I don't really know what I do for a living...

So the hip puts me at the charity of others. I'm lucky because I have the two best TomO Charities. But I don't have a gig this summer like I thought. So am I really retired or just retiring for the summer? This weekend I was the farm hand feeding the calves out of nipple buckets and trying to get three piles of grain in the paddock with three frisky ponies. Never did I imagine 6 months ago that I would be back on a farm cleaning cow and horse shit off my shoes with the smell of hay, manure, milk replacer on my clothes.
I miss the ocean fierce! I miss the smell of the tides and the feel of grains and stones on my feet and the sound of the surf. The sense of salt on my body most of the day and the color of sun all over me.
In the interim I'm back to where I was five years ago and I re-learn the appreciation for the trees, fields and the large sweet water lake. As much as I love the salt water, there always was the jump in the lake after two weeks on the Island, from salt water to sweet water.
There is beauty everywhere in nature and I am basking in the belly of it it seems.

This is what I see every good night so I can close my eyes and see the sunset reflecting on the sand in Montezuma or Bocas while I smell the fir trees and lilacs in the wind.
It 's sweet watching bees in the blueberry fields and remembering having hives at Goodtime Farm across the lake, raising a family and creating history.
I am a lucky fuck if you look at it. I go from the one great setting to another and all I have to do is go with the flow.
I'll paint barns, drive a hay truck, feed critters and whatever else needs to be done and maybe some time at the bar on the work side.
I don't really know what I do for a living but I know how I'm living my life. Pretty sweet. Just sayin, TmyO...

if I had been a horse they would have shot me. Must be the KDerby and finally the Kentucky Steve and Trish story

So this could also be called "people you meet on the Road dos." This is the story of Kentucky Steve and Trish. It's a long overdue story of a couple of peeps from Kentucky. I first met Steve up at the Ylang Ylang resort. The super funky place a walk up the beach. Steve was holding court at the back garden bar. Now court may be a bit of a stretch as there are only four chairs at the bar and only two of them were filled but Steve was definitely holding court. The man can work a room better than most. I listened to him talking to the people at the bar and he didn't and doesn't talk shit. We got to talking or rather he pulled me into the conversation and I had just finished the usual sunset smokey walk up the beach so I was good for a babble for a bit. We were joined by his wife Trish who could easily hold her own with KSteve. Trish is a senior partner in a firm in Lexington and a funny shit on her own.
At their insistence I joined them for dinner, the first of a week's worth of dinners they had me join them. I have to admit that first dinner had me wondering if they were a couple of swingers with a penchant for old pirates but it was simply two wonderful, gracious people who liked to have a very good time. They have a thoroughbred way station farm for high end racers coming to town for that track that has a race for flowers and horses that are in transit from coast to coast. Steve was also involved with a couple of other enterprises all of which afforded a life grounded in hard work and the opportunity to play hard on the beach, the jungle, wherever. Steve had done the amazon the real way and looking at him you would not think that this was a guy who understood the secrets in the Amazonian bush but he does. Of course all this travel and exotica just armed him with some of the funniest stories and serious reflections on life outside the box.
I would go up to the little waterfalls on the way to Playa Grande and Steve would roll out of his  suite by the beach, jump in the water and then go lie on the warm sand, no blanket, and just lay there in the sun a basic sun loving dude. He'd look like the beach I was he walked down to jump in the water covered in sand and smile.
This boy could catch a buzz. We had long discussions about earnest work in your own environment and great play out in the rest of the world, balancing the yin and the yang.
I really got to enjoy their company and the brief time passed fast. We started to do the dance of, "let's keep in touch and do this again", but it was no backhand see you later and never hear from peeps again. Not Kentucky Steve and Trish. He asked me if I still had a suit somewhere and would I come to Louisville for The Derby Weekend and be their guest at all the VIP parties and the inside track for the famous Run for the Roses. It was a serious offer and I was seriously going to do it. Shit folks I can cultivate a taste for mint juleps! Alcohol, racehorses, 100,000 people and bound to be women in hats there right?
Well I would be there now hanging with Trish and Kentucky Steve in their world and watching him work an event. The scorpion got in the way and I can't fly until the middle of June and recovery is dictated by others and as much as I push the envelope the travel part of it is a benchmark and that can't happen until weeks after everyone is starting to get all excited about a possible triple crown winner.
This is also a mea culpa to Kentucky Steve and Trish for not getting back to you and I can't claim the scorpion took your email, I just lost a bunch of cards in the seat pocket of the escape flight from Panama.
If you stay on the road or if you find a cool spot along the road, you will be open to meeting some very interesting people and Kentucky Steve and Trish were two of 'em. Gracias amigos. Solo estoy diciendo. TmYo...

