Pico de Orizaba

Pico de Orizaba
Taken from Huatusco, Veracruz, the closest town to Margarita's family's ranch.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Suicide and Other Things...



I was laying in bed not sleeping, just a bit molested, thinking...  What about suicide? What is the issue?  What is the concern? and one more day not having the writing flow at my fingertips.  I painted today after not painting since mid December. But that's besides the point, although I was pretty successful.  When I paint I don't think.  My feet hurt from standing so long.  Had the light not gone bad for distinguishing colors, I probably would be painting now. I'm obsessive when it comes to creating and can aguantar (withstand) so much more than others...  When I see Jackson Pollock, I see myself.  I see my intensity.  But I have a totally different style... 

I was lying in bed asking myself what is the case?  What would I do if someone appeared and said, "Ross, we believe in you and we can offer you the way of living your life as an artist and writer, if that's what you truly want..."?  What would I do?  

What is the true life struggle with me?  I don't have any friends that I know I will see again.  I accept that.  I accepted that...  If I have 5000 friends on Facebook or none, I imagine that's almost all the same.  Afterall, it's all just an illusion.  Without seeing people in person, people I truly want to see in person, the friendship seem unreal.  There lacks something substantial.  But, I've been living this way for 8.5 years.  

My mother and probably my sister Sheri living in Australia is following my blog.  Why lie?  I don't believe in bullshitting.  I don't believe in denile.  I don't believe in facades...  My mother has visited us 4 times in Mexico.  She has been the person who has been most attentive towards my postings on Facebook.  But, she is not the person I wait for here nor on the internet.  Her style of communication annoys me.  Why?  Because it's so superficial.  She's lived so many years putting on the strong and controlled mask, that she doesn't truly know what is below.  She doesn't know what she did to me and what she caused in me.  She says she feels bad when I feel bad, when I get angry.  But she never truly feels bad about what she did to me...  And what if she was sincere with me?  I don't know.  Maybe it's too late.  Sometimes your first wish is your true wish and what you truly receive in life.  She wished not to have me. And that's what she got, even if she believes she's changed her mind...  

Why rant about this?  Probably because I lost my train of thought before entering my blog, because Margarita got annoyed that I had turned on the computer.  During the day of painting, she became very attentive towards me.  I guess she was turned on by me painting.  When she saw my profile photograph on Facebook, she said a few times pointing to my photograph, "You should put a caption beneath saying, 'MARRIED'"  But what is her concern?  Who of you will I see again who isn't my mother?  And who says I'll see her again?   

Today I spent very little time on the computer since I don't have a writing flow.  I firmly believe that there are times of the year when I draw and paint, times of the year when I write and times of the year when I read...  I first began drawing on July 5, 1997.  I stopped drawing and painting in order to devote my time and energy to creating a life with Margarita, since the creative obsession causes me to put aside everything.  I ended my 7 year hiatus from drawing and painting early July 2010 only to put it aside last December.  I just picked it up again on the 30th of June...  But what for?  What for what?  What is anything for? And I wonder what causes the desire to remove myself from this life...  

That said, I am not suicidal.  You don't believe me.  But I don't understand my high level of disatisfaction towards life.  First I must be doing something creative that I can show other people be it cooking or baking or painting or drawing or writing or dancing...  If I am not in a creative endeavor of my own doing, I feel horrible.  The cupcake business satisfied my needs for many years.  However, it almost killed me.  The coffee business satisfied my needs for about 3 years, but now there is nothing more I can do with this for it to be creatively stimulating. 

I'm boring myself with this piece of shit writing.  I lost my train of thought with Margarita's frustration...

The paintings and drawings aren't sufficient.  The problem is that I know that they won't be exhibited in galleries where people buy them and at their value.  What is their value? They don't have a value.  Paintings don't have a value.  The art market is arbitrary, random.  It's a crap shoot. What is truly interesting about a Jackson Pollock?  His intensity.  But you won't put him on your wall.  He's a story just as is Basquiat.  I would like to get paid for my intensity too...  If I were free to be crazy then maybe I would write crazy too and not be afraid that you will have me blocked on Facebook or that you will not understand and then stop talking to me.  But, since I would be paid to be crazy, then it wouldn't matter what you think anyway.  

