Come A Little Closer

“First, come to the point where you realize you are alone, completely and utterly alone in the vastness of the universe and all of time.  Then realize you are not alone. Look back on your life and see the people who stood by you. There were some. Realize the God of your understanding cares.”
 
― Christopher Hawke

So many have been there for me over the years.  I know God has been there for me over the years.  Now that I live alone, I must always remember, I am not alone.  It is SO important that I stay with God.  It means SO much.  I wrote a letter to God a couple of days ago.  It began, " I am writing to you God. This does not need to be blogged...."  Obviously, I'll leave it at that.  Well, I will say that I basically said that I understand that my continuing to use would not be a Good thing for me.  I just asked that if I failed it would not hurt the many who have cared about me.  I do understand that ultimately, my success would not allow hurt to occur, but I have not done too Good in the past when I have had so many reasons to never use again.  I had to pray that I take ALL the hurt if I fail.  I know that in some ways that is not possible, but I guess I was speaking of the afterlife.  My head is complicated.

This blog is suppose to help others.  It's about me, but it's really suppose to be about God.  That letter I wrote was very serious.  It is very important I keep God in my life.  If I were to fail, I hope that what people get out of it is a reason to believe in God - not me.  When I use, I am not a Good person.  I am sexual freak who disappears from everyone who cares about me.  This is not okay.  So many have been there for me and done so much for me.  Millions of dollars were spent saving my life and getting me back to as Good of health as possible.  My life has been saved more than once.  One of my lifelong dreams came true when I was placed on the 26th floor of a high rise in downtown San Francisco.  It is so important I remain grateful for all of these blessings.  Not doing so will and should spell nothing Good for me.


When I keep God in my life, God gives me beautiful signs.  God gives me a different beautiful sunset every night.

The first night I was really trying to stay in tune with God just a couple of nights ago, the light kept changing out my window every time I thought of God.  It was so coincidentally captivating.

Saturday, I finally got to help out a friend who has done so much for me over the years.  He is just one of many, but he has done a lot for me.  My help to him is actually a Good thing for me too.  He is making a film and I am The Director of Photography.  That is so cool for me.  I have to be clean in able to help him though.  I took some stills for the film back in June of 2013, just after I got out of the wheelchair.  I took some more on Saturday.

On my way over, I was conversing with God in my head.  I was thinking how important it was that I find a way to stay clean.  As I looked down, I was reminded of something I have actually been considering - Jesus.  I feel ridiculous saying it, but I think Jesus may matter for me.  I believe I will never be able to make amends for everything I've done.  When I was homeless, I found a Quran and read it.  It scared me.  I'm not saying it doesn't work for many.  It does.  In fact, I never really liked the way Christianity believed it was the only way, but it may be the only way for me.  Perhaps the Son of God did die for my sins.  I have committed many. 

What is most important is that I be a Good person in this life.  I hope that I can somehow do that.  Being "saved" will not by itself help me stay clean, but it couldn't hurt.  I did grow up in a Christian home.  In fact, when I think of my mother, I remember two things incredibly clearly.  The day I found her dying and how when I was young she used to pour the communion in those little glasses at the church we attended.  I assume that has to mean something.  I want to do what is best for me and all of those who care about me.  I'm not trying to tell others what to do.  I don't believe that believing hurts anyone though.  Believing in the God of ones understanding that is.

It says "MEDUGORGE".  I think it basically means "Mother Mary".  To me, it basically meant Jesus.

 

I don't want to be some holy roller, but I cannot deny that the first person I remember seeing when I woke up at the hospital last year was my pastor.  He's a great guy.  He gave me an iPod that was full of Foo Fighter and Pink Floyd songs.  He knows me too well.  I saw him yesterday and he was so glad to see me.  He gave me a big hug.  I told him I relapsed.  He said my faith was very important right now.  I told him I was considering being baptized.  I also told him I wrote a letter to God that was not to be blogged.  He thought it was Good that I was not going to blog it.  He has always thought I needed to be more private.  Many do.

My head is not right lately.  I'm very confused.  I don't feel like this blog is making a lot of sense.  I know what I know, but I'm having trouble writing about it.  With that said, I'll stop writing - for now.  I want to continue blogging and I want it to matter to whoever reads it.  I always want it to be something Good.  After all, so many have been so Good to me.