Pasar a mejor vida, to leave this world..my suicide rant. {I almost lost this like the friends in it}

Pasar a mejor vida, to leave this world..my suicide rant.
Posted: 07 Feb 2012 11:06 PM PST
He took his own life they told me. That's an interesting concept when you get beyond the sadness of the act if it is an act grown from sadness. He didn't take his own life, he took a part of the lives of everyone in his life. Some he took little parts, moments, meetings, an occurrence taken from associates, colleagues, a stranger in the night. For others he took bigger parts like the chance of adding more memories to a friendship, the opportunity to learn more and see the friendship grow. Those closest to him had some of their lives stolen. A big some the closer you get. When he took his life he took yours with him, a lot of it at first, a little of it for eternity.
He took his own life is how we gently say he killed himself like we say someone "passed" instead of someone died. I grew up in a funeral home and everyone there was dead, except us of course, and the only passing was out the door to the hearse. My father did pass a kidney stone once at the Perry Funeral Home and sometimes people pass gas when they are embalmed.
So when you take your own life you murder yourself and in the process you become a mass murderer, you kill something in each of us.
He took his own life is also used after some asshole has killed a shitload of people at his old job and then turns the weapon on himself. I always hope for confusion when the killer forgets what he's supposed to do and kills himself first, I mean passes first.
I've had time this summer here to ponder the issue as I relive a lot of the trip Rocketman and I took years ago. Many of the times, memories, meetings, occurrences, opportunities to watch us and our friendship grow have found time in every day to remind me what he took from me and all of us that were a part of his life big or small.
I oir como oir llover, ignored warnings, as I was involved with his first attempt and spoke with him an hour before his final taking and passing. But faithful promises of not a real taking and a one time occurrence brought security. Unfortunately number two take attempt involved the other of the three amigos and he too was given faithful promises of no repeats of stupid things in drunken moments. We found all this out at his funeral which I'm sure was not unique to just us.
I wonder if these people spend any time in the planning {if there is any} of who is going to find them and how that moment is forever burned vividly into their minds, lives and souls? I wonder how many people that might have stopped?
Recently I learned in an email of another long time friend both professional/personal who had died and when I got an email back to my shocked inquiry I got an even bigger one, he had taken not just his own life but a piece of all of ours. To often it does come as a shock because you either oir como oir llover or it is truly a shot to the blind side. I talked with him before I came down for the summer here and there was still the laugh in him, the enthusiasm for what he was doing {truly compassionate work} and I could see that smile that made him look marvelous as we talked on the phone. He retired, paid his dues in our world and was doing the thing he loved doing the most. On the surface he sure was not on my suspect list but the surface view of any one's life is the cover of the book and not the content and gives us either an idea of the truth of their life or what they want us to believe. Because I'm here I haven't heard anything else about it, how he murdered himself and the lives of those who loved him?Did he leave a suicide note {never referred to as a taking his own life note although often referred to as a note to loved ones which confuses the shit out of me as well} and  who found him? All questions that only bring more questions, unsatisfactory answers and all the Kubler-Ross stages you go through with death and the grief attendant.
Suicide is another way of someone saying, "no te quiero ver nunca mas." I never want to see you again. They won't.
After Rocketman's fuse burned out I promised us both that I would rather lose a friendship not a friend so I will always err on the side of caution if I sense the sadness, mental madness or hear the language of hopelessness in a voice. I've done it once and it caused a gap in time on a friendship clock but I felt it had to be done and he is still here.
Last night I sat with a friend while Elton John sang Rocketman in the longest version I ever have heard and I cried through it all. There was one empty seat on the stadium floor and it was next to me. A guy with a NY giants hat turned to me and offered me a shot of his whiskey. It was Jim Beam, the only bourbon Paul and I drank. I made it through the emotion of the night like I knew I would but shouldn't have, none of us should. I know I will understand the latest piece of my life someone took, most of us do. Time does that.
This may touch a nerve with some because we would rather talk Superbowls than suicides but this is my rant just like my cancer rant. Fuck suicide and fuck you if you think it's a solution and don't call out for another view of your moment but in time I'll still and always will love you. Just sayin, TmyO....