Back In The Saddle

June 29, 2004 - Tuesday

Back in the Saddle

Damn it's been a long time, hasn't it? Where the fuck have I been?

To make a long, fucked up story short I had a fire in my place back at the end of October and damn-near lost everything. Sux to be me, doesn't it? It's incredibly hard to describe the full range of emotions that ran through my brain when I got the call from a friend in my building late that night saying "Dude...your place is gone."

And I mean, it was all literally gone. I got to see the remains of the place, it was an empty dark shell of charcoal and ashes.

What pained me most were the loss of two things: my dog and my writings/drawings/photos.

The former was the sweetest grey/white, blue-eyed husky you've ever had the pleasure to meet. Maia, it's been 7 months and I still miss your goony face looking at me like I was your best friend in the world. You deserved better. I watched her being born, I raised her and then had the agonizing pain of carrying her blood-spattered corpse out of what used to be my apartment. It'll be a long, long time before I take on the responsibility of caring for another animal; not just because I don't think I can handle it yet, but because I'm not ready to "replace" my girl.

The loss of the latter was a different sort of heart-wrenching experience. All the little notes and research for potential story ideas, all the outlines and concepts I'd jotted down over the past 15 or so years, all the sketches and drawings and letters I'd written and saved, the poems I'd written down, the photos I'd taken of all the people I've known and loved over the years...

...gone in a blaze of fire.

It's like a part of me, a part of my history, my inner core, was extinguished in that fire. I felt like I lost a sense of identity, of who I was - because so much of who I'd been was in those papers and photos and drawings. A part of me burned in that fire, and it took me a long time to get over that. Hell, I'm still not over it - but at least I've climbed back up onto the hill and continued my ascent up the slope.

And there's the rub of the life of a Capricorn. I read, once, that we Cappys are destined (doomed?) to forever strive...just to strive. To always reach, to climb, to take the hard road to the mountaintop. It's why we're the SeaGoat - because we start in the deepest of oceans and climb from the stormy seas up the side of the highest mountains.

Fortunately for me my Monkey side is stronger than I give it credit for; I think it's that side of my personality that keeps me climbing when most would just give up, squat at the base of the mountain and wait for life to end. That damnable Monkey refuses to believe I'm beaten and keeps me moving, always searching for another handhold, a foothold, a place to lift myself higher and higher despite the weather, the terrain, despite anything that would knock me back or keep me down.

So oook oook, baby. The Monkey's back.