So Much More To Tell You

this will be continues someday...






Don't panic. I still know why I'm here. To say hello. I still want to believe (and hope) that someone will understand and I will share honesty and true love before I go.


A bit of inspiration can go a long long way.


Still looking for and waiting for and creating a life in in song so many songs you never heard because the music was never written anywhere but in my head, never seen, never played, never sung, so much left undone, so much more never even begun.

The Most Important People I've Ever Known

Those I might call the most important people I've ever known are not important in the famous sense, but rather the people who left the biggest impact on me in this life. Where do I begin? For most of this life, the question or thought stream asking who are the most important people I've ever known? would start with Aneone if I was keeping the people narrowed to people I actually knew personally and Harry if I expanded to include anyone who ever lived. Known in the latter case would not include everyone who ever lived (like Galileo had a major impact on me, as did Robin Williams, but I never met them and do not feel I know enough about their lives or personalities or deed beyond what they generally contributed to the world to consider them personal impacts in this sense, even though they did have much personal impact from a far) as I would need to feel a level of legitimate knowledge of the person as a real person to feel I knew them. People who lived too long ago or celebrities in a cloud of mystery lose much of the legitimacy as real people in this sense as stories elaborate and add much fiction to the real person as history is written. The Jesus persona, whoemever he or she might have been (ever consider Jesus never existed?... how about the possibility that Jesus was a woman?... or a transexual?... the power of the sensitivity of the being, fictitious or not, certainly was not in line with the males of the time... but I am digressing already, no doubt), impacted me profoundly as an ideal of giving and sharing and caring and loving even if the actual person never existed. Yes, so maybe this makes sense to you and you share the laugher (or giggle) at the rambling ways of the babbler as another auto-biographical entry begins (there's always hope).

This entry returns to a subtle irreverence and the quiet laughter that perspective brings, which is the magic of writing for me and why I have still not lost myself or hope completely in the cold cruel depressive world in which we live. So where were we?... who are the most important people I've ever known? Really? lol lam sigh. Ok, let's see where this goes.

It (this entry, if it ever gets started lol), may belong in one of the more introductory or auto-bio gardens like the bios or profiles or intros or (to be decided) and images and videos and songs (what music? sigh, somewhere... in this blogging life, yeah yeah yeah) or a million words before you could even begin to know if you really want to be with me much more intimately (but my heart, Aneone, but my heart or not (what?), after all. Sigh, it could all just be bullsugar by the time it gets rolling or completed (if it is ever completed... is anything? I mean, everything can all be gone in the blink of an eye, right?... and what (ever) may be remembered... is the way we were (eek). Perhaps the funda know lol lam laa). Oh lighten up and get real (if you are at all concerned about me... it's only castles burning la la la (once upon a time, or rhyme, after all). So where've you been (hopefully lost in clicking links and reading all about me and my shadow strolling through the written gardens, aye?).

Perhaps we should get started with the this entry?

Aneone was my first uncontrollable (and the most uncontrollable so far) falling in love in this life. Somewhere deep inside I lamented losing her for more than twenty years and it undermined the two longest relationships I've known in this life. Neither of the two, Sammee or Fale, could accept that my first love, Aneone, would always be part of me and welcome in my heart and life anytime because that is the nature of my love, unconditional and eternal and infinite. That internal (however imaginary, but then, isn't the core of falling in love born of a mutual delusion that two beings can somehow become one? Find that on some cereal box, aye?). I wonder sometimes if that perspective simply my way of protecting myself from falling as uncontrollably again? Perhaps, as it did seem to prevent it (maybe... and maybe I'm wrong)... but that's a catch-22 question for if the answer is yes, than my love is a fake shield rather than the precious gift I believe it is (and want it to be).

Did the foundation of the universe just shake a little?

She (Ameone) was the complete package for me. Innocent and vulnerable and untouched by heartbreak, as pure as a new born in her heart and experience. Physically adorable and sensually uninhibited and no one has attracted or ignited libido quite so powerfully since. Hours passed in kisses and embraces and we'd be drenched with perspiration and exhausted when we'd realize day turned into night or night turned into day and we were still kissing in each others arms. No one was ever so willing to lose themselves and all track of time with me like that before or since.

