This morning Monkey says to me.....

" Don't you blog anymore??"

I felt the whine, the big eyes, the en francais stare. I've been meaning to get back here and chill. A million excuses and none that are reasonable. So here I am, a thousand and one apologies plus a spanking.

What has been going on the last few months....hmmm. Man, I can't even think back to last week. I'll be Frank, you be Joe Cool. My head kind of exploded for a while. Kaboom. Pieces went everywhere, and I left them where they were. After the smoke cleared I was still standing but only had enough in me to function without really living. It's not a fun place to be, but as a creative soul told me..." People who think big eventually explode, then need time to gather more ammunition to be such a think tank again." Wowee, that sounds right. Dave Chapelle left to Africa, I locked myself up in my apartment and rented his dvds.

Work up to a few days ago was extremely unstable, family problems were leaving me with headscreams, the wonder of what my role was in Street Hop Session kind of left me in a daze. So I made myself Time out. I trust myself completely to know when to stand up.

After a while, I started to come back. And it started in my apartment. Drop the pants. Exhale. Pull out the garbage bags. Piece by piece I started throwing crap out. Went into every closet and started throwing things out that I had kept in for so many years. The bags kept piling up. Dusting the shelves, washing the windows, scrubbing the floor. Relighting the candles. Let the light in girl. Fixed the kitchen faucet, scrub the toilet. Patches was elated.

Wash the goddamn dishes.

Next was going after the music collection. CDs were piling up everywhere, Patch successfully knocked all of them down. Hundreds of cds were in every oriface of this place. Some I hadn't even taken out of the package. That took a couple of days. Now everything is neatly organized in binders and baskets. I finally bought a stand for my beloved dusty guitar.

After a few days I became horribly obsessed with cleaning. Each night I would come home and scrub the kitchen and bathroom down, search high and low for cat fur tumbleweeds.

During this time, a little miracle happened. I got an email from someone I hadn't seen or spoken to in almost eight years. He had fallen into a dark spot and then slowly disappeared. Over the years, I thought of him often but had no idea where to begin to find him. Little did I know that he was thinking the same of me. One day he googles me online and found me through the station. Next thing I know, I'm in Little Italy in Toronto and I'm embracing my childhood best friend. We're eating vodka rigatoni and drinking stella beers. We're telling each other of mutual head explosions over the years. All of a sudden, I'm not as bad as it seems. He tells me that I'm one of the few people in his life that truly mattered. I stayed in Toronto a few more days with Shazzer and Drew. Walking down Yonge and taking the subways, eating at ridiculousy swanky dives, laughing again. I started to forgive myself more and more. Feeling safe.

I hadn't realized up to that point, how much I truly needed to feel grounded. Fierce independence can make you so isolated...you don't realize you're fighting so hard, knocking walls down only to remember you still need something around you.

I found myself constantly on the road, driving out on all the highways. I'm always going and leaving. I told a friend last night, it's still hard to leave. The moon was awesome last night though. It was huge. The stars were amazing. I suppose this too is another phase in my life, the highway. Next time you're out driving on one, try to be conscious of where it is that you are going...you'll find yourself in a mindtrip of memories. It's an amazing space of thinking that we should do more of. I found myself again out there.

Talk to y'all soon.

KLP