another loss - fin

in your early thirties and too young, you left behind a family and so many friends. you were reckless, we all were, yet you were good for your word, and six years ago you saw and spoke of a future for yourself, creative. i dream that it manifests on some non-material plane. it does not matter how we left one another the day after the last time i saw you, on disconnected and fractured terms, for the six foot tall skinny boy i knew, whose face i saw behind glasses sometimes at the corner of 28th and telegraph, any day any season, always had a hug and wide devious smile for me, and some stories to share. and i know, had we come across one another since, it wouldn't have been any different.

i remember us in the late afternoon sun. we had met our mutual friends on 28th by the laundromat and kicked it on the street that day, fixing bikes and listening to music. i had a brief shout-it-out with my ex-boyfriend of the hour,  nothing unusual about that. everyone knows i've been breaking up since sixth grade. by the time the sun began to edge out and the sky turning colors, I had to go and you were already gone. You had told me not to worry, you would come by the next day to pick up your bike.

the following morning I was still crashed out and making up sleep from several days end-to-end insomnia and stress of the move. when you came i missed you, and several calls you made. the messages you left were far from friendly. you thought i had made off with your bike, when it was just sitting in the backyard waiting for you. i couldn't get ahold of you after that, your phone had died and you hadn't paid the bill. i was good for my word, just like you. i kept your bike for you, for weeks.

I will always remember you well, and so sad for your child and your family and friends. it's really tragic we never got to see you shine. i wish you the best on the nonmaterial plane and hope to see you and embrace you, in the next. see that tall boy with the bowler hat and the wide and devious smile. kick back like we did, trading EDM tracks and war stories. how does that sound? sweet dreams, my friend, you are loved.

in memoriam -- JR Lindberg

KatYa

in memoriam - Jennifer M.

You were my friend. You had reached out to me in January of this year, randomly, and I was so glad to hear from you, I don't know why I did not follow the way to see if we could hook up for a moment in this life, one last time? Life gets chaotic and there's nothing much you can do. Suddenly starts, suddenly ends, and gradually you realize you never know when. We can try, though, and that's exactly what I forgot to do, about you. Jennifer Mendiola aka Alana Kane. I will miss your enduring smile. I cried very hard tonight when I discovered you sailed out on a Ghost Ship and never to return. The clock struck midnight and you and your lover, you were dancing, you were gone. I remember back in 2009 when I met you South of Market, San Francisco. We were counselors at a painful place. Sixteen beds for sixteen lost and homeless souls. I brought my desire to help. You brought your presence and your smile. We got along easily, though the work we had to do was hard and brutal. Just outside those double locked doors in this sanctuary city, people were driven to desperate intoxication and suicidal panic, and all the time. I could not believe you at first, I wondered how could you smile all day long like that? From dawn to 3pm when we got out. There were times I thought you must be faking it, I confess. All the methadone nods of sixteen souls all around us? The cutting scars and track marks? The lonely vacant stares, up and down the carpet stairs. But we knew we could make a small difference in a semi-safe space. Listen to them tell us their stories. Hold them if they cried. Teach them simple skills if they wanted to learn. Laugh like we were family, and for a time we were. Everything about it could be cold, day by day. Yet you smiled. I guess you had just recently been married around then, I didn't really know or maybe I forgot. All I know is we worked well together and kept the place running, which was the best we could do with phones ringing, doors buzzing, and sixteen souls in need of something all the time. I really admired you. I knew I could trust you, you worked real hard and really cared. If I walked in the door and saw you, those early foggy San Francisco mornings, some of that tension, that burden a social worker experiences inside, fell off of me immediately. I could take my earbuds out, warm my hands with breath, take a deep breath and look to you. Talk to you. Get willing with you toward the day ahead of us. I will miss you my friend. I will think upon you when the work gets brutal, and try and smile through.

cold. the purple rain

Cold, cold, the rain when you got a million fans and you're gettin older and life is painful, seems it always hurts as god is your witness. Cold, cold the rain as you set your jet on target for the sun. I saw you there, once, dressed in black and white. Caught in the electrical storm, can-not-rise-a-bove-the-pur-ple-rain. The pills make it a little easier and won't take you down, no, nothing can. Nobody can tell you what to do, your music heralded all around the world and god has blessed you, we held you here on high. Cold, cold the rain and you gave away the umbrella. You always liked it raw. Any stage any auditorium any stadium, the people they lined up for you. Cold, cold the rain falls in Minnesota. You gave us hope and power and free-dom-to-cre-ate-our-loving-selves. You gave me power and hope. Cold, cold the rain, the purple rain, tonight it falls for you.     - 2 Prince. love KatYa

1983

Tonight again I miss something we had, the je ne sais quoi from 1983. Togetherness. A bit wild we were in an America no longer the same, and I was a kid only ten... smell of petrol and tools, and cars that broke down, water that froze in the pipes in the winter, seasons we spent without cell phones. And where will we go when the earth meets the flow of the sea? Storms and long thaws, and it was never easy but we had eachother, laughing and bitching and fighting. I cried and I sulked when I couldn't get my way. We ran ourselves ragged by the end of each day, and tired at night all slowed to half  the pace, then half of half the pace - then a resurgence as the kids put to bed, the ice I heard clinking in the cocktails, new laughter arose and I wanted to be anything but tucked in, and found any excuse to go out to Mom and be with her then. Back to bed now, go on! The music stops playing and all is quite silent while under the water, heat lightning flashes the sky to highlight these tides, seen through the screens of the porch. The wind whistles.

We won't care so much when our senses our gone and an unbroken dawn cracks and poaches its whites by the sea, I promise, the rolling is fun and into the sun with the elements the same and no one to blame, neither you, neither me. The loss was magnificent and tragic, and you may never love that way again. And again we won't care so much having been there, in the sharp cutting glare where all is exposed as a life that has died as life always does, again and again, and again. So push up your hair with your hands, see where it stands, and roll your eyes all around the earth. You will see that we share an uncommon bond, untouched by time and strong as the vine, and wide as the sea may be long, so you can smile and laugh, sing a sweet epitaph, and roll your tongue merrily along under the names of the ones you have loved, again and again, and again. In memoriam, 1983.