Christmas time and want

Christmas is rapidly approaching, well maybe not as rapidly as we think but it will be here before we know it. Luckily for me, I have a majority of presents bought...the wrapping and sending, that's a different story. And I love giving people presents for birthdays and Christmas and Easter and...well hell, I like giving presents to people to see their faces light up (hopefully) when they open a package wrapped as nicely as I can.

And yet...oh you knew there would be an "and yet"....I can't help but think about what *I* want for Christmas and know I won't be getting. Why? Because mostly they are things that are too expensive for people to get me. And without a loving spouse/boyfriend/anyone there that has a good paying job, I'm kinda up the crick.

So what ridiculous things do I want for Christmas that no one has money for? A new car? Nope. I have a car. It's a 93 and runs and I'm thankful for it. A luxurious trip somewhere? Well it would be nice but then I would have to take time off of work and lose money in doing it so...nope. I realized that what I really wanted for a Christmas present, or birthday present for that matter even though my birthday is half a year away, are things I feel I actually need.

A newer computer would be just grand. Mine works (obviously or I wouldn't be posting here), but it's 8 year or so old. That means that the CPU is not as powerful as some of the programs that are out there now so....yeah no games really since my computer can't handle them, and a few programs I do use max out the CPU when I run them. But I doubt anyone is going going to fork out for a computer.

A new microwave would be AWESOME. I have no clue how old the one I inherited is. It works, but I'm starting to worry it's on it's last leg soon. Believe me that it gets a good work out by me a lot of the time. But....probably not something anyone can afford to get me a really good one (I dream of the kind that is also a convection oven as well *droooool*). If I'm really lucky, and can find some way to save money, maybe next year I can find a good sale going on.

Yes I want some sillier items too. An Xbox360 because I want to play the Batman games on it, I'd love to have a blue-ray player since I'm a video nut, and a new vacume cleaner.... the more "in your fucking dreams" items like an actual one bedroom apartment or a new stove/oven for here....but I know that I will get things from people that actually care about me enough to buy me a present. And isn't that enough?

It should be enough to know that my mom will probably send me a few new sweaters (which right now would come in very very handy), and I will get some fun bobbles from friends, and hopefully some Christmas Cards as well. I know we're all hurting when it comes to the pocket book, me included. There are things I would love to do and buy for people, but I just can't. It really IS the thought that counts though. There are a lot of people that just wish that someone would remember them on Christmas. And so I'm trying to stave off the "wants" and accept whatever gift comes my way. Be it cookies, or a card, I know that person cared enough to take the time to think about me. That my friends, equates to love in my books.

And while I don't really have a lot of dosh to throw around, I think that this year there will be the attempt at some Christmas cooking going on here to simply be able to say, "I was thinking of you and love and appreciate you even if we rarely talk or get together. My thoughts and love are with you."

Wondering if I am just selfish

Christmas time is officially here in three days time. Almost December and I have at least had an idea what to get those I am going to give gifts to. Let us hope that I have the money to buy them, and the money to ship some of them. But it makes me think about what I will NOT get this year, or next, or the next from anyone. It is the season to be giving and I try and do that with love and the money I can afford to spend. Hell, a lot of time I get myself in a bit of financial hot water over Christmas trinkets for people. Why? Because I love them and I want to give them something wonderful.

But that little piece of jealousy creeps in every year and it gets harder and harder to ignore it sometimes. I'm not saying I'm not grateful for whatever gift I get from people, but it's a sense of melancholia when I see boyfriends and girlfriends lavish their others. When husbands give wives a new Ipad, and I get a couple of books. Where is the person that is supposed to lavish me with an Xbox 360 that I would never imagined anyone getting me? Well, they aren't there and so I wind up feeling alone and bitter and then selfish.

I've lived for at least 8 years alone now, by myself in a studio apartment. There is no cat. There is no roommate. Just me and the space and my movies to keep me company (and of course my friends who I talk with on the phone). I don't really have room for a Christmas tree, but I'm trying to make room this year because I need that. I need to feel like I'm not outside looking in anymore. But I'm selfish. I know I am to some degree. I crave what I cannot have and it makes me bitter at times. The thoughts of "why not me?" have been constant for a long time now. And I understand why people say "It's enough to drive a man to drink." although I'm too anal to go down that road really. Too obsessed with the fact that I'm the "responsible" one and at the same time dying to not be.

