Bellyache

            

            I was born a fighter. Given the unfamiliar circumstances of my birth, even my name was chosen based on my ability to endure. From what I understand, they did not expect me to survive the process. Apparently, I did just that (and then some). From the time I was a little boy, I have known struggle. It seems to never end. I am resolved to keep going, to keep fighting in spite of it all. I have come to a point where any chaos I encounter, any toll that life takes, is merely an inconvenience. I have learned not to give them a moment's time. They have no power over me. I refuse to let life cripple me. I can't stand it when others do just that. I can't stand it when someone constantly whines about their lot in life. I hate it when someone fixates on the pain and all their needless suffering. I understand fully that we all need to express ourselves. It is cathartic to purge your feelings and explain any reasons. I write about my experiences all the time. I am easily annoyed when people ruminate in misery rather than continuing on with dignity. I don't expect that people really work that way. I don't believe I will find many exceptions to the rule. Most times, most people need to just shut the fuck up. 

            I do not expect my fellow humans to have the same resolve that I do. Everyone struggles through this life and not everyone can take it. Some people become so lost in all the misery that they no longer function at all. What may cause me discomfort may very well bring another to the brink of madness. One thing after another can add and add until you pop your last nerve. When I go to sleep at night, I don't think about the day behind. I don't think about the day to come. In my mind's eye, I find the otherland. I focus on those things which give me pleasure. Most nights, as I lay me down, you will find me battling crime as a superhero or exploring a cave in the mountains of Tibet. I soar to the moon and back. I have love on the last day of my life. In the morning, I start reality all over again. I don't fixate on my problems. From the way things appear, you wouldn't know anything was anything at all. I don't want to complain about life and all the heartache it can bring. I don't have the need to make people aware of every detail of my life. I try to grin and bear it, even if it means I might have to undergo a little more suffering along the way. I prefer to do that suffering in private.

            The irony lies in the fact that I am complaining about people who complain. I say, "Fuck 'em if they can't take the joke." People are people and they tend to bitch about anything. Most times, it seems they are simply trying to fill the dead space between us all. I see no need to whimper. I see no need at all. In October of 2016, an illustration happened at the bottom of the staircase in my home. As I raised my right foot to move to the bottom stair, my cat Shadowe slid underneath my appendage. He is always trying to beat me up the stairs. I stepped on him hard, not with intent, but that is regardless to my point. He screamed as I crushed him a little. I fell forward, smashing my face against the lower wall of the landing. The force was one to be reckoned with. My head slammed into the wall, full on the right side of my face. One of my front teeth, a canine, snapped in two. The Chiclet was tossed clear across the foyer and down the kitchen floor. There was no blood. There was no real pain. There was no lachrymose, not even for a minute. I sat myself upright and shook it off. The only other symptom from the fall was the matter of my right eye. So what, so it wouldn't open for about an hour. As an accident prone klutz, it was just another day. I guess I'm lucky I didn't snap my neck. This would not have been the way I wanted it all to end.

            As I waited for the dental solution, I tried not to bring notice to my newly found hole. I'm not much of a smiling man so it was of little challenge to obscure the thing with my normal facial expression. I don't grin when I bear it. I told my Father, and my partner, and joked about it on my Facebook page. In public, I tried not to draw attention to it. It would be several weeks before an opening with my dentist. A few hours after the event, my partner was surprised by how little the "tooth capitation" seemed to have affected me. 

In the following weeks, I simply kept my mug shot shut. I seemed a little unhappier to some. I seemed distant to others. I was only hiding the flaw, no longer smiling to avoid this type of revelation. There was no heart breaking, it wasn't even aching. There wasn't even a cloud in the sky. No biggie, I got by. What else am I supposed to do? There is no merit in not letting it go. It wasn't even worth the repeating. Shit happens all the time and karma catches you when you least expect it. I don't need to whine because it happened. I don't need to complain how unfair it all was. Woe is me, makes me wanna puke. Adult rational conversations on the matter are acceptable; blubbering, needless suffering is not. I try not to dwell. Life is still worthwhile, I just don't smile.  

