Ganesha Puja

Amethyst cave heals the soul.

From Darkness to Light.

It will be hard to do justice to the experience of my participation in The Overnight, this Saturday and Sunday. It was an extraordinarily moving event, at times somber, mournful, joyous, hopeful, and ALWAYS inspiring.

As almost 1,200 people walked and 170 people crewed from sundown on Saturday evening until a beautiful dawn on Sunday, they covered 18 miles of hilly San Francisco terrain, raising over $1.7 million for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s mission of raising funds and awareness for suicide prevention.

As you all so patiently tolerate my emails and fundraising appeals, you know that I’ve done my share of fundraising. Never have I received such personal or touching responses to something I’ve participated in. People, who have personally struggled with suicidal notions, lost family, friends, lovers. I received a note from a stranger who received my email about the event and said that they had ideated suicide that very night, but read my email, found out about AFSP and the resources they offer, and they decided to seek help.

We hold SUCH power as people, our passions, our words, we don’t realize how we affect those around us. By the grace of God, my email made it in to the right inbox at the right hour, and I am so thankful that a person found hope rekindled by an email.

This is a powerful subject, with much stigma attached. One of my friends who joyously supported my AIDS/LifeCycle journey asked me to stop emailing (fundraising and personally) after the AFSP appeal—I must have crossed a line in some personal history. It certainly was not my intention. I apologized for making my friend feel uncomfortable, but I would not apologize for my effort or my appeal.

I will not undersell you or say no for you around my efforts. I certainly don’t expect donations when I email about my participation—I’m simply spreading the word. Awareness is as important if not more so than funds raised.

One element of the Overnight included colored Mardi Gras beads worn by participants & crew. White symbolized a child lost to suicide, red symbolized a spouse, other colors meant siblings, parents, close friends or other family members, green meant a personal struggle with suicide or depression, and blue meant one was supporter of the cause.

People were wearing too many beads.

Todd on my crew wore white beads for his fifteen year-old son who took his life three months earlier. Todd related the whole experience. He chose action over the black hole of despair. He was a strong, wonderful soul. My friend Donna wore purple for her boyfriend Danny who took his life twenty years earlier. Mara, also on my team, lost her boyfriend and a best friend.

I wore three purple strands, for Alex, Jesse, and my grandfather, John Tewksbury. I wore blue to symbolize support. And I wore green to show my own personal struggle back when I was twelve.

Stigma still surrounds suicide. My mom was told her dad had walking pneumonia and wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral. She didn’t find out till she was older.

I’m still not sure if Scott my brother knew about my considering suicide when I was younger (did ya Scott, huh, huh??). But I was a prime candidate, depressed, with a family history of depression leading to suicide, grieving for a lost pet, and being ‘different’ than everyone else—an all-too-common situation for gay/lesbian & questioning youth. I didn’t know how to stop the hurting. Luckily, the enormous love of and for my family got me through this dark period.

To be honest, it was quite liberating and a little terrifying wearing the green beads showing personal struggle. I know it shocked the bloomers off quite a few of you when I alluded to this in my last email. I know you’re tough, though, and you’re used to my over-personal, heart-on-my-sleeves missives. You will always get honesty from me, even when it’s less-than-pretty.

There is no shame in honesty or acknowledging the entire person that you are, even the dark turns and less savory moments. Everything that has come before makes us who we are today. The person reading this email, and the person typing this → ‘e’.

I have said this in regard to HIV and I say it again here. There is NO SHAME IN A DISEASE. We must talk about these issues if they are to be changed. Suicide is not weakness, selfishness, an inability to pull one’s self up by their bootstraps, or get it together.

In 90 per cent of suicides, there is a diagnosable though not necessarily diagnosed mental illness—depression, bi polar or other mood disorder. Suicide is the terminal outcome of these disorders.

One thing that was clear is people who have experienced such devastating loss want to talk about it, their struggle, their grief.

There was talk about people belonging to a club they wouldn’t want their worst enemy to have to join. There was common sense of compassion, shared understanding and a chance to begin healing. In commonality there was peace and hope.

Okay, back to the walk. Two moments pop out at me.

When I was directing traffic at California and Divisadero, I had a slightly inebriated woman (being kind here) spill out of Soulstice bar, saunter up to me and say,

“Are you for real? This whole hot, crossing guard get up? Is this a ‘Jackass’ episode?”

I told her it was and that she should smile at the mailbox as it was a hidden camera. She may still be there…

Another occurrence at the same corner, was when a gentleman of maybe sixty came up to me and said,

“Excuse me, may I ask you a question? What’s this for?”

I explained the walk and its mission.

He said, “I live across the street and I was upstairs in my pajamas playing my piano when I heard all the commotion and you telling people to walk safely and to hydrate. I had to put on my clothes and come see what this was all about.”

At that, he turned his coat jacket pocket inside out and gave me the $1.31 that was in there.

“It’s all I have; please take it.”

Awareness. It’s a beautiful thing.

So, my friends, that was my experience of a journey out of the darkness and into a new dawn of hope.

Thank you for supporting my efforts, by donating, by wishing me well, by reading my email and not sicking the hounds on me…

I am grateful for all parts of this grand adventure.

I’ve said it before, and I say it again,

Namaste.

I honor the God I you.

Love Craig

http://www.theovernight.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=extranet.personalpage&confirmid=10006388

hermes reveals his wings

god of swiftness, hermes dons his wings

new work.

it's strange. I wanted to get my hermes touched up before I left for the East Coast. Miah from Braindrops did a great job.

But I have always looked at my tattoos as spiritual in nature, not as "come-fuck-me" tattoos like the big tribal work. Nothing wrong with those, it's just I wasn't using my ink as a lure.

