it finally is?  I feel like I'm waiting for the heart attack, sometimes, you know?  Like for a building to fall in, or a flood.  I know, I shouldn't even draw the energy to me, but I wonder why I can't just decide to do something and go after it without a piano having to fall on my head?  I've been emptying myself out, crying buckets of tears, seeking out sadness to release the gates, to cleanse and purge.  If I can't cry for myself, I'll cry for someone else, and then come to the mourning slowly, in an hours long ritual of searching into the void for a clue, for a point of origin.  And what do I think will happen in that moment?  Awareness?  Fulfillment?  Contentment?  Despair?

'Oh, stop being so dramatic and get over it already!' is what I tell myself, and what I've been trying to get past, for real, and maybe it's working.  I feel like I'm uncrumpling after being crushed, and I needed a moment to think about how much that hurt - and then get over it!  I still have all the work of writing my way through it, but if I can see past the awareness/fulfillment/contentment/despair and just do what needs doing instead of constantly facing down my own fears, well, then what?  Jeez, it's like that Enigma comic, where all the kids committed suicide because Titus Bird wrote those very words!  Like Faust #12, and Chapter 13 in  A Clockwork Orange...just keep moving forward because there's no way back.  So I go look for my own place to call home, while trying not to count all the ways in which I still feel like a teenager.