            Life is nothing if not consistent. There is never a moment of peace and we all know it. Whether we admit as much is also irrelevant to my cause. For the whiner, there appears to be a sense that one should be not only immune but unavailable for life's more trying moments. They act as if they are special, somehow above the consequence that merely existing can bring. I do not claim to be resistant to a few sessions of bitch and complain. Here and there, we all do it. We take some part in it at some time or another. It shouldn't be a lifestyle. Nothing can turn you off quicker, with perhaps the exception of pus and gore, than a person who will not shut up about how hard life has been for them. I don't mean mentioning, I mean ruminating. Spread the misery. No shit, life is hard. Welcome to my world pal!

            I have great respect for people who suffer in silence. I'm not talking about when a radiator falls down stairs and crushes your leg. I'm not talking about losing your adult child to suicide. I'm not talking about your heart attack or your battle with alcohol. There is little more annoying that the constant drone of a bellyacher. It is always enough to make one scream, at least in your head. Not everything is negative and rarely does any positive outrun chaos in the race. People who moan and groan about their lot in life are like grating chalk. One should always be prepared for the noise. Why are they surprised that things are so? I'd like to know why they even think they have the right to exception. As if their lot in life merits more mercy than anyone else's. From the time they rise until they fall back down again, they snivel about looking for someone willing to listen. Everything is empty and sad and melodramatic. There is nothing worse in my eyes than an unadulterated chicken, blaming life and their God for the things that happen to them. They even complain for other people, as if their own laments failed to add up to the appropriate amount of whining. I cringe in the company of a cry baby.

            I have never met my friend Donna. Social networking brought us together and Facebook is our common ground. She lives in London, Ontario while I reside in Paris, about 100 km east. We haven't even discussed meeting. I guess we don't need to. Almost every day over the last year, we have connected on one platform or another. We are kindred spirits and like minded. A few months ago, Donna informed me of her cancer. That is really all she mentioned until her treatments began. As if a matter of fact, with each step she took in motion, she let me know the prognosis. I am glad to talk to her about anything she is comfortable with. By now her treatments have more than ended, although not all came back with good news. She is nowhere back to whatever normal she once bore. Her plight continues. Not once, not even a single time, have I found her wanting. She never whined to me, cried to me or showed any sign of weakness. Her outlook was positive from beginning to complete. Somehow amidst all her chaos, she found strength on some level. I am sure I did not see all there was for her to be. Her private moments, or time with loved ones, are her own to share. I only see courage. I only witness fortitude and bravery and calm. The deeper the pain, I suppose, the thicker the wall. The thicker the wall, the safer one stays.

            Linda was my friend for a few years back in the mid-1990s. We met through mutual friends and started hanging out in the most casual of ways. It was a laidback relationship, based on little but that was enough. It was the right time and the right place for both of us. At the time, I was fresh from the suicide of my partner. Linda was, to say the least, overweight. Well over 350 pounds of flesh weighed her down daily. She didn't even try to lose it. The result was a lifestyle made of pain, misery and discomfort. She did not fail to let everyone know her lot. It became a daily briefing, a feature in our morning news. Over and over she repeated the same complaints. When she started, I used to sing in my head. For the longest time, I thought her discourse might have been written by Mozart, or Handel or even Quincy Jones. The time I spent with her was really nothing but noise. The constant drone of how hard this life is and woe is me, woe is me. Once I started dating again, I withdrew from the drama. My new life would have to do. I saw her years later, in a mall somewhere in Southern Ontario. The first thing out of her mouth was: "You look much better than I feel."

            I'm not claiming to be better, I just claim to live better. I realize that everyone is limited by their perspective. Not everyone is capable of strength in the face of hardship. It's not even that I think people like this are weak. They're not weak, they are annoying. Boo fucking hoo. If I have to hear one more person squeal over the miserable life they lead, I'll fucking scream (still in my head). How do these people find so much energy in the act of telling it but can't seem to focus that energy on making things better? Why subscribe yourself to such needless suffering.? Why does it always seem that some of those afflicted by this life tend to ruminate in their own misery? One of my strong suits has always been my ability to listen, to give what I expect others to do for me. I have never signed on for a cascade of the whimpering soul. I want to have empathy and compassion, but mostly I just want them to stick their misery where the sun don't shine. Relationships are primarily based on presentation. What you give, you often end up getting. Bellyaching is not a lost art. It still echoes. It finds life in some people. I prefer silence to the barbs of a harpy. I think I have seen a few here and there. I know, it's in every one of us. I cannot help thinking that it all just seems so needless.

