"Skylark, I don't know if you can find these things, but my heart is riding on your wings.."

My saddest Christmas? Strung out in East Hollywood pretending to have the flu? That happened a couple of times. Or maybe 1997 in Long Beach, going to see "Midnight In The Garden of Good & Evil" alone after refusing to go to the Duggan Family Christmas shindig in Garden Grove. The theater was full of guys like me - misfits, loners, drunks, junkies - many of whom looked even more lost and broken than I had been at the time. As the film progressed, you could hear the audible collective disconnection and disinterest; like some immense lonely energy that permeated everything, including what was on screen. As Kevin Spacey clutches his chest and falls to the floor (seeing Jude Law's ghostly visage) and the credits roll, no one got up to leave. We sat there numb, in some kind of stupor. The house lights eventually came on, and one by one we struggled to our feet and clumsily filed out to face the sun, the shameful light of Christmas Day, and for most of us, I assume, the awful truth about our lives.

These days, the old skylark of my depression, my cohort since childhood, hangs around in the back of my head, lifting weights, waiting for the holidays to sing her loudest melancholy melody. In all the sweet and tender moments that make up my life these days, in all the numerous blessings of my beautiful family near and far, she is still there, flapping those wings, threating the sickening squawks of seasonal sadness. When she comes alive, in her festive feathered fullness, she is a formidable inertia, known to cancel out whole days and even weeks. But no matter how heavy and real the battle might be as it rages onward, I never have to look far to see that it's temporary; that time has a way of slowly taking the venom out of even the worst things, even with her song in my ears.

That skylark is singing today. I hear her trying to get my attention even as I type this. Even after years of being off any kind of junk, I recognize the seraphic sad song she sings and I try to keep the volume from overtaking the rest of the picture. And I count my blessings. I'm not dopesick. I'm not lost. I'm loved beyond all measure. 

The ghosts of trauma and the alleyways of childhood do not release us willingly, but the picture gets grainier with time. And that old skylark? She's still in the rotation, but the soundtrack gets a little warmer every year. Someday, somehow, she's going to fly away. But not today.

But it's like the Lady Chablis says: "Two tears in a bucket? Mutha-Fuck It!"

Happy Holidays to all of you, and to kids from 1 to 92. 

Warts And All.

For many of us, there is a razor thin line between powerlessness and acceptance. We cannot control other people and much of the time, we cannot control our care for them - at least I can’t. I can certainly set boundaries and walk away, but my battered heart will likely still feel some semblance of just what it was about them that set my soul afire in the first place. 

 

I’ve never been able to sublimate my love and turn it into something more powerful or otherworldly than exactly what it is. It’s a ragged, stormy, vulnerable, awkward and immediate thing and, once I’ve loved someone, I will love them always. I’ll keep my distance if I need to, but I will always hope for some level of harmony, and they will likely never leave my prayers and well-wishes. 

Something inside of me deeply resists the trend of categorizing people into subhuman tropes based on their level of relational behavior, their failures, their ugly sides. I, too, have ugly sides, and I, too, am worthy of love. 

 

It boggles my mind when I hear our fellow humans throwing around massively disparaging titles so callously and effortlessly as they discuss other humans. It just seems irresponsible and, quite frankly, juvenile and petulant. It lacks the depth of true compassion, clarity or understanding. Those with the inability to forgive will likely be cursed with the inability to deeply love and be loved. Not to mention, the outlook is deeply disempowering (s/o to my exes, most of whom will likely never see this anyway: I don’t describe you or think of you in black-and-white and I never will). 

 

We are tragically and hilariously flawed beings. We are all full of mixed motives. We are capable of great tenderness and great viciousness alike. We overestimate the sunshine and then curse at the clouds. We love the ones who hurt us and we hurt the ones who love us. We rush in, we push, we pull, we forget important things - our coat, our strength, the last step on the staircase, our keys, our goodness. It’s awkward and foolish and that’s just how it is. We rise and we falter and we get up the next day and do it all over again (to paraphrase Jackson Browne). 

 

And it's fucking beautiful, warts and all, exactly as it is. And guess what? So are You. 

 
- RPD 
Journal Entry - 3/23/19 

Nothing Special.

She snuck out after dark that night, 

Against her father’s wishes. 

She’d always been a good girl, 

Never done anything like that before. 

But he was a spoken word poet, 

A shaggy haired dream. 

A college boy 

With a quick wit, kind eyes 

And an easy way about him. 

Her stomach was full of butterflies. 

She imaged being in a poem, 

In His poem; 

Not her name, necessarily, 

but her Essence. 

And she wore 

what used to be 

Her favorite black skirt 

To their date, 

under the moonlight, 

Like in a poem. 

But Mr. Dream Poet, 

Mr. Goddamn Kind Eyes, 

He brought her Death, 

Instead of a lyrical bouquet. 

It sounds ridiculous, 

But a love song was playing, 

She remembers the melody. 

 Echoing through tinny speakers 

With the treble way too high 

And the words too strange to make much sense. 

She prayed and pleaded; 

First, with him, 

And then to a god that didn’t give a shit, 

Leaking pointless tears 

On his vice grip around her neck, 

Until he was done taking whatever he wanted. 

He drove her back, 

Saying nothing. 

She remembered that awful silence, 

Her eyes puffy and swollen, 

Barely able to catch her breath, 

Waiting for red lights to turn green. 

She kept his secret 

Through the shame 

Through the terror 

Through her friends reciting Shakespeare 

and Jokingly calling her The Muse

Through the brokenness of 

Not being able to trust anyone 

Not feeling worthy of love 

Not understanding why. 

She kept his secret, 

Playing coy and elusive, 

Smiling through the pain

as it rotted her from the inside out. 

From her friends, 

From her lovers, 

From her Father 

From Everyone. 

Because she knows 

It’s nothing special. 

To be forced 

Hurt 

Used 

Emptied into; 

And then dropped from the heavens 

To land in a dull pile 

With Monday’s trash collection 

Alongside a million other fairytales, 

just like hers: 

Broken, 

Violated, 

Discarded.. 

Without a poem, 

Without a choice, 

Without happily ever afters.

Journal Entry - 12/22/18