CRUCIBLE ADDENDUM

The sun was shining most of the day today and it brought a heartening current of promise to probably just about everyone sharing it.  I know it did to me.  Who doesn't welcome the spring equinox and that cat-stretch of daylight hours yawning deep into evening giving us all more time to see and to remember why we are alive?

I've backed off the blog for a day or two in deference to the fragile and deeply personal content of my last entry.  Between the tears and caustic burn of recounting even those cursory details about my son's journey and the woefully intensive effort to respectfully, honestly and gracefully say all that needed to be said with as much perfection as I could muster; the whole process exceeded ten hours, concluding just before midnight.

For the following two days, Easter Sunday and yesterday, I was played and felt almost hollowed out.  It wasn't the dark kind of hollow where apathy reigns.  It was the blissfully exhausting hollow after a mighty purging, and I just wanted to remain quiet for as long as possible.

I also wanted to let that post stand all on it's own for a time; undisturbed and available.

But yesterday a wonderful thing happened.

About four weeks ago I decided to install a stat counter on the blog.  My logic being that it would help motivate me to keep writing if I could actually see and prove that my mother did, indeed, show up every few days to read it.

Of course, I am being somewhat facetious because I know that there are others besides my mom who, for reasons either of curiosity, accident or boredom, do occasionally sweep in and get that much-needed eye-lulling to put them right off to sleep sans any bothersome prescriptions.  As I have said before, I will take anyone I can get.

So, what happened yesterday was nothing short of remarkable as well as ineffably touching.

I began this literary compositional jouncing eight weeks ago and have been faithfully posting an entry about every two days.  I don't know how many or how few readers showed up at the start, but I do know that since I've installed the counter, I average about eighteen to twenty readers a day on slow days, and up to forty or more on holidays and Sundays.  (I've discovered that boredom is universal on Sunday nights.)

I posted the entry about Griffin in the wee hours of Sunday morning.  By ten o'clock Easter morning already twenty-six people had read it.  By the end of the day, forty-seven.

On Sunday evening I received a facebook message from a very sweet and sincere friend of Griffin's from high school telling me that she had re-posted my blog about him on her facebook page and asked if that was alright.  She now teaches in the same town where she and Griffin attended high school and said that there is an enormous heroin problem among the teens there.  She went on to say that by giving the drug abuse problem a 'face' in a person many in this small town knew, it might carry more of an impact.   She also told me that within minutes of re-posting the entry she began receiving emails and phone calls from his old friends who wanted his address so they could write him and send words of encouragement.

Yesterday one-hundred and eight people from all across the country had read that blog.  Of course, I assume that most of these are friends of Griffin's and I am deeply moved by their interest in and support for him after all these years.

As fate would have it, he also phoned me yesterday evening and I was able to share with him the reaction of his friends to his story.  I could hear the soft and lightly broken strain in his voice as he expressed both his shock and his gratitude, and he said, "  Oh brother.  Well, even though it is humiliating;  if my mistakes can help somebody else, I think it is worth telling.  I plan on telling it a lot when I am able to get on with my life."

In spite of everything, Griffin continues to have hope and embrace his gifted and healing sense of humor.  I received a letter from him the other day and will share a part of it, which illustrates this:


I am writing this because, due to the stunningly high collective I.Q. of the general populous of the **** County Jail inmates, a few Einsteins got our tier locked-down for the rest of the day.  Hence, no phone calls, T.V., Pinochle or basketball; for they thought it a wonderful idea to steal some delicious lemon cookies off of a tray at dinner.  
Anyway, this has now become my life; feeling like the alpha male in some paleolithic-era society.  Next up for my band of cro-mags is 'fire', then perhaps, 'the wheel!'
Yes, it is like this.  I know that I have no one to blame but myself, so I try hard to find the humor in whatever I can. 
Maybe I will compose a novel of sorts about my trials and tribulations at the various different county jails I have tenured.
It would be a great tragi-comedy......"


The rest of the letter was much more humorous, however, it revolved around a description of an exchange between himself, a friend and one of the less than brilliant guards whose name figures prominently in and is a necessary component of the story; so it will have to remain untold here.

But I am sharing a bit of him in his own voice for those of you who 'looked in' on him yesterday and would remember and enjoy a taste of the Griffin who is winning his way back.  Thank you for caring and please don't give up on him.  Don't judge or give up on anyone in his position.  There is always a person behind the addict and usually there are also a whole lot of small hurts that stew together to yield the depraved feast of addiction.  And while an addict is not a victim in the sense that they consciously choose to take the first step down that road, the fact is that it is a road open to the good and bad alike.