*unfair statement. Many people with tribal work are doing it for the same spiritual reasons. What a jerk I can be, jumping to assumptions. for shame. somebody shove me off my rickety soapbox*

It was weird being hooted at (three times) walking in the Mission with my new tattoos. Not used to that.

Flattering of a sort. Just not the sort I was looking for.

Ah well.

sign me
HermesAlchemist
trying not to slum in the lower chakras

companion.

what a pooch.
unconditional.

The Power Of Words. The Power of Now.

“Words have alchemical power. When we speak, we are conducting an alchemical ceremony.” ~Carolyn Myss

I have always had a comfortable relationship with my written words. I could always clearly express my heart when my strongly ingrained shyness would prevent me from speaking what would so easily flow from the heart and mind onto the page.

Those in my past have had a lot of ‘hit-and-run’ heavy information from me. A carefully left note. A specifically timed email. All, heavy with emotion, left to sit in the lap of the recipient like a 200 pound lapdog. All feelings and love, crushing weight, often stinky and having a certain cowardice.

Cowardice?

Yeah. Because I did not have the gumption to stick around and witness or help explain these power missives. I was a yellow-bellied chicken. (Please note, no disrespect is intended toward my yellow bellied chicken friends. Last thing I need is the Yellow Bellied Chicken Anti-Defamation League clucking up my tree…)

So I have made a pact with myself here forward to dig my heals in and stick around to see how the information hits. To say it in person. With spoken words. One of the keen benefits of being unique (eccentric, a weirdo, perhaps?) is that you develop a comfort in your choices—less fearful of anticipated reaction.

And you know what? It’s great to be there as an active participant in the experience of shared clarity. I have had several astonishing outpourings of heart to wonderful effect. Who’d a thunk?

As many of you have noted, I have gone through a serious, intense 10-year period of introspection since I first found out I was positive. India was like a decade of talk therapy, but with just myself, my Self, and my cyberjournal. Throw yourself into a culture you don’t understand, one that has 500 dialects, and it makes the chaos of what’s eddying around in your own squash seem kind of quaint by comparison.

As I turned an unblinking eye toward the patterns of dysfunction and blockages in my personal and spiritual growth, I gained a better sense of humor, humanity, compassion and understanding of the human condition and my part within that divine play.

And as I started to routinely make double footed leaps of faith into the void, I grew more fearless, less attached to outcome, more trusting, more grateful.

Before each of these leaps, I experienced a period of intense stomach churning, nauseating energy rolling around in my gut, similar to the “butterflies” I would get before performing.

I’ve come to understand that this is my inner knowing or earthy gut feeling, which connects to the cerebral Gemini conceptual/imaginative vortex. It’s like my second chakra pushes up the gut knowing or energy into my heart where I trust the intuition and the clarity and comfort of expressed feeling.

The place where I’ve always had a logjam of sorts was between the heart and the throat. Instead of trying to blast it open with New Age dynamite, I stepped back, observed what was going on, and got ever closer to my Homer Simpson “D’Ohhh!” epiphany where suddenly you just all make sense to yourself.

I remember the agony and fear I went through around anticipated reaction to people finding out I was gay. Funny thing, they all knew before I did, and nobody really cared—just wanted me to be happy. The doom and gloom of ‘what if?” proved an twenty year waste of time thanks to my beautiful friends & family.

I remember almost throwing up at my first audition, petrified that I wouldn’t be liked (imagine the horror for a people pleaser!), and instead, I leapt and was greatly appreciated and got the lead role.

My first AIDS ride. Unthinkable. Wasn’t athletic, wasn’t in shape. Again, almost signed the registration form with gastric juice. Leapt and soared. These rides transformed my life.

Quitting my job at Virgin and jeopardizing my insurance at a time when I was on 12,000 dollars a year worth of meds, to throw myself into a yearlong traipse through the Subcontinent petrie dish of disease, devotion, overpopulation and solitude—surviving malaria and pneumonia. Emerged healthier, mind/body/spirit.

Moving to San Francisco without a job or many resources. Upping my fundraising ante to doing three vaccine rides in a year. A marathon and a Kilimanjaro climb the next.

Facing shadow exploration, depression and drug abuse—to emerge more hopeful, more thankful, more centered.

So how would I challenge myself now? The Alchemist speaks. By uttering it, it is made real. And I am not afraid, just excited.

I say this feeling the familiar gut rolling up through the chakras to the heart past the throat into the mind and out the top of the noggin—and I say, unafraid, assured of the action, detached from the outcome.

In August I will be leaving California to return to the East Coast, to be near family, to grow a life in New York, to continue to be challenged personally, professionally, spiritually.

Why leave San Francisco? Well, for six years, I have been laid off from three jobs I’ve loved, been unemployed or when working, dreadfully underemployed. It wasn’t the right market for my skillset, my passion or my person, but was exactly the right place for the difficult period of introspection and growth that I needed to get past my blockages.

I had to finally ask myself, “Why are you trying to make a river flow uphill? Ain’t natural.”

So I go with a new flow, knowing that I can make no wrong choice, knowing that one cannot stray from his path. The lessons emerge where they will.

So I begin a new chapter, a new adventure, ready to gratefully receive abundance, love, balance, health and peace. Growing stronger not by donning armor but by removing it, becoming more open, more tender. Less fearful, ready for the experience, the knowledge.

So, that’s Hermes’ new chapter, emerging from a voyage through the underworld, ready to embrace the light.

And these are my words of actualization, the power of now.

Alchemy begins anew, so do I.

Grateful.

Amen.

Remember.

“Remember for just one minute of the day, it would be best to try looking upon yourself more as God does, for She knows your true royal nature.”
~Hafiz of Persia