...drove back in safely from Palm Springs yesterday and back in to the maddening clutches of the business and a hectic-life-as-usual/unusual. A huge monsoon played havoc with Phoenix last night and my yard calls out to the three neglected hounds - "bath in me, roll in me, roll to the back door and then through - there is a carpet calling your names", I finally gave in and resolved to tear out every inch of carpet in my home and lay tile and wood floors before the winter.

So as for the anniversary of HERO's death, my 35th birthday and my trip to Palm Springs - I guess everything was better/worse and worse/better in varying degrees at different and vascilating moments. The weather was horrible. Palm Springs had it's own difficulty with monsoons for the first two days, the days I most need to be out-of-my-own-mind...I did my best, watched movies in the hotel room, reading half-heartedly staring out the casita window at the dark skies and empty pool. I ended up staying Sunday night since it was the first day that afforded me a day to get the much needed sun and pool time that I had been planning on.

In a way it had been perfect, I wasn't entirely ready to just lay around laughing and pretending every was ok. When I returned though there was a difference, it seemd like ages had past since I had been home; those things that were haunting me when I left HERO, my birthday, work - they all seemd so long ago, so in the past. I traded a couple of blow-jobs in PS, met my share of off-the-wall locals - my wounded energy pulling the wrongs ones closer to me and probably shutting off the ones I would have rather met. In the end, it was good I went away - not for the trip itself but maybe for the distance and the physical space added to the mental process I was working thru.

I did one thing with my entry of the 13th I don't ever do - I forwarded it's contents to family and closest friends.

What I say here, stays here. In many ways, mainly because I choose not to speak to people about such incredibly personal things - maybe it seems to reader that I have pondered endlessly and spoken of nothing else but HERO's death, when in reality - it's only here that I lay it all, raw and exposed. The family I come from loves each other - but pain and anger aren't expressed - they are held tightly to the chest and casual jokes and celerity gossip is offered instead.

After receiving my email, my brother two years my senior wrote me this, simple note:


Thank you for being the person, and the man you have become. Thanks for sharing even a little part of the difficult last year with me.

Let tomorrow be a wonderful new start, to a wonderful new year for you.

Happy birthday brother

A world of little hurts, can be dulled hearing words like that where love and compassion are not easily shared.

I decided not to the post of second half of the "Ghost" entry, maybe I know enough of the last two months to not air the details.

Another monsoon hitting tonight and some close friends are taking me out for dinner and drinks - the 35th year begins.

Thanks for birthday wishes and all, really.