Mad to want this life.

Miami, Florida, 2016

That’s the best way I can describe it. Words flock to me from another world. This voice that’s whispered to me from some far reaching corners of my mind where soul, start dust and past lives meet, she’s known me since before I was born.

Maybe she was the one that brought me here.

Maybe, if I’m lucky, she is me.

When the noise quiets, when the race of life around me isn’t all consuming, when I’m not questioning if I’ll be able to pay my credit card bill this month, maybe that’s when I hear her best.

But no, that can’t be it.

Because she’s there equally and maybe even more presently so in moments of absolute despair. When loneliness seems unbearable, when creativity appears futile at best and when no amount of Steven Pressfield, Eckhart Tolle or Esther Hicks can get me out of bed or mind to breathe life into the videos that dance around endlessly in that space that where she only resides.

An eternal, ethereal geisha playing upon my heartstrings.

There’s so much to make. So much to convey. The weight and honor of this press into my shoulder blades and down the left side of my neck.

What if I die with the gift still in me?

That’s what she said right after he busted a nut amidst their very forgettable one night stand. She regretted it before it happened; he rolled over and fell asleep.

There’s got to be more to life than getting f!cked, she panted, tears in one eye, rage in the other.

To die is not my greatest fear, not by far. Death only matters to me in the context of unrealized dreams. In the scenario dressed as pre-determinedly unforgivable in which I haven’t lived a full life or sung the songs that are mine by birthright.

Can I live up to the weight of expectation and responsibility to use all I’ve been given?

The world doesn’t make singing easy. I suppose that’s the point.

What is her name?

This woman that whispers in my ear.

I do not know.

What is her magic?

I can’t be sure.

But it’s real.

You see the problem, dear friend, isn’t that I lack talent. The problem is that not everything I make is great. It’s that I don’t always know when phantom geisha will strike and that the mania of perfectionism and re-inventing myself over in each piece of work that hits the internet, in each word that makes its way on to this page, is all consuming at times.

It’s suffocating.

It’s inappropriate, one-sided public affection from a mental pedophile feening to steal, bend and morph these young dreams into something far less meaningful, to rob them of their innocence before they even know it existed.

To chisel away at something so fresh, so in-bloom that it feels blasphemous.

What I love about this body I’m in is how emotional she is.

The fragrance of her glance across the room. The way her hips move when salsa comes on. How she is a human seismometer with a knack for self expression and communication.

I’ve been given a profound gift to tune into people, places and land. To see what often goes unnoticed with compassion and honesty.

But it’s a bloody battle some days.

Too many voices.

Too many feelings.

Too. many. everything.

So today I came to a BlueTree Juice in downtown Miami. I bought a BlueTree smoothie, extra large.

I sat down at a table, blocks away from a community I feel will become a part of what I come to call home.

And with an unmistakable desire to cry for the unexpressed creativity within me, for the voices I didn’t give voice to, for the contrast, contradiction, and passion, for the fear I may not be able to afford living in something I love so much or that the relationship I’m investing in in Canada will crumble, I sat down to write.

Because what more can you do?

Unconventional is beautiful and offbeat. So I’m resting on downbeat 4, for salsa on 2, in hopes I might catch it all and stay on beat.