She was a giver, a helper, a pleaser just like me and yet maintained a balance of ego and independence that ultimately brought us to a point where she placed someone else who love me ahead of her and she pushed me away to give the other, her best friend, a chance with me. She saw it as stepping aside, I saw it as giving up on the dream. I cried for days and did nothing else (and I mean nothing else... I did not eat... I did not always walk to the bathroom... I laid in bed and cried as I felt the dream die).

After a week or more, I emerged and did what Aneone wanted, I tried to make a relationship work with her best friend (and my best friend after Aneone too) because that is what Ameone wanted and I would have done anything for her. Shamie was so in love with me it hurt us to see her when Aneone and I were together. I kissed Shamie first, two weeks before I kissed Aneone. Aneone saw that fact with an ethically and morally clarity I don't think my heart, which fell completely for Ameone, will ever fully understood.

I did my best but ultimately was lost without Ameone by my side and since I had no emotional or positive support from family as a child, I had to get away from the situation so I joined the Army and moved across the country. How many times has that story been told? I feel like a cliche. In fact, a friend did the same thing (except in the Navy) a few months before I did. He returned to marry Hideme (who was the girl who shared my first full-on french kiss and only Aneone kissed better) and they lived happily ever after to this day. That was not to be the case for Shamie and me as the love for Aneone never waned no matter how much I tried to fall in love with Shamie. She became my best friend and we had much fun together playing cards and pool and ping pong and all sorts of games and movies and bowling and dinners and activities, but I broke her heart because mine was a shattered pile of splinters and mush.

Suddenly I jump to Jackson. Is she the second most important person I've known in this life? I don't think so, yet she is the most important person in life as I know it today. She pops up at this moment because I am typing on her laptop, a gift she just gave me because mine is dying. For the last fifteen minutes I paused in writing to remember this laptop has music (for the last few months the other one had no sound at all) and I opened her iTunes and am playing a playlist that I made based on the number of plays she played each song. I listen to her music and remember living with her which is a wonderfully bittersweet (cuz I miss her) memory of laughter and tears and challenges and comforts, but most of all, I rejoice in the return of music into my world. There's no thanks that can be enough for this. Five months without TV and four months of no sound on the laptop left me with my CDs and I focused on less than a half dozen CDs and one was played much more than the others. Lenka's self-titled CD from 2008 (or was that 2009?) was the therapy CD for me these last few months and would be high above all the others in number of plays in 2016. Others that helped are old friends (and bookends) included Justin Hayward & John Lodge Blue Jays, The Moody Blues Seventh Sojourn, Elton John's self-titled CD, Harry Chapin Dance Band on the Titanic and others, John Denver Seasons of the Heart, Eagles Hotel California, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and a few others million (ok, not million, but others).

Music is something so very important to both of us (you'll see a bit of that in the links above when you click on them if you haven't already), yet we hardly ever shared it. Too intimate perhaps and she was just not that into getting close to my heart or mind. I am not sure why. She always said that's just the way she is and as for me, for the first time in my life I let it be. I didn't open her up the way I opened others throughout this life. That was my gift to her, to let her be as she wanted to be, even though she hurt and agonized with anxiety at times. Even though I hurt and felt rejected and unworthy of her trust most of the time. I decided this would be the first time I did not "know better" and maybe that was a mistake and maybe it was the right thing to do. I may never know.

Back to the subject (and subjects) at hand. The most important people I've ever known. Harry Chapin comes to mind. Jackson never shared Harry with me. She shared some of her favorites because I would take her to concerts, almost always my treat because I could and she couldn't and giving is one of the most wonderful feelings for me. We went to a lot of concerts. Stage shoes too. Whenever one of her favorites was in town, I'd get the best seats in the house. Usually first three rows, center. I've treated a lot of people to music and shows because I love to go and share and give. Back to Harry, actually, nobody has shared him with me. I suppose he is too intense for everyone I ever met to really experience him the way I experience music. I live the song, singing, feeling, at times acting the parts. These days I am farther from that experience than I've ever been. Remembering there was a time when I would become the song, singing, feeling, being the words... I miss that. I miss sharing me. In my earlier years I could sound so close to many singers it was kind of amazing. Occasionally I got that wow kind of feedback from someone listening, but no one cared. No one ever really paid attention. No one ever nurtured the singer I was so I sang to myself and faded into oblivion as a singer something like Mr. Tanner and that is just one of the killer connections Harry gave me.