I think it is worth remembering that there are more good people who do bad things as a result of their addictions than bad people who become addicts because it feels good.

Onward and upward................

THE CRUCIBLE OF TRUTH

Whether or not you are religious, Easter time holds the same promises for everyone:  It holds the promise of renewal, the promise of hope and the promise of new beginnings; and within very the season it inhabits, it holds the evidence of survival and the promise of new life.  No matter how long or harsh the winter has been, there comes the lush transfiguration in the organic countenance of the planet to make us all feel strengthened and lighter.

Now while courage and renewal are not necessarily synonymous, there is a level at which they are required to conjoin if true resurrection is to be the result.  It is a level where honesty prevails and where there are no dark corners; a level that reveals the most vulnerable truths about ourselves and our lives and which is also as utterly and devastatingly terrifying as it necessarily and profoundly liberating.

It is the level that nails you to the cross.

Up until now in this spiritual, silly, narcissistic, humorous, indulgent, querying and candid blog-journey; I've skillfully (subjective opinion) danced around an area of my life that in many ways is my life but for reasons that will become obvious to any reader shortly, has remained deep in the soft, holding cell at the frayed and care-worn center of my heart.

If you go there, you will find every cell, fiber and microcosmic tissue throbbing harmoniously with the unifying thrust of unconditional love protecting the essence, image of and ultimate hope for my son, Griffin.

My son is a drug addict and has been so in one degree or form since he was about eighteen years old.   In late August he celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday under the same conditions in which he has celebrated all but one of his birthdays since 2007:  as an inmate in a state correctional facility.

Given that he is a man of extremely high intelligence, he managed to fund his addiction by a cleverly-executed scheme of prescription fraud.  This is what he was sentenced for.  Again.

The first time around he spent eighteen months at different correctional facilities in two states and several counties satisfying the various infractions in each; but at no time in any facility did he receive any sort of rehabilitative counseling or aid.  None.  And they wonder why recidivism is so high.

Two years ago in the pre-dawn hours of Halloween he was released from the county jail, yet just over one year later he was on his way back in.  For the first few months he was doing well, but over time as those same buttons were being pushed and still without  any recourse to viable coping methods, he slowly retreated to the only form of consolation and escape that he has known:  prescription pain medication.

Griffin is a charming guy; a massive charming guy standing nearly six foot six and weighing in around three-hundred and sixty pounds.  He was a huge baby and a huge child, although a very congenial and loquacious one and I would often have to warn him not to speak to every single person, down every single isle, about every single thing, every single time we entered the Supermarket.

Because of his size people assumed he was always much older than he was, which put a certain amount of pressure on him from a young age.  When people assume you are five and yet you behave as though you are two and a half, they tend to draw some unflattering conclusions about your emotional maturity and mental capacity and unfortunately, many had no reservations about voicing their asinine opinions and observations right in front of us.

People can bring astoundingly damaging energy to the function of opinion.


If Griffin has one weakness of character, it would be his incessant desire to please and an even greater need to be loved and admired.  He is a Leo, after all.  But for as far back as he was aware, he was not able to live up to those desires, and the harder he tried, the more abjectly he would fail.

When he was very young, his peers were afraid of him due to his massive size and exuberance and had a tendency to run from him.  Bringing him to the nursery school playground would sometimes evoke  scenes similar to the ones where Godzilla enters Tokyo and sends diminutive Japanese denizens scrambling frantically in every direction.

 As he grew and the other kids realized that he in no way regarded his physical presence as an advantage and a tool of intimidation, they took the opposite position and he became the goat.  He was a sweet, affable, sometimes gullible and gentle giant; just what the predatory types like to consume whole.  Nothing makes a small bully feel more empowered than by taking a larger kid down.

He played baseball and basketball in elementary and middle schools and excelled at both; especially baseball where he still holds the record for home runs hit clean out of the local ballpark and into the woods.  But because his size so greatly exceeded the height and weight requirements of the Pop Warner Football league, he was not able to participate in the one sport most suited to his monolithic frame.

That all changed when he reached high school.

By this time, too, he was so eager to find peer acceptance that I do believe he would have taken up wing-walking or bull running if it would have earned him their regard.  But he didn't have to do anything that risky.  All he had to do was to be big, put on a helmet and knock people down on the football field; simple as that, and he did so readily.

