In July the beat of my drum turned inward and outward and quietly beat out in my arms. Gone. Three months later the gift bearer bringer of the drum that is me began her 4 month journey to the nada side. 7 months apart, precious wife & then precious mom, ‘nough is enough, gotta get goin’. Hang in there if you can, Messybear, we’re outta time, no reason no do-overs no rhyme. For a few months I meditated in the pickup at a light, at bedtime or any given sleepless night, even pondside in broad daylight, trying to direct myself to be open to a visit from Maya. It was my primary reason for anything anymore. Staring at her picture, our pictures, her face, welling-up like a lonesome clown and I would chant any words that I thought would/could/should send a signal that the window is [SO] open. But not one time have I been aware of Maya in a dream, not in nearly 8 months. Not in dark alleys, not beside a great tree trunk riverside, not in the pickup at a light, not on the toilet, not in the shower, not in the bathroom mirror while clearing the steam for a shave; certainly NOt on the lone big screen behind my eyelids, day or night or anytime at all. Not at all. And that said, certainly neither have I felt the presence of my mom, Mae. Not at all since she went away. Frankly, if Maya could/would regularly visit me in my (her) dreams and we could carry on an intuitive version of our 25 year love affair only in the semi-quietude of mortal meets immortal slumber, then I could see myself living a normalesque even kinda happyesque waking life on this prostituted living-Earth that they-who-would-ENSLAVE-it-all call Get Up & Get Some. That, in my most earnest humble opinion, is the active choice I make for certain. To be with Maya in my (our) own cosmic mind-meld, to see & hear & feel & taste & breathe her in with every ticking tock of eyes-closed time in what remains of this life sentence. To know the best of the remains of me in dreamscape reality with Maya OceanEyes would be enough of “our life” to sustain me through what remains of this crapshoot. Then I can shoot basketball & pool & darts & the shit with m’ sons and try in some broken way to have answers and be a solace-place on which to lean their weary young 21st Century woes and convince them that no-money fun is a far cry better than big money fun in this staggered age. Just be here for them for a while, anyway, even though I’m fine with death in the near future or whenever. And if mom pops into our cerebral cosmic mind-meld mix on occasion for a game of gin and a few grins & giggles gone belly laugh then halleluiah, it is a miraculous hopeful gesture of a dwelling again, and the two most adorable, most precious, most exemplary examples of matriarchal life-energies can touch upon this so fragmented Earth-place for a time again, through me, and me through them. But to this point, this very moment, this precise agonizing tick of the f#cking dread-Earth clock of man, to reply in earnest to your broad open-forum query to the sustaining dbis tribespersons & trolls en masse, Eric:

Every waking moment of my life. & not at all.