Wow, yesterday was so amazing around here.
But first, here’s this:
A friend over in Newark sent me this shot she took of the candlelight vigil in the Square last night. It looks like it was a complete success!
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And before I forget–
Phil is supposed to be going live tonight, starting at 10PM eastern time. Be sure to check here later to confirm.
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Nick Cave was back with his Red Hand Files yesterday! And what a great one it was, too. Brief, but he explained everything he’s been up to during his break from the Files, and he said the Red Hand Files is now officially 7 years old (!!) — and also, he answered a question about love & freedom, saying in part:
“I thought on your question, Mies, ‘Did love mean freedom to me?’ I reflected on the things that matter most to me on this earth – my family, friends, those within my sphere of influence, my music, my writing, my spiritual life, and the health of the world in general, all these elements that, together, constitute a life lived lovingly. Mies, these things seem far from freedom. Instead, they are forms of containment that place demands upon us, sometimes greatly so. The pursuit of love involves feelings of duty and responsibility, as well as sacrifice, hard work, resilience, patience, forgiveness, and understanding. These are the structural bonds within which supreme love can flourish…“
You can read it in full HERE.
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Tomorrow, I ostensibly have another day off.
However.
Since being put on Medicare when I turned 65, I now have to have “a doctor.” And since next Thursday, a nurse from the insurance company is coming to my house to give me my “annual check-up” (insurance-speak for “we might not want to insure you if you don’t let us come over”), I have to have the doctor in place by then.
I am not a fan of traditional medicine, as all of you probably know by now. And I have not been to a doctor in 24 years. But back when I was on Welfare — during the fake lockdowns — they put me on Medicaid and assigned me a doctor “near me”. (30 miles away.)
When I was finally able to get off Welfare, I looked into the doctor they had assigned me and I actually liked his credentials! He has a degree from the University of Pikeville, in Kentucky (!!), where most of my ancestors are from. And more importantly — the University of Pikeville teaches Osteopathic Medicine (and is connected to a Presbyterian Church). (FYI: “Osteopathic medicine is a distinct branch of healthcare that emphasizes the body’s inherent ability to heal itself. “)
So I made a note of the doctor’s name and phone number, etc., and decided that if I was ever forced to have a doctor, he would be it.
And now that I’m forced to have a doctor, when insurance/medical-type people ask me who my doctor is, I always say him but I haven’t actually ever met him.
But tomorrow afternoon, I will be meeting him. Officially. And he will become “my doctor.” So that everything can go smoothly when the insurance-nurse comes next week. And then they can go back to leaving me alone for another year.
(If you know me AT ALL, you know that I’m just super thrilled about all of this — having to give ANY of my free time to doctors and insurance companies. However, on we go.)
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On a related note…
If you know me at all, then you also know that I am 100% totally into natural healing. And I always have been, even though for the first 40 years of my life, I also went through the motions of “going to doctors”. Then I basically gave up and said, I need a different path…
In my current novel-in-progress, The Curse of Our Profound Disorder, there is a character based in certain key ways on a Lakota Sioux Medicine Man, Jack Red Eagle, that I knew briefly back in the mid-1980s.
At that time, he had left the Reservation in Oklahoma and was living in a cabin in the woods outside of Nacogdoches, TX. And he was a practicing Medicine Man. He was in his early 60s and looking for someone to train to take over his practice. He wanted to retire. He thought I had what it took to be a Medicine Woman.
We corresponded briefly, I went to Texas, it turned out I was really good at it, and it freaked me the fuck out because I was only 24 years old… (plus I was a singer-songwriter in NYC. I couldn’t see myself moving to a cabin in the woods in East Texas to heal people when I hadn’t even learned yet how to heal myself).
Anyway. So I have a character in my novel, created around Jack Red Eagle. And I created that character 26 years ago, when I first started writing (almost all of) this novel.
As I’ve been revising the novel, and moving forward with it, I had toyed with the idea of changing the character’s name to Jake instead of Jack — but I kept coming back to the very strong feeling that the character’s name needed to be Jack (my character is Jack Kicking Eagle, and he’s in his 30s). And as I first read over the novel, after not having read it in 26 years, I was sort of overwhelmed by how spiritual the character was.
Anyway. I have to focus now on the ending of the novel. And so I do a lot of sitting and staring. And yesterday, I kept getting the feeling that I should dig out those old letters from Jack Red Eagle and read over them. I hadn’t read them in 40 years.
So I finally went and dug them out of storage. And WOW. They blew me away. Not just the unbelievable similarities between what the real Jack believed and what my character believes (like, verbatim, after not having read those letters in 40 years), I was also overwhelmed by what a high opinion Jack Red Eagle had had in my mental/spiritual abilities to heal, way back then.
In fact, he had told me that he was certain I had Native American blood in me (because of certain things I was just sort of eerily familiar with), and this was a few years before I met my birth father and discovered I was indeed descended, in part, from the Black Foot Indian Nation in Montana.
I googled Jack Red Eagle yesterday, and found out he had died back in 1992. And he is buried here, in a very, very old cemetery in Nacogdoches:
And then, of course, through all of this, I kept feeling like he was communicating with me (in spirit) and once I found out he was actually dead, then I knew he was.
And then I “found” a photo of him that I didn’t know I had.
And then I found a frame that it fit into and so I framed it and put it on my bedroom wall! (It’s over by my ministerial ordination certifications.)
Anyway. Wow. Suddenly, he was back in my life and I got the profound feeling that it was HIS essence that had been telling me that the character in the novel had to stay as Jack and not be changed to Jake.
And once I saw — after reading over the original letters yesterday — that my character already had all of the real Jack’s beliefs, etc., I was kind of overjoyed about all of it.
Anyway. Long story short:
Jack Red Eagle, back in my life after 40 years!
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Okay, I gotta scoot!!!
I gotta head to town and see my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man. And he has family in town today, “winterizing” the house — and this is making my Japanese man very unhappy. He feels like they just want him to die so they can sell the house…
I’m guessing it will be an emotionally tricky day. I’m hoping to just whisk him off to Peony Bistro, and get sashimi and sake. We’ll see how that goes.
Meanwhile. Have a wonder-filled Wednesday, wherever you are in the world!!
Thanks for visting.
I love you guys. See ya!
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Breakfast-listening music!!
Yes, you guessed it!! Too fucking FUN!! (I have it on a bootleg CD, with better sound quality).
Bob Dylan’s classic, Everybody Must Get Stoned, by Tom Petty live NYC! Enjoy, gang.
Marilyn's Room 