Suddenly, he was a hero and with his brilliant mind, gregarious nature and quick humor he quickly became one of the most popular kids in school.  However, within his own mind absolution did not fully come and the reality of his earlier years kept him a prisoner of disbelief and insecurity and feeling as though he still needed to be continually vigilant in his quest to please or he might just as suddenly find himself once more the target instead of the bullet.

But for the time being he was the largest bullet any high school coach in the history of the school had ever seen.  Not only that be he was fast, and scouts from colleges all across the country were coming to take a gander.  He was a mammoth,  treasured, testosterone-fueled commodity.

So, when he hurt his shoulder during a fall practice in his senior year and the team doctor (who had formerly been so for a professional football team in another state) began prescribing him injections of steroids and pain medications, the ramifications escaped our notice.

Sadly, they didn't escape Griffin's.  What these jock-cocktails provided most was a steady emotional lift with an undercurrent of invincibility and euphoria.  He was happy and a part of the team, only now if anyone didn't like him, he didn't care - not consciously anyway.  What he gradually discovered was that as long as he was under the influence of these substances, he felt good about himself.

Then, when news of Griffin's bad shoulder was leaked to the colleges courting him, one by one they dropped their offers and as the offers stopped, so did the attention.  By graduation day the glory days had ended, but not his dependency on the glory drugs.

In the years after high school I watched my son disappear.  He had a few unsuccessful attempts at college, culinary school and a variety of fairly respectable jobs but all were undermined by his increasingly insatiable dependency on chasing happy. 


 It wasn't happiness he was after.  Happiness is a state of being; a subjective emotion that wraps around our outlook like a sacred ribbon around our best day.  Griffin was chasing some sort of safe boxed thing:  a stagnant puddle of compartmentalized indifference;  a chunk of calm ringed by bursts of artificial joy;  a hollow parody of self-confidence.  He had never fully known happiness and the congenial rush from trustworthy peer support, so he didn't really know what to look for.

Of course, over time all the concomitant ills of addiction came into play:  the nearly pathological lying, stealing,  manipulating, chronic irresponsibility and connivance.  He was no longer recognizable by habit or attitude and after a couple of suicide attempts, neither were we.

Our lives had been voluntarily hijacked because we could not turn away and all that we had emotionally, financially and prayerfully went into trying to help him find his way to a point of peace and a place where he could start over.

Ultimately, only Griffin can heal Griffin, and for a long time that did not seem as though it was ever going to happen.  No matter how sincere his wish nor valiant his efforts, without long-term professional rehabilitative help, the healing would not take place and all the half-starts and nearly-theres were simply not good enough.

I've discovered that if a pattern continues long enough and you are able to fool yourself into believing that you are in control while in reality you are playing both sides of the game, eventually you will become buried by not only your addiction but by your deception, as well.  Soon every single out-breath you release becomes toxic until nothing whole and good can stand in your presence and those who try to do so either become victims of your declivitous game at self-destruction or they become casualties of your indifference to anything except satisfying your pharmaceutical craving.

But as anyone knows who has by fate or circumstance been beguiled into courting hopelessness, there really is no such thing and the saying, "Where there is life, there is hope." could not be more true or more worth believing.

Griffin has been incarcerated this time around since early December; and while the deep sorrow attendant to his situation as a recidivist addict and offender and the purgatorial consequences of his actions never leaves me for one minute, I can honestly say that at this moment I am not only filled with hope for his recovery, but I am filled with pride as well.  I am also filled with great happiness because he has been accepted for admission to the two-year inmate drug rehab program and will finally get the intensive help he needs and deserves.

He is ready for it now.  For the first time he is facing and assuming full responsibility for everything he has done to bring about his present fate.  This may not sound like much, but denial is a huge part of addiction, and I have heard him blame everyone but the Pope for his problems in the past.

I still grapple with ragged grief over the situation in general and missing him in particular.  On my visits I am not able to hug or hold him or come any closer then the bullet proof glass partition will accommodate and our conversations are over a phone receiver.  We have come to greet and leave one another with the ritual of pressing our hands together and matching them up against the glass that separates us.  Even though he is a man, his giant hand remains that of my child and as it engulfs and extends well beyond the silhouette of my own, I am reminded only of the corresponding enormity of his great and loving heart.

 But his heart suffers physically now, too.   As a result of his years of excessive abuse, he has developed cardiac arrhythmia and has already had two mild heart attacks; one before he was taken into custody and another a couple of weeks ago.  The concern for his health has driven me to my knees more than once and keeps me firmly grounded in prayer and awake deep into the night with predictable regularity as I barter with God and the angels and any celestial intercessor who will listen for the restored health of his body and his soul.

