Tonight.

I am missing you a lot.

Edited again, I needed to add to it when i re-read it.

You find the center of a dark place and then things pile up, I found out a lot today about myself and others and what we all go through and how nasty a place this world can be and a lot of it was sad and hurtful and a lot of it was me realizing ive been sad and i have been hurtful to people I love and care about so whatever I am getting now is my just desserts. 

Its the start of a new year and its the first year ill ever be myself the way id like to be, 

no matter how full of shit anyone thinks i am or if anyone thinks im new or telling the truth or healed or anything because i know that i am the guy that is worth while. I used to be discarded street trash and now after lots of refurbishing and painting and oiling I am something worth being proud of. By no means am i at the finish line and can say that I am some perfect entity lickity split, but when something so major shifts something so deep and you cant deny the experience and how profoundly its impacted you. Then you change. You just do. I even know where the doubt or believability i can change comes from, I am the boy who cried wolf. Im not saying its magic dust, im just saying that you get a swift and hard and painful kick in the ass from life and the people that love you.  Then you stop telling yourself you are broken or crazy and start realizing you make mistakes, youre human, and you have potential to be something better than the flawed version of yourself you created and nurtured far beyond the point of reason. 

I know the hurt in me is important and the growth can only be nurtured through experience and applying the lessons ive learned to the way I live my life. 

Today I talked to some friends and family today and learned a lot of things that made me sad, most of the information i am taking with a grain of salt but still friendships and knowledge is hard.

Im glad I know my friends and what they go through and what they choose to share with me and I even love what they dont share with me. 

After all this chloe puts up a retrospective of her previous year in glorious photographs she has taken. I was a large part of this last year in her life and obviously hers in mine. 

It made me cry to see how happy we could have been and to see a love that I could have had without borders and a love that was real but poisoned by my excuses,lies and inability to believe anyone could love me for who i am (which is,in actuality, far less exciting than pretend lukas but at least i know im still kinda cool as boring old true lukas). To see in those photos those moments of joy, those moments of pure love, now that im in in a place to except and understand the concept of it. it was so hard to see. It was like realizing that you threw away a winning lottery ticket and then had to see the photo of you tossing it on the side of the road thinking it wasnt worth anything.  Then the crying turned to howling when I realized/remembered how talented, smart, funny, and beautiful she is and how ugly I have been and how much i want her to be happy and to know what the kind of love she gave me can be like to receive. I am glueing myself back together just like she is, but in a totally different way because part of what ive learned is that we are separate people and will always approach our lives in separate ways.  That love is accepting someone for who they are and loving them for the drawbacks as much as you love the great things. That we all have problems that we cant blame on our parents or baggage or past, that we all try to love the best we can, even if thats not enough, that we all nurture and care in seperate ways,that we all grow at a different pace and that love is the acceptance and enjoyment of someone elses life, while not sacrificing yours, and allowing them the parts of themselves that make someone a complete person. oh, and not being a giant lying dick bag fucker is a good thing as well. TRUST ME. 

25 was supposed to be huge, and i thought it was a magic button on your birthday all of a sudden some tibetan monk bestows ultimate knowledge and wisdom on you. Turns out its a slow build of lessons and loss and fear and progress with some great times on the other side (fingers x'ed).  

2009 I have good hope for you. 

Everything evil before you can burn. 

This was pretty huge when i read it. 

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone. 

-W.H.Auden

Oh my god

...

Wow.

So sad and shocked.
Sometimes information is a bad thing.
Why does being stupid and uninformed seem so much happier.
I can barely move today.
Karma is a bitch.

The Zoo Is Fucking with me...Right??????

I went to the zoo with my family to take my mind off things. 

Pretty much no animals were out or looked remotely excited, 

the ones that were out sort of just flopped about looking all dumpy lumpy. 

Ronin put it best when he said his favorite part was the construction site below a bridge. 

So while I had more time on my hands to look at architecture than animals I started noticing that all the signs were super fucking creepy. 

I decided it would be a fun photo project for me as ronin enjoyed looking at everything, no matter how boring. 

They are all crappy and blurry because the rooms had almost no light.

For halfway decent zoo photos check my flickr page which i can no longer update

other than by uploading via email. Better than nothing i guess. 

Flickr.com/photos/limeyariver

Loss.

My Sister Lark Passed away. I found out this morning. 

I didnt know her like I know a lot of my family but she still 

was someone important to me, even when distant. we shared a dad. 

She contracted aids several years ago and got very sick christmas day and passed soon after. 

I just hope she went lightly, calmly, and at peace. 

We are going to have a little funeral tonight in the garden since we cant make her actual funeral.

 R.I.P. Lark Song Previn. 

You will be missed. 

"special" doesnt do her justice.

Every song sits on me and every quote hangs heavy. 

I want to show you who i am, prove that i am ready. 

But hearts are broken eventually 

mentally im choking,cant you see?

Break myself in two again

so i can build it back and then

return to something beautiful

to a life where no on has to pull.

You deserve to just be oh so happy

to live life so its not so  crappy

you deserve the greatest joys

of life and love and all its toys

Where mornings scent is your golden hair

and breakfast happens without a care

to laugh at things so carelessly 

to hold you close, just next to me. 

