MY BIRTHDAY PARTY

I had a huge party planned for my 21^st birthday. Living in the Brown Trail apartments with Kem Keeton, I expected about 100 people. Never mind the logistics of getting 100 people into a two bedroom apartment.

At 7:00, there were probably 30 people there. The kitchen, dining room and living room were packed, and now the stairway was filling up.

Herschel and John came to me. We needed to make a beer run they said.

“I don’t want to go on a beer run!” I said. “I got chicks coming to this party, I plan to be here when they arrive.”

I’m not sure what my plan was for all these “chicks”, I just knew I didn’t want to miss anything.

But they were persistent, and talked me into going on their stupid “beer run”.

The beer run took us all the way to Majestic Liquors, way over on Randall Mill and 820. We bought the beer, got back in the car. I was eager to get back home, all those “chicks”, ya know?

But once underway, all of a sudden John wants to go to his house for a “Pot Run”. His house is way over in Richland Hills.

I’m livid.

“We got enough pot back home to invade Amsterdam. Take me home. I got “Chicks” coming over” I said.

It didn’t matter. My best friends were being un-cooperative, and 30 minutes later, with no “chicks” anywhere around that I could see, we were in front of Johns house. It was starting to get dark. I’d been away from MY PARTY for an hour and a half, and I had visions of all the “chicks” there were being scooped up by all my horn-dog  friends.

On my Birthday!

The nerve of those guys.

We were in front of Johns house, but no way was I getting out of the car.

“You just run in John, get yer shit, and run back out and get me back to my party!”

“No, you have to come in” John says. “I have a present for you.”

“No way’ I said “bring the present out with you. I’m not getting sucked into some black hole that is your house. I got chicks waiting for me.”

Well, the next thing I know, they have physically removed me from the car.

Now I’m stamping my feet in Johns front yard, having a tantrum, and all I can think to say, over and over  is “Take me home. I got chicks.”

Finally, Herschel grabs me by the shoulders, says “Look down the street. See all these cars? Where do you think all these cars came from.”

I look down the street. As far as I can see, there are cars parked, asshole to elbow, looking both ways.

It is a bit unusual.
“That’s weird. What ARE all these cars doing here?” I said.

Herschel shakes his head. “Happy Birthday asshole. If you will just come inside, we moved your party to Johns house. There was no room at your apartment. There are all sorts of chicks in there, waiting just for you. So do you want to come inside, or do you want us to take you back home now?”

I wish my friends Cyndy and Kathy were here to read this post.

They both passed the last two years, and Cynthia was always delighted whenever I would thank Kathy for the wonderful present she gave me for my 21st Birthday.

NOT HEROIC DEFEATS

"Roshi [his Zen Buddhist teacher] said something nice to me one time. He said that the older you get, the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need. Which means that this hero that you’re trying to maintain as the central figure in the drama of your life— this hero is not enjoying the life of a hero. You’re exerting a tremendous maintenance to keep this heroic stance available to you, and the hero is suffering defeat after defeat. And they’re not heroic defeats; they’re ignoble defeats. Finally, one day you say, ‘Let him die— I can’t invest any more in this heroic position.’ From there, you just live your life as if it’s real— as if you have to make decisions even though you have absolutely no guarantee of any of the consequences of your decisions"
Leonard Cohen

I often run across the first two sentences in this quote, and its good. But I think you have to have the rest of the quote, Leonards explanation, to really get what its about.

FOR PEREGRINE

The best collection of hilarious comics is over at This Isnt Happiness.
I've filtered them out for you, just follow the link below, and enjoy!
http://thisisnthappiness.com/tagged/comix

YOUR OWN ADVICE IS HARDEST TO TAKE

"To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment "already"? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a "crystallization," so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different."

Czesław Miłosz

A few years ago there was a girl, Ellie, that wanted to show me what for. She flirted, I flirted back. As girls often do, she confided in me. Said she was seeing a married man. I talked with her, without revealing to her that I was seeing a married woman. That I had been for 3 years. I listened, and let her talk.  It was easy to empathize, though her case was different from mine.
Among other things, he had told her he was moving out from his wife, getting an apartment the next day. But it didn't happen. My girl had never told me anything like that. He had strung her along with those kind of stories for quite some time. And she was distraught over it.