 And, of course,  there is still the pathetic ignorance and prejudice from people who routinely expose their profound insensitivity by malicious gossip and impudent judgments all based on their smug belief that because it has never happened to them or to one of their kids, they are immune from and above all moral prosecution for their craven tongues and are righteously defended in the eyes of the world and of their God.

Sadly, they pass this loathsome trait down to their children as my daughter experienced the other day at her job as a hostess in a local restaurant when the son of a former friend of mine entered with a buddy.  He recognized my daughter and they chatted offhandedly as she seated them.  But as he was leaving, he stopped at her station by the door and inquired about Griffin.

Being the honest soul she is, she told him the truth about her brother's incarceration adding also that we were very encouraged because this time he was finally going to get help for his problem.  He responded in full voice and without the slightest compunction that he stood also in front of her supervisor and co-workers and said, "Your brother is a real scum bag.  No offense."

No offense?

She was quite naturally stunned and felt a retort was out of the question because she was at work, so she said nothing but goodbye.  Then she fell into tears.  Her boss was more than understanding as were those co-workers within earshot, and they all rallied round her until she regained her composure promising covert retribution on her behalf should he ever show his face there again.

Composure, as a form of emotional rebounding, is something that I have come to master over the years with frightening acuity and could probably teach a college-level course on both the subject and the techniques.  It is only unfortunate in that it has become a necessity rather than a choice.

For a long time I could not look at a ball field or a large boy or a young family in church or any such reminders without it bringing my son into my thoughts with such searing regret, guilt, longing and shame that I could barely breath let alone hold back my emotions.

But with the years came strength and also a resolve not to let the darkest aspects of this lesson infect the rest of my hope with that kind of fruitless anguish.  Slowly, I developed a strategy of disengaging when these black holes were opened and to defer my reaction until a more private circumstance afforded me the opportunity to express my anguished heart.

What other productive options do I have?

I am committed to love and lift my magnificent son out of this wretched pit of abuse, self-sabotage and transgression just as he did for me.

Twenty-seven years ago I was spiraling out of control on a chemical vortex of drugs and super-charged apathy after leaving a grossly ill-conceived but blessedly brief, nine-month-long marriage of violence and abuse.

At twenty-five years old and in the aftermath of yet another one of my many compendious failures, I had no hope and saw few options and had returned to the derelict risk-taking of my teens with brash abandon and little regard as to whether I lived or died.

That is a pathetic tale all it's own, but the fact is that in the throes of this crash-test of my sanity, I became pregnant and from the moment this reality became known to me, so did another life-saving conception.  The birth of PURPOSE.  Suddenly, I had a goal and a purpose and a reason to rededicate myself to seeking the transcendent in life, and I named him Griffin.

Today my son and I have a victory to chase and there is nothing in heaven or in hell that is going to prevent me from finishing this formidable journey with him.

And as for those with distain who sneer and try to hold my son down in the muck of their pond-scum judgment, shame on you!

Oftentimes the most magnificent recreations are made of shame and ash.  This Griffin will soar again.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

What's in a name?  Apparently quite a bit.  It obviously provoked Shakespeare into giving it some serious thought, and he certainly had better things to do with his time.

I mean, think about it.  When you hear the name Harry what pops into your mind first?  I know, I know, Clint Eastwood certainly sexed up the image with his 'Dirty Harry' movies and Prince Harry is obviously no slouch; but, really; what is your initial visual response?

Odds are you probably picture if not an old, laid-back, pot-bellied guy with suspenders and a half- chewed cigar; at least a guy with glasses and perhaps less hair than more.  You might picture a bookworm or a friendly, old Uncle; a senior citizen or a nerd.

So, if you have the name Harry, then it is incumbent upon you to either conform to that image or to redefine that presumptive collective portrait like hunky Clint did in the 70's and 80's and Prince Harry is doing because, well, he can do whatever the heck he wants to.  Obviously, the latter is a hell of a lot more daunting simply because you are working against the tide of popular visualization.

According to my birth certificate it states that my name is Susan Tucker Creamer.  This was the obvious and conscious intention of my mother and father.   Then how is it that rarely have I ever been referred to by my given name of Susan?

It is as much my name, as Moon Unit Zappa's is her name.  It is as much my name as Madonna's name is her name or Cher's name is hers.  And even if those close to Moon call her Moonie or,  if Sonny called Cher, Cherzie; or, as I have heard is the case, those close to Madonna call her Madge, we still know these women as Moon Unit, Madonna and Cher.  No one being introduced to them for the first time would dare to be so presumptuous as to refer to them by any name other than the one first given unless otherwise invited by them to do so.

