the unshared time... the empty memories... not completely empty, for I can create anything I want of them... that is what unshared time is about, being alone with the complete freedom to create anything you want out of each moment... but unshared, the wonder haunts...is it real?... what meaning has it, what does it mean?...

I just realize that The Wallflowers, especially Dylan's voice, is bringing me back to The Waterboys... this is really good, better than words could ever express... for The Waterboys is a time before... before what?... have I no name for the worst period of time I've known in this life?... apparently not... maybe it really isn't completely over... after all, when I check the pot, I keep coming up with the same phrase... it's not soup yet... that's just the temporary title, not the permanent name for the period... let's see if gazing back across the years might help (and let's see how much of what has been already written and is sitting on lost computers and stolen disks somewhere can actually be remembered)...

birth is a fine name for birth, I suppose... not very creative or exciting, not like emergence or something that infers a coming or going, but birth will suffice for now...

emergence, however, eludes to a time before birth and while consciousness might be rather challenging for memory to retrieve from in there, I believe it did happen so something is waiting to be found... I'll leave it for another time for now...

what usually passes for childhood, for me, was alienation...
relative abandonment compounded by superficial over-dependent neediness and a neglect of deeper intimacies, meaningfulness, and creativities is a fair summary of my early years on this planet... my experienced was communal in nature, though lacking the free-thinking enlightened caring that I heard the sixties were about in some circles... still, I know it's out there somewhere...

childhood can be broken into several parts, or phases... several different abandonments might be milestones, but I see more vagaries in transitions at the moment so I explore what memory pulls up with a less specific-event orientation... physical experience started very early, and somehow I was able to realize that the hyperactivity I felt and could express would bring controls and limits I did not want, so I learned to be my own discipline, I found my own ritalin or whatever inside... in other words, I learned to fake it so well I fooled everybody, not that anybody really was aware enough to care enough to notice the nuances and things I experienced as life... the early awareness and physicality isolated me, which added to the alienation...

the world was out there and I was in here, most of the time... I could also see that the world was out here and I was in there, and sometimes I could achieve being here and there simultaneously, but that seemed to freak people out so I learned to show people what they wanted to see and not point out what they themselves ignored... sensuality also started very early (compared to human norms, and what else shall we compare it to?)... masturbation started while I was still in diapers and I realized that no matter how others would try to control me when they were around, others were not around most of the time and what I did when others were not around did not count... that is, what they did not know did not exist for them... so I continued doing what felt right for me, which includes masturbation but this point can be carried over into all aspects of my development and my philosophy of existence as a human in this world... sharing masturbation also came very early, at four years old, and I learned to stop sharing such intimacies because I did not want to be poked and prodded physically and psychologically by doctors and other adults... and that's what they did in their efforts to find out what made me tick when I would not conform to nursery school rules at three and four years old... by the time I was five I had learned those most important lessons (and how to do them)... what they don't know won't hurt them, or me...

so I learned to fantasize (and while this particular exploration of my development as a human seems to use sexuality as an example, the early development and awareness carried over into all aspects of interactions...but expanding on to every tangent might lead to confusion or at least dilution of the point, which is to see if I can find a name for a certain period of this life by reviewing the names I had once given to other periods and therein see if I can remember some of the millions of words lost in boxes and computers and disks left in unsafe hands or stolen along the way)... life was out there, but I only gave out there the minimum it required (to maintain the appearance of conformity and normalcy enough to keep out of doctors offices and achieve as much freedom as a little kid can achieve... and it was rather a lot, since the adults around me were way too easy to manipulate and send to their rooms)... and I was in here...