I'm still not crazy and that's why it doesn't matter what I write, even though I believe this idea is so important to share about spirit and the 5 levels of being that I began to understand when I saw my small intestine with a mind of it's own, the journey of the spirit or soul or whatever the damn thing is that is so much more than this piece of skin sack of flesh and bones, and the fact that we are a constant before and after this so beloved body we overly call ourselves.  No, I'm not crazy.  But when I'm just a bit crazy I dance real well and I am very witty and say funny things and people are entertained.  When I am crazy I cook food that is very interesting and I write good spoken word and I draw and paint things that people lawd...  But, when you think I'm crazy, you shun me...  When I'm not in the slightest bit crazy, I'm invisible even to my bestest of best friends.  Yes that's an illusion.  One of my friends repeatedly signed his emails with "I love you".  And repeatedly disappeared when I wrote about the difficulties of living in Mexico or the difficulties with my family.   If that is love...  To avoid tension, don't say you love me.  You can love my cooking, my painting/drawing, my writing.  But don't say you love me.  It's all a crock of shit.  

No one loves anyone who doesn't offer them something that they believe they truly need at the time.  There is no unconditional love.  My mother needs me to give her the fantasy that she is a good mother TODAY.  She does not want to die thinking that she couldn't maintain that illusion in her head.  Yes, she loves me.  Why?  Because she needs to believe that she is a mother who loves her son.  But she didn't love her son when he needed her the most; when all children need their parents the most; during the formative years and during times of extreme difficulties, such as when a 4.5 year-old boy's father dies and then when all the children are picking on him and excluding him; throw in a physically abusive uncle when that boy's father is dying.  But no one wants to believe me...

I think I regained my train of thought because I feel my eyes becoming hot. 

And what if you believed me?  It wouldn't change the situation, would it?  Maybe my mother should have believed me way back when.  But she was too selfish taking care of her own needs.  Remember, it was the sexual boom 70s.  How many potential fathers passed through our house?  How many did I ask to play catch?  Which of them sexually abused Beth?  Which of those many loud sexual experiences inspired Beth want to practice on me?  Oh!  Did I tell you too much?  Well fuck you!  You don't exist anyway and she exists too much in my memories because that was absolutely disgusting and fucked up.  But we were very young pre-pubescent children back then.  But for some reason I knew that a sister shouldn't wet kiss her older brother...  Stupid, Stupid Beth. But, no one knows about that. No one castigated her for being sick.  Just me.  Try it on for size.  Try my mother on for size.  How do you think you would have survived?  And yes, there are many other people in this world with the same horrible childhoods and the same horrible surgeries and the same horrible health realities...  Does it help knowing them?  I think it's neither here nor there.  We all just want to feel normal, be accepted and live strong and healthy lives.  We want to obtain our personal goals...

So what's wrong here?  I have a wonderful beautiful dream of a wife for me.  I paint and draw some really interesting paintings and drawings and I am magic in the kitchen, especially if I live in a truly international city...  I occasionally write real well, occasionally very creative...

I don't like sounding as if I'm ranting and whining.  But, for some reason I thought this would get me somewhere when the early signs of insomnia were opening my eyelids... 

I've attempted suicide 4 times in my life.  The 4th time I was successful.  But I was sent to a purgatory named Mexico.  Stupid statement, no?  Life is purgatory.  There is no hell.  

Last night I dreamed that I had sex with my mother's best friend Judy.  The first woman I knew had had a stroke.  Now I know three.  Judy had very loose clear skin with a strange form of cellulite.  Thinking about it, what was strange or disgusting about her skin was that it was translucent and filled with gell-like wormy things...  And when she kissed me, her kiss was loose like her skin.  But what comes best to mind was what Stephen King wrote in the first book of his I read, "Loose like a dead strumpet's cooze..."  

