And then there was one...

One moment.  One day.  One life. One.  Just one. One breath.  One heartbeat.  One earth. One love. One people.  One.

One.

I forget sometimes.  I forget that I am one.  A synthesis of thought and deed.  Though the thoughts may wander and wreak havoc upon the world and her children, the body may be still and silent, laying in the sunlit grass, breathing and being.

Two distinct "bodies" - one, a body of thought and desire, trapped 'tween the ears.  The second, a physical manifestation, eating, shitting, procreating, dying.

I believe this twisted, braided journey is the whole kit and kaboodle - the answer to the mystery.  Our wills and thoughts and consciences are torn endlessly between the spiritual truths and lofty values of our teachers and the clear, undistilled pleasures that are borne of the flesh.  To lust is one thing, to chase it down to the end, grabbing that tiger by the tail and drawing blood are two very different things indeed.

But, in the end, we are one.

If we do not act, are we not still guilty of the sin?  Are we inherently meant to carry those sins as human luggage?  If God allows me to feel it, want it, NEED it, it must certainly be ordained, right?  RIGHT?  If he wanted me to be clean and sober, he would have removed the urge from me.  Right?  Christ, I know I would have if I were God!

I label myself an addict.  This is ostensibly done to remind me of my penchant for forgetting that I am unable to have "just one"...  I don't buy it anymore.

Like my friend Percy tells me, "You're not a crackhead.  You just THINK you're a crackhead."

I used to delay my work - my REAL work - songwriting, prose, writing plays and stories, etc. - because I wasn't "sober"...  I used to think that my truth wasn't distilled properly, that my writing was convoluted and twisted, that it didn't accurately capture my soul or my true heart; that I needed to be clean for "undisclosed duration of time" before I could write in a good way.  Always waiting.

Waiting for that day to come.   Maybe after one year clean and sober, maybe 6 months.  Who would know? Well, I thought I would know when the time was right.  Then never writing, and always relapsing.  Stymieing my chances at literary success or songwriting legend.

Fuck that paradigm.

The time is now.  This moment. This breath.

I am a writer.  Sometimes business plans and organizational development documents, or proposals and reports, sometimes songs and prose.  But always A WRITER.

And a writer that doesn't write is a dumbass.  I am also a singer/songwriter.  I haven't sung for months.

I love this life.  And so many who share it with me.  And what else is life but a celebration of who we are?

I need to celebrate.  Right now.  Right now.  Right now.  This moment, this breath, this heartbeat.

Time is becoming precious in this world.

I have a dear friend, a relative, who says, "just you wait, one day I will be truly where I deserve to be..."  and he waits, sadly, forlorn, he waits.  Not realizing the time is now.

The time is now.

So, onward and upward.  Let us sally forth.

I recently celebrated 59 days of sobriety by picking up.  Not purposely, not like "hey, I deserve this.."  but sneakily, more insidiously.  Like I had allowed the tiger to slip out from under the careful watch he had been placed.

I left the gate unlocked, and placed several large, tender steaks around his cage, in order that he might find his way out.

Sabotage.

Dummy.

I don't want that life.  I dangled my toes in the water of the streets again, normalized behaviours of couriering mules and pushers around for a blast, driving through deathly slippery conditions in near whiteout in order that the prying eyes of "THEM" wouldn't see me in my shame.  Silly goose.  Thankfully, the God that I know to be there, always, held my hand, stilled my truck, held it to the icy, salted asphalt. "QUIT pushing your luck there chum, and challenging my love for you," says He.  "Trust in me.  Trust in you.  Listen to your true self."

Simple.

I picked up a guy outside the Mustard Seed on Saturday morning.  Asked him where I could pick up.  He came with me in my truck, looked around, saw the little mess, the little bit of self loathing mockery I was sitting in, and asked me, "so are you Indian or what?"

I answer yes.  He takes pity on me in my lostness.  He has been there.  He has the jewel eyes of a gaunt tiger.  He also has dope.  I tell him I only have ten bucks, and it is in change.  He laughs, "you're worse than a panhandler."

I laugh too.  This is true.  He says, "well, give me a ride over to the co-op by Boyle St. and I'll hook you up good."

Then, when I've poured the handful of quarters into his hands and he's given me the goods, he looks at me and says, "hey."

I look back at him.

"Make sure you get home," he says.  My heart just warms and I awaken from the tiger's hypnotic pull over me.

The gatekeeper that leaves raw meat lying outside the tiger's cage is a liar.  A selfish little self pitying liar that was borne from dysfunction and chaos, reared and raised on porn and instant gratification.  "I want my cake NOWWWWWW!"  Sometimes he leaves the key in the lock, and sometimes he unlocks the cage entirely. The tiger will always be there, gaunt and hungry, wily and strong, pacing his cage till eternity.

The soft, quiet me, the one that I love, wants him to stay in there.  The loud brash charmer, he thumbs his nose at the fear and dares that tiger to slip out.  Fucking dares him.

And what is irrevocably twisted is that all are part of the one.  The me.  The Sheldon.  The Dude.  Lone, but never alone.

To what should I aspire?  A comfortable circle jerk with a tiger, a liar, a gentle spirit, sitting in counsel together, harmonious?  I don't know that this is a real picture.

My heart tells me that I have to meditate, sit still, listen to my heart and allow those disparate voices and characters and bullshit dissipate into the wind, until only one remains.

Now is the time.

Small world after all...

It's a world of laughter, a world of tears...
It's a world of hope and a world of fears...
There's so much that we share, and it's time we're aware,
It's a small world after all...