words became the refuge for my untapped creativity and desire... I realized that a seven year old was not supposed to have sensual or profound fantasies (no less be able to express them in words), so I kept them hidden on paper I stored neatly in boxes between the pages of comic books and Scholastic book club books and buried under many thousands of baseball cards... no self-respecting adult would risk their appearance of maturity by taking any exploration of such boxes seriously back then... though today, those boxes would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for the comics and baseball cards alone... the value of the words I wrote, for me, could not be measured in any human currency... alas, I learned the profound feeling of such a loss as I left my teens when I returned to the basement where I had left the boxes, the whole of my creativity and physical memory of the first two decades of this life weather-sealed and brightly labeled, and found those two people who were supposed to be the ones to teach me unconditional love and trust, humans call them parents, had disposed of the boxes while I was away and could not remember what they did with them... but then, they were never there even when they were there... and I doubt they even had an inkling that here existed...

so I started over with nothing again (as I did at birth and little did I know it would not be the last time... rhetorically, a voice asks... why trust?... but that's a deeper tangent that ironically leads to the time still unnamed, for exploration at another time)... drifted through what I might call amylessness... for it was quite aimless and resulted primarily from my heart-obsession with a girl named amy who remains the recipient and holder of the purest love I've ever known or created in this life... sometimes those years were called the amy years, when I chose to name periods of my personal history after the names of people who most heavily influenced those periods... but then, I'd have to find a time to call by many names, for many have come into that realm of influence in my mind... so perhaps if I see this nomenclature as if there are sub-names within larger spans (as I have in previous attempts to organize my memories), this proper name effect will work... still, a more encompassing name might be more appropriate for communicating the time...

but I skipped ahead, slipped through a memory wormhole, so to speak, much like the one I referred to as the deeper tangent that would take us to the unnamed time in the previous paragraph... in case you need directions, that is... we were back in the earliest years, learning to keep it hid...

names... we name things for reference, so we can have a common language to understand shared meanings... so this particular nomenclature I am briefly exploring today is for anyone who wishes to know something about where I have been in this life so far... call up and name that refers to a period of time and ask about it and I may just find more words in my mind that refer to that time in the development of who I am at the moment as a human being in this life... it would be so much easier (and probably infinitely more insightful) if I could pull up some of the millions of words previously written, but others, sometimes carelessly and sometimes deliberately, too, the power of trust I gave them and now prevent me from doing that... and that hurts infinitely more than any words can express, beyond a name, beyond even any feeling I could have as a human being... and if you can wrap you mind around that, then maybe we can begin to understand each other...

somewhere in those years of elementary school I found myself in words and found this was the sanctuary I required if I was to remain free and me in this world... I also had music, being handed a violin and an accordion before these hands were actually big enough to hold either correctly, but as profoundly seductive as music was (and is) for me,I wanted something more literal... which was probably the start of my downfall as if I devoted to music half the time I have devoted to words along the way, I'd have probably made a much more creative and perhaps less lonely or at least more comfortable life for myself along the musical path... but I'd still find myself wanting to explain what the riffs and chord lines meant in language that only words could express and since music is a language that words can not fully express, my angst over the futility of creative desires would be even greater than it is along the path I have chosen... so whether I made the right choice or not, I probably have less angst to show for it...

unfortunately, there was no external musical influence as sharing was not something that the adults in my life actually knew how to do with me, probably largely because I shared on different levels and in ways they could not understand, no less share... which is probably why I turned to words, as much as a sanctuary for what was not understood or accepted by others around me as a way to try to explain and communicate, because from my earliest memories of desire the desire to share was one of the most dominant... still is, though it has diminished slightly over the course of time and abuse...

so I learned to play music, but not to share it... how to play music and how to play music with others are two very different things... and sadly, playing music took a back seat in the activities I called life around the time I found the basement boxes were gone, partly because those boxes also contained tapes of music I played and music I wrote and also because the instruments were also gone... I did find an accordion for a few years a bit later on, but accordions are fragile instruments dependant on glue and mechanisms that deteriorate over time without constant cleaning and repair, so the accordion in storage up north is probably beyond repair and would require a rebuild that would be more expensive than buying a new one... hopefully the same won't be said for the various keyboards also in storage up north... or the computers or vinyl records or tapes or CDs or books or... no, we should not go there now, much too potentially depressing and yet another tangent that leads away from the point here even if the wormholes hold much information and ultimately, all leads back to here and now...