"Smile tho' your heart is aching

Smile even tho' it's breaking

When there are clouds in the sky

You'll get by

If you smile

Thro' your fear and sorrow

Smile and maybe tomorrow

You'll see the sun come shining thro'

For you

Light up your face with gladness

Hide every trace of sadness

Altho' a tear may be ever so near

That's the time

You must keep on trying

Smile, what's the use of crying?

You'll find that life is still worth-while

If you just smile."

(Smile, Charlie Chaplin 1936)

Photo

http://topsy.fr/hashtag.php?q=%23whiner

Out in the Woods

            It's not that sex is a taboo subject for me. My sex life is really none of your business. There is a huge difference, for me, between what I think and say and how I fuck someone. The latter is completely irrelevant (except to the fuckee). I just can't approach the subject from an objective position. I can discuss the topic until I'm sore. When it comes to my private activities, I would rather say nothing at all. With that being said, it can be intimidating to express your ideas on sexuality. It can be hard and often difficult to    

move freely within the parameters. People ramble on and on about their conquests but never their failures. Some people cannot rise to the occasion. Perhaps the matter needs some lubrication, a way to slide into the topic on a much less personal and much more humorous playing field. Always wear a rubber.

            Being a gay man in this much more tolerant world, you would think it would be easy for me to reveal my sexuality to people. Don't get me wrong, it most certainly is, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. The act of telling someone you are a homosexual invites them, at least in their mind, to conclude certain things. I'm sorry but I don't want you assuming that I am a cocksucker and/or sodomite. I doesn't really matter if I am. I wish there was some way to not allow such an approach, such intimate information.  I have had a partner for the last 18 years but it doesn't get any easier for me to invite anyone into my private world. I don't want to know whether your husband eats out your pussy so why should you have access to what I do or don't do with my penis and/or any orifice you might imagine? Unlike heterosexuality, which entails certain moral privacy, what I experience as a gay man should be an issue for me and me alone. Well, myself  and the object of my erection.

            I got older and sex changed for me. As a young adult, I frequented so many gay bars I looked like the poster girl (not really, but it fits). As an untreated Bi-polar, you can imagine the heightened sexual impulses that flooded my mind and body at the time.

Getting laid was all that really mattered to me back then. Left without it, I was driven to just seek more and more and more. One conquest after the other made little difference. The urges were out of control because I had no control. Anything outside of the norm found a place within less mainstream parts of the gay community. It can appear that anything goes. This promiscuous behaviour had always been as rampant in the heterosexual community but we just don't talk about that. They use much the same tools but what they hammer is much different. Most "breeders" have an innate sense of validation no matter what they themselves tend to do. For me, sex always had a power over me. It always controlled me, drove me towards hedonism and the quest for coital gratification. Copulation was purpose and nothing else really mattered.

Julie: "He said that he loved me."

Helen: "Men say that. They all say that. Then they cum."

(Parenthood, film 1989)

            When people realize the accessibility gay men have to casual sexual encounters, it tends to justify any moral and/or spiritual superiority they cling to. The acts of so many sinners validates the very what, and the why, religious people think the way they do regarding the sin that once did not speak its name. If you care to notice, now we just won't shut up. I long for ambiguity in our expression. For the general population, we have always just assumed that the people we meet are heterosexual. Let them keep thinking that and leave us to our different world. It's much more fun without you. Most people never consider the availability of this vice until they witness it for themselves.  Browsing Church Street in Toronto, on my 19^th birthday, was like putting a kid in a candy shop. Amongst all the things one can chew or suck on, I discovered a smorgasbord beyond anything I could have imagined while I beat my meat all through High School. The cup really does overflow. Throughout the 1980s, this trend in moral diversity brandished in spite of the AIDS epidemic. For awhile, accessibility came covered in latex but it existed and flourished regardless. The sky is the limit when it comes to debauchery and the lasciviousness nature of man (and most times even his woman).

            My friends who live in Toronto have an entire landscape based on sex to indulge in. They are not at play in the fields of the Lord. There is a seedy lifestyle, an underground "modus vivendi" most people never recognize, let alone acknowledge.

