WHY I WALK? (Part Two) : @AIDSWalkSF

HELP SUPPORT My Week-Long Fundraising Pledge...

http://eepurl.com/eJmaI – PLEASE HELP Matthew Blanchard (a.k.a. QHereKidSF) SURPASS his week-long $500 fundraising pledge in support of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.!

AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011

WHY I WALK? (Part Two)

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HELP SURPASS My $500 Fundraising Pledge!

Donations directly benefit Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.

http://awsf2011.kintera.org/qherekidsf

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With a soft, unpretending and polite voice: a voice ripe with care, compassion and empathy, my younger sister described to me the “difficult challenge” she and other of my closest family members faced back in late 2007 – at the dawn of a miracle and at the dusk of my demise! – when they were forced to confront the very real possibility of my overdose-induced, HIV/AIDS-related death.

Once my diseased, decomposing & comatose body was rushed to the hospital, doctors began their valiant efforts to alleviate my pneumonia, to restore function to my failing kidneys, and to combat – in hopes to conquer! – the poly-microbial necrotizing bacterial infection that had already succeeded in turning the once gentle and happy contours of my handsome smile into a putrid mess of blackened corroded flesh.

The initial prognosis of my critically weakened health was so bleak that doctors were compelled – if not forced by a strict code of ethics! – to contact my family. A triage team of medical care providers informed my closest relatives of my terrible condition, urged my loved ones to ready themselves for my impending death, and requested that they thoughtfully considering together exactly how I would have liked the final directives of my life to be executed.

The story my sister told of my family's own insufferable worry in response to the dreadful possibility of my death fell from her thoughts with surprised suspense:

It was incredible! One day, we were being told that it’d be best for us to prepare for the end. A week later, doctors called again to report that you were stabilizing. Days later, you were still critical but were responding to exterior stimuli. After another week, your foggy eyes peeked open into consciousness. Then, soon enough, you were responding to visual stimuli and were taken off life support.

Before we could catch our breath and put away thoughts of your possible death, you were on the phone with us trying so desperately to communicate your excitement, without a mouth, in spats of very happy giggles, grunts, and moaning. What a roller-coaster; you can imagine! It was a miracle – no question! And, that’s a lot to be said coming from a twenty-something military wife who had long-ago lost her faith. But, only God does miracles; right?

In the glowing radiance of my miraculous rebound back to life from death, I can only attest to the life-saving, life-sustaining force and potential of the myriad members of my social-support and care-provider networks who have remained committed to empowering my continued growth and holistic healing beyond the uncertainty of fragile health, forward toward psycho-social and physical wellness, and in the direction of a complete fulfillment of my ideal future self.

Thanks to vital contributions by countless community-based HIV/AIDS Prevention & Care Service agencies, such as those throughout the San Francisco Bay Area who will most directly benefit from the fundraising efforts of over 25,000 AIDS Walk San Francisco 2011 participants, I have been empowered to make good of these miracles of prolonged life and second chances that have been gifted to me either by God or by science – or both! Who knows?

Without the unrelenting and selfless support of the numerous humble heroes of both my care-provider and social-support networks, I would surely not have been able to sustain my course toward prolonged survival and eventual success in life. This is why I walk!

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Thanks to each of my friends, family members, care providers, and colleagues for your enduring compassion and support! At present, with $450.00 already raised in just under three days, I find myself rejoicing in this unique opportunity I have to witness the direct impact of your generous contributions to my cause.

In grateful recognition of the valued generosity of donors to my cause, each of my supporters who contributes a charitable gift in the amount of or exceeding $25.00 USD, via my Fundraising Portal, shall receive a special note of thanks hand-written on stationery that features a high-quality digital print copy of one of my limited edition hand-crafted rubber block-cut floral prints – in periwinkle and white on brown (as featured above).

http://awsf2011.kintera.org/qherekidsf

Likewise, I hereby commit to keeping all of the many generous donors to my cause well informed of their impact, as the Board of Directors and staff of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. strives to thrive for several more years to come, in support of all Bay Area youth infected and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. Thanks again!! Cheers! Ciao & Namaste...

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In grateful honor of those innumerable heroes who have helped me redeem my right to live, to survive, to strive, and to thrive in hope, while faced with a disabling AIDS diagnosis, I am planning to participate in the 25th Annual AIDS Walk San Francisco - July 17, 2011!

As a Member of the Board of Directors of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc., one of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation Community Partners (Team #8088), I am committed to raising a minimum of $500 for my organization, during this week prior to the event.

All charitable funds raised by board members and staff of AIDS Walk Beneficiary Organizations will be allocated in full directly back to those participating nonprofit agencies. So, please consider contributing to my fundraising efforts in support of BAY Positives, via my personal Fundraising Portal:

http://awsf2011.kintera.org/qherekidsf

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AIDS Walk San Francisco is organized by and benefits the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, as well as HIV/AIDS Prevention & Care Services throughout the Bay Area.

San Francisco AIDS Foundation works to end the HIV epidemic in the city where it began, and eventually everywhere. Established in 1982, our mission is the radical reduction of new infections in San Francisco because we refuse to accept HIV as inevitable. Through education, advocacy and direct services for prevention and care, we are confronting HIV in communities most vulnerable to the disease.

