My Uncle Stevie hopped on a plane one day in the late seventies and flew to New York because he'd joined the Unification Church which appalled most people around him. He had become a moonie. When the plane landed he soon found himself standing near Madison Square Garden where Black Sabbath happened to be playing .. here's this young man from Cooma looking around at the people in black t-shirts, thinking to himself "what the fuck?" But not a "what the fuck" in a bad way - it was a good way. Because Stevie just accepts wherever he is at any given time and just rolls with it. Talk about big lives. It's safe to live safe lives but when you live a big life you have all these experiences and people and havoc and mayhem and everything. I've always loved Uncle Stevie. He's some kind of mystical creative shaman psychic, walking through life with his soul wide open.
I did a meeting last night in Springwood partly because I was terrified of drinking, mostly because I was so lonely and sad that I just needed to be around people who sit in circles and talk about their real shit. After the meeting I'm sitting in my car looking at my phone, hesitating calling Stevie even though he lived five minutes away. For over a year now he's said "Edie, come down here anytime you need to. Our house is always open." So I called and went over to his house, my bulging problems could hardly fit through the door but I got there, on his couch, talking. Drinking water, crying, laughing. Just sat and sat for hours talking with him, my cousin Ellie and my Aunt Karen. Steve and Karen got married in that huge 5,000 people strong wedding ceremony in New York, matched together by elders of the Unification Church. (MOONIES! MOONIES EVERYWHERE!) That wedding ceremony even made its way back down here to TV screens on the nightly news and when I found out that Stevie was a part of it I thought it was the coolest fucking thing ever.
The last little bit for me here in life has been extraordinarily difficult, traumatic, and to be frank .. I'm quite over continually having to get over every stupid hard thing that happens. Backtracking my steps, searching for the straw that broke the camels back. Watching my stepdad Jim die in hospital in 2012 was the catalyst of the spiral of the catastrophic events that have led me to this very place, right now, splayed on my living room floor writing to you, Computer.
I'm tired.
I'm so fucking tired even my tired is tired. I'm so fucking sad even my sad is sad. Some people don't feel enough, or feel just right .. some of us feel too much. I'm soultired - you ever been that? My fire's gone down to a small smouldering ember.
Last night Stevie gave me a foot massage and meant it. He made me laugh SO HARD .. once he found himself suddenly in charge of captaining a huge fishing boat out of channels near Long Island. So here's standing there last night, re-enacting out his driving motions. "Edie it was like driving a tractor. And I had no fucking idea how to drive a tractor." He reversed that huge boat for about ten or a hundred kilometres down the channel I forget exactly how many kilometres because numbers - but he just reversed the fucker! It was the only way out. Steve and I know that sometimes the only way out is backwards. Steve doesn't care that he's dyslexic and couldn't read the sea maps and I don't care that I thought the world had two equators. Just the other day Rocco told me that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. Whut? That means technically the sun doesn't come up in the morning, we tilt ourselves back around to the warmth of the sun.
When he was little my brother used to come into my bedroom and sniff, always said "Your bedroom smells like warm." When he was eight my brothers dad killed himself. When I was eight my brother was born. When my eldest son was eight things got really tough around home. Rocco is now eight. You turn eight on its side and you get infinity suns. I'm so exhausted and I couldn't see any future whatsoever and it's scary but Stevie ended up captaining that boat for two days. By the end of it he drove it like a BOSS and when he finally reached his destination all the people on the dock were waiting for him and all the other fishermen were there too and he just does this huge burnout 3-point turn and parked that huge boat with pizazz like a glove into the mooring. He parked that boat as if he built that boat which he probably could have. EVERYBODY on the piers and in the other boats gave him a huge round of applause.
It's one of the coolest stories I've ever heard and I imagine in that moment Stevie probably felt like Ozzy Osbourne walking out onstage at Madison Square Garden in 1978.
What I'm saying here is that people need people. One night one of my sons crept into our bedroom at night to hop into bed with us. "I just need people." I'll never forget it, how he said it, his beautiful brown hair. You know how when you're a parent you hope the love you give your kids is enough and will tide them through? We all just need people.
Last night after hours of conversation about astral travelling, UFO's, Trump, driving forty on the freeway, how Catholicism and the Unification Church are both cults, black sheep, secrets and lies, ants eating cockroaches - we all went to bed. My other cousin Morgan is in hospital again so I slept in her bedroom in her single white bed and when I got up took this photo of the sticker on her mirror and text it to her with the caption: "IT'S SCIENCE, BITCHEZ."
Breaking Bad: "To challenge conventions, to defy authority, and to skirt the edges of the law."
Some of us break bread and some of us break bad hey do you think all of us have the capacity to be Walter White? I do. So would Jung.
We're all there at the hospital today sitting on the bed while Karen did Morgie a tarot reading because Morgie really doesn't want to have to go through another surgery and sometimes we just really need help getting answers. I hugged Morgie's purple unicorn pillow cushion for comfort because I'm tired. Morgie had her first surgery at the age of - yes, eight - to remove half of her jaw to get to the cancerous tumour and then they put her jaw back. Now she's fighting Crohns and it just sucks and it's not fair. Hey Morgie reading this right now from hospital I made your bed so it's ready when you get home. I love you, Bone Broth.
Rocco's here this week. Rocco doesn't give a fuck that his mum sometimes has greasy hair. She teaches him how to cut strawberries and cook stirfry with spinach and lays down with him on the floor to play the Marvel game on our phones simultaneously. One of the biggest things a kid needs is undivided attention and proper conversation. Nine years ago at that same hospital I was doing IVF treatment for six months for Rocco to be born into and wasn't the earth tilting towards the sun that day. Rocco doesn't give a fuck his mum doesn't iron. He just wants to kick a soccer ball at the park and swing off his favourite branch and he wants me to watch him.
I'm tired but this morning my Uncle Stevie made french toast with real maple syrup for breakfast and we all ate it al fresco in the front garden. He made coffee the exact way he used to make it for his mum in the kitchen in Cooma when he was a kid.
It was delicious.
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Write to be understood, speak to be heard. - Lawrence Powell