Many Moons, Many Moods

Whether you are a volunteer or you do it for a living, if your daily activity involves some kind of altruism or giving of yourself, today you may learn a very important lesson, dear Pisces. You are going to learn that in order to help other people, you need to learn to take care of yourself. After all, how can you help other people as much as you would like to if you don't take good care of yourself mentally and physically?

Well, kiddies, usually Rob Breszney is my focus each week, but this time Susan Miller hit it right on the head. Can I keep giving? At what price glory, I ask.

Ghosts surround me: dad’s death, Coltrane’s on the cover of The Village Voice and for some inexplicable reason, I picked up my copy of Lady in Satin to get me through today. What do all these things have in common…

Broken spirits. Something in them died while they were still alive.

Places can be haunted, but so can people. Give, give, and give and get nothing in return? Well, watch yourself go, fall apart, snap, die. I am trying so desperately not to do that. Working with narcissists, schizotypals, powermongers and control freaks does not allow an area conducive to breathing. Where’s the levity? Ghosts float. Mists, orbs, shadows. Corporeal people—like me sitting here—need this. I want something in return if I give. If I care, If I schedule, commit, agree, work, and fight every ounce of a body that keeps telling me to waste away, lay still, admit defeat. Absolutely not.

I get the distinct feeling that these creatures in this current building would like me to believe their version of me: I am somehow less than them. Lower, scrappier, disfiguringly flawed, deficient. Well, here’s the funny thing: if I’ve already figured out what they are, and they absolutely cannot see what I’m made of, who won that game? And it IS a game. The same game that drove so many of the good people and entertainers I adored into drugs, booze, pills, madness and despair. The game doesn’t change, but I realize I must. I have to. I am not ready for my name engraved on a stone with the others I love.

This weekend, I am visiting a medium named Ellie Crystal. Not my usual medium, but then again, I haven’t seen Roger Pratt in a long time. And his connection was to my mother, not really me. Perhaps I need my own. If I have the cerebral balance of a therapist (mind), perhaps I can take a new batch of questions to Ellie (spirit.) Who said dialogue is only one-on-one? Conventional thinking states that too many cooks spoil the broth, but it’s more than broth I’m going after. I am still in the middle of a very shitty situation and struggling.

Billie sang “It’s a Pleasure to be Sad…” I have to disagree. I’ve seen too damn much of it and I need to purge that idea from my head. My future as a human being --as opposed to these soulless monsters--depends on it.

And so do many of you, my beloved audience.