I've most likely lost most readers a while back anyway, so for those of you following along, the name for childhood so far might be empty... perhaps alone would be more appropriate... though I had best friends and love interests through just about every grade until college... I disintegrated during the years after high school, those years of amylessness, and wandered as alone as I've ever been in this physical life for a time... except maybe for now...

so birth and alienation appear to be acceptable for the first few years... and for now, I think play will fit in after that as I truly learned all the world is a stage, everything is illusion, and people only see what they want to see and that is the way they find happiness and they way to coexist peacefully and still maintain freedom of self is to show them only what they want to see and not point out what they ignore... so I became the writer and actor in the play that came to be known as my life... I also learned to play in more conventional ways, which was and is fun, but the word holds much deeper meanings that maybe you've understood here...

and then came the conscientious years when I was a straight A student and was almost valedictorian (I asked not to be, therein withdrawing from the two person race)... those continued into high school, as skipping grades and acing tests with minimal effort (I seldom brought books home from school, never did homework, and rarely opened them while in school... so much for our wonderful education system that allowed me to excess with those study habits) but hit a wall by the name of Mr. Waltzman (the irony of the musical name of my ninth grade algebra teacher {and I use the term very loosely} has gradually become a groan I can almost laugh at at times)... during the conscientious years I was shy, occasionally overweight, a middle of the road athlete in the schoolyard, and casually social... though I masturbated regularly in class, at least once a day in elementary school years (it is amazing what people choose to ignore... I still wonder if anybody ever noticed... which leads me to wonder if any of my classmates from those years have found my rambling online and, well, if you sat next to me in my school years, even if you might consider me a pervert now, how about then?... did you know what I was doing?... were you ever doing it too?... don't worry, I'm not naming names... well, at least not today)...

besides the secret social life and fun and games, I learned early on that school was about grades, not learning... it really did not seem to matter to most of the teachers I knew back then if any kid learned anything at all, just so the kid could pass the tests, which were arbitrary lists of memorized facts were mostly spoon fed in class... stay awake, pay attention, and remember... good memory was all that was needed... heck, in later years I didn't even stay awake, but just asked the right questions when I did wake up and learned how to find the answers in the questions on the test itself... that could be a big reason Americans grow up fat and arrogant and act like they can do anything, because the public school system gives them a false sense of success, knowledge, and their own capability...

anyway, the wall was didactic authoritarianism that traded compassion for cruelty... an unhappy old man who took out his dissatisfaction with his own lot in life on poor unsuspecting ninth graders getting their first taste of real mathematics... using his knowledge to feel superior by putting down kids who never heard of the concepts he was teaching very poorly when they dared ask questions... and my punishment for not playing his game (good grades required heavy ass-kissing, sublimation of facts, and participating in group cruelty when he chose to ridicule the dummy of the day, as he called his victims...maybe it was because he could never nail me as his dummy or because I would not play in his puppet show, and maybe cuz I occasionally stood up to him and told him to back off a student he was driving into the ground psychologically... or maybe it was because he'd wake me up expecting to catch me sleeping and I'd give him the answer to the question he asked without missing a beat... the silence after those moments was so think I thought he would suffocate, but he'd just turn bright red and tell me to leave the room because I obviously did not need to be taught anything... I'd play right into his sarcasm, say thanks, and ask for a hall pass... he'd usually explode and try to convince me to go to the principle and unless I actually wanted to leave, I'd suggest that the principle was too busy to be disturbed by a student who simply gave the right answer when it wasn't suspected and I'd appreciate it if he'd get back to teaching algerbra... he usually did, after much fuss at his desk and sometimes a pop quiz to punish everyone for my impudence... hey, you can't please all the people all the time...

anyway, once I hit that wall, school became less interesting... the party years began and grades didn't matter anymore... my straight A top of the class ranking slipped to thirty second by my junior year, but I figured that was ok because there were close to fifteen hundred students in my grade by then... of course that semester I simply didn't show up for class at all and received 39s (we actually used a numeric grading system rather than an A,B,C system, so my average dipped well below 90 after that semester) and stopped paying attention... I still graduated with several honors and advanced credit classes along the way... but I only showed up for graduation to party...

