The Dawn of the Muse

Dear friends,

I am jumping into blogging on the occasion of reading a couple of entries in Greenfrogcafe.blogspot.com.

I am in a relatively settled frame of mind, which has been happening more and more over the last several months as I have worked through some of the tarpits and mines that constitute my psyche.

I hope you will not mind if I occasionally switch over to a stream-of-consciousness style of writing because unfortunately there are times when I can only get at what's there by spewing a jumbled mess beforehand.

For those of you who have been waiting on tenterhooks as to news about my condition(s), plans, thoughts, emotions, relationships, activities and such, welcome! For those of you who are merely curious, indifferent or skeptical, let me say, also, welcome!

The handholds on reality that I have been searching for lo these many years seem to have taken shape to at least the extent that I can identify where they are in the mist.

Since it is traditional within some of the communities within which I have grown or into which I have more or less brazenly/violently inserted myself to analyze one's life in terms of the material underpinnings of it, let me just say that I am living on my mother's money, and that it makes me feel like a gigolo/user, etc. As a matter of fact, I admitted to her that I was using her, but she, from love I suppose, told me not to worry about it. The relationship I have to the world at the present is 1) I need people for friendship, pleasure, conversation, learning, mutual support and succor (all of which are two-way streets), and 2) I need some occupation.

Let me go into the second fact first. As those of you who know me well at all know all too well, I have thrown away multiple opportunities to reach out for a stable career for reasons that apparently are mysterious to others, and have sometimes been mysterious for me. Let me just say that I have Rebelled, sought ego-gratification from Rebellion, have analyzed myself and my Rebellion down to the last atom and have found that much if not all of this Rebellion, which took on great significance and effect in my life (for I wished to learn how to hellp others in my situation) was useless. I believe now that I have nothing to prove and perhaps never did.

It was highly interesting during the four days that I was homeless-on-the-streets in June (because I perhaps foolishly didn't want to be in the torture chamber they call REhab) that I discovered that there were NO revolutionaries sleeping on the benches except me, NO homeless people (at least in the Parks where I was staying) NO drug addicts, except those who wished me to give them a blowjob or worse have public sex with them for a pittance of crack and NO "homeless street queens." (I did run into Josephine who shook her head in apparent pity at my tribulations but who did not offer me a place to go.) I was alone with no where to go except a few interim days with a crack-smoking friend of mine in Brooklyn and then on to my Mother's. As you might imagine I was dismayed and disillusioned. Apparently all the smart people who do self-destructive things along the lines that I have so counterproductively embraced, do them INSIDE somewhere in a safe place. It is sort of an urban joke on the aggressively idealistic person I painted myself as to myself and others.

Having said all that I am now facing the fact that I need something to do with my life that will make me feel happy, or at least proud of myself. I have not decided what to do. I have always resented "focusing" and "networking" and trying to convince someone, even myself, that I am capable of working hard and aiding some larger enterprise, or again, even myself. I was around in the early 80s when all of this stuff came in, when Reagan was president, so I know it's not necessary. You ought to be able just to walk in somewhere and be hired. I could list some optioins. First is some form of writing, second some form of teaching, third some form of research, fourth some form of sales, fifth some form of clerical work. I think that overall I would like to help people understand the ways of the world so that they can be successful and be healed and cared for within it. That of course is what I 've been searching for myself. As you can tell this is all vague. However, those of you who read what I have written can certainly, I believe, agree that I do have expressive skills, and that beauty and an awareness of positive energy do evince themselves. So maybe writing would be okay. So, Julia, write for the internet, write ads, write for an organization. All of that would be against the major project of my life, which quixotically continues to be, to let people know what are some of the horrendous facts of this society and help them do something about them, partly by relating what I have witnessed, what I've occasionally accomplished, and by leading people to the Goddess I serve, which is not separate from an account of the last 15 years of being "out" in my eyes. All so self-absorbed.

WEll, I've learned that if people don't llike me for WHATEVER reason, they can take a flying leap, and losing me is more of a loss to them than it is to me.

Before coming to a hopefully swift conclusion with this entry, I would like to alert whoever to the fact that I am still vulnerable to crack. I think I may have learned how to blunt the self-destructiveness that made my smoking it as damaging to myself and my friends as it is, but I cannot say it will never happen again. So the set of friends I have will probably be determined by that decision. I hope that those who know me now will not forsake me, because I will NEVER ask you or anyone else for money to support an addiction.

You see, the question is, what would never doing crack again accomplish, which is another way of asking, what is it I can accomplish, and the answer is I don't know. I do know that I am slowly redirecting my energy to other pathways than the ones I've been on for the last 3-6 years, and I believe that whatever happens that some of you will have learned from me some of what you need to know in your own lives.

I am not just a pushover, or a victim, or a laughingstock. I am an intelligent, caring human being, and I will have love and respect.

I hope this blog is the beginning of a conversation with people, especially those of Transie House, and that it will become more hopeful and more helpful over time.

Thank you,

Love



JM