Keeping Hope Alive

On MSNBC this morning, there was a photographer reporting from the trenches of Ike.  She was doing a phone report as they played a reel of her pictures.  Of COURSE they were all terribly sad shots of desperate scenarios.  Heart breaking to behold, especially in the peace of my downtown L.A. apartment.  

Among the pictures was a family carrying their most important belongings, being ushered to a safer place to stay while relief efforts were being deployed (well... what relief is being offered.  It hurts to even imagine the agony of what relief they're NOT getting at this point).  Incredibly, among the belongings being carried (so, so few) was a huge, framed picture of Tupac.  The boy carrying it was holding it in front of him, using two hands, resting it against his hips.  This awkward and seemingly ridiculous item was one of the few things he grabbed for his immediate survival.  

I felt very moved by that.  The fact that a simple picture of an artist... someone who makes music this person is surely empowered by, was this boy's necissity.  THAT'S HOW MUCH Tupac- a rapper- means to this person.  THAT'S HOW MUCH art is capable of changing a person on the rawest level.  Enough to influence their will to survive.

Now- on a side note, I am a Tupac WORSHIPER.  I think he's one of the most brilliant rappers who ever lived.  Some of the choices he makes in his lyrics and melodies are almost mystifying.  It's not Tupac I'm focusing on, here.  It's how much art can change you.  Change you to the point at which just a PICTURE of the artist you love, inspires you to survive.  Literally survive.

Slightly Mystified

I quickly had to drop this post- I turned on my TV this morning to find Scooby Doo, on Cartoon Network.  The Gang was in the midst of a crazy caper... scrambling after ghosts of some sort or running around after sandwiches.  So imagine my surprise when I realized the song they were montaging (not a word) over was I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You, by none other than The Ramones.

WHO was in charge of procuring the music for that episode!?  And HOW does Scooby Doo, at THIS POINT, have that kind of budget?

Love it.

Gratitude

I was deeply- yes, deeply touched to find that a sweet, new friend, had read my blog with fever.  I literally type this blog and imagine it never being seen.  Mostly I type for posterity, or to get the poison out.  It works most of the time.

Reading back over some of the rawest posts I've made, I feel tremendous gratitude.  The darkest of days are SO CLOSE behind and yet I feel unimaginably different, today.  Therapy never stops helping.  It literally never stops helping.  Scarily, I didn't even... couldn't even bring myself to type during the darkest, pitch-blackest times.  My fingers passing over keys, felt like lifting little lead pipes.  Exhausting to imagine doing and quite impossible to do.  Thank you God for the change in me.  Thank you God for relief.

I didn't deal with the passing of my mother.  I pushed it all under a mountain of starvation (literally) and chose to burn my agony in the furnace of being forever hungry.  Again, literally, forever hungry.  I stopped putting food in my mouth and made fire.  A fire into which I pushed all things unbearable.  Immolated they became, in the name of psyche-survival.  It was fine.  I needed to deal in that manner.  I'll post, some day, about my thinness. 

I guess this is a post of thanks.  Thanks to God for being a guide for me.  Thanks to my therapist for following her heart (career wise) and then saving mine.  Thanks to sweet friends who care to pass by and ingest these words.  And thanks to the Universe for guiding me through the power of instinct.  Everything feels so much right-er these days.  

I am so lucky... so lucky.