Audacity Part II... (This Time It's Personal!)

Okay...

I was talking about hope and my weird relationship with it.

I have some, somewhere. I suffer from bouts of it like everyone else. It comes in unbelievable spouts of regular-ness, but it ain't like how 'Aunt-Flo' treats her nieces. Sometimes I just wish it did because sometimes...

I need a little hope just to get me thru these days nowadays.

Things have been so different since August 30. On that day I didn't even know that I had already lost one of the closest people to me. It was the next day, that Monday very early that another close friend called me to inform me. That phone call shattered my calm and since then I've been spinning, trying so very damn hard to put death into perspective.  Whereas I have come to terms that I cannot get my friend back, I realized that she was much more than that. Well, I think a few people know that she was a creative partner, helping construct a lot of stuff I've done in the past 5 years. If you didn't, you do now. She was more than a friend that had access to the inner workings of my daily habit as well becoming a jokey/cynical-ass muppet judge that sat in the balcony of my life with sly commentary on every production, including all of the bad shit. Her commentary was welcome and warranted and I miss her dearly. Since the loss of my sister, my motivation to create has been low to non-existent because she' ain't here.

But I still want to do stuff. At first I didn't want to do new stuff creatively because she ain't here anymore... And then hope kicked in and affected me to continue.

The road trip ended a week after going  back to Atlanta to attend my friend's homegoing service. To my surprise things were upbeat and celebratory. There were other factors in making me feel better about the situation and there were people there that I connected or reconnected with that gave me peace, but the circumstances in bringing me from what was our newly settled home in Las Vegas back to Chicago after my friend's death and the circumstances that have us back in Chi-Town had left me clueless for a brief moment in what to do next. Things are different because I'm a married man and I have to lead, defend, protect and provide even if I consider my wife (and I do) equal, even and just as equitable in our life partnership as I do.

I was looking for hope in everything and for a moment, I didn't think I could find it again. And then I turned on the TV.

In a little under a year, the phrase hope had been replaced with so many other nouns and narratives that I had to blink a few times and check to see if I had been jettisoned to a past era. The hope that had inspired many to accept few had faded. The result of that version of spread hope opened a pandora's box of emotion and revealed true feelings from many that neither snapped my neck in disbelief or surprised me.

But it did push me back. It also made me think about if there was any residual hope left for me to have and use in my personal situations. I mean, my marriage is fine, my earnings are stable and my future prospects are solid, but if I lost my ability to create and express myself where would I be? How does coming to terms with the death of a friend and partner affect the creative output of a person? I'm finding out right now because I'm going thru it, and it feels rather empty. I really need hope as a means to motivate and excite myself...

I gotta get into traffic. Again. More later I guess.