It's like an otherland of sin and lust and reckless abandon (in some cases). I'm in no position to judge. There are many times that I wish I could go back and access the way things were in those days. From bathhouses to online sex apps to park cruising, you can always find what you need. Maybe you are into barebacking, or watersports, or even fisting, you can cum and get it. "Gifting" parties are still a dime a dozen. Let us add a little meth or G or K, or even poppers, to top (or bottom) off the night, depending on your proclivity. If you want to have a gang bang, Google it. If you want to suck someone off in front of 32 strangers, just go to the Black Eagle. When I was in San Francisco, I was invited to join 16 other men in an orgy. A gang bang is like mashed potatoes. They come with each entrée. Any flavour, any fashion, any gender you choose to be, it all lies within the grasp. It's a different world and not for the fainthearted. You walk up to the buffet  and you fill your plate with your fondest desires then rush home to your wife and children and the dog you bought last week.   

            Not every gay man is promiscuous. Not every lesbian takes multiple tugboats to Tuna Town. Every kind of person you can imagine has a moral compass which, for the most part, directs at least towards moderation. For many, it gives a free hand to do what they please. It's just the variable that is different. If you're going to cheat, you don't need to be straight to do it. Just as if you want to overload your weekend with sex and more sex, you don't need to be gay to go this way.  Despite the clandestine nature of this beast, I would argue that it appears more decadent, more hedonistic, if we simply believe that homosexuality is a precursor to fornication, idolatry and promiscuity. On statistics alone, there would be many more heterosexuals running around in sin than abominations drinking from the tap in a back room in San Diego. For some reason, we don't generalize when we sit in the majority. We demonize, criticize and even attempt to destroy. We tend to project our own shortcomings (so to speak) on others. The very same things we cast upon them we do ourselves in silence. I suppose one solution is more masturbation. We self-indulge regardless, so we should at least get something out of it. There is nothing wrong with spilling and wasting your seed.

"Hey, don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love."

(Annie Hall, film 1977)

           

            He added me to his Facebook without consulting me and I added him like I do with every request that I receive. He started lurking on my page, liking this and sharing that. Suddenly, he messaged me, teasing and tweaking at my interest. It didn't work. This wasn't Gay.com or some fetish site like Recon, rather, he began his dance on my Facebook account. I started mutually poking him as a sign of friendship. He poked me so I poked him back. I had no idea he took it all so literally. I was hoping it would settle him down. Not a chance. He started asking for me to send him pictures. He wanted pictures of my dick, pictures of my chest and even pictures of my ass and, as he referred to it, my "hole". I have to admit, after his constant '"show you mine if you show me yours" diatribe, I felt a little marginalised. He expected me to join in his parade simply because I was a gay man. When I told him I had a partner for over 18 years, he asked me politely to no longer poke him. If I wasn't interested in him sexually, then I was clearly disposable. It was insulting for me to be viewed as a piece of meat ready for consumption. I would have loved the entire scenario when I was 21 years of age; that was then, this is now. The entire experience left me feeling used and a little icky. Wrong place, wrong time pal!

I blocked the fucker for good measure.

            You don't see animals, out in the woods, trying to fuck each other over for a little piece of tail. You don't see raccoons trying to shove pine cones up their ass and they rarely try to copulate on a baby from some litter. Ducks do not drink each other's urine and rarely do you see a peacock after the sex change. Yes, the animal kingdom also roams in the land of coitus. They rape, they breed, they do all sorts of things. I suppose that's one reason we call them animals. As if mankind is more civilized. I'm just glad that with age came the ability to separate sex from pleasure. The two do not always go hand in hand. As a teenager in a small town, long before the internet, the hunt was something that drove me. Instant gratification didn't necessarily exist back when and it took far too long. At least, it did for me. Modern gay men have it so much easier to find whatever their proclivity might be. Social media has changed the way we cruise for cock and the way we look at sex. I have made a lot of mistakes in my time and I regret many of the things I've done. Speaking sexually, I can count on one hand the amount of times I have regretted going out in the woods. For the record, I am not into pine cones.