Harry Chapin and to a very slightly lesser extent, The Moody Blues, especially Justin Hayward were the most profound music people in this life because their music and their lyrics resonated so clearly and deeply in me. Almost as influential, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Pink Floyd, John Lennon, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Jackson Browne, and to a slightly lesser extent, Jim Croche, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt (and the Eagles), The BeeGees, (and now we get to the point where I can't stop because I will leave an essential music person out {Elvis, The Beatles, The Who... Alanis Morrisette, Carpenters, Sara McLachlin, Jewel, Pink, Brandi Carslile, [Erika's mix is influencing me now, aye?], on and on I would go}, so I'll stop anyway so I can continue the story of the most important people and not divert into the most important music people). Words come before the music for me, so lyricists matter most, but some musicians combine the words with the perfect music and they rise to the top. Some singers interpret songs so well, I melt and they join the rest of the music people who affected me most in this life.

Harry is at the top of the music people and near the top of the most important people in this life for me because he expressed reality in words and made the music pound that reality home. I was at his house once, at least. I never actually met him or saw him in concert, I think. I saw his brother Tom so many times after Harry died and many tribute concerts and I feel like I knew him so well, sometimes I think I must have seen him in concerts at least a few times, but the second half of the seventies was lost in drugs and travel and wandering aimlessly through life. Much of those times are a blur. Harry also lived a life of giving to others and used his music to get his message to people. It was a simple message, a simple question. Why are there hungry people in this world when there is enough food to feed everyone? He founded WHY (World Hunger Year) and his daughter and family continue asking the question and working to end hunger. His manager was so inspired that after Harry died, he (Ken Gragen) was fundamental in producing Live Aid and all the hungerthons since owe a debt of inspiration and gratitude to Harry. I wish I was more involved from the start, but the connections never happened during my aimless wanderings.

The Aneone years were the transition from high school to independent living. The Harry years of partying in college, military service, wandering aimlessly, and then finally taking a job hat would become a career followed. Others important during those years remain important to me and a few even stay in touch on Facebook, but most people do not seem to want to stay connected as I do, alas, with all humility and reality and putting ego aside, being as I am is a great challenge in this world. I still feel the first feelings of physical love I experienced at four years old in the library corner of nursery school. I still feel the first crushes. For me, love never ends and the feelings I feel are always with me, so the people who inspired those feelings remain important to me too and any one of them is welcome to reenter this life and many are welcome to whatever I have in this life. The reality of the daily experience is that is why I am not wealthy, giving makes me happier than wealth or material things or even financial security. Who feels that much, remembers that much, gives that much? I hope you are reading right now.

Others I remember (more than I want to at times because they are out of touch and it hurts to realize people do not want to love and stay close as I do) include Shamie and Hideme and a few others who inspired me to emotional or physical love, or both, but it was not just sexuality or sensuality that made people important to me. Some of the male friends from those years remain important to me. A few connect on Facebook, though not close. Sometimes I wonder if the reason people don't stay in touch is me and I must accept some responsibility for it, but is it just me? A few are lost in that out of touch place people go when contact is lost.

You may have noticed a meandering in the words. I've been distracted by music since I put it on so I am not as focused on the question who are the most important people I've ever known? as I might have been when I started this rambling. I wonder if this will be uploaded in parts or as one long rambling post. Once upon a time, this would be one post and I would have tripled it's length by now, but life and time takes their toll on the mind and I do not concentrate, focus, or explode into words the way I used to. Certainly not for as sustained sessions as I used to call them. Five hundred plus page letters were commonplace until the late 1990s when the user mentioned in the previous entry broke my heart and the camel's back and the horse I rode in on, or something like that. Yes, the first and most profound and perhaps most destructive break was when Aneone said goodbye (I still remember the moments as if they were yesterday), but hope remained as powerful and profound as ever. The second time around was a profound blow and some parts of my heart are still reeling, though the past twenty years of disappointments and betrayals have certainly not helped. Hope hangs on byu a thread at times today. Yet here I am, still hoping.

So do I want to fall in love again? I tell myself I do. I think I do. Maybe I just want someone to fall in love with me and accept me broken with some dead parts in my heart so I am not alone. I know I don't want to be as alone as I am most of the time. Can we fall in love together?

