I have been married and divorced two times. I don't know if I will try it a third time, but at the moment there is only one person I would consider, and she is on the distant horizon. Not that I am much of a catch, ask my ex-wives.
I live in miami beach. South Beach, actually. This morning as I was doing my daily errands, I passed this cockeral (baby rooster chick... I think) on the sidewalk in a residential area. It is the first living poultry I have ever seen on the beach. When I lived in West Miami, 17 or so years ago, the roosters would wake me up... and that was in a nice suburban area, but never here on the beach. It crossed my mind that south beach, or sobe for short, is a very unique place, and I struggled with the right words to describe it.
The best I've come up with so far is that it is a confluence (a comming together) of first, second, and third worlds. What makes sobe unique from New York, and I assume L.A. and other major metropolitan areas, is that it is too small for there to be distinct burroughs or barios, and it is just barely big enough for there to be neighborhoods.
As a consequence, people from all over the world live right next to each other and pass each other in the street often enough to recognize each other. In New York, I loved to sit somewhere, anywhere, but especially around mid-town. I would watch a couple thousand people pass in about thirty minutes, and I recognized that there was a very high probability that I would never ever see any one of those people again in my entire life.
Here, you know the "mentally-challenged" homeless people, sometimes by name or by nickname. You watch them go through their up's and down's, and believe me, there are more crazy people here than you can shake a stick at. But there are also very cool, very gentle people. Artists, tradesmen, merchants, musicians, and one or two representatives of the people who aren't career politicians. And you might walk right by their sidewalk cafe table and never realize who you just passed. Or, you might see them over and over, and eventually find an excuse to meet and become life-long friends. Some of my very best life-long friends are people I met here.
Another consequence, and I have talked about this before, is that because we are so heterogeneous, the residents (not necessarily the visitors) have developed extreme tolerance and respect for cultural differences. Instead of saying "you're in america, speak english", they try to learn the essential words to communicate in as many languages as they can. In fact, in my experience, it is the immigrants who have come here and learned english who are the most indignant when someone demands that you speak spanish, or italian. To their credit, the french try very hard to speak english, and they often are very pleased when you try to speak to them in their own language. Of course, you have to say right off the bat that you really don't know how to speak their language. And come to think of it, most people from latin countries and even from italy, warm to the same approach. That said, I will repeat that there are cool people of all colors in all races, and there are also assholes of all colors in all races.
I am not a catch because I live on the fringes of society, often with little or no money. I have gotten used to it, and I have come to trust my higher power to always take care of me as long as I do my best to take care of myself. Don't buy stuff you don't need, don't waste what you have, and never, ever, buy on credit. Read my blog from the beginning, and I hope you will see many examples.
I live on the fringe because I like it, it keeps me alive, and alert, and almost always grateful. In my first marriage, in my 20's, I "fell asleep". I developed a routine that I was comfortable with, I used my awareness to head off any threats to my comfortable routine, and I followed my habits, even down to sex, to the point where years passed without me really noticing. I woke up when I realized my wife had fallen in love with another man, and no matter how much she regretted it and didn't want to hurt me, she was no longer mine, her heart belonged to him. (By her choice, and I bear her no grudge. It was the event that threw my life into turmoil and allowed me to finally, I hope, have awakened in my late forties to what a beautiful thing my life really is.)
My second wife was not capable of loving me. It wasn't necessarily a fault in her, it was simply a folie a deux (as my last therapist described it). But I loved her, and I was willing to blunt my needs for passion with some serious IV cocaine abuse. Eventually, I left (it was either leave or kill myself by overdose), but then cocaine became my significant other. It took me ten long years to finally drop that woman.
My former roommate and dear friend who gave me a place to recover, and allowed me to take care of her life for six months while she came from "illegal" to "being processed" will remain a friend for life. We have disengaged to the point of mutual comfort and agreement. We live seperately, but we see each other often. We were never meant to be lovers, we never tried it, and we have both become strong enough on our own to remain very good friends. It was "by chance" that we met, but I don't believe in coincidence.
Finally, the woman who was the catalyst for me to transform my existenct from being a functioning but stalled addict, back to being a dependable and productive, goal-oriented, able to plan and move forward through intermediate goals person, was my soulmate. She is the woman on the horizon. She is doing the same thing with her life, but she has a husband and children of her own, making things a couple orders of magnitude more complicated and difficult.
Women, women, women... it's biology, man. Continuation of the species. I can't speak to homosexuality, but to me it is as normal and natural as heterosexuality. If homosexuals dominated the planet, we wouldn't have to worry about the population explosion, we would be a much more loving and tolerant society, and we would probably all be healthier and dress better. Unfortunately, I just can't get my head around kissing a man. I like women. That's my flavor, and everyone is entitled to their own personal flavor.
So, first, second, and third worlds... we all live here together. We all get stressed and become irritable sometimes. The people I like, and who I keep close to me, get over it and apologize. They respond to a smile and a hug, and I have been both the giver and the reciever several times in the last year and a half that I have been home. This is my home. Until I get my boat this summer and sail further south to probably less forgiving and more nationalist peoples. Everything happens the way it is supposed to. I am still in training. More of an internship really, because I do get the chance to help people along my way.
Be real, be happy, have fun, and don't fall asleep. Oh, and I miss my guitar so much. Maybe soon... :)
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