Dedicated a reading to you. Happy birthday, somewhere inside you're always here.

 

30 years later somewhere else today is just any other normal day for you, me and us. In these photos we are at the beginning of our lives. 

I think the words I miss or we miss you are inadequate, and it feels anxious to know what to say after 30 years, but I could never not acknowledge this day. 

It's been a little over twenty years this month since I escaped an inferno. The nightmares appear in times of profound distress. It took me ten years afterward to really process and come to terms, the smoke still in my lungs, parts of the brain still scarred. It took a few more years after this recognition to see some things I couldn't admit and face. Memories of back then are a plague of anger, regret, shame, sadness and disbelief. But then you must forgive yourself. You don't need to forgive those who almost killed you. You can't believe it happened but you have to ultimately go into the daylight with the wounds and go about life because you almost didn't make it, you almost lost the world. So many before you never had a chance to survive and make it out alive.

You can't break the loop of thirty years. You have been marked. You may have resurrected yourself but somewhere you have died those thirty years prior and you will never leave that reality. You are forever in room of suspension. There is no address, no phone, no outside knowledge of this room to anyone else. Your secret. Your curse. Life goes and you grow and age and seasons come and disappear and deep inside while you have hoped patiently waiting it's your turn finally, but now you realize this has all been decided those thirty years ago. 

Happy birthday. I wish I could have seen you before the last on this day. I'm glad our life wasn't characterized by the ending of this song. I wish I could have seen you though but I understand why you couldn't believed you couldn't stay. If that had happened to me I wouldn't have known either. I will scan your books this year. Love forever, Little Bear

 I didn't know you but you were such huge influence on me in the process of being someone who found art and used their creativity to find a way out of their suffering and pain. Nevermind and In Utero are so great that they don't even just hold up, they have musically transcended beyond the decade they were crafted. All those awful conspiracies that surrounded your death haunting Courtney and all the vultures that wished she was the one who had died instead and even those in your circles who had turned on her as well, I'm glad she has outlived that time period. I hope you can see Frances has survived to be doing well. As the daughter of someone who also lost their father to suicide I hold a lot of space in my heart for her and Courtney. As someone who is a survivor of being intensely suicidal for years I always have a place inside me for you, along with the place where I hold onto your musical gifts and the moral political counsel you bestowed in a much more racist, sexist, homophobic time. It's been thirty years yet every few years since a new group of kids are wearing Nirvana shirts and head banging along to your words as well as those legendary yet forgotten Generation Xers. I think you got some of the Boomers too. Nirvana is still my favorite band. You were just a human not a rock god that you got written up into and despised, though the culture rightfully immortalizes you while now it's good at balancing that you were a person with some frailties, sensitivities, and talent more than the average earthling. 

Everyone still misses you and always will.

 27 years. I'm a writer now like you also, while still retaining my photography. I wish you could see it, maybe in an alternate view you can. I'm figuring out other things materially, personally, maneuvering as well, maybe its best you only see that when I feel more secure. 

It's been an insane few years politically and world wide catastrophe, more than the usual, but par for the course of human history. Doesn't seem to be letting up in my lifetime. 

Not many can truly grasp and experience and understand the cusp of rationality and insanity and lesser survive it. There was never anything to forgive. Yet for the others, nothing besides the fantasy of malice. It's not constant and violently churning but I don't mind that it won't let up in my lifetime.

I hate the lack of compassion and community in this country and fear getting this new plague we are still in, angry at being socially coerced to unmask. I know you never would have done or succumbed to the inconsiderate, incompetence, compliance and ignorance that infests here. In another life for all of us I imagine it would have been Scotland, Wales or bust. Though not many places are really safe it feels in a consistent sense and that likely won't change in my lifetime and many other's lifetimes. 

