As i was coming back and forth inside moving plants an while I was thinking with my hands in the dirt and throwing the tennis ball for Waffles to chase, I kept adding more deaths this year to that list. I did say that I knew i was forgetting people while writing up that initial post while dming with the 18 year old checking in on her after they put their 12.5 year old dog down today and trying to make plans for the week to help her through the first part of the silences without their family dog she's had since she was 6, back when he was a small puppy. Nobody has it easy living through those silences after someone you love dies. It's just hard. Fucking hard. It always is. But that doesn't mean I can't help the bonus little sister unrelated to me during her daytime hours, y'know? I asked her how she wants to spend her week -- home with her cat and her rat while they navigate the dog's absence, at my place surrounded by all the books and art and snuggling with Spock and Waffles and I can lay a fire and make tea, or going to the zoo to go see Bo and Berit (our polar bears at our zoo here in Madison) and all the other big fur babies. And she said all of the above. So we'll make plans for all of the above this week. I also told her that this is Thanksgiving week which means this is the week I put up the snowflakes and decorations at work and put up my tree at home unpack all the ornaments etc (her family are Jehovah's Witnesses and my policy with her growing up was that it was always up to her whatever she wanted to believe because I see spirituality as between the individual and the Divine however they define that, but also while she was minor living under her parents roof she had to at least respect their religion/rules regardless what she believed for herself and that I would limit teaching her energy work with her gifts to what she needed to know to have strong defenses until she turned 18 could decide for herself if she wants to learn more.) So I asked her if she wanted to help me with decorations at mcw and at my flat like when she was a kid or should I do it without her again this year like I have the last several years and she said she wanted to help with it. So I'll wait and do both with her, and unless you want it all to be a surprise it's more fun to do the holiday decorations with others than by yourself anyway.
But anyway. that first list was incomplete. So I added to it. And, the thing is, it's JUST a list of people and animals I have personally met and loved and who died this year. Not the list of people I haven't met whose deaths have made this a hard year on people I care about.
Even George Winston who I added later after remembering that one while pulling the golden thyme to see how deep the roots for what pot to put them in, I met him and talked to him at shows before he started getting so sick he couldn't see people so he pre-signed all the posters for sale before each show -- the posters that like the CDs he sold at the shows were all partnering with a local food shelter who received every single dollar of every single sale because he had enough and more than enough for his needs. (He was just such a kind man.... weird and brilliant, but above all else so kind...) That was before we even realized that my friend Morgan's dad who died of a heart attack had been one of George's closest friends. but that is another story and a private one. But like, I was just talking to my sparrow grandma last week after getting her home following (finally) getting her crown replacement in and we were talking about dogs and cats and personalities. And because my grandma was a voice and piano teacher as well as a commercial singer for radio ads in the 50s/60s before she married, I brought up about Spock loving piano music above anything and everything else and how he'll lay on the piano bench and tap the keys to ask that someone play for him and how even if you put a recording on instead of plunking something out right then because you're rusty and can't remember anything except whatever random melodies/ditties come out of your fingers, the cat is just happy to have ANY piano music. And then she was like, "Isn't he the one who has a favorite composer?" And I told her that the cat does and that it's George Winston who sadly died this year and that I was lucky enough to get to TELL George that he was my cat's favorite music and how he lit up in delight and told me that is the single best compliment anyone could give him because he loves cats and asked if i had any pictures on my phone so he could have a mental image of Spock who loves his music. So I showed him pictures of my cat and told him stories before he went back to his green room for the rest of his intermission break and ever after, every time he saw me in the audience if I was close enough for him to see, he would light up and say, "You're Spock's owner!" and I would grin and tell him, "Yep! Spock is doing well and sends his love and you're still his favorite! If I could have smuggled him in so he could hear you live and you could meet him, I would have." (George did Zoom a concert for my cat once, but that's another story. And not one I want to share here right now.) Anyway, i wish that I had gotten on video the way that his delight hearing he was my cat's favorite music lit him up with so much joy.... It was so beautiful... And that was something my grandma kept coming back to with the story, how wonderful it was that I GOT to tell him that, that I could give him that joy before he died or got too sick to remember, as just a small repayment for all of the joy that all his songs have brought me over the years of my life. And George Winston remains the thing most commonly played at home, even though right after I told Spock that George Winston had died and so there would never be any new songs of his that Audrey never got to hear, Spock started yowling and wouldn't stop til he went and curled up with the stuffed polar bear that I put Audrey's second jersey on (the one she wasn't buried in.) And then for a while, Spock would vacillate between his normal purring joy snuggles and then wandering about kitten mewing searching the whole apartment whenever I put on George Winston. But now whenever I put it one, Spock is back to cuddly purring love and gratitude the music IS even though the composer's soul has moved on.