Time shakes, found you at the water

At first you were my father, now I love you like a brother

Earthquakes shake the dust behind you 

This world at times will blind you

Still I know I'll see you there

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Come on, come on, come on

Things aren't always what they seem to be

Come on, come on, come on

Do you understand the things that you would see here

Come on, come on, come on

Do you understand the things that you've been dreaming

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Heartbreaks, the heavy world's upon your shoulders

Will we burn or we just smolder

Somehow I know I'll find you there

Oooh, I wanna see if you can change it, change it

Still I know I'll see you there

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Come on, come on, come on

Things aren't always what they seem to be

Come on, come on, come on

Do you understand the things that you would see here

Come on, come on, come on

Do you understand the things that you've been dreaming

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Ten thousand people stand alone now

And in the evening the sun sets

Tomorrow it will rise

Time flies by, they all sang along

Time flies by, they all sang along

Time flies by, they all sang along

Time flies - bye, bye

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Come on, come on, come on

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Come a little closer, then you'll see

Home



 

“We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”

   

- Carlos Castaneda

There is so much Truth to that quote.  I work awfully hard to be very miserable.  The work I do to be very happy is so much more rewarding.  I don't have to work that hard either.  I don't understand myself.  I am an incredibly sick minded person - that is for sure.



 This is the view from the north facing side of my building.  This is from the fitness center balcony on the 14th floor.

I can finally add photos to my blog again.  I'm not sure why, because I have not been behaving.  Every time I shoot that evil drug, I watch porn on my computer and gets it my computer all out of whack.   Have I mentioned what a sick minded person I am?  I am SO sick.  Even I don't understand me.  I just don't.  How could I have SO much to lose and still risk it just to be a sick freak?

I love my new home.  It's so important I keep it.  I am doing what I need to do to do so.  I am doing everything I am suppose to as far as my recovery goes - now.  I have actually been able to turn my new place into my home!  Let's see if I can put a photo of how far I have come since I have stayed clean.



HOME

God has been so good to me.  God works through so many people.  I actually feel like I take God's love for granted.  Or, I take advantage of it.  Ultimately, if I continue to do so, I will lose.  I don't even blame the devil for my wrong doings.  How could I?  I actually feel sorry for him.  He spent a little time in my head recently.  He's not ALL wrong.  Don't worry, I was nowhere near suicidal.  I never really was.  I did try to kill myself I guess.  That I cannot deny.  It's a long story how I got to that point, but I am nowhere near there now.  How insane do I sound?  How insane am I?  I'm not.  That's the scary part.

This is all so new to me.  I am on my own with my own place.  I am FREE.  With freedom comes reasonability.  This I know.   I really want to make this place my home.  It means so much.  My demons do fill me with fear.   It's important I choose to live in faith not fear.  It's just that I have already allowed my demons to enter my beautiful new home.  I've already been lost here.  It's hard for me to understand.  I do know I love that euphoric lustful rush I get when I shoot that evil drug.  I can't even think about it.  It will lead me down the wrong road. 

I know I am not alone here.  That's for sure.  These voices in my head have not left me alone since I used.  Actually, writing helps quiet them some.  Doing Good things always does.  This blog is supposed to be Good.  So many of you mean so much to me.  So many people in so many places mean so much to me.  God means so much to me.  And still, I make horrible decisions.  Decisions that ultimately lead me to hell.

It's important I be responsible and behave myself.  I must make my appointments.  I always do when I am clean.  Somehow, I tricked myself into believing that I could shoot up and go to my important appointments.  RIGHT!  What was I thinking.  I become an isolated freak.

Today, I have my blinds open and my door to my patio open.  It has been 65 to 70 degrees and sunny every day since I've been back home.  It's important I stay clean so I can take full advantage of this beautiful city.  I can ride my bike to all of my important appointments.  It beats my barricading myself into this beautiful apartment with the shades and patio door closed.  When I am clean and behaving, I also know I am not alone.  God is always with me.  I have so much about that fact which I need to somehow make since about for anyone and everyone, but I am struggling to make since of it myself.  Just keep a Good Orderly Direction is all I know how to advise everyone to do.  Now, if only I could.