Grade 3, during the blur that was my elementary school years.  I think it was St. Edmund's Catholic School where I spent all of four or five months.  I was dressed in my buckskin, and even a little moosehide headband with black yarn braids.  I was the Indian.  Among little Dutch girls, boys in liederhosen, and all the colours of the rainbow.  Was I the only one who felt shame?  How terrible that I was ashamed to be Indian.  How fucking terrible that a seven year old has to feel those feelings.  Where did they come from?  How does the purity and innocence of childhood become tainted by asshole things like shame and fear and the need to be liked over anything else?

Who knows...

Singing became a big part of my life.  Always, always.  My family were all musical - Kokom "Mother Maybelle" Edna, Uncle Vic and his lap steel patent and professional session time and road trips with the likes of Ferlin Husky, Anny Murray, and a bevy of country stars; Uncle Jimmy and his banjo, mando and fiddle, brylcreem pompadour and a smile that shone brighter than a National steel guitar.  Uncle George, who I remember dancing in pantyhose and skirt, front partial plate taken out, but whose fiddle playing rose above his fashion sense and penchant for drunken showmanship.

My mom taught me my first song - how fitting that it was a Hank Williams tune, Blues Stay Away from Me.  My uncle Rocky showed me some chops - a Carter family riff, a little Ghost Riders in the Sky,  and these things sent me on the way to discovering a talent for song.

Soon, Dwayne Arlidge shared a little Black Dog with me and thus a love affair with Zeppelin was forged.  Rob Wingo introduced me to Major Pentatonic scale and some 12-bar blues. 

But it was my mom's record collection that really created my love of music.  Jackson Browne - Running on Empty - a record recorded entirely on the road, some in hotel rooms, and one even on a bus (this is obviously not the bus recording, but such a groovy tune; the bus recording has the drummer playing a hi hat and a cardboard box with a footpedal as a bass drum, and you can hear the ol' Silver Eagle gear down in the background as it approaches a downhill turn).

Music transported me.  I remember lying on the floor with some big ass Dolby headphones just sitting there listening to Jesus Christ Superstar, "I don't know how to looooooooove him..."

How I longed to be soothed by Jesus like Mary Magdalene.  How he could touch her heart, this woman of the street.  How he could rattle her to her core...  I could relate.

I remember feeling so ripped off by the world.  How could we continue to kill, stockpile arms, hurt our children, drink, fight, drug and steal when clearly the truth was laid bare before us by this humble Galileean some two thousand years before.

Music used to make me cry.  Softly, gently, laying on my back, all of nine years old or ten or seven or even six:  Warm salty tears sliding down my cheeks, ears and ragged mullet, finally gently laying to rest in our myriad shag carpets.  Comforted me so deeply.  Brought reason and timing, stories with starts and finishes, middles and denouments.  Brought order to my chaos. 

Funny, we sometimes had pretty meagre fridge contents, but shit we had music.  Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Nana Mouskouri , Beach Boys , Charlie Daniels Band.

Lots of music, all kinds. All flavours.  Rock, country, blues, classical, Indian Music - AWESOME Indian music  I loved this band, this album, this song.  Idyllic lifestyle, being one with the rivers, the woods, the deer and fish and sky and sun. 

Even my dream last night.  I was diving into crystal clear waters.  Swimming with my crazy step daughter while her mom was all worried, chiding us from the bridge.  Free.  Alive.  Tears and laughter.

I awoke to a sickness in my chest and a pain in my heart, fear and loathing in my brain and hurt in my stomach.  All these beautiful things within this world, and I choose crackdens, the paranoid highway - eyes in the rearview, scoping the countryside, looking for cops, people following me.  What the fuck.

I missed my trip to the mountains this weekend.  So sad for me.  How I treat myself. Fucker.  The guy that's driving this train is really starting to piss me off.

I was just listening to that song from the last link:  XIT, Plight of the Redman, At Peace, and watching the video.  At the end it says, "For You Native Americans Looking for Peace.  Just Go Home. Where Home is.  And Peace Will Find You.  Mother Earth is Waiting. Grandfathers are Watching."

So I cry yet again, knowing full well the words are true.  How I could have dove in crystal waters.  Friday night I sat in my truck, me and my little asshole friend hiding somewhere in the hood, alone and broke, yet again.  I looked up at the moon, knowing she was shining down on my friends in the lodge out in the mountains.  In my home.  I knew the grandfathers were sad for me, that they missed me, but that the show would go on for those whose moccasins took them there.  And then, I looked above, as my thoughts were strumming around all guilty-like and self loathingly, I realized the northern lights were dancing in a circle right above me.  Despite my level best effort to hide from life and responsibility and spirituality and what is real in this universe, there they were, the Grandfathers and Grandmothers themselves, dancing like I've never seen them before.

I thought of my childhood and the pain and the poverty and the shit and the scum, but I remembered only the gold and the happy days and the joy and the laughter.  I thought how amazing my life was.  How blessed I was.  What a gift was my miserly little life and the amazing gifts I have been handed to steward and share.  How could I keep thumbing my nose to Creation and flipping the hurtin'est bird to my Creator and ancestors.
What is beautiful, is that they still love me.  So dearly.  I know it.  I want to share my vision of the world with my family, with my kids. 

For so many, this has been an amazing summer.  I read my Facebook; I creep friends' pages.  I see what fun you're all having. 

For me, this  has been the summer of shame. 

But watch out mofos:  It's going to be the Fall of the Fall of Selfishness and the Winter of my Contentment.  And heretofore, a life of Hope Springs Eternal.

I'm not ashamed to wear the buckskin anymore you know...  I love it.  I'm ashamed of something else, and I don't know where it is or what it is, but I'll find it if I have to. 

I was just offered a nice little fulltime job from someone who knows my shitty ass truths and has seen my shine.  Someone who believes in me.  I think I can follow his lead and believe in me too.

Love to you all.
S.