Conversations Among the Ruins

I"m not sure what it is about them. They came from some club kid I knew, where they lived quietly in his trendy Wicker Park apartment, in a box covered in dust under a table.

Like all times in that house the memory is blurred. That club kid was, for a spell, a central point in my "new city life" One of those cool friends you have that years later you only remember, when you grow into a calmer version where cool gets silly and life is just different. Not superior or less, just different. He played Pink Panther on mute on his TV to the latest Global Underground sets. We all have our quirks but that one of his always stuck out to me. The walls were bright orange and lime green, but painted neatly. They're all either promoters, dj's, or graphic designers, in those sorts of crowds I swear. For a while I had a great time running around with all of that.

I met a famous dj once. He was sitting on my couch and I freaked him out, asking him about his family and what he wants out of life instead of what continent he was playing on next weekend. That moment and finding that box are two memories I drift off to from time to time. Total evidence that I didn't belong nearly as much as I convinced myself I did.

"What is in that box?"

"Elephants" my friend had said. After that
"Do you want them? I feel bad that they just sit there but I have nowhere to put them."
I was shocked he would give them to me, flattered and happy. A few months later they finally made it to my house. He had cleaned them up and told me it was important to take care of them, these stoic wooden elephants. Two very light brown, two very dark brown, and three little white ones.

When really difficult things or really beautiful things in my life take place I tend to hold onto the objects in which were important and regular during that time. Maybe it's nostalgia. Maybe it's to remember the lesson. Maybe I just like tons of stuff cluttered all around me. Ask my stuffed duck, hippopotamus, piggy banks, TY crab, 500 rocks and minerals, and a gaggle of other characters and they'll tell the stories to me over and over so I don't have to tell them to anybody else.

I didn't know it at the time but the week I was given those elephants was the week I seemingly got onto the indescribable total Go roller coaster of harsh, beautiful, dramatic self metamorphasis of which the past four years has consisted of. At the time I was just a girl with a new set of elephants, too strung out on cool to even possess the simple concept of hope.

The most traumatic part of a break up is taking down a Christmas tree. The second most traumatic part of a break up is sitting back on your ass at your parents house, in a room full of boxes, boxes of YOUR stuff refusing to un pack anything, because it can't possibly be happening. Only it is.

All I took out for a really long time were those elephants and a stuffed hippopatamus named Hippaa because it made me feel as if I belonged where I was. I am not a "duster" as I have forty given objects arranged on any table wherever I live, but I always kept the elephants shining and amongst all of my favorite rocks and bamboo plants . It was as if I was waiting for my life to come back, and when it did, it would see that I cared very much for those times. But that life of mine couldn't hear what I wasn't saying because I didn't know how and eventually, I left, bringing the elephants with me.

There have been a few since that have joined the family. A little white creamer holder that it pours out of the spout. Her name is Masha. I went to an estate sale in this crazy ass hoarders house and found three others, two gray, one orange marble, and a somewhat ostrich like animal that was made from African mud from Nancy, who isn't technically an elephant, but fits in perfectly. (Uh the elephant not NS. I'm proofing this and falling asleep.)

A year ago at this time I was writing "Elephants" under the list headline of NOT SHIPPING - CAR. There were only about five other things written without question on that list. Packing up my little family within my own consciousness was the very last thing I packed when I left Illinois, because that was the beginning of me losing my shit on a regular basis because of the immesurable fear I felt as a result of huge, abrupt change, and it was is I needed that reminder that some things, no matter what, kept standing. In my life most change has been brought on by some and if not that ended in catastrophe, and I did it anyway, and I can say that I am in a place in my life where I am satisfied, less paranoid, and even, happy. But packing the elephants still feels like stabbing myself in the head.

I remember it, in trucker sunglasses and Joe's baseball cap, sobbing tears onto the silk scarves I wrapped each one of them in last July. Because once the elephants are packed I'm not going back. I can dip into that still, how terrified I was to leave the only home and people I'd ever really known. Now it's just a gut sort of homesickness, where I wonder if I have made people sad, and I hope not, because I just want them to know that I am pretty good at life now and they should be proud. I could have never robbed myself of that decision.