A week or so later, at a party at my friend Angela's on a New Years Eve, I spied a ceramic bird on a shelf. I asked Angela where she had gotten the bird.

“Oh, Ellie gave me that!”
Ellie said “Do you like it? I got it Target”.

I said yes, I liked it very much, but didn’t say that I wanted to get one for my girl (she loves ceramic birds) because, well, my girl is a well kept secret.
For almost five years, a very well kept secret.

A month went by, and one day Ellie called. She wanted to come to my apartment. She had something for me. She was pretty insistent, and I gave her directions. She came in and gave me a package with the ceramic bird in it. Then proceeded to try to seduce me.
I’m not one to turn down  pussy, at least I never had been before. But I explained to her that my heart belonged to another, and I wasn’t at liberty to say who, because my situation was so similar to hers.

She seemed to understand.

And here is the thing.

About two weeks or two days later she met someone, and they had an instant connection, and she forgot all about her married guy, forgot all about me, and within a  few months she was married to the new one, and they make the coolest couple. Just meant for each other.

Before I posted this I went through some old Facebook messages I had traded with her two years ago. I sent her this, a few hours after I had refused her advances. Man, it so relevant to what I've been doing for five years now.
But your own advice is the hardest to take. 

“There's something better for you out there, something cleaner, more crystalline, and pure. Some people like to say not to settle, but sometimes we settle. Sometimes a little love on whatever terms is what we need. But there is a time to move too. A time not to settle anymore.”

Addendum: I know why I cant take my own advice.
I still believe, baby. I'm still a believer.

Addendum #2; It took another two months from the posting, but I took my own advice.

THE TOOLS

You think your heart’s your own,
to lay down like a red chip, 
to share or not share. 
But it isn’t your own, 
it will never be your own. 
It belongs to whoever can win it, 
to whoever can keep it. 
It belongs to whoever has the tools 
to break inside your chest and 
take the red right out of you. 

Peregrine @   Your Eyes Blaze Out

THE WHO?

"But in the end you become a hostage to who you are, to what you want, what fascinates you, what breaks you down, what holds you under; the sense you feel compelled to build, the truth you try so helplessly to construct, the who you ultimately and helplessly are."
 - Brad Zellar

SMUGGLING BUBBLE GUM

I cooked some ribs on my smoker this weekend. Two women walking dogs came by. Both with big breasts, nipples poking through the terry cloth tops. Like they were smuggling bubble gum. They talked with me for a long time, and I gave them some ribs, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't stop looking at those tits.
Do you think they noticed I was gawking?
They are probably used to it.
What do you think was the cause of this effect?
Me?
Or the BBQ?
I don't know. 

I'd post this to FB but I'm afraid they might be trolling me by now.
Shoot, they're probably lesbians anyway.
So whats the difference?

BREAKFAST AT THE BUTTERMILK WITH MARK COLLINS ON THE DAY OF HIS BENEFIT

Mark asked me that morning if he had to actually, you know, GO to his Benefit. 

'I dont want all that attention" he said. "Its embarrassing" "

Well, Mark, I think people are expecting you to be there. So, yes, I think as a general rule ones attendance is required at your own Benefit, especially since there have been a few benefits lately that it was impossible for the honoree to be there, if you know what I mean". 

Mark hung his head, played with his eggs. 

"I was afraid you'd say that" he said. "I've asked about 6 people, and they all tell me the same thing". I laughed. "Is there anyone left to ask?" 

"No, I guess not." 

"Well, I'll be seeing you about 3 O'clock then" .

I started to tell all about Mark, how he had started taking pics with his phone camera a few years back, then he bought a stick to steady the camera, and started taking videos of music shows, until one day some pro photographer (they say it was Larry Dillon) said "Hey man, I got a bunch of old gear you might come dig through, and see if we cant get you set up proper", and Mark and Larry got him set up proper, and Mark would go to all the music shows he could, taking pictures of the acts, and more pictures of the folks enjoying the show, (he used to want to film me dancin', but I always told him "If you want to SEE the show, you are going to have to COME to the show"), and as I was to find out the last time I saw Mark, the photographers like to take pics of each other taking pics, like this one of his friend Robert he took at Reds just last Saturday.