Photo


http://twohornyguys.com/tag/nude/

Frostbite

"There's some asshole at work you have to kowtow to, and you find yourself doing things you thought you'd never do. But you try and minimize that stuff; be the best person you can be. But you set your priorities. And that's the way life is. I wonder if your friend Alex knew that. One thing's for sure, he couldn't live with it. I know I shouldn't talk; you guys knew him. But the thing is... no one ever said it would be fun. At least... no one ever said it to me." (The Big Chill, film 1983)

            After everything I have been through. After all these years, it once again seemed that life was nothing but struggle. For the last decade or so, I was so focused. I was actually as normal as normal could be. That is why the struggle found me wanting. You can concentrate, you can appreciate; you can tell yourself it will all be okay. It never really is okay. We just pretend it is. We convince the man in the mirror that things are different. We tell ourselves there is change but there is nothing more than just the same words that have been used before. We polish them up. We dangle in between. We become so sure things are better but all they are is artificial. We think it's real but people don't change unless they are forced to. Shine up the pole all you want but you're still just a whore.
            When the way we imagine things to be conflicts with how things really are, we become unbalanced. Without stability, I could never really function at full capacity. I never imagined I would feel this way again. After over 30 years battling Bi-Polar disorder, I had come to a place were I was in control. I moderated my feelings, I conquered my impulses. In spite of trying not to, it appears there is no choice regarding all the chaos. I have concluded that nothing gets fixed. Nothing ever will. It will always come back to bite you in the ass. 
            You pick yourself up, you dust yourself off and you have no choice but to start over again. Well, perhaps you do have a choice. You could just lay down and die. You could repeat, repeat in a syncopated rhythm with a tap tap tap tap. You might just drop down to sit, waiting for things to be better again; not that they ever were. When you are lost, it's hard to find out where you are. As I stand on the edge of a new unknown, I have to wonder. Does anything really matter much at all? I have to move forward believing that something does matter. I have to hold to faith as if it were a street sign, leading the way. I can surrender to life and settle or I can press myself, reaching for something better, something that makes me happy and is not mired in sadness and defeat.

"It's a cold world out there. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting a little frosty myself."

(The Big Chill, film 1983)

            We need each other. I know this is an archaic idea, one that seems to have little place in our modern era. It is still very true. Like rats left alone in a cage, madness begins with isolation. Perhaps we do it to ourselves. We lock ourselves away, not interacting, not involving anyone outside of me me me. We have become isolationists, escaping through our smartphone or a tablet or some outdated PC somewhere. Instead of being necessitated, we consider ourselves absolved. Who gives a shit about other people when we can Pokémon or Angry Birds and run away from it all? Nine hundred channels and  there is still nothing is on. Human beings are a destructive race. We kill each other, and often ourselves, with little compassion or empathy. We have turned into the very thing that the ancients warned us of. We worship mammon. We dispose of God. We become our own god, high Caesar and all the ides of March stuff.  Somehow all the searching and questioning has done nothing but push us further away. Somehow we are disengaging from what it means to be human.

            I recently had a bout of hypo-mania, brought on by outside forces and due to the mistake I made in skipping my medication. It came out of nowhere and stole me away. I got lost in it, tossed in it. I wasn't prepared for it to come. It would have been easy for me to surrender to it. I could run away much easier. I could end it all without thinking. As it grew, I grew more destructive. For weeks, I walked that line so many people talk about. I had to decide how I wanted to continue. So, I got up and fought to return to my longtime friend, normalcy. I didn't really choose it because of any other. I didn't decide to abandon it all but I couldn't convince myself that the other way would not bring the very same things. Life continues whether you're in your right mind or not. It was my approach that needed adjusting. Once I stabilized, once the pills kicked in and I started over, I quickly realized that healing, in almost any capacity, means little to the world around you. Things are always in flux, chock full of chaos with a side order of desperation.  No matter your state of being, no matter your focus, life is a pile of shit, rotting in the hot sun, covered with flies and ants and much like carrion.  In the end, it is ironic that existence can turn out to be unfit for human consumption.

"I haven't met that many happy people in my life. How do they act?"

(The Big Chill, film 1983)

            I never realized how much frostbite has formed about me. I am often cold to the world in order to survive it. I can become so lost in the big chill. I used to think there was something wrong with me. It wasn't normal, in my eyes, to ice up in such a defensive manner. Unfortunately, cryopathy is the new norm. My detachment isn't a side effect from the pills that I take. It doesn't come from my relationships or my interaction with people on a daily basis. It doesn't mean I am without empathy or compassion for my fellow man. My distance is a survival instinct, not just a reaction to the world around me. It is a lesson I have learned on the road that I travel. Don't get too close, sometimes the beast called man will bite the hand that feeds it.