I've moved twice since moving to this twisted little town and each time I am only at peace when my rocks, plants and elephants are in a presentable, favorable spot where I spend my time.

At Christmas I went home. It was a beautiful holiday and my favorite gift, by far, from my mother. I unwrapped the giant box and six yards of tissue paper, just staring up at her in awestruck - in my eyes, tears. She had given me three brand knew elephants. I hadn't ever told her or anybody really about any of the other ones and she had noticed anyway. Without a further word we cried for a minute. Now I have a family within my own consciousness that represents that my mother pays attention to what is important to me, even if it doesn't seem like something that should be. I don't think many people get that.

Also, the wallies, the root elephant that my counter tail painted for me. Yep. I carried an elephant through O'Hare security during the holidays, and the begining of it all, the "Anything is Possible" painting of a flying elephant from DEMF 06. So I've flown with more elephants than most. Speaking of my life as a circus..

Currently, mostly everything I own is in storage. I'm basically a gypsy. Be careful what you pretend to be until the day you become it. I never realized the significance of the elephants until I tried to put them into storage and fought with myself over it for days.

I've been training at a new job, moving, dealing with my current job, cleaning up the place I"m leaving, figuring out the place I'm going to, volunteering in an art gallery (where I am such a fucking awkward dork), trying to consistently write and make my own art, stay on top of my recovery, speaking on panels which means looking and sounding presentable (You all know how I hate washing my hair) and attempting to sleep a few hours a night at the same time. It's been busy, and none of the boxes have moved. I've been angsty and argumentative and pissy and exhausted. Eating like shit and feeling pale in the blistering sun.

Today my giant diet coke and I decided to tackle the room, and seriously, my whole head shut up as I unwrapped each elephant and found a tenderness of which I didn't think I was capable of any more. I arranged each and for a minute, felt like I was home.

My boyfriend says to me often "You have a charmed chaarrrrrmmmeeeeddddd life rocks." I say "yes" followed by "sh don't let them hear" and we laugh. Within those stoic wooden figures the best charms of all come out. The love I had and lost and appreciate to this day regardless of the frigid Chicago winter, the odd African clay duckling from a day my mentor and I sat under a giant tree as spring turned to Summer, the silent acknowledgement of what is within my heart by my mother, and the outpouring of creativity to canvas from one of my most parallel points in the universe, Corrine.

So I guess it took me a few thousand words to portray what it is about them. I'm going to sleep forever or 7a.m. Whichever comes first. The odds of that bet are, I assure you, total shit, and I get to have that today. X/

Rio, Las Vegas.

My murder sunglasses and cork wedges glide though the casino. I find them, drunk and squabbling. Well Squabbling where she tells him she loves him, he says I love you too, as a best friend, lets change the subject.

Wordlessly I watch their conversation, interrupting occasionally to ask her to talk to me in French. She does, we laugh.

I point to him.

"You are fucking selfish."

I point to her

"And you allow it."

"So that's the sense. One of you make a decision and be done with it. You actually need to leave him. Let him sleep with the thousands of women he still has to sleep with and figure it out. By that time, you'll be over it and into somebody that isn't such a sociopath, and he'll have syphillis, two hundred pairs of shoes, and a great lawyer. Likely sleeping with him also. He isn't healthy. He doesn't want to be healthy, and you're either going to wake up or go down with him."

I smile at him sweetly. He makes a face.

My murder sunglasses and cork wedges have been panicking since I put them on, because I've been in a panic all day and they are now inclined as "me. "So I left the house to say hello because the walls were closing in. She turns to me.

"He said it was you that made him that way."

"I don't think I"m deserving of a decade of those credits, but ok."

And there I am so tall with my eyes shifting. My father calls me at 1:19 on a Monday and I almost lose it with anxiety. I haven't felt this kind of anxiety in years and I'm about to implode.

I have been stuttering in jammed syllables to Justin since they got here that I am not in a position to go out anywhere.

