Beware: Rhapsody

Hey All,
I have a pretty solid feeling that my computer will bite the dust (again) soon, and so this post may be my last for a while. I came home from a lovely and comparatively mellow New Years in Santa Cruz and find the hard drive (or as I like to say "detached life-support system") is squalling and buzzing in a very uncomputerlike way.



I start this year with unpoetic thoughts of actually MAKING A LIVING in the coming year instead of scraping by on the skin of my teeth, eating one meal a day, all that normal Kai stuff. Of course the green land of New Zealand (where is Old Zealand?) beckons as well, I am going to meet Mykle there when he gets off the ice at the end of February, although in all rationality I should not go, because I have NO money and no chance to save any. What would I do if I stayed home though? Continue working 5 days a week as I do now, and pinching pennies and rationing burritos? I don't know. Opportunity knocks, I throw caution to the winds and answer. And then of course, there is my sweetheart, and a new land to explore/starve in.

On Sunday night I had the freedom of a borrowed car and the empty streets of my hometown after an ass-kicking storm had flooded everything and drove everyone indoors. I drove to the end of Seacliff and parked out on the cliff above the swollen fetid rivermouth, which in the foggy rainy night looked glistening black and beautiful. The Ocean roared and the Boardwalk was a deserted surreal shadowland of stilled ferris wheels and twisting silohuetted coaster tracks. It was so heartbreakingly beautiful to feel the rain on my face, smell that fecund ocean, the velvet wet night, everything. Every new year, new fall, birthday...all of these seeming inconsequential dates become dear to me because of this remarkable thing I have been blessed to call my life. Every milestone is the opportunity to look forward to something new, some new change. So much heartbreak and so many ghosts surround me, especially in that coastal town (that they forgot to bomb), that it feels physically intense, overwhelming,... but part of that intensity is the feeling of all of the loved ones I have, and the ornate magical life I lead and all of that other hippie shit;)

I'm just so goddamn lucky. I feel compelled to try to make resolutions, but they are always the same (eat healthier, get in shape, do more art, find a hidden extra 4 hours in the day just for you....)and I never keep them anyway. I'd like to take stock of my life and write down failures and accomplishments, but I am afraid to, because I feel like I'm keeping score. I like the mystery and worlds inside me to not be reduced to that, and instead to be reduced only to a feeling I had while standing on pounded sandstone cliffs over the ocean late at night, watching the river roar out into the blackness beside an empty amusement park, all alone. Looking up at the sky and thinking that I have lived enough. Looking out at the grey stormy horizon, blowing kisses out at the sea, and thinking I can live a little more too. That would be ok with me. I am looking forward to that.