            Detachment is often overlooked as a lifestyle choice. It allows for room to move and breathe in safety. It is a formidable lesson to learn. One must insulate one's self in order to function within the modern parameters. I am not frozen solid. It is still my mission to be kind. It is always a challenge to merge the two. I continue my attempts to rise above and see people as souls rather than the rude, cranky asshole sonsofbitches I encounter on a daily basis. They must be frosted over like me. There is a familiar glaze I occasionally slip and slide on. I am reminded just how imperfect I really am. You don't have to be a nice person to be a nice person. You don't have to think differently to act differently. After all, we all know what really matters the most.

Harold: "Feet grow as you get older."

Michael: "I wish everything did."

(The Big Chill, film 1983)

            I refuse to abandon all hope and give in to permafrost. I cannot help myself. No matter my encounter, no matter the chaos once brought, I always find a way to see the mortal in the man. I have great empathy, even for my so proclaimed enemies. We all gather them about us. They are the flies on the shit we talked about earlier. I use a swatter to squish them in real life. Yet somehow, I always manage to see the me when I am looking at them. I would hope that I am not as easily disposable. No matter the nip in the air, there is warmth in this popsicle. If kindness is a weakness, then so be it. I try to be guilty as charged. I have to see the good in them or I have to admit to myself there is no good in me. That's the way it works, I suppose.

"Nobody thinks they're a bad person. I'm not even claiming that people always think they're doing the right thing; they may know that they're doing something dishonest or insensitive or manipulative but they almost always think that there's a good reason for doing it. They almost always think it will turn out for the best in the end, even if it just turns out best for them, because by definition what's best for them is what's best." (The Big Chill, film 1983)

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/ehambrick/2888092155

Sources

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085244/quotes

The Unsubconscious

"I am the boy who won't let go

I live in my head and I don't look like my photos

And I hate the sound of the world outside

'Cause everybody coming here can't wait to say goodbye

I followed your car to my childhood home

And I looked for the key hidden under the stone

And I still hear the sound in my father's voice

When he lifts me up like I'm a little boy"

            This is no place at all. It is not really here, at least not in the material sense. It is a world of imagination, the place we all can go to breathe and search and observe. It may be some escape into the twilight zone or a night gallery of our thoughts and fears. It is anthology, and memory, and all we hold dear. We all have an otherland, a place we all name as our own. It is safe refuge. It's more like television playing in our head. We can see it and we can hear it but we know it isn't really there. Every thought we have ever thought of, every dream we have ever dreamed, melt into the ether that is the entirety of our person. Every secret stands accessible, waiting to be seen and finally heard. The sum of who we are has been cumulative, adding layer after layer to the invisible part of us. It is all there just waiting, waiting for nothing, waiting for nothing at all.   

"I saw horses from my window

They were watching all the cars go

And they don't care that I am broken

Close my eyes and run beside them

I'm already free

I'm already free

So don't look for me here

'Cause I run in my dreams"

            I'm a relatively social person. I have always had friends. There has been little time in my adulthood where I did not have a significant other. I involve myself with my family. I placate to my neighbours and those I work with. I have to synchronize with my partner. I try, sometimes with great effort, to blend myself nicely among the public domain. I am friendly and I attempt to act with kindness (for the most part). I don't mean to sound like a hermit. I swear I am not anti-social but if the truth were told, I would rather be by myself. At this point in my life, I much prefer silence to all that noise. I don't hate anyone and I am not trying to run away. The reality that I manifest while alone is something of an otherworld. Few would even know how to get there. I do. It is my unsubconscious mind. My favourite place. Storage for all my nightmares and dreams. It is everything I am and so much more. It is secret and shelter and someplace that I can hide. The world I create on my own is the fabric of how I see myself. This filter is how we all see ourselves. We may never show it to another. We may never grant free admission but it is still the greatest reflection of who we are. I say bid them enter. All are welcome to take a peek. While others tend to build walls around their little world, I add windows so that one might see inside.