Adulthood and going into my first year of what one considers middle age is interesting to observe most adults still keep the vulnerability and fear and maturity from their teens. It's all over the place especially with this social media and digital world now. Fascinating. Though it's dystopia label and diagnosis is overused and yet not inaccurate but not the whole picture. You taught me well to never accept one true narrative, and as I continue I can see many angles and how complex and multilayered things and people are no matter a baseline of the ignorance and banality that they continually pivot to. It feels like mass denial one side and accelerationists on the other, not there aren't others who reject either, like me. It's bad and frightening though and I'm glad you don't have to witness that. However to diagnose pessimism and apathy does disgust me, though it can feel satisfying momentarily but it feels dishonest and a cope out. Because it is. And I refuse to give in, the fascists and powerful never do so why should I? Not that I am brave, though not a coward I feel, but no one can really know that test till you're face to face and would one recognize the test? Is it large or a series of small ones? I guess if one fails, they don't have to worry it is an indefinite occurrence. 

It's strange how life is unreconcilable and unresolvable but we keep going. It's ok you didn't. This isn't a gotcha or admonishment what cruelty that would be, certainly no daughter you had raised, that I still retain the best of what you gave and provided, and grown from what were your weaknesses and fragilities which I know you yourself would have shed eventually because that's what I knew. Someone continually channeling, searching, picking apart, observing, growing excited for change and knowledge. I wish I could say I have met an abundance or a handful of people like you but I haven't. You're like mom one of kind. People love to say that about their loved ones and I believe they feel it but I believe it is a true rarity. I admit it's wonderful and sad but nobody is perfect because how else would we adapt and change and reflect to be who we hope to? Self awareness combined with the same level of observance of others is not a curse, for me at least, I think you'll enjoy my novel it's full of that sort of thing. And I feel I have to thank you indefinitely for that. 

💕

 Little Bear

"I turned around, there was nothing there." 25 years, wish you were here.

Miss you always

I'm sorry you are no longer here. I still cannot comprehend it all after twenty four years. Happy Birthday. 

happy birthday wish you were here

Survived 21 years yesterday. It was a pretty decent day.

R.I.P. 20 years, how could so much time have been stolen away from me?

_______________________________

I. Love obsessed with suicidal men
I swear I didn't know until
I crept under their covers
listened to their heartbeat.
I have already picked apart their secrets,
they hide in front of everyone
in plain sight.
I keep chasing boys
who will never replace my father.


II. He would come back a lion,
claw apart the bodies who
have left their marks on me.
I'd comb back his thick mane,
bring him to where I have been
living the past few years.
The streets are somewhat empty,
it's cool out, the pavement 
is easy on his paws.
I joke he is my big protective dog
but he doesn't say anything,
I see his eyes fixated
on moving forward,
he won't look at me.
I want to be a little girl,
have him carry me on his back,
but I get the feeling he is too old,
I don't bother to bring out
my child voice.


III. It is not just quiet between us,
there is silence,
a thickness of air because
we haven't been together
in this atmosphere
for many long and awaiting years.
We don't like the sunshine,
the night is our best friend.
I think to myself,
he will leave before daylight.
I think back to when I was young,
I wonder why we never watched
a sunrise together.
We continue walking
where I was born,
where he was a young man,
where he met my mom,
where unfulfilled hopes
of our family started.
He can still walk faster then me
in the city's landscape,
I keep thinking,
we must not stop because when I
look over next time he will
have disappeared,
but I can't help myself.
I want to see the same eyes I have,
the eyes I first looked into when
I was waking up from being a baby,
I want to know where he lives inside.


IV. I have caught up to the lion's stride.
I am afraid, but  I am more afraid
of never knowing.
I turn around, close my eyes ,
and hug the lion.
I hear a faint whisper,
"Goodbye Heather."
When I open my eyes
he is gone,
no scent or hair.
I try but I feel the same as I always do,
there are no signs of his presence here or then.
I don't feel the lion went to a grand kingdom.
No night,
no heartache,
no joy,
will recreate him


V. My father was here.
The lion did walk with me.
It is fall outside,
but tonight it will snow.

R.I.P (1948-1995) (19 years)

In Prospect Park at Mission to Burma show with Wayne, Brooklyn,  August 4, 2012

Rockaway Beach, August 17, 2012

Rockaway Beach, August 17, 2012