You Rock...I Roll

[Pony]

Thanks Faith for that short, yet sweet, review... Nice to know it's hitting somebody.

You Rock...I Roll



(Excerpt)

I didn’t know what to expect upon entering the very packed venue that was normally used for concerts. I saw the band Yes here and other shows. It felt like a concert with music and excited crowd. The first thing that struck me was how many people in wheelchairs were there. They put us all on the back rows as far from the stage as possible. There were even extremely ill people being rolled in on their death bed hooked up to tubes. I sat there trying to envision some of these people standing up normal and casting their chair away, but I just couldn’t. It went against my reasoning of how things work in this world, but I was trying with everything I had. I didn’t want to be left out of this if God was going to heal anyone. Things were running through my mind, like “How will I feel if a few of us are healed, but not me? Was I worthy of healing? Maybe I will be jealous of others healed. Yes, I know I would be. How could I not be?”

The service stated like most services, choir, then preacher. The preacher said he knows God is there and that people WILL be healed tonight. He said it so passionately, so confidently with such vigor that I trembled inside at the thought. “This has to be true,” I thought to myself, “or else he will look foolish if no one is healed.”

The preacher went on for a good 30 minutes, touching on the power of God’s love, how He has promised to heal us, how we must claim it by giving all to Him. I was sure when he said (Him) he meant God, but looking back, maybe he meant him- the preacher, because soon he was speaking of how much money you can give to God that night, and in turn, God will give back. Sounded like a bribe to me- ‘you want a good healing, huh?, then you better cough it up, brother.’

Soon, there was, what seemed to be, hundreds of ushers collecting money. The preacher made it clear checks and credit cards were accepted. Well, I never saw offering plates fill up so fast in my life, and to be sure, I threw everything I had in there, which was only $20. I didn’t have a credit card, or I might’ve thrown that, too. I wanted that healing now!

[Pony]

(written for my sister who died a few years back of cancer)

She’s Gone

You don’t surrender in one day
No war is lost in one battle
The erosion comes in pieces
Slowly the wall of resistance gives way
To a new understanding that it must be this way

We are the insignificant ones
The hopelessly downed
The rulers of nothing
But our own status we’ve found

Release to nature
Release my hand
Slip away slow like your voice that night
I can’t stop what’s right
I can’t stop what’s wrong
I’d bring you back just for you to hear that song
If I could

But would you want to come back?
I really don’t know
Maybe let it be finished
The curtains have closed on the show

You were braver than I
You accepted it more
I’ve been a fool to fight the shutting door
That will close on me, too

Your war has been lost
Mine will come too
Your beauty was captured
Mine is part of you

[wheelavfun]

Wish i hadn't bought the book now lol

[happyface2013]

Dec 14, 2014 15:27:08 GMT -5 wheelavfun said:

Wish i hadn't bought the book now lol

Giving too much away?

[wheelavfun]

Will be the full book soon lol

[Pony]

Nope...plenty of moments left!!! Just trying to tease n please....lol

[mwin]

These excerpts are great. Off to get the book! ?

[mwin]

Ummm that wasn't the emoticon I was going for....

[Pony]

Yahhhh, an 'excerpt' supporter! See, I love when I read excerpts, really hooks me. That's why I'm throwing them out there, like baited fishing hooks.

[Pony]

How can I explain what it's like to be paralyzed from my chest down? It's almost like trying to explain what a color looks like. It's very difficult, and probably impossible to have an able-bodied person comprehend what it's like to not really feel your hands, and yet use them to push this chair, drive, type, answer phone or touch another person's skin in an act of affection.

No, at my level of injury, sensation is a very limited experience. I'm left with many memories of sensation that made the experience of diving into cool water in summer, or bouncing a basketball, or playing guitar, or even holding a sandwich a more full experience.

In fact, I really have only a few satisfying sensations. One being the hot water of a shower when it sprays hard on my head and face. Below my injury level - nothing! Another very interesting sensation is the relaxing, meditative power of sitting in the sun. To me, it's almost a religious experience that goes beyond tanning. However, I love that part of sunning, too. One of the physical attributes that remain a source of pride is my dark smooth shoulders. It’s my sexiest trait, although they hurt often. The joints are shot.

