Best of 2018’s Week 44

“If we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is a terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”

Nick Cave

Grief is a reminder of how deeply I loved. It is a reminder that what was, was real and had depth and weight…that the love had meaning and intention in my life. Pretending not to grief is pretending to not love.

And?

What a wonderfully full, revealing, and wet week.

Drove twenty hours across three days with a friend. It rained hard for over fourteen straight hours across five stated.

Now, like water over Niagra, I have words pouring out of me. I see the book now.

This

More vengeance in the background – even at my most shitheaderiness I never tried to harm anyone else. I tried to dam up the behaviors like the Army Corp of Engineers tried to damn up Lake Pontchartrain behind the flood walls.  My failure is the Hurricane Katrina of my life. My levies were a poor design and an overestimate of my abilities, and so eventually the levy failed, submerging C and our life in flood waters.

It will be 12 months in two weeks. Still so much anger and vengeance…so little healing.

Like New Orleans, only the structures on the highest grounds survive.

That

My Saab is in Pittsburgh now enjoying a late winter and hoping for an early spring as the first real snows are falling northwest Wisconsin.

The boats and docks are out of Squash Lake as the ice fishing huts are starting to line the shores awaiting ice drinking – I mean ice fishing  – season.

More of This

I’m working with a friend to open a pop-up art gallery in the Twin Cities and have started reaching out to artists. It will be interesting to see who has invested personally in the drama triangle but this action is consistent with the life I want. I started reaching out to artists this morning. C and I did this five years ago in the Twin Cities and it was very profitable.

Let’s try this again, shall we?

…but without C.

More of That

One of the best cafe’s in the country is almost finished with its remodeling.

Talking to my friend that owns the cafe about letting me host another Karaoke Christmas night. I bought a karaoke machine a few years ago, we got all dressed up, got together with twenty other people, and we drank and sang karaoke Christmas tunes all night.

It was a great time.

Let’s see about trying this again too, shall we…again without C.

She’s thinking it over.

It’s hard for her because she was pressured by others to never speak to me again – because I was unstable, dangerous, manipulative, blah, blah, blah. For a while, she didn’t and actively carried some of C’s water to still others.

She eventually figured it out what was happening and sat and talked with me.

Lots of would-be Heroes in Our Triangle. Only one villain. Only one damsel. Lots of people trying on the armor. Like Highlander, at the end, there can only be one.

I know my friend has to be conscious of the optics but she is also a smart woman. As such, eventually, she’ll make her own decisions about what is best for her and best for her business.

If she says, “No,” I understand it won’t be about me.

And the Other Thing

Although I dream about C every day, I can’t go back, she’s gone away. It knocked me down but that’s okay. I’ve got this life to fix. I threw it all out in a ditch. Broken down when I was sick, now I gotta build it back up brick by brick.

The gallery would be a start. Karaoke would be a blast…neither may happen but that isn’t the point. Opportunity – like healing – presents itself to the prepared mind.

Here are the people, places, and things that carry me forward through the day as I trudge the road of happy destiny.