Ok.  What did that have to do with anything?  

Suicide.  The first time, I truly wanted to end my life.  Did I think I would reunite with my father?  I don't remember.  But I was tired, exhausted. I had burned my hope wick.  The second time I decided to flee Mónica the Puerto Riqueña and I still haven't written about her....  The third time Anya was in Kiev and I was in my new and wonderful studio apartment on Ocean Avenue between Kings Highway and Avenue O.  I was existentially testing God or the Gods or the spirits or my antepasados (deceased ancestors).  It was like some sort of a challenge.  I think I said something like, God if you exist or whatever it is that supposedly is guiding and protecting me, well watch this.  I was on anti-depressants.  Do you know that the two times I attempted suicide in New York City occurred the two times I was prescribed anti-depressants? Isn't that ironic?  Do you think I believe in Psychiatrists and psychologists?  I believe in God, and I have yet to find one in human form...  

Did I tell you to fuck off?  Don't take it personally.  But I need to say it someone.  When I needed to say it to my mother, she shoved a bar of soap in my mouth, twice.  But why?  I was only repeating what she said to me repeatedly. And I didn't shove a fucking bar of soap in her horribly dirty mouth. Am I angry?  Oh dear me, I've broken protocol...  Maybe one of you will complain to Blogger than I just offended you.  Maybe they're about to shut me down here too...  

I use to love seeing my blood.  In New York City I fantasized about painting with my own blood when I painted like Jackson Pollock before ever knowing who he was, canvas on the floor.  Yes, that was me to begin with...  I painted like Van Gogh and then read about him and couldn't look at my paintings nor his without feeling very anxious... In 1998 I had his energy.  I was his age too...  But I'm not Schizophrenic.  My mother's mother was was was one of the reasons my Uncle Henry ran ran ran and why my mother denies so well that she believes that she isn't ill like she believed I was and why she believes she's the only therapist who doesn't need to see a therapist. Yes, you heard it;  Her mother was schizophrenic and died of gangrene in a mental hospital when my mother was 15.  Her father was an alcoholic.  If I heard correctly she had a sexually abusive uncle... Her American dream gone wrong husband suddenly died of cancer leaving her with 3 young children, 2 of whom would inherit her husband's horrible disease and she didn't need to see a therapist?

EVERYONE PUT THEIR SHIT ON MY SHOULDERS.  Could you read that clearly?  As long as I had the problem, they all were just fine. Can you understand that?  Don't you know that that was so clear and understandable for me from such a young age?  I think you all got off on that.

Now listen to this aguafiestas (raining on my college graduation parade):  When I graduated from Hampshire College my mother said, "You showed them!" Concerned I asked, "What do you mean?"  and she explained while we were still celebrating in Amherst.  "There were some people in the family who had told me, 'Marsha, you've going to have to care for Ross all your life!'" One or two of them were at my college graduation and were dancing real youngly for ex-hippies become very successful people living 19 floors above Riverside Drive...  

You tell me one thing:  Why would I return to the U.S. risking returning to my mother's house, fullfilling that profesy?  Do you think that I wanted to be failure and unsuccess? All of those relatives so listos so sure of themselves  thinking that I brought my world crashing on my head when my father died and my mother was afraid of me inspiring her to place my face between her legs.  And don't scowl at that, there are mothers who do that to their little boys just as fathers fuck their daughters.  Must I be Alice Walker for you to accept that last statement.  What, you think I'm that fuckin' stupid reckless son of a bitch who isn't better read than you stupid fuck.  The Color Purple.  I've used less drugs than my fucking mother and I was the one with the problem?  I've never even seen cocaine.  I didn't experiment with LSD. My younger sister did as did she use cocaine.  In my lifetime I've drunk less alcohol than any one of my relatives in any given year.  And YES I am proud of myself.  I'm sorry, I'm boring you again.  I'm not a partier, it's true.  I don't go to concerts either, nor do I like fairs, although I work in them for 4 years now.  Do I like working in them?  I would love a better option...  