"You are so incredibly sane and beautiful anyway." He says. I sit at a listless slot machine. Standing up I blurt out

"I have to go. Like right now. I have to leave right now. It's too Vegas in here. I'm sorry I can't stay I have to leave. I'm fucking cracking up literally. Like the shell face on nickelodean. I am not sane, I am not rational, and I don't have it together. This is a grand illusion and I'm sorry for everything that ever happened. I don't know if my payroll sent for my entire company and my car insurance is due two days before yesterday and I don't know why my dad just called me and I don't have a dollar to tip the valet and i can't write a book, a book proposal, or show up to anywhere i need to go. When I see people I see two of them. Two. The one they want me to see and the one I feel. Nobody matches up. I can't finish any of the paintings I start and three weeks ago I was in love with somebody. I mean total stupid rainbow like love and it wasn't real. I can't stop picking at my face or washing my hair and look at my cuiticles. I'm fucking losing it man and I'm not going to do it in a casino or in front of you."

The tears run down my face as I put my sunglasses on. For five minutes he hugs me, saying over and over

"You are not what or who you were, and you never will be again. Fuck the details. Nothing can be as bad as it already has been."

"That isn't the STANDARD. I'm crying at RIO."

For five more minutes I cry in the middle of the casino. He cups the back of my head with his hands, before we break apart and I say

"Hold Tight"

before I turn and walk out of the building.

Two minutes later I call back my dad, happily asking what's up. He saw somebody wearing my massive pink boots today and had to call me to tell me. Ninety pounds comes off of my chest. I drive to Jami's and lay on the couch as she watches Oprah and cuts up peppers for dinner.

Later my mentor and I have a long discussion as I layer endless paint, drink stale coffee, and chain smoke marlboros.

"Everything looks like fucking fruity pebbles that I"m painting right now. That about defines my chakra situation. I started six pieces. All I can do is get the foundation of each and I'm afraid to do anything of structure over it."

"You're emotionally cluttered."

"Do you know what the word clutter means to me? I have a high threshold."

"You are an emotional hoarder. You hoard away everything you feel and arrange it. You're running out of room. Do you even want to be in recovery any more?"

" Yes. But I want to stop meeting people in recovery and just recover. I trust like five people in those rooms and maybe that sounds a little fucked up, but it's true. I want nothing to do with most of them. I've never wanted to take a hit of glass with a drink in my hand so badly sober in my life as I did last night, and I want to know where the fuck that all came from. I"m like right back where I started. I can't check out of anything any more. The paintings don't finish, the poems don't add up, and don't even ask me about the book. I"m pissed at Robb for all of those years that I looked back on him as a wonderful person, and I"m pissed that I have the sense to never ask "Why" about anything.

Because I asked "Why" for years, and I never got an answer. Why is redundant. But I want to ask it anyway. It's a rhetorical question anyway. I never wished for this kind of evoloution, not on this Earth, not after I walked through the places that required me to forget when I did ask. But I found out why. If anything, I know why, and why isn't the cure. There is no cure.

There is no cure. There is not a cure, only more work and the knowledge to stop asking questions of which contain answers I cannot accept.

I love this vanilla coffee by the way. That's something."

We continue to talk for hours. I think I am finally tired enough to sleep. I hope.

Theories about Atlantis mention the extensive use of crystals by Atlanteans. Crystals varied in patterns or grid - sizes - color combinations - and tones. Crystals follow harmonic frequencies and could be used with an instrument that looks like a tuning fork. They received power from a variety of sources, including the Sun, the Earth's energy grid system, or from each other.

Atlanteans allegedly harnessed the energies of the pyramids, using crystals to that end. As we have the Great Pyramid at the center of the planet linked to the grid matrix that creates our reality, so, too, did the Atlanteans. Their pyramid allegedly sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean which is a metaphor about returning to the collective unconsciousness or source of creation.

Just as we have major and minor grid points of energy on the planet - so did the Atlanteans. Grids point are often marked by pyramids. The Atlanteans used this energy, combined with crystals, to transmit energy from one pyramid to another.

Depending on the tilt of the Earth's axis at a particular time of the year, one pyramid would function to intensify and transmit energies to other pyramids which would then act as receiving devices and would disperse energy as it was needed. The opposite would apply when that pyramid was at an unfocused point to their celestial alignment, when other pyramids would be used as transmitters. It was an intricate matrix crystal grid system.

