rhondak

Talking things out is not going to work. Because at the base of it all, I'm not a talker unless I'm nervous or in a state of WOO HOO...and there's like maybe 3 people on the world I can talk to within 100 miles of where I am at any given minute.

Like Biden during the VP debate got visibly upset thinking about his wife...the thing about loosing those you love is the places in your life you wish they were there with you. Like this moment, if SHE/HE could be there...and you feel their loss again hard against your heart staring through your tears at a world that thinks you should just get over it...and wonder what is wrong with you because you haven't. Because loss isn't a favorite pair of jeans you outgrow, but more like a scar that still hurts sometimes because you pull the skin too tight reaching for something. I can't afford to sell at the Siesta Key Farmer's Market, but I did create 9 signs for the event as part of my civic duty. There was a tiki carver there...and his bits were OK, but they weren't Alan's. It wasn't the set up Alan and I could do. They had no stories. People were complimenting my signs because they looked like the "real deal." The market's goal is to sort of be "groovy" like Old Siesta Key used to be...a fun swinging beach town. And it is hard to take the compliments, because I shouldn't be there taking them alone.

People kept saying...they looked so real and weathered. Well, they were real. They were weathered. I don't see them lasting every week, but I have them for my website.

I ended up getting upset at Gulfport Friday which wasn't good because that is where I was the night Alan decided to kill himself in a way that would work. Serious, I have a certain urge to drive off the side of Sunshine Skyway everytime I go over it now but only when driving South. Used to I was just scared of driving over, now I just talk to a host of demons from one side to the other. I'm saying this because, well, I think we've all had some time in our lives we drive around with our own demons.

Why the Skyway? On a`July 4th weekend Alan and I brought a boat over to Cortez from Madiera Beach. It is a story in me. One that really only made sense some time later when I understood why he was freaking out being offshore for so long. Maybe. I don't know. Oskar was there, as was FiFi. Oskar and I spent the night on deck sleeping because it took along time for me not to get sick in the Vberth of a boat. Oskar and I slept on deck alot.

Why is it still rough? This October is my first season of selling and painting where I know without any doubt there will absolutely NOT be an Alan at the end of it ever.

Then at Bradenton Beach a well meaning wonderful man came up and wanted to check on me. He'd just come from a funeral. I could see he wanted to cry for me. Some people know your story...but some people know your heart. And some people understand what makes you actually do what you do. I also hugged this woman who has been battling illness, I could feel her every bone. You know, I wish there was something where you could exchange your life with someone else you see fighting their heart out while I'm having conversations with my satans driving over a bridge. I know there's something selfish stupid ugly in that, that might be the information from the chorus of well meaning angels who try to tell me to act right.

I have no idea how or why Marley's song asking this woman not to cry came on before it seems to play everytime I turn on the radio. I don't smoke the pot. I don't listen to reggae. But Alan did these things.

I wrote his X I was his last and most lasting piece of art. Because one of the things you have to understand about folk art is that it isn't something that you create as much as something you work on ...or rather WITH. The object at hand dictates what it will be but still depends on the artist to free it...reveal it...work with it.

There almost isn't a day where I don't have to explain my dreads (no, I don't do drugs, I don't sell drugs, yes, I wash them, no, I don't listen to reggae)...or talk about how I started painting or why. "He left me because he wanted to prove I couldn't live without him..." the story has in it. True. Now it sounds like something even harsher.

I want to tell that chorus of demons and self righteous angels -- he's right, I can't. But I will.

And I am.

I have things in my head no one should. But we all do. Or will. July 20 is not the first time Alan tried to kill himself. He called me one night almost a year ago telling me he was hanging himself and wanted me to HEAR IT. It was this horrible message. When I replayed it, I had no reason to think he'd lived. Later he called to tell me he'd lived, but some pretty harsh things. You know, I told him to come back more than once. He didn't. Whatever he said, I got the impression that Key West wasn't a good place to stay.

People who tell you that they're going to kill themselves sometimes do, despite the conventional wisdom it is all words.

I really don't believe he would have killed himself if I was with him. Because as much as he wore on me, I wore on him. People will say to me, that my presence wouldn't have changed things. That I was lucky he didn't come back and then kill himself. I've tried the idea on. It doesn't fit. I know he wouldn't have done that. Love and anger are motivating. I cannot say with the same certainty he would not have killed me. But I told him to come back anyway.

Such was my feeling on the issue.

I don't know that John getting out this week is going to be good or bad. I can't predict this one. He is one of the few people on this planet I can talk to. I mean, defenses down, honest to my heart talk to. He believes he's changed. But you know, I haven't. And no matter that he left -- some of those reasons are with me. And us all the sudden being together 24/7 will be ...revealing. He's going to rattle my cage, because that's what he does. He wants to help me pick things up. If he can't, it might not be that he didn't try - but I didn't let him.

At this point, if someone doesn't pick something up we'll starve...but me more slowly because my bills are getting paid first. It's back to the boat budget. Bills out first, scratch up the rest.

I have today to get my court papers straight, fill in 26 pages of information for my lawyer I'll hire Tuesday and I have to be good Monday. But it is so hard to take seriously because it is so overwhelmingly unfair, I'm seriously outgunned and as horrible as the whole thing is --essentially losing most everything I have-- it isn't the worst thing that has happened to me, but I have to act like it is so maybe there's some relief or maybe a lawsuit that is boat sized. Because, they've taken everything and they're coming for the rest.

Which is one of those things that always lets you know precisely what you really are.

I just don't want to cry. I want to have enough money to take the pug to the vet.

This really great artist that lives on his boat in Sarasota told me about how he started painting driftwood because he was starving as he'd lost his business to Hurricane Eleanor ( there's a host of hurricane tales of Floridians where one storm's name becomes where they tell their life story from)...and he sold a painting and bought a steak. The local paper took a picture of him painting with his dog on the beach ( "painter with panter" it read which sort of kicked off his coastal painting career. He's a dashing figure who absolutely didn't seem himself 10 years ago drawing tourist's portraits on the seaside or making his money beautifully painting pics of his own boat, his bays, his passes, his beautiful world of water, boats and sunsets. And he told me how I needed to live on a boat not knowing my story.

Well, a Jax lawyer has my boat at the moment. At least the red one I was beginning to warm up on.

But, at the least, should I scratch things up, I'll be at anchor with a real artist and build a better community of people who've let their losses carve them into better people. Not bitter people. Or at least bigger people...if you consider the idea that the universe breaks your heart is because it is too small to hold all you're capable of...and the heart break is the thing you'll look back on that freed you. Like a hurricane that takes everything you know or have.

You'll see sometimes people build the same house the same way in the same place that a hurricane destroyed. There's a place for longing, but it maybe isn't for the living. It is a better province for ghosts.

And I realize that's the issue, the process of being broken. Letting these things carve me into that better and greater thing than I am. And while the demons are loud, they have no part in this.