Everybody knows while Mark was in the hospital  someone came and ripped off all his gear, and a benefit was held by Mark's friends. an undetermined amount of money was raised, enough to replace all his stuff, and I have to think the total was quite substantial.

But I didnt want to turn this into a long post. Mark went from being a hobbyist to a professional photographer in about two years, and along the way everybody loved him, He was as much a part of the scene as the musicians themselves.  He was famous, though he didnt want to be, and his great humility always shone through, and now that I've put it down I guess I really regret not letting Mark film me dancin', just one time.

Marks camera, taken by Robert Keith, 4/23/2016 at Reds. Mark passed 4/27/2016. 

This has got to be the loneliest camera in the world right now.

EATING PEACHES

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."
- Wendell Berry

FRIENDSHIP

"In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves. Through the eyes of a real friendship an individual is larger than their everyday actions, and through the eyes of another we receive a greater sense of a self we can aspire to, the one in whom they have most faith. Friendship is a moving frontier of understanding, not only of self and other but of a possible and as yet unlived future."

"..., the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone."
David Whyte

More, click here.

LITTLE BIRD

These are not hollow words.
Just sit there, and let me land on your finger.
I’ll try to be lighter.
Just remember these are not hollow words
     when I say how much I love you.

bulletholes, 2016

THE CLOWN IN THE BELFRY

The trading of joy comes naturally because it is of the nature of joy to proclaim and share itself. Joy cannot contain itself, as we say. It overflows.

And so it should properly be with pain as well. We are never more alive to life than when it hurts—never more aware both of our own powerlessness to save ourselves and of at least the possibility of a power beyond ourselves to save us and heal us if we can only open ourselves to it. We are never more aware of our need for each other, never more in reach of each other if we can only bring ourselves to reach out and let ourselves be reached….
We are never more in touch with life than when life is painful, never more in touch with hope than we are then, if only the hope of another human presence to be with us and for us.
Being a good steward of your pain involves all those things, I think. It involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows.
-The Clown in the Belfry

Frederick Buechner gatehered at Alive On All Channels

THE DOOR

So I had this dream last night. 

She had moved into the same apartments as me. 

Lived just a couple doors down. 

I went outside to smoke a cigarette, which is weird because I don't smoke. I look, and she is by her car, kissing some guy. She looked up, see's me, and I yell “NO!” and turned and started to run to my apartment. She’s running behind me, yelling “Stop!” and every time she yells "Stop!" I yell “NO!” and now my apartment is like 100 miles away, all the while she's somewhere behind me yelling "Stop!" and I'm running fast as I can yelling "NO!". 

Finally, I see my apartment. 

The door is wide open, just like I left it. 

I go running in, and stop to close the door. 

But I don’t. 

I stop, catch myself, and leave the door open.
Bittersweet. Surrender.
End of dream.

"...the heart breaks, and breaks, and lives by breaking..."
Stanley Kunitz, "The Testing Tree"

MY SISTER LISA'S FRIEND SUZI SAYS:

"I always enjoy the parts about Lisa in Junior High because that is what I remember best. But, yeah, I remember that your bedroom was dark and scary with lots of strange posters depicting music groups like Black Sabbath. Lisa & I scooted on past your door very quickly when heading to her room."

And I responded:
Suzi, you stopped by my room one day...I had The Who "Quadraphenia " going....Daltry sings...

"Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love
Can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers
Laying in the fields.

Love, Reign o'er me
Love, Reign o'er me, rain on me

Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high

Love Reign O'er me

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool cool rain
I can't sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool cool rain "


Suzi, Daltry was singing his heart out, singing from his toes that day.
And the voilins wept and Moon carressed his drums and Suzi, you got this glazed look in your eyes
And Suzi, you sat down crosslegged on the floor and sagged against the wall and mouthed the words to me "That song is beautiful Steve" and it was very intense.
And Suzi I got to tell you I just nearly kissed you that day, but you were even scarier to me than my room was to you.
And you never came back again.
No, you never came back again.

