I refuse to get sick.
No amount of hot/cold
Cold/hot transition
Will shake my resolve.
No season change
No breathing, hacking
8-year-old,
No readings of posts
About sore throats
Callings out of work
Or warm forehead sensations
Will wear down
My defenses.
I refuse to get sick
And when I move
And move all day,
It's not possible.

New Ones

I had a picture of what it would be like
If I moved back home in the spring
I'd get a job, and a downtown apartment
And we'd find a place for your things

It's eating away at me
All those moments alone
When I'm drunk and I'm hopeless and weak
It's eating away at me
I'm incomplete.

I had an idea of what it feel like
When all of my plans had been set
I'd sing you songs while you cooked me lasagna
And I'd kiss that spot on your neck

It's eating away at me
When the woman I'm with
Doesn't make me feel quite as at peace
It's eating away at me
I'm incomplete.

Well, this ain't a turning around
This ain't a lost and found
So look me in the eye and tell me why
(JS/JR)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once upon a time
We knew what our love was for
Before we melted down our hearts
And turned them into tools of war

Too much black and white together
We've turned it all to grey
So take all the blurs and shadows
From the words that I say
That I say

Lover, please stand down
There's no more fight in me now

Our voices are so cold and lonely
Somewhere down the wire
So I'm calling cross the field
Baby hold your fire
Your fire

Lover, please stand down
There's no more fight in me now
Lover, please stand down
There's no more fight in me now

Someone's got blood on their hands
Someone's got blood on their hands
And I don't understand
We don't understand

Lover, please stand down
There's no more fight in me now
(JS/AM/LF)

Beyond

Another unrecognized cause of anxiety has got me dreading something later, something other than right now.  I have bills that need to be paid, and a desire to drop close to a thousand dollars on a plane ticket and finally begin my journey on the Camino.

Once I am committed financially by a plane ticket to CDG airport I am officially beginning my pilgrimage.  It weighs so heavy and looms so large for my life and for my future.  

Why am I walking?  Well why do I walk anywhere?  What started as a pleasant way to lose weight and enjoy the outdoors of the spring and summer morphed into forced alone time, dealing with all the issues surrounding the sudden demise of my last relationship, my own self-image, and with all the lost connections to my body and my soul.  It was feeling in my own skin, feeling blisters, sore hip flexors, tired diaphragms, and at the same time feeling that imagined but still tactile sign of the cross being drawn on my forehead.  I walked because it felt good, and I had nothing better to do.  Then I walked because I wanted to, and I started to change myself.  I faced demons, I faced insecurities, I faced absolutely everything. I adopted a mantra that was "be kind to everyone, no matter what." I resisted the trappings of modern NYC life, instead opting for polite and sincerity.

My most peaceful moments were spent along the cemetery in Sunset Park, both the east and west sides.  It somehow gave me solace, and filled me up with such beauty.  These fallen people all seemed to connect me back to my soul, something that was yearning for daylight again.  As I walked, I pictured my body getting smaller, the fat falling off of me as if it were just a temporary mold.  Ten, then twenty, then thirty,then forty, then fifty, then sixty, then seventy, and now eighty pounds fell off of me.  My walks started as 3 mile stints around the neighborhood, and have culminated in a 12 mile trek to Manhattan. 

I went on my first few legit dates with women, I sang better than ever at my gigs, and was so happy with how much I was "getting after it" lately. 

And yet, I sat in a chair at 2am after having sang for 3 hours in NYC, after saying goodbye to my friend who left with a woman he would take home to sleep with, while waiting for another one of my friends to finish a drink while talking to another woman, and the rest of the bar completely cleared out, and the staff packing up.  There I sat, and my thoughts were not of finding my own fake connection for the night, or getting sauced.  I just wanted to be on the Camino.  I wanted to do something with my life.  I wanted to walk, 500 miles, through the French and Spanish countryside, not because I had anything to prove to anyone.

But rather, for the first time in a really, really long time, my SOUL wanted to be there.  And ever since I learned of the walk, the subtle sensitivity to human nuance returned to my life.  The thought of walking for the health of my soul started to move me to tears, as it does now writing about it.  It was the perfect marriage of all the aspects of me that were so out of whack, my mind, my body, and my soul, all together on one unified goal: walk to Santiago, along the Camino.

So I'm going on this pilgrimage because I need to.  And because I'm supposed to. And most, importantly, because I've sent the last eight months walking for seemingly no purpose, and like she always does, Life finally gave me a reason, no, a DESTINATION.  So henceforth, I'm walking the Camino, everyday, even though I don't leave for about 6 months.