For the majority, all my friends are already in a relationship with someone one, or married. I keep wondering, why not me? Where is mine? And maybe that's why I don't have one, a relationship...too greedy for it. I simply have to have faith that somewhere, the man I'm looking so hard to find is out there. I don't give a damn if we're both poor as church mice. We'd be poor together, and as long as we were/are in love with each other....then we're two against the world instead of just the "friend" who is loved and gets his Christmas presents....but still feels slightly outside no matter how much we care about each other.

I don't know if that's wrong or not. I don't know if I really AM selfish or not for wanting to have someone surprise me with gifts I never imagined. I just know that I always feel a little like the kid looking in at a toy store and knowing that his folks can't afford anything in there. Yeah, I'm the "socks for Christmas" kid in that scenario, but I'll be grateful for the socks anyway. At least I know I was thought of.

2011

It's been over 4 years now since I wrote here. So many things have changed, so much has happened over the course of time. I forgot what it was like to have a place to put my thoughts.

And how odd is it that with so much change, it feels as if nothing has sometimes. I'm still where I was to some degree. Same place, same job, same life almost. The only things that have changed have been silly items like facebooking and twitter. Watching Glee tonight just reminded me how much I want my life to change for the better. How much I want someone to be there next to me, with me. And how much I don't feel like I fit in even with the gay community.

I know I'm not some 20 year old running out there to find life. I feel like those years were stolen from me in a lot of ways along with parts of my youth. And I'm not sure just who the hell I am sometimes anymore. Which "me" am I? Who does the person I'm dealing with want me to be? Who am I supposed to be and is it even really me at some point. I just know that someone out there wants me for me. It's the only thing I have to keep hoping for, that I'll find that person one day. Silly as it sounds, I saw them in a dream and I know they exist somewhere. I just don't know where.

I wish I was 25 again. Wish I could go back and try and make things better for myself. Wish that I could find the capacity to not be so shy and open up and not feel like I'm a dork whenever I meet someone I think is attractive. But that door is shut. I'm 45 and living in a studio apartment which is all I can afford. And that has to be enough for now.

Sure, I still wait for the knight in shining armor. I still want to be swept off my feet. I still want to be able to fall in love with someone and have them fall in love with me. I just don't understand how it all works anymore. I know it can happen, and I am still praying that it does happen. Maybe this coming year. Maybe if I'm good to myself, someone else might come along and see me and decide I am what they want too.

Wednesday and Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's lyrics have always spoken volumes to me. He's written songs that sometimes I think were about my life and soul at times. Happy, sad, wandering, lost....my life. Bowie said in A Song For Robert Zimmerman that Dylan has a voice like "sand and glue"....but I don't care. Bob was there for me when my father died. He was there for me when we had to sell the condo I lived in with my father and I had no idea where I was going to go, or where I was going to live. Bob Dylan is about the only thing I play on guitar with the exception of the one song I ever wrote in my life. Probably the one and only. Bob has been my comfort, and the man that sings out my life.

Everything has a beginning. When it starts it's fresh and shiny and full of the wonders of what could be. And, everything has an ending. It may or may not be shiny and full of the wonder that it started out with, but it hopefully leaves a lasting mark on the Universe somehow. A statement of "I was here. I existed." It just feels like it's the time for this place to come to an end. It won't go out with a whimper, nor a bang, nor tears of either joy or sorrow. It will simply stand as the statement that I was here.

Life has a way of going up and down, sideways at times. Mine is no different from anyone else's in the world. But it's becoming more and more difficult to make myself write here. I may eventually start writing again, but it seems doubtful at the moment. I need to go out and live a non-virtual life, find my path that I feel I have wandered too far away from.

To all the wonderful people who have filled my life with friendship and joy, I am not going to be forgetting any of you.

Bob Dylan says in Like A Rolling Stone

" When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?"

I'm feeling like that rolling stone again...so it's time to roll along a little ways and try and find where I can find that direction home.

So I leave you with a little more from Bob, something that I hope still means something to us all.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

Thank you Jon, and Rey, and Ryan, and Jim, and Albert, and Camilla, and M'lady, and all the rest of you. May the Universe smile on us all and bring us love and light.

As always...

Be safe. Be well. BE PROUD!!! Be LOVED!