THE LATEST ADDITION TO THE BULLETHOLES CULINARY REPETOIRE

I've never had a really nice grill and smoker before. Always just the little 50 dollar rigs that dad's use to cook burgers twice a year. But I went ahead and got a pro model. its bigger than it looks. When I got it to my apartment I discovered that it would not fit through the sliding glass door to go safely and secure on my back porch.
So I bought a chain, and a motion detector, and dared anyone to try to steal it from under the stairwell.
Well, as things go it didnt take long for it to attract the attention of Apartment Management. They said it broke city code by "impeding egress".
Bullshit.
The Grill Nazi's at my apartments have made me move my grill from sitting harmlessly beneath the stair to my back porch. I didn't even whimper, I just complied by pulling out the tools, removing the sliding glass door (it would not fit through otherwise) and put the grill on the back porch.
I hold no resentment towards the Grill Nazi's, and wont burn the complex down in retaliation. Not on purpose anyway.

When chicken thighs and country style pork ribs are on sale for 88 cents a pound, this is what $12 worth looks like.

LOOK IT IN THE EYE

"You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

Patton Oswalt via Alive On All Channels

SPRING IS COMING ALL BY ITSELF

Sleep comes its little while. Then I wake
in the valley of midnight or three a.m.
to the first fragrances of spring
which is coming, all by itself, no matter what.

My heart says, what you thought you have you do not have.
My body says, will this pounding ever stop?

My heart says: there, there, be a good student.
My body says: let me up and out I want to fondle those soft white flowers, open in the night.

An Old Story by Mary Oliver, from "A Thousand Mornings"

THEY GOT THAT WRONG

"Women think that the men will eventually change, and men think the women never will".
A good friend of mine

WAY IT GOES

TRUE GRIT

DAVE PREPARES TO RUN A 50K THIS WEEKEND, DESPITE THE CANCER AND A LESS THAN HOPEFUL RADIOLOGY REPORT

"Dammit! I was sleeping so good. I guess I need to start driving to Kansas, though. Gonna try to walk fifty miles tomorrow if I get myself all the way there, which is a decision I'm still making. Shouldn't the adrenaline be kicking by now? Hello! Adrenaline! Oh, God. Cristina Renfro was so soft and sweet and the bed was so warm. Stop it! This is nonsense! It's not that bad a drive and you know the route be heart. Stop at Rush Running on the way there--that'll cheer you up! You said you wanted to visit the Mothership, the new store in Bentonville, so do it! Nope. As soon as the guys pressure-washing the breezeway finish, I'm hitting the road and I ain't stopping till I get to the same gravel road where I stopped to pee last time. Hey, I think my afternoon pain pill is starting to kick! Fucking oxycodone is magic! You know what? Turn your alarm off, Babes. I'll sign Donald out of school a few minutes early and get him some French fries on the way home. I want to kiss my baby. Hell, were it not for an accidental conversation with Zach Adams this morning, I wouldn't even know there was going to be a speaker at Celebration Hall tonight. I'd love to hear his presentation, but I'll meet the dude at the finish line instead. I want to pick my son up from school. That's my job. Balance, baby! Balance!

You should read my radiology report, which contains the word innumerable. I'm as proud of that word as I was of the speeding ticket I got in 1988 when I apparently passed a sheriff's deputy in my Datsun 510 autocross car at the Doty fire hall on Nemo Road and she didn't become visible in my mirror until I was already in Rapid City. She wrote "very excessive, dangerous speed in corners" on the ticket but was super cool about it. She didn't seem pissed at all; she knew she was outgunned! But that's lateral information. The point is that I'm gonna finish this fucking race regardless of what it says in my radiology report. I dropped last year because I didn't know what I was doing. Not this year. I can shit my bowels out and I will not drop. As long as my heart is delivering oxygenated blood to my brain, I'm going to keep walking, and that is a fact. Just want you all to know."