 

Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave (wave) is stringing us along
Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm gonna make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm gonna make this place your home

Ooo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Oo-oo-oo-oo [x2]
Aaa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa. Aa-aa-aa-aaaaaa [x4]

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm gonna make this place your home

Ooo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Ao-oo-oo-oo [x4]
Aaa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa. Aa-aa-aa-aaaaaa [x4]

Not Fade Away

"My love is bigger than a Cadillac!"

-Buddy Holly

I love so many people in this beautiful old city I from.  It has been so good to be here.  It really has.  I really do wish I wouldn't have used before I came home, but I can't change that.  In many way, my using made this trip mean so much more than it would have.  Being here helped me stay clean.   Using made me miserable and I knew I couldn't continue to do so, but sometimes, that doesn't stop me.  After being here a while, it became what it was supposed to be - a beautifully amazing experience that I am completely grateful for.

I do look forward to getting back to San Francisco and turning my new high rise apartment into my home.  The two weeks I spent in it, I was a tweaked out mess or I was so depressed and afraid I would lose my dream come true.  Currently, it has a bed on the floor and a bunch of unpacked boxes in it.  It looks just as it did the day the movers dropped everything off - except it was cleaner. 

Now, I get to go home and unpack.  I get home late Thursday night.  Friday morning, my social worker comes over at 9:00 A.M.   She really is an angel.  After that, I have to go to General Hospital to pick up prescriptions and other much needed medical supplies to care for my damaged body.  Then, at 1:00 P.M. I meet with my G.A .worker.  G.A. is basically welfare.  Thankfully, all of that is working out.  It's a long story but things weren't working out for me before I came home.   Half of my $422.00  G.A. cash payment pays my rent.  I also get $200.00 in food stamps.  Being Social Security pending, I'm not supposed to work. I'm not sure I even could.  That's...another whole story.  More than that, I need to move on.  All of that would have been so complicated without my insane mind hearing harsh negative voices that show up when I am coming down from shooting meth.  Basically, I made a mess messier.  Move on!

Saturday, a few of my good friends from Wally World are coming over to my new place.  My one friend said that he has some posters for me.  Knowing him, they are probably of women's butts.  Don't get me wrong, I love women's butts, but not on the walls of my home. That would just make me want to shoot up again.  Later Saturday, me and my Wally World friends will go to band practice with The Alanos.  I really look forward to playing with my band again.  It's been six or seven weeks!

Sunday I'm going to church and  then to my sponsors home.  Monday I have physical therapy.  Tuesday I meet with my psychiatrist.  Wednesday, I go to the dentist.  I have a lot to keep me busy back in San Francisco.  I really look forward to unpacking and seeing all of my recovery friends!

I look forward to getting home to these things but I will miss everyone here.  I have had a great time on my visit home.  I love all of my family and friends.  I got to go up and visit my brother in Indiana a few weeks ago.  I also went down to the hills of Kentucky and visited all of my hillbilly family members down there.  Every time  I go there, I meet a new cousin.  This time was no exception.  I think my little brothers and my favorite part was meeting Buck.  Buck is my hillbilly uncle's horse.  I love that horse.  Buck loves me.  He loves giving kisses.  He loves my camera too.  He loved putting his head over my shoulder to allow me to take our photo together.

What is really frustrating is the fact that I am unable to attach photos to my blogs.  It has been that way every since I shot crystal meth.  I assume it has something to do with that because sometimes I like to watch internet porn and do other twisted sexual things on this computer when I shoot speed.  I'm not sure that doing that is where the problem arose, but I wouldn't doubt it.  I'm sorry if I give too much information, but it is simply The Truth.  If I live a Truth that is not a big deal to share then things are much easier for me to write about.  I'm not proud of the person I become when I shoot speed.  And, trust me, I am not telling the detailed Truth.  Just enough.  Enough.