I think sometimes we forget how much joy and love we can gift into the lives of those who have brightened our lives and how little it costs us to do so -- even if at most it's an acquaintanceship built on profound admiration and remembering the quirky man loves cats so he might like to hear the story.... I mean, honestly, I was lucky in that we were sitting in the second row and I was one of the few who stayed put during intermission and i was reading looked up as he came back to grab his tea he had left and I smiled and he told me "thank you for coming tonight and loving the songs." so i took the opportunity to tell him he's always been one of my favorites and to tell him the story of my cat's love for him because I knew how much George loved cats. And that's how it happened. Right place right time.
*sigh* I am grateful I got to tell him that though and to get to see his very real joy in finding out a cat loved his music best of all music. And that i could give him that before the cancer got so much worse.... And my gran fixated on how wonderful a gift it was that I got to tell him that and gift him that bit of joy in return for all the joy his music has brought into my life.
Anyway, my point is. It's been a fucking hard year of brutally hard losses and grief and deaths. At least among me and my family/friends. And it's not over yet....
In fall of 22, I started writing 24 on everything I put the date on. And every time people called me on it they would laugh at me because apparently most people wait til the new year and then keep writing the PREVIOUS year that's past and it was a very weird only me thing to do to want to mess up the date by skipping ahead like that... And I would get so serious and my eyes would get sad and my shine would dim and I would just say, "the best of this year is past and 2023 is going to be a brutally hard year. Necessary, but HARD. I'd just like us to be on the other side of it, y'know?" Which, coming from the mouth of a precog who regularly plays Cassandra is a fucking load to lay on people who know about that particular gift of mine. But I couldn't just laugh at me for it, because I knew why I was doing it and even if I didn't tell them what I had seen and what I couldn't stop even with my own sweet dog's life force ebbing, I couldn't bring myself to laugh at me for it because I knew why I was wanting to skip over 2023 and have it be 2024 already....
But. And I'm not saying it balances out the losses of the year. But the thing in me that fails at pessimism every time I try it and screams defiance at whatever tries to beat me because it can kill but can never bend my will and the soul light that shines in wonder that a beautiful thing IS despite all the things tried to destroy it... That part of me, it's starting to rise up from the ashes of the hollows that I have spent most of this year in since Audrey died on the Aquarius new moon, and that part of me is rising up saying, 'but let's make something beautiful and wonderful and new with what remains of this year. This year has taken and taken and taken, and damnit now it's time for it to give something irreplaceable and new that never could have been if not for having gone through what 2023 has been. I want something good and bright that can exist NOW and couldn't have with where things were if we had just skipped over 2023 like the cowardly part of me that didn't want to face what was coming wanted to pretend we could." I never see the happy surprises coming, it's a blind spot of my own making on my precogs and gift of prophecy -- because precogging a happy surprise just destroys the magic for me and for whoever was trying to make it happen. So before the year is out, I want some fucking bright magickal happy surprise to be born into this world that can keep growing shining light and love and goodness into the future so that I can go, "Okay but 2023 was worth going through because it gave us this. Mostly it sucked and took a lot away, but without going through it we wouldn't have this."
Maybe I'm asking for too much in the remaining month and a half (especially with me being at my sister's in Seattle area for two of those six weeks) but I don't think I am. Because I don't precog my own happy surprises and even if it happened in the last hour of the last day of the last month of this year, it would be enough and more than enough.
