Countdown (Prologue)

 Ever notice that we tend to have things we need to do and very often don't do them? There are a lot of reasons but the main mental blockage is that we think we'll find the time to do these things somewhere in the future. Problem is we don't know when this 'Present' will end and the future isn't promised to anyone.

No one. Zilch. Nada.

I have a birthday coming up next month and it's marks the countdown to the time when just getting up in the morning isn't a given. Seventy is just around the corner and I'm at the age when I could simply fall down for no reason and not get back up. Truth is that could have happened anytime in the last ten years but I didn't feel old.

Until my sister took my photograph. Lines everywhere and I've lost so much weight so quickly that my skin is just kinda hanging and it really sucks!

It's not like a surprise, I was told by my lung doctor exactly how I'll die if I don't get killed in some car accident or a meteor hits me while I'm sitting on the front porch or somebody somewhere decided to drop a nuclear bomb in the area. I have only a partial part of one lung working and, according to the Mayo Clinic (Where I was registered to get updates and suck on my condition) when my fingernails started turning purple and my lips look as though I was back in the Goth days wearing the old black lipstick. 

I've spent this past couple of decades working on my art pretty much constantly, fighting the fact that my hands shake and my eyesight is shit...I know that when I stop drawing or painting I can see no light at the end of the dark tunnel of life. Then just turning on the news (CNN, AP, NPR etc...Fox Lies are not allowed on my television) and the new Nazi party, the white racist/misogynistic GOP is trying their best to make sure only old, straight white guys have any rights. They're committed to make certain women have no rights and LGBTQ individuals lose every right they've fought and died for. In my lifetime I've seen some progress and I've also seen there are those who want to make certain white men have any say in the way the country and people of color and 'Alternate' lifestyles are put on this earth to serve them.

Which really fucking sucks!

 Mainly because we're so close, as a nation, from seeing that actually becoming the case. History has shown us that moments like the ones we're currently living in, always ends in violence and bloodshed. 

The next Civil War really is standing on our doorstep.

And there's no place to run or hide.

On a daily basis it's a battle to find a reason to hang around and not just letting the darkness cover me completely. If this past weekend is any example of the days ahead (For me personally) it's going to be a painful climb toward finding reasons to continue. I don't have any idea as to why I've out lived many of my friends and relatives because I've really pushed the limits of life for a while now and it's unfair that so many good people have been taken from our midst while this old fuck continues to breath air and become that last memory of those I've loved and have died and my memory is starting to vanish so the memories are pretty much damaged at this point and can't be counted on for relating the facts as so much the 'Feeling' of events dealing with yesteryear. 

So, given the premise I'll be here in one piece the next month I'm going to be a writing fool and I'll be posting a lot of art. There will be some surprises for you along the way, things I haven't told anyone (Save my dead friends and family) and I want to make it clear that my life has never been about me, it was about the journey and those around me who deserve to remain a part of the future. 

Peace.