[happyface2013]

Keep it up Tony:)

[Pony]

Our relationship was odd, at times, but there were odd reasons. I never held him totally responsible, and I still don’t.  My father was a consummate musician, obsessed with playing music, and living the lifestyle that went along with playing in clubs until wee hours of the morning, drug use, womanizing, many friends vying for his attention and quick-naps here and there for required rest. 

My dad was married to music first.  It was all he really wanted to do since he was a child.  You could easily make the argument he was one-track minded, but it wasn’t that he didn’t care about me, or my sister, or my mother in the old days, or his second wife who had been his wife since the ’70s. He just had a “mission,” and that was play music.  And to his credit, my father won a lot of my respect through his devotion to his craft. Nobody hustled more than him in the biz.

Being a musician myself, I’ve learned the difficult road it is to succeed, or eek out a living solely through music.  But my dad worked hard at finding other musicians, finding gigs, exposure via newspaper articles, playing as a studio musician; even playing in Europe for a while as a street-musician, which he loved.
 
On the surface, my dad was a carefree, easy-going, loose kind of guy. His many friends adored him, really.  Most of his friends were fellow musicians, open minded and slightly off-center. Dad hated judgmental people, however, there was a time when he was extremely religious, and judgmental himself.

I always felt a deep current of anger and pain that seem to run through his life like the way an undertow is hidden in the ocean, very strong, and not apparent to the eye. 

[Pony]

I asked Jani what her favorite Kansas song was, and with some hesitation she replied, Lonely Wind.

My sister was always lonely. She desperately wanted a friend, but her problems eventually pushed people away. Maybe that’s why she was crazy about cats, talking to them in baby-voice. Cats gave her the love and company she sought so badly in humans, but could never achieve.

The last thing I muttered to Jani through tears was how sorry I was for not being a better friend, and brother. I told her, “Jani, I will always love you and think of you.” The shame is I probably never told her before. Through the pain of Jani’s life and death, I will always see and feel her in every Kansas song.



“But we cannot endure/Like the earth and the mountains
Life is not ours to keep/For a new sun is rising”
-Kansas

[Pony]

(excerpt)

We were boys from broken homes. Unstable homes. Neglected, and sometimes dangerous homes. Each one of us boys that stayed at The Florida Sheriff’s Boys Ranch in Live Oak, Florida in the early 70s had our own story of a troubled home life.

In my particular case, my parents had divorced in ugly fashion- fights, burning of clothes, disruption to my whole life. I was truly traumatized, so I was living with my grandparents, which was a temporary situation. My mother had found a guy named Chuck and moved in with him, but I didn’t want anything to do with him. I just didn’t like him. He was constantly trying to boost his ego, but I think part of my disdain for him was a little boy shell-shocked from the war between my parents and the fact I was angry and jealous of my mother. She was suddenly acting like a slut to me. I just didn’t understand her desperate situation of not being able to support my sister and me.

Desperate, my mom was under the gun, pressured by her parents to not keep depending on them. The quick way out was finding a man. There were good things about Chuck, like wanting to throw the football with me and go fishing. He liked male-bonding a lot, but he could be cruel to my sister, hurting her feelings. She’d been through the same shit as me, only four years younger. The last thing she needed was this grown man, a stranger, picking on her. I never forgave him for those things, and many other things.

[Pony]

(excerpt)

We were boys from broken homes. Unstable homes. Neglected, and sometimes dangerous homes. Each one of us boys that stayed at The Florida Sheriff’s Boys Ranch in Live Oak, Florida in the early 70s had our own story of a troubled home life.

In my particular case, my parents had divorced in ugly fashion- fights, burning of clothes, disruption to my whole life. I was truly traumatized, so I was living with my grandparents, which was a temporary situation. My mother had found a guy named Chuck and moved in with him, but I didn’t want anything to do with him. I just didn’t like him. He was constantly trying to boost his ego, but I think part of my disdain for him was a little boy shell-shocked from the war between my parents and the fact I was angry and jealous of my mother. She was suddenly acting like a slut to me. I just didn’t understand her desperate situation of not being able to support my sister and me.

Desperate, my mom was under the gun, pressured by her parents to not keep depending on them. The quick way out was finding a man. There were good things about Chuck, like wanting to throw the football with me and go fishing. He liked male-bonding a lot, but he could be cruel to my sister, hurting her feelings. She’d been through the same shit as me, only four years younger. The last thing she needed was this grown man, a stranger, picking on her. I never forgave him for those things, and many other things.