****TEAM HERMES RAISES A COUPLE OF HUNDRED BUCKS!!! WRITE ON!!! FEEL FREE TO DONATE STILL BY LINK (WRITE 'IN SUPPORT OF CRAIG HERMES WRITEATHON') OR TEXT 'WRITE' TO 20222 AND $10 BUCKS WILL BE ADDED TO YOUR PHONE BILL. BELOW IS MY ATTEMPT AND PLANNED SPONTANEITY******
2:58pm August 26, 2010826 Valencia Write-a-thon
Hmmmm. What to write, what to write... Funny how the Gemini with verbal diarrhea seems at a loss for words. Maybe I shouldn't have committed to 62,500 words, but I figured, "What the hey? I can do AT LEAST half a day of my Facebook update activity in the name of a noble non-profit..."
So here I sit, canoodling with my broken paw, glad that I have a seemingly credible excuse for slow, awkward one-handed typing. There is something shameful, dark, and incomprehensible about a writer and journalism major who never learned to type. Disturbing and unfathomable--like Britney Spear's success.
My hunt-and-peck has served me well, though, helping me spill my guts and creepy New Age optimism across thousands of pages, blogs, emotions, life situations, continents and near misses with tragedy. But to be a journalist who can't type? Ridiculous.
Okay, back on point... Ooooh. Look over there... something shiny.
Where was I? Sometimes my insatiable curiosity coupled with my hyperactive Gemini-which-is-Mercury-who-is-Hermes-which-is-Gemini quadpolar nature AND a freakish ability to notice everything, EVERYTHING in my path, makes me seem at my worst, a bit like Rain Man, or at best, bit scattered. You see, I languish from/am blessed with global vision. Imagine what fun it was to have this quality during my The Shadow Knows period of a speed dalliance.
[Insert :10 PSA] "Do you love information? Have the ability to anticipate disaster? Try Crystal Meth(TM)... Stay awake for days, seeing how you can fix EVERYTHING but your own situation! 33 percent more feeling like you're falling the Universe, with 200 percent MORE time to stew on it!!! Crystal Meth(TM). Go Nowhere Faster!"
Now back to our regularly scheduled though seriously derailed train-of-thought...
I can't type. Never could. Was just 'splaining to my pal Tom, who is sitting across the table from me also trying to poke the muse with a stick, that I can hunt-and-peck really fast but have never been able to type the 'correct' way. I think it's probably tied to my math anxiety and to the fact that I cannot read music but I can play by ear. Fond childhood memories #103--age of 7 with piano teacher listening to me play 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', a waiting pause, inhaling and saying, "Craig, have you been tested? Are you mildly retarded?"
Perfect question for a shy, pathologically self-defecating people pleaser like me. Probably turned me gay. Stupid hag. No, not really. The hag probably wasn't stupid. Dumb, fatty kid couldn't play. And I REALLY was asked if I was mildly retarded. Couldn't wait to jump ahead four years and learn I couldn't play saxophone either.
What a disturbing story. Thank God I am not able to really think about it as all these awful, noisy children are junking up the pristine writing environment. Why are they HERE? Oh. Nonprofit. For kids.
Totally kidding about the kids. I love the enthusiasm and energy they bring to learning and to life. I am getting a kick at watching the faces of childrenless writers "tut-tut"-ing and looking down their noses disdainfully at the "chaos" of enthusiasm and play, blaming it for their inability to create on demand. Kind of like business class travelers who haven't had kids. "How could you inconvenience me so?!?"
You know, for me, if the muse is whispering in my ear, something like the repetitive drumming of the woman across from me who typed one word in the past hour, it wouldn't really bother me. When I was traveling through India, many times the din was amazing, the humidity and heat way to the far left of oppressive, malaria, HIV and pneumonia thumbwrestling for my attention, but the words, the muse was there. She just stepped up her game a bit and shouted her song. I am grateful for my banshee/harpy muse and her insistence on my spreading her message.
Today she wants me to reiterate my gratitude for the events of yesterday. Through the kind and skillful assistance of Mark Chernev and the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, I was to absolve $60,000 of debt accrued during my three periods of lay off in San Francisco. The crushing stress of trying to remain insured and on meds in our broken healthcare system brought me to the edges of illness, insanity and homelessness. My total debt was medical related. I know many a raised eyebrow is posing as such because they think, "Lots of travel and fundraising..." I paid that out of pocket, cynic eyebrows. With $900 a month COBRA coverage, which was so expensive I couldn't afford my co-pays or quarterly blood draws, I quickly hit a point of no return.
After missing ONE monthly premium, my policy was terminated and had to stop my HIV meds after 13 years of complete compliance. My undetectable viral load spiked to around 750,000 and T-Cells went from moderately low 500 to near AIDS defining 200. So, yeah, bankruptcy on top of deteriorating health, tenuous work and the following disability brought me to the point where I had to realize there were situations that even I, Superflawed Superman, couldn't handle. And that it is not only okay, but actually required me to learn to accept help from those who wish to do so.
Case in point, one week after a particularly stressful week of having Fugee croak on the sidewalk a couple of times and the requisite vet bills, I found myself 8 days away from my next disability check and with only half a tube of Saltines and a stick of butter. On Day Five of greasy saltines, I received an anonymous card with a gift certificate for groceries from Trader Joe's. The only enclosure? A Post-It(R) that read, "Charity is love."
The Universe is a challenging and beautiful place.
The HUGE relief of a tabula rasa credit history affords me the time and attention toward establishing a more balanced life and a more wholistic health approach. Even Fugee's passing, while I miss him dearly, allows me much more flexibility in working and living options. For the first time, probably since leaving Virgin over a decade ago, I feel I can take a more proactive, less reactive approach to creating my future.
You know, I've had a long, fascinating run in the Play of Craig Hermes, Phoenix Boy. Amazing, nonsensical opportunities to create, change, try on philosophies, jobs, personas. As much as I have tried to fit into a niche I've realized I don't fit into any niche, but possess enough of the actor and the curious nature to blend into most. I have had so many near death experiences that death isn't scary to me. I think of it as a fascinating adventure. Would prefer not to croak today, but if I were to look up and see a comet hurtling toward my head, I'd take a bow and say,
"Holy Shit. What a great run!"
So... what's next? Maybe a massage intensive so I can re-up my certification and and have a skill I can barter in bad economies and use as ancillary income if I go back to school. I'm kind of thinking that my next foray will be following Mom's footsteps--no--NOT teaching bellydancing, floating around with milk jugs, or getting gall bladder cancer and dying at 53--but creepy, New Aged mind/body/spirit healing. With my empathic nature, heart connection and Vidal Sassoon-like tenet of "If you don't feel good, I don't feel good", I'd like to help folks and the world remember our intrinsic ability to attain wellness. In our perfect mirrored universe, as I help others attain balance and wellness, I gain it myself. Throw Wounded Healer on the Archetype pile: "WH, meet Phoenix, Chiron, Messenger, Shadow... have fun!"
So here I sit, on the edge of dawn of a new day, actually having the latitude to consider things like going back to school, pursuing my writing, actually becoming the full figured model/porn star I was meant to be. I feel I can breathe freely for the first time in ages.
Colour me, a colourful, complex, human soul, certainly NOT perfect, not ashamed, not regretful for having been dealt a few crap hands, but deeply grateful for having been given any hand at all.
Gratitude survives.
Craig
"D'Ohhh!!!" -Homer J. Simpson, aka FishBulb