I miss the way you put on clothes

the way you cooked apon our stoves

the gentle shake before you sleep

the sunken eyes when you have weeped. 

The way you eat with just a finger

the way your smile just always lingered. 

The way that you got so damn excited 

to be creative and delighted

The way your talent shines so bright

the way youre so creative late at night

the funny things you find in life

the scary way you hold a knife. 

The crafty things you used to make

the delicious cakes you used to bake.

The way you look at me and say 

"i love you bunny, every day"

but the flames now out and its been trashed

by me, my problems and my past

it all caught up eventually 

and broke because i carelessly 

didnt think for anyone else

except my ego and my tattered self. 

 strange things happen from the truth

Like pulling out an impacted tooth

So now i am finally set free

from the poison that encompassed me. 

I want to take you to all the places

share our love for watching faces

sip our coffee and our tea

Live life together so effortlessly .

I never thought id be a squatter

living with my lovely otter. 

Id give anything for one more night,

to hold each other so damn tight. 

I have no one left to blame

to make me feel like i was sane

I want no one else to make me better

not spoken, yelled or in a letter. 

the only thing i want from before

is the girl i so adore. 

If i could build a time machine

id do things right, id keep things clean. 

Then maybe i would sleep a wink

not concerned with what you drink. 

Not be scared of where you have been been

and if its cozier when youre with him.

Id call you and just shoot the shit

and charm with you with my pathetic wit. 

Id pull you tight and whisper so

make sure that you wouldnt go.

Make sure that you understood

my love for you so that we could,

begin to live so happily,

as one big fucked up family. 

I would make sure i never lied

 keep things holed up deep inside. 

You would know, for once, for sure. 

The love we have it will endure. 

That i am new and fresh and great

not the old me that i now hate.

That i mean the words i say

fully, each and every day. 

I made mistakes that are so huge

that turned me into such a scrooge. 

Now my heart has turned to gold 

It wont go back to having mold

it will keep on growing because of you

now that i know what i must do. 

because you showed me effortlessly 

how easy being me can be. 

Thank you for everything we shared

the love you gave, the amount you cared. 

because i know it wont return

it crashed it broke and then it burned

but here it is so you can see

I love you otter...endlessly. 

To be as you wish.

If you knew me before this month, please take a strainer to your memories of who I was and make sure you only let the parts of me that made you smile pour through the holes and whatever sticks in the strainer as negative bury it under concrete. I am. 

The other night I burned a list I made of all the qualities in myself I never want to let be a part of me again and a list of lies I told the people I should have loved more. I sat barefoot on a square of slate...perched...squatting, like a gargoyle on the fronts of my toes, leaning over the fire and letting myself feel everything. I Watched that thick paper start to turn to embers and allowed my face to brush up against the smoke. As I let the smoke edge around my face I let go of all the parts of me I can no longer face in the mirror. "Just get through this" I murmured. I made sure everytime my mind tried to escape from the density of the moment that I brought it back to face every bit of pain I was needing to let go. As I wiped my face clear of the first wave of tears I dragged deep on my cigarette and used the butt end of my red lighter to scoop a hole out from the dirt in the garden. I pushed the ashes of my worst self  into the hole and packed the dirt on tight, watering whatever might grow there with the saline reality falling out of my facial ducts. I then pulled the slate over it as a little headstone and looked up into the starry night and promised without saying a thing to whoever was listening,god,the neighbors,an earthworm, that I was never going to be the type of man that I was previously allowing myself to become.  The release was gigantic.  I turned around and there was my brother, watching me the whole time.  He had been so silent, so respectful of the moment. I pushed my cigarette down into the small ashtray at the top of the stairs back into the kitchen and without saying a word we both walked inside. 

photo.jpg

photo.jpg
Originally uploaded by Limey A River.

I miss your finger in my ear.

Sleepless xmas morning.

"You don't know what love is

Until you've learned the meaning of the blues

Until you've loved a love you've had to lose

You don't know what love is.

You dont know how Lips hurt

Until You've Kissed and had to pay the cost

Until You've Flipped your heart and you have lost

You dont know what love is

Do you know how a lost heart fears

The thought of reminiscing

and how lips that taste of tears

Lose their taste for kissing

You dont know how hearts burn

For love that cannot live yet never dies

Until You've Faced each dawn with sleepless eyes

You dont know what love is."

-Billie Holiday

I love this.

"We have bigger houses but smaller families:
We have more degrees but less sense;
more knowledge but less judgements;
more experts but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,but we have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour.
We build more computers to hold more information,to produce more copies than ever,but we have less communication.
We have become long on quantity but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods,but slow digestion;
tall man, but short character;
steep profits, but shallow relationships.
It is time when there is much in the window
but nothing in the room."

Almost...

Almost...
Originally uploaded by Limey A River.

She eats doodie

She eats doodie
Originally uploaded by Limey A River.

Morning face.

Morning face.
Originally uploaded by Limey A River.

Dettol.

Popcorn makes people think of the movies.

Coconut makes people think of the beach.