So, please explain to me why for my entire life, I have been called Suzi?  


Oh, it wasn't always spelled that way.  It started out Susie, but that spelling was no longer hip by the time I reached 5th grade in 1965, and so I replaced three letters with two others and Suzy was born.  Still, I would have preferred being Susan.  

 Yet I don't recall ever being afforded the option, and since as I was growing up, the only time I was referred to as Susan, was when I was in trouble, you would think that I would have developed a natural aversion to the use of my formal name based on the negative association; but quite the contrary.  I embraced it even more.   I suppose that, as a direct result of my inherent rebelliousness, it was  logical to make the connotative leap and equate Susan with autonomy, freedom, power, and adventure!  

My mother claims she named me Susan for a couple of reasons: One, because she felt it had class.  She said it brought to mind Grace Kelley.

The second reason was because it was a second choice.  I was supposed to have been named after my father's late mother, Sara.  However, my grandfather had remarried by the time I was born and my parents didn't want to engender resentment from my step-grandmother.  It was a legitimate assumption, although unnecessary as the poor woman died before I could even walk.

So, Susan/Susie  it was.  But it got worse.

In 1967, when I was in 7th grade Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention came out with an album and an iconic fictional character and vocalist who went by the name, Suzy Creamcheese.

 I was Suzy Creamer.  Can you see what I was up against?  I didn't stand a chance.

But to the delight of nearly everyone of that generation who was even remotely savvy, I was and will forever remain Suzy Creamcheese.  There was no way after that point that I could realistically entertain any hope of reinstating my given name to it's rightful place, so I took the only option left open to me, which was to replace yet another letter, thereby giving birth to Suzi.  

It is not my name, nor my preference; but, as I mentioned earlier, I've been swimming against the current of collective perception and; subsequently, swallowing massive amounts of subjective preconceptions and opinions from the tides of popular culture about who and what I must be for over half a century. At this point I'm drowning in misguided imagery and misunderstood characterizations.

I don't hate, Suzi.  She's got her good points; but, overall, she is seen as being a little light in the lantern.  Not that I consider myself to be some sort of rocket scientist, but even Frank Zappa painted Suzy as being a tad in denial about her darker, more cerebral side.  


I can be silly, lighthearted and whimsical; but I can also sit for an eternity lost in thought as I grapple all logic while trying to understand the underpinnings of absolutely everything.  I don't think Suzi has that same mental fortitude.  Or at least no one thinks she does based on her name alone.

But I could not be Susan for yet another reason.  Aside from the insistent preference of both friends and family to retain the cuter, more frivolous-sounding appellation; I had another reason entirely my own.   For some reason completely unfathomable by me, whenever I introduce myself to anyone as Susan,  almost invariably by the time we part they are bidding adieu to Sue!  

Now, I apologize upfront if this offends any legitimate-and-loving-it Sue's out there, but of all the names in the world, that is one that least resonates with who I am. I have no problem addressing anyone else by that name, but the minute those two vowels and one lone consonant are uttered and assigned to me, it is like fingernails down a chalkboard. 


 No.  It's worse.  It is like a verbal evisceration of my entire consciousness.  It is a bad, bad mistake.

I did make an heroic attempt to vanquish both Susan and Suzi to the outer reaches of bitter memories once I graduated from high school.  I viewed going away to college as an opportunity to reinvent myself; and since I was an art and English major and those departments are practically required to service bohemians and renegades,  I decided to simply go by my middle name, Tucker.

It is a perfectly androgynous name full of character and quirkiness; and it would have remained in use to this day had I not married a very traditional sort of man who, upon meeting me said, "What the hell kind of a name is that for a girl?  Don't you have a normal one?"

So long, Tucker.


But I suppose it could be worse.  My nephews and niece are French and when my nephew was very small he couldn't pronounce Suzi and, instead, pronounced it Zu-Zu.  I understand that the familiar word for Aunt in French is Ta-Ta.  

That's right.  I am Ta-ta Zu-Zu; and, yes, there are some juicy visual implications there.

I don't think even Suzy Creamcheese could live that one down.

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Every once in a while life hands you a rose.  It seemingly comes out of nowhere and is almost always completely unanticipated, however, you find yourself unable to ignore the other-worldly fragrance or to equate the gesture to anything other than as being a gift from the Heavens.