I love so many people here.  And, somehow, they all seem to love twisted me.  They do because they know who I really am.   That Universe I love so much sure threw some bad weather my way for The Grateful Gathering.  Not everything is about me!  I know that.  It's just what happens in Cincinnati sometimes.  I will say one thing, the people who did show up really mean a lot to me - even before they showed up.  It was pretty much the old crowd that one might have found on Klotter Avenue when I lived in Cincinnati 12 years ago.   Many were not there, including some of Klotter's residents themselves, but the roads really were THAT BAD!

I had to be there.  It wasn't too far for me.  Some of my best friends came from the West Side!  Two of my amazing cousins came from pretty far away too!  I know one lives on the west side.  I had not seen them in 20 years!  Literally.  However, it was as if we had not missed a beat. 

That night at Bocca Live really was a good time.  I think the coolest part was my getting to jam with The Barking Squirrels which is my little brothers band.  We did two of my songs and one cover.  The first one of my mine we did I wrote a few days before my dad died in 2006.  I wrote it out at Ocean Beach where I had been spending so many nights shooting speed.  The time I wrote it however, instead of taking drugs, I took my guitar and lyrically wondered, "Why we killing ourselves?"  That song is called Live.  My brothers band really jammed that one.

Next, we did the infamous, Tequila and Trains. It's a long story, but the lyrics are true.  The lyrics are true in all of my songs.  Basically, years ago, I drank all day and then did a bunch of mushrooms before an Allman Brothers concert at The Beacon Theater in Harlem.   Afterwards, we went to New York's financial district.  I did 13 shots of tequila.  To get back to Hoboken, New Jersey, where our friend lived, we had to catch a subway train at The World Trade Center.  In a drunken stupor, I fell into the subway tracks.  I landed in a huge and nasty puddle of grease.  Thankfully, my friends pulled me out before the subway train came.

A couple years later, I drank a fifth of Monte Alban and ate the worm while at my hillbilly uncles house in Burnside, Kentucky.  There are some seriously busy railroad tracks nearby.  I wish I could post the photos I took a couple of days ago, but once again, I can't.  We went out on this huge railroad trestle that crosses Lake Cumberland.  I stood  up on the railing 300 feet above the lake, raised my arms into the air and yelled like a maniac.  After walking across the top of the long bridge, we climbed down to the cat walk and walked back.  Trains would then pass on the busy tracks just overhead, shaking that cat walk back and forth like crazy.  We hoot and hollered and loved it.  After that, we climbed up and were walking through a narrow railroad passage and something happened.  I think I was too close to the train and it scalped me.  All I knew was, "My heads bleeding."  One of my friends ran back to my uncles and woke Susan.  She rushed me to the hospital and I got 30 stiches in my head.  Talk about a having a headache!  I quit drinking tequila after that.  Using has brought me close to death too many times.  That was probably the first really close call.  I think I was 28.

The third and last song I played with The Barking Squirrels was a cover.  It was Not Fade Away by Buddy Holly.  It was a originally preformed by Buddy Holly, but was made famous to me by The Grateful Dead.  I remember the first time I heard it live.  I was at The Richfield Coliseum outside of Cleveland.  The Grateful Dead played it as there last song of the second set.  They ended the song as its usual end, "You know our love will not fade away.  You know our love will not fade away...."  The crowd, as usual, joined in.  Eventually, The Dead stopped singing, put down their instruments and left the stage.  The crowd continued singing, "You know our love will not fade away.  You know our love will not fade away...."  After a while, the band came back and joined back in and then finised the song.  They then played an encore song.  I called it the Grateful Gathering for a couple reasons.  One, I was grateful to so many for so much.  Two, I love The Grateful Dead.  That song was my little brothers idea.  We were going to do more, but his band and I only had time to practice twice.  Each time we practiced each song once or twice.

I am so grateful to be home.  It had been 3 years since I have been here.  So many of you mean so much to me.  I knew that, but now I really know that.  I really want to be someone that matters to my little brothers.  I want to be that to all of my family and friends.  So many of you mean so much to0 me.  I mean that.  You know our love will not fade away!

(I normally put a video on this page, but wasn't sure how to do that with the video my cousin made with her smartphone and shared on Facebook.  The link below simply gets you to OUR version on Facebook.  Once you get to the video, you must push play.  If you weren't there, I hope you enjoy. I know we did!)

 

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10202326973570134&set=vb.1665701402&type=2&theater