Dettol Makes me think of skinned knees and the woods in Surrey England.

I Was Born In a hospital in London England on the morning of October 28th 1983. Once I was fit to leave I was taken home to our cottage in a town south of London close to the south shore of England called Reigate Surrey.

Represented Here By a small red dot.

This was the type of town that just cant exist anymore. It was small, subtle, quaint, centered around community and local business. Most shops were owned by familys within the area. Pharmacists and tobaconists and grocery stores and all the kinds of places that usually are owned by conglomorates were owned by friendly shop keepers. I think this is probably where the original seed of doubt in big business for me started because of course eventually Reigate did fall victim (albeit to a far lesser degree than most towns in the modernized world) to corporate interest and low low prices.

Here is the High Street (Main Street)

I would spend the majority of my days walking around the woods in our back yard. Depending on the time of year It seemed that I would always have different walking partners. My brothers usually only in the winter because they were bored of being indoors, my sister in the summer because she only enjoyed the outdoors when it was nice, my mother in the fall because she loved seeing the leaves change and my father whenever he found the time or was home.
The walk through the woods wasnt short, it was a path that I would guess (and when I say guess it really is nothing more than JUST a guess...a childs perception of distance is no legal document) was about 2-4 miles depending on which trails you took. The one that left and returned to our back yard was the shortest but also my favorite because in the center of it, insanely enough, there was an old locomotive dining car. It was cherry red stained by years of exposure to the elements so every last crack had the weathering of something exquisetly made and worn in such a way that only the power of nature can accomplish. The metal railings were tinted brown and orange from the oxidation finally stripping away the hand polished guiderails and foot guards. The inside was deep cherry and oak woods that had somehow retained their elegance despite all the odds. My father would walk me through those woods and recount me story after story on those trails and in that locomotive car. He would improvise aboutgnomes and tree dwelling elves (I had never even heard of keebler at this point, so you can imagine how shocking it was when i really believed for a few years that keebler elves had stolen my fathers idea after we had moved to the states.) He would tell these stories with such passion and intense depth and hand movements. It was true joy to experience his genius of creation transposed to a seperate and completely silly medium such as childrens mystical story telling. He was damn good as far as I can remember. He should have written a book.

Here is a portion of those woods that we walked. I will try and find the locomotive at somepoint but im pretty sure it will take a lot of searching.

Thinking about those woods always makes me happy. Its like they are my power song. My Under Pressure. My Rise Above. Just this one thought of myself alone in those woods in england, rustling my stupid feet through those stupid leaves with a stomach full of ribena and smarties trying to remember and sometimes act out all those stories my dad told me, makes me warm inside in a way that i havent found in a long time. With no sarcasm I present to you the only word i can think of to represent it...YAY!

During these adventures I would often be throwing my pale little frail british body off of logs and up trees and down paths and would eventually scrape myself up. When it was bad (which it often was) I would run home and ask my mom to bandage me up. This was ALWAYS followed by a giant over-reaction on my mothers behalf on the severity of the wounds and would insist that i take a bath with a capful of dettol in it. Dettol is made by Reckitt & Coleman and is commercially available (Probably at those giant stores in reigate now) as an inexpensive liquid antiseptic which is safe and gentle enough to use on the skin (like in a bath) and powerful enough to also use as a disinfectant (for dog pee on kitchen floors). It is effective against bacteria, fungi, yeast, mildew and even the frightening "super-bug" It is able to kill 98% of microbes in just 15 seconds. So in other words, this shit is fucking unreal. Even grez started using it to prep his tattoos!
So now whenever I smell dettol, it doesnt remind me of dettol. It reminds me of my family in the woods, comfort when im hurt, a time in life when the hardest part of my day was deciding if I was going to be a wizard or a tree elf, and how much ribena I can fit in my belly. I love happiness. Why did I shun it for so long? Its all around when you just stop and smell the dettol.

When I am at work, this is how I feel. 

Insomania.

I can't sleep. It's two am after sharing the most satisying evening of
riffs burritos great friends and lots of laughs I've had in a long
time. Thanks Chloe and Bee. I guess I'm still up watching ultimate
fighter because I'm not letting this great night die but I do hope
I'll be able to sleep soon because right now I am wide awake with
happiness. I'm going to start staying happy as often as I can cause
this feels fantastic this...happy thing. I like it! Most importantly
I'd like to thank my bff, without her id be half the man I want to be
and half as cool and calm etc. Just thanks for helping with all the
good things, SOO much otter. Uni Tuesdays are amazing! Ok fuck it i'm
going to shut em and see how well it styx.

Ikea nesting instinct.

Ikea nesting instinct.
Originally uploaded by Limey A River.

New light!

New light!
Originally uploaded by Limey A River.

Home décor.

Xmas shopping is hard, Luckily Chloe Hasnt shut up about what she wants more than anything this year, so it should be really easy to get shopping for her done. Just today she said "I want this more than I want a career in photography". so if you are wondering what it is she could want so much...

What Words.

Today I feel more like the left side than the right side.

Edit 7:29pm : Chloe Makes a lot of sense and cheered me up! I am now more right side than left! Thanks to the best otter ever!