But why would I kill myself?  I just don't understand that?  At any given day I would tell anyone that suicide is not logical.  But, then again life isn't logical, at least Human life.  It's ironic, the more "rational" we are, the less logical is the life we live as a race.  If you were one of the rest of the animal forms on this planet, I would buy my statement suicide isn't logical.  Why?  Because, although other animals do think and feel, communicate and respond to complex stimulus (would you believe that we were taught that animals don't have emotions and don't think?), their lives still are so simple and basic that they abide by the instinct rules...  They are placed on this Earth to reproduce themselves, to subsist, to find shelter and to try not to be killed... Now that's logical.  Humans on the other hand have upped the stakes and confused themselves with their ever increasing possibilities that they don't understand that we are also instinctual animals living with a strong, yet disactivated, 6th sense that precludes rational intelligence...  

Humans don't have to live just as they don't have to believe that the penis and the vagina and the breasts were only placed on the male and female bodies for the same reason they were also placed on the bodies of dogs and sheep and cats and...  just as they don't have to spend billions of dollars seeking solutions for prolonging life...  Truthfully, I don't believe in suicide.  I think it is a very pathetic response.  However, the world that humans are perpetually creating seems just as pathetic.  Do you want me to run off the list?

The first item that comes to mind is believing that death is tragic.  What is tragic is the suffering of the person who lost their loved one.  But that's not so tragic because we all will lose everyone even ourselves one of these days...  No, what is tragic is a young mother with 3 young children losing her husband or a young child losing his parents and at the same time being physically abused by one of his uncles and at the same time being abused by his older sister and by his peers from 2nd until 10th grade...and at the same time having his large intestine removed and at the same time hearing his mother acuse him of lying about the abuse by his peers...  

Yes FUCK ME!  You want to say it.  But I've beaten you to that statement so many times before... 

Should I just off myself. I repeatedly think about offing you from my mind...  

You hate me?  Don't be so childish.  They are just words.  

For some reason my Jesus Christ and a Cross of Gold poem just came to mind.  Maybe I should post it.  And to think, it's one of the poems I discovered buried in my email that I wasn't planning upon posting...  But it's asking me for it's ten seconds of fame.  So here it goes...

Jesus Christ and a Cross of Gold  Sometime in 1999...

Jesus Christ and a cross of gold hanging from ancient minds growing old. 
When you're ready  
that's when life's story's MUST be told. 
You can look to the sky. But remember 
nothing falls without first having been pushed off balance. 
And in the challenge of deciphering languages of illusion and delusion
from that language inherent within all cut from umbilical chords 
you find headaches and nausea and rages for order. 
This trip. 
Thus you. Find the truth 
in Newton's castle of gravited apples and infinite space. 
A journey and a journal. 
A reminder. 
A marker. 
A memory for the future. 
A friend from the past. 
My father. 
Your mother. 
A woman that never became your lover. 
My sisters. 
Her brother. 
Alex the cat dreams of lining his intestines with plastic, 
concerned about the rise in cancer of the colon. 
"If I had my druthers". 
"If I had My way". 
If he says "chicken salad sandwich" one more time...! 
If I could kill this rhyme.
Maybe we'd be able to return to the luster or the shine 
of Christ Jesus' cross of gold plated stone 
and a cloud on the horizon 
which is the only truth. 
Although grasping clouds is much like chasing the sun. 
And I was an acorn that dropped from a tree in Prospect Park. 
I'm THAT dog in THAT run. As Ani DiFranco says, 
"He may keep me from being happy. 
But he'll never stop me from having fun", 
I dream of one day chasing squirrels in the park 
without a collar without a leash 
and who gives a bark what you think of my chasing a bitch I misstook for the sun? 
Jump. Fly. Run. 
Float on life's currents. 
An updraft. 
A riptide. 
Blood. Pulse. Breath. Vision.
As you are the ONLY one who perceives what you see. 
So live. Think. Love. 
Be honest. Be free.