Moving on into the 1980's (does age rule you out if you were born in the eighties? Agism is a profound prejudice in our culture and it has hurt me from both ends of the tape measure of time that humans judge how close two people can get. Even though most people believe we are ageless timeless spiritual beings who live some sort of eternal spiritual life, a few years in this physical world seem to make most humans incompatible shutting out most of the spirits on the planet. It makes no sense to me, but then, neither does the whole religious experience most people seem to experience. The agism and their eternal soul believe are contradictory, but that subject is not popular. I am digressing again) we come to one of the most stable periods in this life.

Sammee shared the decade with me in the same space and same bed and most of the same activities. Sadly, she never got into music or words or running or working out or other things so much a part of me and so important to me and that was such a disappointment because it kept showing me she was not the one and when I'd tell her, it would hurt us both because she called me the love of her life. She never even asked me to sing even though she knew how important that was to me. She was so in love with me and I wonder how much of that was gratitude. I was the first person she ever lived with outside of her parents and she learned all the basic life skills from finances to self-care and challenging herself to give her best to herself (she didn't understand it all until after I left when she started exercising more seriously. I felt she was too dependent on me and neither of us could continue to grow by staying together. I stopped growing musically and creatively as a writer and slipped out of optimal physical shape in those eight years we stayed together.

We had a great place, a huge kitchen where we cooked up great meals, though I did almost all of the cooking. She loved most of my favorites and we loved finding restaurants. We lived very well as I was managing money because money was very important to her and good investments were paying off. We bowled together in leagues and became regulars (I became treasurer and she secretary and there were at least a hundred bowlers in our league and we had over $30,000 in the bank each season). We loved movies and went to movies almost every weekend, usually seeing at least three movies each trip. So we shared enough interests to enjoy our time together. I supported her while she went through school and she did the same for me (though I worked full time all through the time we were together, she was becoming a teacher so she looked for a job, substituted for a term or two, then found the right job in the right school and I saw she was ready to be independent, at least financially). We even bought a house together in Florida (both our names, but my money) because that is where I wanted to move to, but she did not want to leave her mom or the teachers salaries in New York.

When I met her we were working together and I was looking for a new roommate and my heart was still lost in my love for Aneone and my mind was not ready to move on either, so from the start I was clear about our relationship. She fell in love anyway. She had such an innocent pure loving heart and I miss her a lot, but I understand why she stopped keeping in touch once I moved on to another relationship. I left her the house and unfortunately could not afford to keep paying for it and she might not have been able to either. I put $25K cash down on the house and paid most of the first four years at almost $1,000 a month and the mortgage could have been refinanced to be affordable, but I don't know if she choose bankruptcy instead of selling the house. I declared bankruptcy after the next relationship took all I had, and that brings us to Fale.

I fell in love and left all responsibilities and this country behind to follow my heart. That probably hurt Sammee most of all, especially if she couldn't manage the money. I feel terrible now, but I justified it then by telling myself she knew from the start exactly what I wanted from her, a roommate, not a permanent relationship. She also knew I did not want to stay in New York and had the chance to move down here with me and I understand why she didn't, but I did put over $70K into that house and left it all for her... still wish I didn't hurt her.

Fale and I met through words. I believe The Letter Exchange still exists. It connected people who loved to write and who wanted to find pen pals and friends through the written word. I created two similar magazines back then and was sad that Fale did not encourage me to continue or help me with them, but the Fale on paper was very different than the Fale I met in the physical world. On paper, she was my best friend, my cheerleader, my confident, and was interested in everything little thing about me and every little thing I did. She was married and I had no thought of falling in love with her for at least two years of exchanging thousands of pages through the mail. She was one of more than a hundred people with whom I shared frequent correspondence and rose to be one of about five who were immediate responders with volumes of words that spilled into telephone calls. She would tell me about her kids adventures and respond to my rambling philosophies and all the details of the story of my life as if she was a long lost relative who wanted to know everything that went on while she was away. She encouraged me to write more than anyone else in this life. I miss that a lot.

During the last six months of our correspondence she explained some of the darker sides of her life. She was a Canadian citizen married to an American who refused to sign papers that would make her a US citizen because he wanted to maintain control of her. So for ten years (giving birth to three kids and having a fourth older kid from a previous relationship) she had no life outside of taking care of him and the kids and walking to the grocery store a mile away because he refused to give her a car or let her work. I don't know if there was any physical abuse, but he spent a couple of years in a psychiatric institution and stopped working regularly when he got out. I think most of that was true, though I wonder if she was just feeding me a sad story so I would help her out of her situation. She wanted to return to Canada and asked if I would help.