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

Tuesday

Costa Rica was pretty amazing...of course I feel like I didn't sleep at all in the last 48 hours since I got back, but hey, how often do you get to have your boss send you to pick friggin coffee on a mountainside?

The people there were amazingly friendly, kinda, polite, nice, and all the other adjectives I can't think of. I was blow away by it. Genuinely nice people were all I seemed to meet except for one guy on the street of San Jose that hassled us for money. There are too many pictures to post.

And otherwise, the world seems to have turned, life has gone on and I have a slightly different outlook on things. I'm hoping that it all continues. Need to push myself again but maybe after tomorrow when I feel more back to the swing of things.

Life can kick ya in the head a couple of times, but sometimes that's a good thing too. Makes you start to think more, realize things that you may not have before, ponder knew questions and new options. Hard for me because I get trapped in routine a lot. Focus too hard on one or two things and forget the other stuff.

What I do know is this, I may be a fool and a hopeless (or hopefull) romantic, but I still hold fast to the concept that love with see you through anything. Sometimes it's hard to remember that. Sometimes it doesn't seem like it will, but it's one of the few things I truly have faith in. Without it, I think I'd fall to complete pieces and would shatter into all the millions of molecules of the universe.

And here's the wackiest part of it all, no matter how bad things seem to get...I realized a long time ago that love is the only truth out there, and as long as you have it...well things seem to turn out ok. Just realized that this afternoon actually. The people that you honestly love and who have that place no one else can take from you heart? They're always there. That's something I have to remember. It was kinda proved to me with a friend of mine and how things worked out between us over almost a decade of friendship now.

So fill up your hearts! Tell your friends how much you love them because ya know what? People need to hear that. Honestly, people need to hear that they are loved, and you'd be surprised at what that one simple act can do for someone.

My list is rather long for folks to say I love you to, and I would feel bad if I left anyone out but I do just want to say that I love you Jon, Mikey, Ryan, Rey, Albert, Scott, Jim, Alden, Camilla, M'lady, Ari, Marko and all my friends. My arms are always open for ya. And if you're name wasn't there it doesn't mean my arms are closed off to you. I hope that I have arms big enough to embrace the world. So go out there and embrace it yourselves!

Be safe. Be well. Be PROUD! Be Loved!

Peter, Paul, and Me

A quick update to all that read this little site. I'm actually going to be gone (unlike the non-existant postings) for a week to the sunny shores of Costa Rica to see how coffee is grown and cultivate, picked and processed before it hit the shop I work for as 50lb bags of green coffee beans.

While I haven't been posting much, the cobwebs are slowly dissipating, new and grander visions of the future are brewing, and life is happening (although sometimes I don't feel like it is).

Doug said in a comment about my last post " Hopeless romantic fool. I love it." Well he's right, as most of you that read here know. I am a hopeless romantic. I do honestly believe that love is a conquering force in this Universe. Thank you to everyone that takes the time to comment here. I may not return them all the time, but they are appreciated and make me smile.

I wrote a little something while waiting for my passport to be processed the other day and I thought I'd post it here. Just a little observational poem while having a smoke, sitting by a statue on the streets of San Francisco. He was a little black bird that called out once as he shot through the intersection through the crossing crowd that day. Funny what will inspire us no?

Brazen! Reckless, incredulous
you dart in front of casual glancers, passers by, streaming metal giants.
A single sound issued forth.
A call? An Alarm? An announcement?
The world seems to care naught for you.
Do you care of the world?
And only perhaps one sees you,
watching as you streak to destinations unknown.
Like through liquid you sail past, gone to whither your whim.
And I alone watch you depart through the ethers ushered by a single call.

I've decided to leave with images lately. Pictures to remind me, and you, that there is love and good stuff out there....now let's go get it!!!




Be safe. Be well. Be PROUD! BE LOVED!!

Dig this....Think Love!

What's on my mind? Love. What else?

I'm not exactly back to writing here yet. Not until I get the cobwebs under control and sort through the boxes that I have left for far too long in the back recesses. May take a while, but it's got to be done. For now though, I simply wanted to send out some love into the universe. I just think that we all could use a little more of it right now. And honestly, what's better than seeing two guys kissing when it looks like they really mean it?

So dig it! THINK LOVE! (hm...maybe I need to put that on a T-shirt)


Be safe. Be well. Be PROUD! Be LOVED!!