I will spend the remaining time putting in the time to maintain and help grow healthy friendships, learning some Spanish, and saving money.  My future as it stands in Brooklyn or New York is so pleasantly up in the air, as is my music career.  I must do what feels right, instead of what is in front of me.  

My transformation continues tomorrow, with more training for the 5K race and the walk that will almost surely put me into TriBeCa in time for my early evening meeting.  I promise to pray tonight, and tomorrow, and if for nothing else than to put my head in order.  I must be accountable for things now, and I promise to be.  It's time to get a move on, to move beyond, and work to bring peace and light to others around me.  From that very source, I will find my own.

.

8 Months Into It

This is my weight loss history from January 1st to today, September 5th.

Here is a photo of me then, January:

And me last night:

I'm at 80 pounds lost. 29 pounds to go.

My first GIF

Once

You have broken me all the way down
Down upon my knees
And you have broken me all the way now
You'll be the last, you'll see

And some fight you gave
When I pushed you away
From me

And in the morning
When you turn in
I'll be far to sea

And you have broken me all the way down
You'll be the last, you'll see

And what chance have we got
When you missed every shot
For me

And in the morning
When you turn in
I'll be out of reach

And in the darkness
When you find this
I'll be far to sea

And you have broken me all the way down
You'll be the last, you'll see

Binary Code

So it's been 3 months
Since you left me
And this must be my mandatory
Expected contribution
To the myriad of songs or poems
Or utterances
About life post "You"

I made a conscious decision to remove
Any likeness
Any tangible form you once held
And honestly, the worst
By a mile
Was deleting photos -
Those digital representations
The 0s and 1s arranged so beautifully
That represented what we shared
And what we stood for.
I passed by one of you
Laying on your side
In bed
A close up on your beautiful,
Transcendent face.
It was that face I saw more often than not
In the early morning
When you rose.
It is how I will remember you by.
It was not,
(Full admission here)
Your constant reality,
But you'll go down in my life's story
As that set of eyes
And that smile.

Even that photo
Got the delete button.

Strange how I can feel so much
While looking at a screen,
Looking at 0s and 1s
Arranged so beautifully.
So, post-"you" me:
He's healthy
And getting healthier
I will not usher in my 30s,
A decade where I am supposed to fully ripen as a human,
With the reckless abandon
That I took on for 15 years previous.
I am still twinged with profound sadness
About all that lost potential
All that love that seems to evaporate in this heat.
I arrive at the same conclusion every few days,
Spurned on by a sighting of something Texas,
Or Upper West Side,
Or Los Angeles,
Or the like.
The conclusion of course,
Is that I'm not fine
And I'm not okay
I'm deeply wounded
And any outward development I make
Both physically
And with making new acquaintances
Only points towards an impending date I have
With facing the reality and truth
That I wanted to marry you
And all the necessary changes and adjustments required to so
I wanted babies
And to live that photo -
The 0s and 1s
Arranged so beautifully -
Nearly every morning.
it was surreptitiously taken from me
For reasons I know not yet how to comprehend.
I barrel towards a day of reckoning
And my hope is that I will have progressed,
Lost so much weight
Slept with enough women
Made enough new friends
Captured enough of my spirituality
That I can absorb the sucking chest wound
That was our demise.
I am comforted by the fact
That my concerns now lie in my own well-being
I mean this sincerely:
I don't care how you're doing
And what you're up to
I certainly don't wish you ill-
I don't wish you anything-
Which to me is worse.
I will soon enough have my Reckoning
Where I touch the fire of all the things you burned
And on that day,
You'll have a Conference Call
Or a Staff Lunch
Or a Happy Hour
Or a Memo to Type
It'll be a Tuesday or something -
And I will be Alive
I will experience real and true pain
And I will spit on the scorched earth
As you become an also-ran in my story
Relegated to a singular memory
Of beautiful 0s and 1s
Arranged on a screen
That grows ever foggy.

For those Walking Purposefully

For those Walking Purposefully

Your pounding aching legs know well

What these kindred spirits mean

When they say so fervently

NEVER
STOP

MOVING

My Prayer

Let my outside Match my inside
Let my Inside become More Resolute
Let my spirit return to my Tangible Self
Let them unite into a more empowered Living

#4

A Profound Sadness
Comes over me
When I think of
Never being draped
In your Yellow Curls again
How you kissed me
As if it were a gulp
A great swallowing
Of my essense
And your saliva
Covered my Lips
Cheeks
Chin
Everywhere
The way an Infant
Eating ice cream
Cares not where it goes
And my hand
In back of your head
My lungs Breathing
Gulping
Your essence
And two pairs
Of Very Different Eyes
Meet in a Passing Glance
as we undress.