those were the very social years... I dropped my cloak of shyness and organized weekly parties at friends houses... people tossed their numbers at me because they wanted to be invited... I became half of a couple that was second in the balloting for 'class couple' (lost be a few votes to a football star who was going out with a cheerleader... we all spent a summer working at camp together, remember?)... those were the days, in spades...

and the year after high school, while I spent some time at the beach that the college I enrolled in happened to be built on, was the most profoundly happy and challenging year ever for my heart for I was going out with my two best friends and only one knew about the other because the one who knew asked me not to say anything and it about drove me crazy (I learned that while all the world is a stage, I did not like playing a duplicitous role at all and that was the last one I even attempted)... but while it lasted, those were the peak years of playful, relatively irresponsible, romantic, childhood fun...

the people I was close to in those years knew me as completely as anyone ever did since then, except for maybe two other people along the way... maybe... and I had not felt as comfortably loved by and in love with anyone since (that might be sad), but then, those last years before stepping out and having to support oneself in the dog-eat-dog world should be as idyllic as mine were... complete freedom with minimal responsibility... I still feel those best friends from those years were as close to family as I've ever known and if any one of them called today I would hop on a plane as fast as I could get to the airport and buy a ticket if my being there would help them at all... that is a large part of understanding who I am...

but a name, we were looking for a name... the party years, maybe... the years of innocence and love (my own personal hippie times?)... ah, well, all I read of the sixties tells me I had it all then... the social years might be just as well a name... and names that come to mind from past attempts to summarize this life are Ray's Basement, the 105th street run, and life is a beach... someday, maybe I'll find the previously written bios... until then, this is another start at remembering the long and winding road loosely called my life...

and there is music... I returned to music, bringing it back from the back burners, though not playing nearly as much as listening... and singing... singing was always a refuge and exercise for me, though mostly in the shower as it disturbed the parent people and I didn't seek their disdain or ridicule... and for one reason or another, probably the insecurity deeply instilled by the childhood negativity laid on anything creative I would want to do that was not what they wanted me to do, I have still not connected with another person who shared the love of singing and reverence for music I choose to know... music is the closest thing to a religion or tangible spiritual path I might have... singing is prayer, release, and being most of all... and in some ways, communication with the universe and anyone who might care to be aware, or be aware enough to care... I no longer expect humans to understand, but then, I never invested much in expectations...

I made mix tapes to survive after love went awry... until then, I listening mostly to music from inside that plays always, even when I try not to listen... to understand humanity, I decided to try to listen to others music... and I sought words and music that expressed my loss, my emptiness, my pain... and that which no words could express... tapes 62 through 95 came out of that period, though all are probably gone now... some along the way and the rest entrusted in Toronto... I may refer to Toronto a lot, I am not keeping track... it is where much of the soup that is not soup yet happened and I suppose that's what started this ramble today, seeking a name for the period of time that may still be happening right now (and perhaps begging for closure, for naming something definitely helps write it's substance and writing the story certainly helps me find closure... is that what I'm doing here?)... anyway, once again we get ahead of ourselves...let's just say for now that the Toronto experience contained depths that bottomed out somewhere below the basement boxes experience, and I thought that was not possible... no wonder it's still cooking and hasn't been named yet, huh?...

so back to where we left off, we come to what is commonly called adulthood... and there was some time spent in the army, madness personified, but I found my way to another plane of enlightenment amidst the war games... I was lucky, I just saw war and it's results from the safety of a stateside emergency room in the form of returning troops... triage... you go to ward B (temporary holding), you go to the OR (operating room), you go to the third floor (intensive care), you go to the ninth floor (psych ward), you can go home (but then, there was no going home ever again even for the ones who came back intact and supposedly healthy... that is what war does and I didn't have to have bullets flying past me to learn)... I learned a lot about a lot in the Army, but above all else I learned that I was definitely not a normal human... and I still don't want to be one...