As the story goes ... the people of Atlantis had many warnings before the continent sank (the Atlantean program ending). Prior to closure, crystals were allegedly used to store information which would be found in our timeline by those who programmed them. These crystals contained the original star codes for the Atlantean program. Once found, the crystals would be used as a means of helping them remember. But if all is happening in the NOW, than we are in a parallel situation, though Atlantis seems like thousands of years ago. Our souls are experiencing in both grid programs simultaneously and the crystals are our spiraling DNA moving consciousness between realities to learn.

"Have I
ever told you
how I scribble

out symbols
all of the time?

Did I ever
say I

found out
where they are
from?"

She told me the other day

"Don't be the
Gypsy circus
freak. You are
far too much

for that."

www.crystalinks.com everybody visit that sight it is brilliant.

I'm in this mood
somebody I knew once

would get into -
where he

would laugh
hysterically

before punching
somebody out

cold.

"You are homicidal.
It'll pass." She says

simply. I just wrote
a bazillion little
sonnets and

lost them to the
world between

internet connection and
self satisfied rambling.

"You are a
brilliant
young woman."

She says to me. And I
smile because she

didn't have to
say that
laying
down.

"I'll stick
with you kid."

I tell her, a smile on
my face. There are

certain sorts.
Those of which

claim to
be of such sorts

should know
not to fuck with.

Considering
that

there isn't any
further
clarity

of how manipulative
you tried to
be.

If we
were ever
in a million

years at all
the same,

you would have
stayed
away.

They used to
call me

power house and
I'd smile like a

pretty girl. But the
pretty girl

is gone today.
She's walked far

too far on too many
planks

for that low
of a standard.

The parts
of us that break

are the strongest
and if

you break it
it breaks you
back and I"ll

send you a bill
for what you tried
to buy.

Because you'll
be paying for it

anyway. Under an
ancient sun

for millions
and millions
of years. I fail

to possess
the extravagance
of simple

empathy. I've just
got me, and my

paint, and my
glittering shoes

walking my
saved ass

just where it
always needed

to be.

Further.

Today is my birthday and I am nine months old.

The last drink I had is clear. My favorite bar, Skylark, in Pilsen, Chicago. It was Fox's birthday and I was late. I ordered two gin and tonics, one for me one for Derek. it was last call. I left forty on the bar, the bartender was one of my favorites, a hip neo nerd that will make you dozens of carbombs in a dive is somebody special when they have cool tattoos and they make ridiculous drinks an hour after closing, as he always did in the past.

I didn't know at the time why I was sleeping so much. I had a funny way of not considering all of the addorall I had taken the weeks prior, when I stayed up for days, glitched out with my "life together."

I was only in the bar for fifteen minutes. All of the lights came on and the drink was half full. I left it on the table and made my way to my car.

I didn't know a goddamn thing except for that things had to change, and as I sit here, thousands of miles away, in this condo located in a valley that I now call my home, I'm barely capable of placing everything that has happened since that freezing February night.

For a long time I was full of this fire energy after I stopped. Where I would just stalk around and almost flip out at the tiniest of things.

Livid

is the word. Livid that I couldn't justify going out with all of my friends anymore to get fucked up until sunrise. Livid that I was twenty six years old and I felt eighty. Livid that I felt I was missing out in between two hundred billion other feelings because somewhere, at some point, going out for fifteen dirty martinis to deal wasn't an option.

I waitressed 13 hour shifts on the weekends and I didn't have a way to numb that stress any more. If I worked that hard, shouldn't I be entitled to play that hard?

"It is utterly absurd that you won't sit and have a miller light."
"I agree."

I agreed, but I couldn't make sense of why it became so wrong. Through this time I've learned that I'm not a person that can just "have a miller light" because the numbing, the drugs, the drinking, had me all along.

Seven years ago my neighbor was checking my pulse because I passed out in the hallway of my apartment with all of my groceries, which was melted ice cream and pedialight. It was Febrauary. I hadn't slept since December. I only walked in alleys and even now I still can't bring myself to post half of the shit that I've seen, done, and the physical brink of death I pushed myself to in order to not recognize any of it.