So I picked myself up and moved to Canada. I put everything I owned in storage in New York state because I couldn't bring it across the border (and there it remains {I hope}, 20 years and almost $20K later). I rented an apartment in Toronto just off College St (hello Harry) and looked for a place she and her four kids could live. She sent her kids to visit her mom in Quebec and I picked her up in the states and took her to a three bedroom apartment in a suburb of Toronto. Gratitude, loneliness, physical attraction, whatever it was we stayed together until Canada threw me out (oh, yes, the story is really fun lol - sarcasm drips with pain... I laugh now, but it was the most challenging time of this life so far).

I supported the six of us (and my dog, Happy) until she found a job there. I burned through all my savings and borrowed more to keep us comfortable (I had to buy new clothes for everyone as she left everything behind and I brought most household stuff up from storage). After about a year and a half I was tapped out, but she was earning enough to keep us alive as long as we shopped thrift stores and did not spend a whole lot. It was a dream come true for me because I had kids and I love kids and I finally had a whole family. I was daddy home with the youngest until she started school, taking the kids to school, doctors, and everywhere else while she worked. They loved me and my dog and I loved them and I thought we would be together for the rest of our lives.

Then I got a ticket while driving and the government stepped in. My driver's license had expired. Who thought of these things, I was in love and busy every day taking care of a family. I realized I no longer had a permanent address in the US and that made me an illegal in Canada. A departure order is not a deportation, it is a friendly way of saying get out and don't come back unless you do it right, that is, legally. They told me just fly back to the states and come back as a visitor. They lied. So I flew back to the states and then was stopped trying to get back into Canada. Turns out what they meant by "legally" was given them $50K. Yes, all I had to do was deposit $50,000 in a Canadian bank and pay a few thousand more in immigration fees and I would be allowed back in.

At that point I had $4 and the clothes on my back. Sometimes I wonder if Fale wanted it that way. She said she didn't. She said she'd come down to the states and marry me so I could move to Canada legally and become a citizen through marriage. She said that for more than a year... or was that more than two years?... or longer? It's a bit of a blur because I was living on the streets at first and then, with a loan from some disapproving family, I bought a cheap station wagon to live in while I sent every penny I could borrow or earn up to Fale and the kids. I left my dog up there and she wouldn't come to visit. I left my car and expensive stuff up there that they used. I still wonder how many emergencies were made up just to keep me emotionally chained to sending her more money. After a couple of years of promises to meet me at the bus station, she disappeared. Then a male voice answered the phone, told me Fale was busy giving him a blow job and I should fuck off.

I pretty much gave up on life for a while. Some dear people took me in for a few months and I just wandered around aimlessly. I worked 80-100 hours a week in Buffalo, NY sending all my money to her until that phone call and her phone was disconnected. I just stayed in Buffalo working until finally I felt I saved enough to started life again in Orlando. I still stumbled around aimlessly for another year before going back to work at the bottom of the totem poll because I wanted a job with no responsibilities where I could care about people. I became a psych tech in a psych hospital. I probably really wanted a bed there.

Fale contacted me a few times over the years, the first few times asking for money. The last time it was just to talk and sort of show she cared. She encouraged me to write. She read through my words and created a couple of blogs for selections of my writings she really liked. Our love for words lead us to create a few joint private blogs and a public blog or two we share online. That went on for years, then she disappeared again.

So Sammee and Fale rank high on the who are the most important people I've ever known? list for different reasons and both are beautiful and painful memories and I wish we had peaceful caring honest relationships today because I loved them both. I wish the kids knew I still love them unconditionally. I wish a lot, but people seem more comfortable breaking ties and losing contact than letting love rise above any mistakes or pains.

At least none of my former loves are vindictive, I think.

Now what? There are others, but I think it is time for a break. Curly's router needs to be taken into the store for exchange and I've got a lunch date with Jane and then have softball, a double header, this evening and I only got two or three hours sleep last night. Maybe I'll nap this afternoon. I just drank a Dew Kickstart with a cherry italian ices in it instead of ice cubes and feel somewhat wired (overlapping the fatigue) so I shall pick this body up and get on with the day.

Maybe I'll get back on the internet soon and get some of the dozens of entries uploaded and the blogs will seem like I've never been gone, aye? Like you are waiting for that with baited breath (narf). Well, if you are the one, I still hope you are. :)