"I am the girl who won't let go

I live in my house and I don't like my photos

And I hate the sound of the world outside

And I still haven't found my place to hide"

            Assuming you've made it this far, your history, the life you have led, can be a survivor's guide of sorts. The past can teach and mistakes may well correct you. It may very well help you get past almost anything. Your journey is an otherland, an accounting for everything you have said and done. You stand defined by your experience. All the good things and all the bad things exist here together. They are a weave of everything we are. They are regret and they hold promise. They are the past and also what the future may hold (as least to our own thinking). In the bleakest corner of this place thrives shame. This is the landscape we do not wish to visit. It is a hidden part, so hidden we often don't even know it's there most of the time. All in all, this is a friendly place. A safety space, unknown to another. If you look inside, you may see something worth sharing. Therein lies purpose and effect and Grace. Swing wide open the windows I have built. Pull back the curtains and let the outside come in. Run away in your dreams if you dare. Why look for the otherland when you are already there?

"And I saw horses from my window

They were watching all the cars go

And they don't care that I am broken

Close my eyes and run beside them

Through the valleys and the pastures

And I know you'll never find me

'Cause I'm already free

I'm already free

So don't look for me here

'Cause I run in my dreams"

(Horses, Dala 2009)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDYndAROzd0

Photo

http://humansarefree.com/2014/03/how-to-disconnect-from-matrix-and.html

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            As hard as it is to survive God, there is nothing tougher than surviving life. The constant chaos just living can bring is more than enough to affect the strongest of men. We can use borrowed knowledge to sustain and guide us but what we think and feel has little bearing on our fate. We must struggle. We must strive. If we do not, then we are doomed by our own hand. We make the bed then we don't want to sleep in it. We engage, then curse things when they don't turn out the way we wished that they would. Nothing ever comes out right. We need to escape. Each person has an internal life, a land of emancipation, that we turn to in the darkest hours. We go there when the world is just too rough. It becomes a dependable haven from the duality life seems to exhibit. One day the sun shines then the rain comes and washes everything away. Sometimes you wanna go where only you know your name. In quiet refuge we try to carry on, using the world we create inside to cope with the pandemonium and all that bedlam. When the life you lead is troubled go right ahead and create a safe place.

"So, you've handed in your resignation,

Contemplatin' why nothin' turns out right.

A little fed up with all the disappointments,

So what's the point in wastin' any time?

It's only temporary, so what's your hurry?

No need to worry. Don't you know that,

If it all just happened overnight,

You wouldn't know how much it means

If it all just happened overnight,

You would never learn to believe

In what you cannot see,

What you cannot see.

Take it a day, a day at a time

 One foot in front of the other,

 Take it a day, a day at a time

 No need to hurry, hurry.

 Take it a day, a day at a time

 It won't happen over night.

 It won't happen over night.

 Have a little faith,

 Must appreciate,

 Every single day,

 Don't give up, no"

(Overnight, Amy Grant 2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhPHEcz8iTo

            My biography is often like an amusement park.  It exists as an otherland. I have used it to hide from life, learn from life and as a method to carry on through life. Some parts are droll and boring, others thrill you with their simplicity. Every time I sit down for a ride I go up and down, then repeat it again and again. Sometimes the ride lasts forever and other times it is quick and precise. I've been coming here since the time I was a child. I could always count on this safe place. As I sit in contemplation, going through the  events from my life, I realize that in a way I have the perfect tool, a survivor's guide (if you will) to almost everything. I can capture these moments, these lessons that have come from just living. I choose to use them in an attempt to make it through. I share them so that, in a sense, you can learn too.

            Welcome to Otherland.  It may look abandoned but I assure you that it breathes. It is. It is the place we all go to, just with a different name for each different person.  It is our secret place and our treasured space. It is yours and yours alone. I have chosen to grant free admission to anyone who wants a peek inside.  I have nothing left to hide. It may seem like part of some freak show but I assure you this carnival is legit. It is everything I have come to know and holds all the reasons that I have come to be who I am. Wander with me now. Take a walk through the pictures that I paint. Stop and smell the roses. Take a joyride. Jump on a coaster and go go go. In the Otherland, all the joy comes for free but with great expense. Grab a ticket and meet me inside.  

Photos

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2346084/When-fun-stops-Inside-scores-abandoned-theme-parks-America.html

http://www.michaeljohngrist.com/2011/09/ruins-of-the-secret-world/

http://www.lolwot.com/10-captivating-abandoned-amusement-parks-in-the-united-states/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/191754896604741152/

Otherland

"You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster ...

Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride! ...

I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together!

Some didn't like it.

They went on the merry-go-round.

That just goes around. Nothing.

I like the roller coaster.

You get more out of it."

(Parenthood, film 1989)

Photo

http://schnettepics.de/index.php?showimage=158