That happened to me recently in the form of a lovely and supportive email from an old friend whom I've long loved and admired even when he wasn't able to love or admire himself.  Of course, that was back in the days when we were of an age endemic to feelings of insecurity and prone to risk-taking and self-destructive behaviors; but the curious thing was that even back then I could see the light behind the haze of confusion and knew this guy possessed qualities fairly unique to all of us awkward creatures of earth and that one day he'd realize these things himself.  Once that happened, the world would be in for a treat.

I think it is happening now; the awakening to a renewed and deeper sense of value, purpose and grace. The fact that we've re- connected at this moment in time is no accident because we are both on the precipice of new phases that will bring us each into a long-awaited fulfillment in terms of recognizing and mobilizing the more enlightened options within our respective life plans.

This is an example of the 'collision of souls' that I referred to in an earlier blog.  Those rare and extraordinary bonds that exist before all memory and serve as a lifeline in the dense bog of our mortal incarnation.  They are a reminder that we are not in this alone; and, indeed, that we truly require the love and encouragement of others to succeed at our divinely-appointed sojourns here, especially from those who understand us.

I am sure there is a reason that these precious and sacred convergences are so uncommon.  Being prone to uneven tempers, imperfect actions and a general lack of appreciation, the only way we seem able to truly cherish such exceptional blessings as they surface in our pedestrian lives is by knowing that they are far from ordinary and may never come again.  It forces us to hold onto whatever light they bring to us and make the effort ever after to incorporate that incandescent beam of blessed consonance into everything that we do and not to squander the wisdom or misuse the supernatural boost it gave our soul.

Doing right by others is a mammoth responsibility.

That fact has been very recently brought home as the result of another different but fascinating and revelatory exchange of emails between myself and a former neighbor of mine a hundred years ago when I was about thirteen and had just moved to Kansas City from New York with my family.

 Reading his entertaining, well-written accounts and verbal re-enactments of the people, times and events that are now over forty years behind us has provided me with a much-needed sense of continuity as well as with the undeniable reminder that everything counts!  What we say and do in this moment and space in time has lasting implications and will eventually provide the material that becomes who and what we are as we exit this earth-bound arena at whatever point that happens.

I've also realized that often we are not in control of people's perceptions or of their subjective experiences of us, which can be unsettling; particularly if we are perceived negatively or judged falsely.

But the reality of that can also be oddly comforting because it encourages us not to get overly upset or distracted by those occasionally unpleasant corporeal interfaces, since there is little we can do to change them.  When the threat of despair looms I do as my sister does when faced with such odds:  She raises her hands up to the sides of her head and brings them gracefully down in a motion similar to what you might do to gently wave away smoke and she softly chants, " LET IT GO."


I have been fording my way through some profoundly deep currents of thought lately; brought about as they have been by these felicitous communications, as well as by those abjectly painful ones; and I can only expect that at some point I will understand more clearly why this is so.

 Although, today it is gloriously sunny and unusually warm, and I would like nothing more than to step out into the middle of it and disappear.  However, I did that last week and am now forced to forgo any thoughts of frolicking in the sunshine because I have work to do.  There is art to be created, paintings to paint and jewelry to be designed and assembled all in preparation for my once-monthly, three day commitment as a vendor in a magical place downtown called Good JuJu.

The website has been up and operational for a few weeks, but no sales yet.  My Web god, Johnny, says that it takes time and that I need to promote the site now.  I'll get to that as soon as I make the capital to do so, although I did replace some pieces I did not like with others made recently that I do.  I freshened it up a bit.  Whoever coined the words, "It takes money to make money." was evidently not kidding!  I am making some sales outside of the site at least, so I'll get there eventually.

And as I think I've also alluded to before, I'm discovering that I'm far more emotionally vested in the writing of this blog then the business of the website.  I suppose that comes from the awareness that well-crafted words have a far more powerful and providential capacity to uplift, enlighten, engage, encourage and entertain than does either a well-crafted painting, drawing or frivolous piece of jewelry.  Still, the world would be a loathsome and unbearable place without the visual transcendency of art and ornament.  Of course, I include music in the mix, however, I have no special claim over that domain other than the paltry ability to play Oh Susannah on the harmonica, so I tend no to dwell on it beyond my limited capacity as a devoted listener.

Now it is time to get back to work.  The doors and windows are open, the birds are singing, and the rose bush outside my door is just now coming into leaf.  How lucky, then, am I to already be filled with it's perfumed expression.  "What's in a name?  That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet."   Thanks, Mr. Shakespeare.  I think I'll call it,  "miraculous."