one major love I found during that period was correspondence... I wrote to many people daily and loved the interactive play of written words... most of the letters were sent and not saved, though I did save the letters from those who wrote to me... I wonder if those boxes of letters were lost in Toronto or are still in the storage place... someday, when I finally move and unpack the stuff (and face the reasons everything went into storage and more, precisely what was lost and most of all, what can be found), we will know...

it was upon returning from Uncle Sam's military machine that I found the basement boxes and their precious content (the me I left in safekeeping) was gone... what the military could not do, break my spirit, that all but did... trust was always a precarious understanding for me because how could I completely trust humans when I could see they did not trust themselves and for the most part, had no awareness of what they were doing half the time... but this was the parent people who were supposed to... well, we know what parents are supposed to do and most of us know that there are parents who simply don't... after all, I had several fathers and a couple of mothers along the way, being born in a hospital as an orphan and adopted a couple of times before I stepped out on my own (of course I left out some details, even the outline of a story of a life can not be perfectly complete on the first re-draft)... hey, at least I faked it well enough to be adoptable... there are kids who don't get that far on the stage of life... and we think we know loneliness?...

and the thing I ran away from that lead me to join the dang army in the first place, the sunshine of my life, the one and only one I could ever imagine loving with all my heart and everything I've got, the one who gave me a feeling that has never been touched again, she was a different person... she became human... she sold out, bought into the pretense, caved into the conformity... repression is gross to look at when you know what freedom looks like... especially when the difference happened in the eyes of the one you love... and so I wandered off, disillusions with life and love and people and anything that had any meaning to me before... I paid my way with army benefits and one of the life skills the army taught me, the drug market... my connections were good and I could have made many fortunes many times over in those days, but I just wanted to drift away and so I made contact only when I needed some more spending cash or another new drug... mostly I smoked, but for a few years in there I was doing everything I could find (or create)... after a few years I went back to work... the evening shift at an institution for developmentally disabled teens and adults... somewhere around 8PM we'd put them all to bed and pull out the cards and booze... Hennessey's was a popular brand... so was Bacardi... those were some of the best spades games I ever played... and sometime after work, after parking at my stool at the local bar (it was called Captain Walters, and everybody did not know my name, but everybody seemed to know to leave that stool empty after 11PM) and telling the bartender to surprise me, I'd somehow find my way back to a bed... sometimes... the beach was just a few blocks away and my car was as much home as anywhere else not directly under the stars...

nobody cared to straighten me out (especially not me), nobody came from my past to shake me up, wake me up, or give me tough love... then again, maybe they did and their form of tough love was to ignore me... the trouble with that is I ever noticed... all I felt was the infinite hole inside that was once filled with what I thought was an infinite love... ah, the romantic dreamer fool I am... the warning here is that I still have not learned whatever humans learn that keeps them safe from their hearts desires...

somewhere out there in space I was lost, devoid of music or anyone even to remotely call friend, I still wrote almost daily... some of those handwritten books may still be in storage (hope so, I pay for the space)... at least the ones I did not bring up to Toronto and leave there in my unreasonable efforts to unconditionally trust other human beings... might be some amazing gibberish in there... and then a few deaths of icons, musical muses I had chosen when I was still caring that I was alive and aware, woke me... I returned to music a bit and then a bit more and started making mix tapes again...

I was somehow up to tape 285 (so here were tapes made in the wasted years... hey, I think I just named them)... tapes 115, 116,and 117 were played often, but they were Harry Chapin, Moody Blues, and something else (I think based on Free To Be, You and Me, but I'm not sure... eventually, maybe someone who cares will help me remember)... tapes 151 and 156 are remembered as core mixes, and 165-169 as well... and some others I am currently leaving out that, if brought together as a full set, would be the soundtrack of this life for me... I feel very sad when I think they might be gone for good, but then, the basement boxes taught me that while stuff can not be replaced, nor can the potential of sharing all the most important stuff be realized, life is made of losses as much as gains and the best we can do is make the most of what we've got... knowing me would be so much richer and deeper and maybe easier with the soundtrack, but it won't be... and what will be, will be...