It was all so that I wouldn't have to see or feel. I crafted a world where I only had to see the people around me, and all I had to feel was fun yet when I tried to get serious, to get serious career and seriously publish a novel, granted I managed to write in between boxes of wine and styrophome gallon cup martini cocktail shifts until 2am before I went out to the club, absolutely nothing fell into place, because I was completely asleep in an imaginary life. A life where all I ever obsessed over was the past and it cost me a great deal, because talking and feeling are two very separate ideals. I just didn't stop and shut the hell up enough to ever realize it.

I miss it sometimes, being so proportionally centered in my own oblivion. But where is the sense in having a life that is built on stilts of glass? For a long time I carried so much resentment for the fact that I woke up. So often I hear people say

"If you ever want to sincerely fuck up ever getting fucked up ever again, start coming into these rooms."

I went into Narcotics Annonymous like an acting out, irritated child. "Fuck them" was all I ever really thought. But I ended up in a church one day, lost and trying to find a room. I found the room and a woman named Jessica smiled at me, and those people became my family. I learned that I am exactly the same as all of them, that our stories vary but in the end, it's all the same.

Total loss of control, that for me wasn't ever present in the first place. I started writing on my first step two months ago. I thought I'd be done in two days. But hey, hand writing how much you have royally fucked up and lost yourself is actually quite a task. At first I would sit back and think "Holy shit, that happened." but as I kept writing I would think to myself "This never has to happen to me again. Not ever."

In that writing I came to terms that my life has never ever, since I was a kid, been manageable. It was one fire skillet to the next. I'm in a place now where for the first time I feel everything and I can manage it with the help of others aren't just paying the bar tab.

My parents don't get it. I can feel them flinch on the phone when I say "I'm late for a meeting." My dad tsks me and tells me to go have a drink and meet some people. I had to write on denial and I kept it simple, that denial didn't play a roll in my life it was the only stable component. My "social" life is a joke because I spent so much time faking it, faking that it all mattered, where I was, who I was with, that I have simply lost that tolerance. I like hanging out with myself in mis matched slippers with all of my rocks and something to write or paint. And writing and painting alone doesn't make me into a girl with half the blood from my face on the floor of the bar because that's what caught my fall.

Some things in life are free and priceless. They are the most rare.

I don't have to present my life on a scaled continuum of synthetic movement. Somebody said to me recently "You're like a good mormon girl" and that just about had my blood boiling a neck bone. I don't expect many people to understand my process and it's flattering I guess, that I appear to be so far removed from the madness that I've seemingly crash landed here as a person with boundaries, standards and morals in regards to the dumb shit I don't do to myself or those around me. But I still want to start fucking screaming sometimes in the name of my own street cred. But my "bust your teeth out" mask gives me anxiety and it doesn't fill anything except ego based self righteousness, and I mainlined enough of that for enough time in this lifetime. I'm not getting any fucking younger but in a way I am. Ignore the cards walk out on the bet casino royal there is no win without sound trust.

I finished my first step today and I'm currently in a financial freak out amongst trying to deflect the meltdowns of others out of my pointed direction. Because the only thing I am responsible for handling is myself, and so far, I've done an outstanding job. For those of you trying to dictate otherwise, get fucked, and best wishes. That is my last acknowledgement of you on this blog any further, ever.

I'm a warrior sitting here with one Chicago Bears, one Count Chucula slipper and nobody will ever make me believe any different. I rarely feel scared or alone, and if I do I have the resources to change it in an instant, that doesn't involve a glass pipe, a glass bottle, a maxed credit card, a wig, hot sex outfits, shoes that kill my feet, or some asshole that I can try to change myself for.

There are very few people that I know that have what I have. Which is everything, nothing, and the ability to balance a life on that tiny line of reality. I can't stop writing. I'm getting to a point I used to get to, where even when I'm thinking I'm picturing the text on a screen of every word. My novel is a bitch ass shit show right now but I'm getting it done. When I get lazy with it I simply tell myself that it is my only way up and the hell out of the current way of which is my life.

NS I have thought of you a lot today. Thank you for all of those good witch spells.

Glitter on the west streets,
HL