P. S. 11:11pm update: I didn't say anything about the email from Delta Rae on Thursday. O I saw it, it came in from their email list and the kickstarter email list, so twice over I got the email. And I read it, well them, but they were nearly identical so it. I didn't watch the video -- why bother? In the past any video links have led to their Instagram post which if I click on it when logged in to either my insta (like on my phone) or my facebook account (which is linked to my insta) tells me that there's nothing there, that the video and the account doesn't exist because that's what happens when you're blocked by an instagram account and that happening on the official band account really fucked over anything or anybody that shares to their instagram account and then that just gets me mad because it reminds me it hurts and is unfair and I didn't do anything to deserve it other than be honest that I was sad I'd likely never see Hands Dirty live, which I had LOVED when the single was released, due to country music played at shows being so painful to my color-timbre synesthesia that it would stop me attending future shows. (This was after having attended the Q106 holiday show at the Majestic to see them, and several other artists at that showcase had pitchy vocals that were so painful off key on the twangs that they caused me flinching nerve pain from how my synesthesia experienced those vocalists. So I was speaking from my own personal experience as a direct result of the choices to go country radio in that statement of factual truth speaking where I was at. Which is what got me blocked, for giving the girls honesty they didn't want to hear.) Anyway. I saw no point in even bothering to click on the video update to even consider watching it given the history of their video links always leading to the band's instagram account.
But I did read the emails, since they came to me and thus didn't violate anyone's boundaries or me seeking out further or renewed contact. I don't have a key for behind the door, I never have, they developed it after the point they were their own management but still refused to even acknowledge or discuss me being blocked on the band's account no matter who I tried to contact about it publicly or privately. So Behind the Door has never been a thing I have ever taken any part in. And as such, it is unlikely I will ever have the opportunity to listen to most of the songs on Never Lost. I just won't. Because I will never spend another penny on the band as long as I am blocked on their instagram account not welcome as their fan. If it weren't for needing to clean up my responsibility surrounding the Minneapolis based entity that had left hooks in the girls, I wouldn't have showed up at the Madison show in April of this year for the Return of the Witch tour, as full circle closure as it was to see them for a last time at High Noon which is where I first saw a full show when 105.5 brought them in back in 2013 after the single release of If I loved You (not first time I saw them perform, that was randomly hurrying down a path to meet friends at Milwaukee Summerfest like 11 years ago and I had no idea who they were but they stopped me in my tracks to listen to them sing Hey, Hey, Hey before I took off back down the path to the stage I was already late to.) But arbitrary boundaries of the band not desiring to exist to me created the instant I was blocked on the band's official instagram account don't outweigh my responsibilities about cleaning up the loose ends and damage created by the unincarnated entity from Minneapolis after I dealt with the entity itself. So I went to the High Noon Saloon show in April, even though it meant spending money on the tickets.
So anyway, the rest of the album given it's only Behind the Door, I don't expect I will ever listen to it. But the single, since it arrived in my own inbox with a link that I could access, that I consider included from my Kickstarter support when I had hope that them going independent and new management meant things could get cleaned up and the past was a mistake. That didn't happen, but still I paid into the Kickstarter on good faith of that hope so I consider anything gifted to Kickstarter backers as part of what I helped support.
I didn't listen to the song Give Her What She Wants yesterday -- I wasn't in the right head space or heart space for that especially as I got more and more news yesterday. But after I got back inside from taking care of the gardening stuff and made some dinner, I listened to the song tonight.
It's beautiful and I loved it. Thank you for recording it and sharing it and making sure it got to me. That wasn't the easiest at this juncture to get me to hear it, all things considered. But I am very grateful that it did make it to me and I heard it tonight.
I don't know what all I think/feel from it and all the ripples inside me, but I know it's beautiful and I loved it and it made my heart happy and I REALLY want to believe it true and that there's a way through to get from here to the promise in it. I don't see it from what I can see but that doesn't mean there isn't a way -- just means i can't see it from my subjective perspective where I am looking at it.
But I do love the song and it's beautiful and it makes my heart sing happiness and I'm very grateful that it did reach me and I did choose to listen to it tonight.
And I don't know any of the rest or have answers -- but I know that all those things are true. Or at least, if not objective truth with a capital T, it's still my truth and true about me and my heart.
[Post Title: Lyrics to the song Airplanes by B.o.B. featuring Hayley Williams.]
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