I didn't like the stupid poem until the almost to the end... And that's probably why I didn't think of posting it.  There are so many other poems that I was waiting to post during the New York City period between Mónica la Puertoriqueña and Joey...  However, I just don't have the energy for continuing with this stupid memoirs right now.

Am I about to kill myself?  Now what all you people just don't understand is that I can't live an Oxymoron...  Do you know what is an oximoron?  Pizza Pie.  Pizza means Pie in a Italian...  So, if I truly believe that leaving for Mexico was a form of suicide, I can't kill myself again.  

How do you truly know I'm alive?  Prove it!

I believe I've always been dead, ever since I was truly born into that life at the age of 4...  My life is divided into clear 7 year cycles that began with my father becoming horribly ill when I was approaching the age of 4.  I will get into that one day.  I will also tell you that the significance of the 3-7s referring to Joey being born 7 years, 7 days and 7 minutes after me, that I mentioned to Estrella the psychic in Park Slope had the same significance as the pendant that Michael's wife M'nique gave to me when I was leaving for Mexico. Truthfully, I don't know what draws me to this fish; I don't have Pisces in me...  I forgot to mention the significance of putting that in The 3 Messengers.

When the relationship between Margarita and I began in February 2003, I put the pendent around her neck and said, "The fish (pez) has found it's home and I'm delivering it to you."  Why?  Joey wasn't my 3 7s I was looking for.  It was Margarita, born under the sign of Pisces on 3-7, 1975.  3-7 was my most powerful spiritual and luckiest numbers.  Margarita was born on March 7th...  And, until I started writing this blog, I hadn't felt the slightest risk of depression for 8.5 years.  I realized what I was living for.  But I also understand that I live for unobtainable goals, unobtainable because I was plastered during my formative years, absolutely crushed...  When you are always working with a deficit, you are always reaching backwards, trying to make up for lost time, for lost ground. You work double for nothing.  You are always exhausted...  


3 comments:

Unknown said...

This is written as if you are asking me for something. What is it that you seek from me? If I can give it, and I think it will do no harm, I will try to give it. I'm trying to overcome suffering, most of it rooted in early childhood, too. But all, yes ALLLLLLLLL, human beings suffer. I seek to end suffering. I'm just starting on this path to end suffering, so I'm far far far from qualified to teach. And even the masters wait until asked. They do not presume or impose. They pay attention. They allow space around what is. I'm allowing space around your "what was," which seems to be your "what is," as well. I have no answers. I can only stupidly mouth what I heard while starting out on my path: that the way to end suffering is to intend and dedicate yourself to being of service to all beings. All. It is a tall order. It is called compassion. The thing is, though, it has to begin with compassion for yourself. This means it has to begin with a view into why we keep childhood pain alive. It is because it is familiar, and what is dysfunctional for the rest of an abused child's life is that the child inserts familiarity where love was not. So, it seems to me, what you search and search and search for, with no end to frustration, you can only give yourself by beginning to ask more directly for what you really need.

Ross said...

It's funny. I wrote that piece on suicide and other things to the Unknown. And out of the blue I received a response from the unknown. Was that God speaking to me? or maybe it was my grandfather... Who knows? What happens when you die? UNKNOWN. Just as you don't know what happens when you die, you probably don't know what truly happens when you live. It's such a crap shoot, no? Almost 7 billion people living on this planet. How many people have died in the history of mankind? How many souls or spirits or mind are floating around in the ether? I think I'll go study Bhuddism in order to become enlightened. One third of the world's population is found in China and India. The worst exploitation and neglect of human beings is found in those two countries also on the top 10 list of countriew with the strongest economies. What role does bhudda play in those two countries? Are the people truly more enlightened because of their bhuddism? It's just a philosophy. However instead of making yourself feel better by masterbating your mind, you massage your brain. Isn't that true Unknown?

Ross said...

I'm sorry if the unknown person thought I was writing to them. I wasn't. I was writing to you. But I wasn't asking for suggestions nor for solutions. I was just writing what inspired me at the time.