I drift off from the point again I see (this outline may be winding down... wake up)... I was straightening out and coming out of the wasted years... giving up my bar stool and spades game and moving on up... and found a roommate and lover and best friend who was just the influence I sought (masters degree plus) to try the professional life track... back to school, got the office, assistants, power and responsibility... and the comfortable lifestyle that such a path affords... investments paid off and I was living some dreams, but still a void of creativity was eating me alive... my heart was still not in it, she fell in love with me but I never full in love with her... always told her so, hoping she'd understand that there would be a time I'd move on... she did and yet, it was not easy...

there was no sharing of the words, the music, the exercise, the passions that make me who I am... I left the professional world, and NYC... she did not want to leave... I went to play in Orlando, Florida, land of childhood dreams and summer sunshine... we bought a house together, which was a mistake because she cared about material things and money much more than I did and eventually I walked away and put finding my dream of true love ahead of money and she was left with more bills than she needed... I wish I never did that to her, but neither of us got what we wanted... still, she was one of the gentlest hearts I ever had around me... someday, if I have a spare house or the price of a house laying around, I'll try to find her and give it to her... she deserves much more and I hope she's found it... those years might be called the Sandy years, ironically, for I left there to find the sun and beach again... perhaps the professional years would be the more global name...

I was still writing daily, though not listening to music or mixing tapes much... I worked full time and earned 157 credits in four years, luckily I've never needed much sleep... there was bowling leagues to share (I was treasurer one year), and no time to think about what was missing... but still, I felt the call to return to my creative nature, music and the world outside of suits and offices and fine dining and professional-couple sports... I started communicating through a pen pal magazine called The Letter Exhange... I wonder if Steve is still publishing it... then there was The Writer's Exchange (I think that is what I called it), a newsletter I published with my Atari ST 1040 and NEC P6 printer... the printer was stolen by the so-called friend I trusted to watch my stuff (at her request... yeah, trust people)... the Atari should still be in storage... so those words may be retrievable... ultimately, the warm climate and creative freedom called and I moved, as I said, to Orlando...

I vowed never to return to winter, for I had enough cold weather to last a lifetime... and I spent some time enjoying the spoils of my labors... a long vacation, giving much away (ultimately too much) and looking for love and fun everywhere I went... lots of all night dancing at raves, running regularly, someone gave me a dog that tied me down a bit, but then, I was ready, willing, and able to settle down and find the one and do the whole family thing, so Happy Dog was no burden and kept my feet on the ground while I partied all the time (though this time without any of the chemical additives I used in the previous party years... my high was runners high... dancers high {dancing wild a few hours straight will do it} and words and music)...

settling into my own space, dancing all night and running to my heart's content, I expanded my CD and video library tremendously and I returned to correspondence again and some of my best writing ever (if self-appraisal means anything) happened... and I found close spirits through the written word... a few came believing they were the one I was seeking, one came close but she was ready to fly and I was ready to land and we had to let go... and then came the one who inspired me to move back to winter, to Toronto, and to what I thought was and wanted to be the family forever... family is forever, after all...

the dream became a nightmare (how brief can the story get, huh?) and I am now at the after-show (with devastating betrayals all it's own for another telling)... perhaps nearing the end of those wasted, mourning, wandering aimless years... I wish it was a re-run, but it's definitely a new and different wasted years that is relatively partyless and excruciatingly dull... I kept up my online journaling and expanded into diaryland and live journal, but for all my love of correspondence I find I do not trust the once beloved intimacy I knew in written words... those who've emailed me over the years no doubt found that out as most have drifted off to other internet sharings...

so this is an outline (did I hear a shreek?)... it will be added to, edited, and may never be completed (and especially the second half was diluted by trying to write it all in one sitting)... but at least you've got the start of what may be a bio of sorts... and here we are... maybe a little closer to summing up the last however long it's been and giving it a name and closure and moving on to the next phase of this life, the next story...

I think I'll pause here...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)