San Francisco AIDS Foundation is guided by a strategic plan with three ambitious goals aimed at radically reducing new infections in San Francisco by 2015.

GOAL 1: Reduce new HIV infections in San Francisco by 50%
Leveraging scientific research and community knowledge we will devise new approaches and ensure that federal, state and local legislation supports a climate hospitable to effective HIV prevention.

GOAL 2: Ensure all San Franciscans know their current HIV status
We are expanding advocacy and public education about the benefits of testing, determining the feasibility of citywide HIV screening, and optimizing our own and others’ capacity to provide HIV testing.

GOAL 3: Ensure access to proper care for all HIV-positive San Franciscans
As the epidemic evolves, we are evolving our targeted programs to improve the health of people with HIV and AIDS, from housing and medical referrals to group support and services that address mental health and substance use among populations most vulnerable to HIV.

© 2011 San Francisco AIDS Foundation | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
1035 Market Street, Ste 400 | San Francisco, CA 94103
www.sfaf.org | +1.415.487.3000 (main) | feedback@sfaf.org

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Matthew D. Blanchard
Member, Board of Directors
Bay Area Young Positives, Inc.
http://www.baypositives.org
matthew@baypositives.org
+1.415.487.1616 (main)
+1.415.487.1617 (fax)

http://eepurl.com/eJmaI

COPYRIGHT © 2011 Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

baypositives.org | 701 Oak Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 | info@baypositives.org

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
matthew@qherekidsf.com
San Francisco, CA USA
[20110713T061237PST]

Romance's Ripe New Reason...

Love Is Like A Flower | © COPYRIGHT {peace&love♥} | 23rd May, 2008 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Accessed March 21, 2011 by QHereKidSF (a.k.a. Matthew D. Blanchard) on Flickr®

Inspired by the well-wishing of a college mentor: Adjunct Theater Arts Professor & Acting Coach, David Doersch, whose warmhearted wisdom woven into a few simple words beamed bright as day in my mind, I read his "Happy SPRING to All!" message on Facebook, while sitting blinded by the light of my computer monitor in the dark of well-past dusk.

Despite the dark and dreary evening that has befallen & befogged all of San Francisco, my heart & mind were filled with the warmth of the season by these, his welcoming words. And thus, such warmth, well-wishing & wisdom from such a distant friend & role model performance artisan or craftsman inspired in me a deep desire to express creatively exactly how I gladly envision the season to blossom into rebirth such beauty as romance in spite of ridicule, and love in light of sensually dew-dampened lust & longing.

What a beautifully bespoken first few lines of lyrical rhymes & reason have I set to poetry, as my poem is presented here poised below a quite provocatively romantic photograph, which I found via a Flickr® Photostream™ Key Word Search of "buttercups." I am pleased to recognize the talents of an anonymous artist: peace&love♥, and to thank the photographer for making available their significantly sophisticated & valuable works of photographic art for blogging direct from Flickr®.

I do hope that in posting Love Is Like A Flower, I will earn a right to download this particular image by permission of the photographer, him or herself, because I'd very much like to have this photo image at my disposal for future noncommercial & unaltered, shared-alike use. But, we'll just have to wait and see on the outcome of that such request. For now, I am still ever so proud at least to present the poem I wrote in response to David Doersch's Facebook® remarks and inspired by this photograph posted above.

SPRING! SPRING! What beauty this season brings
From slothful doted days to a few love-labored flings
That be right wondrous, yet ne'er more as pleasing,
As day’s blessed birth doth savor splendid seedling:
Few to many-petalled gorgeous golden blossoms
Of four-leafed clovers and buttercups so lithesome,
That doth glimmer, glow and shimmer as none before
Upon the tender-to-touch bosom in beauty’s open door
Of a fair merry-weathered, mischief-minded maiden
For whom the goodly fruits of spring be not forbidden.

Here upon doth the season's sweetly stunning affect
Forever bold and bravely full on forthwith reflect
The delightfully bright and brilliant sun’s fine speck
That doth in gleaming traces of sparkled beauty bedeck
Such sweet-nectar dew upon her delicately dimpled neck,
To be kissed off and caressed by a truly “très beau mec,"
As the only daring, dashing young dapper son "français"
Who doth so love, adore, long for and desire with to stay
The dewdrop damsel and her dazzling buttercup breasts,
As she, with toes dipped wet in water’s tiding crests,
Doth also long for and desire love — come what may!
Thus, so flowering, a fine romance is born this day!

Two lovers dance to life, in light of unending union,
The colorful reflections of romance's ripe new reason
Wound and woven, as a festive time-tinted silk ribbon,
Round the maypole, at the hands of all towns-children.
While the joking jester doth flagrantly flout Love’s luster,
His fickle halfhearted flaunter be echoed by such laughter.
Still yet two lovers dance ‘til lips tenderly touch as one,
Thus, their longed-for love doth live from dusk 'til dawn;
And be no more foolish, frolicsome, dumb nor dafter.
Than desire be that doth last still more ‘til then thereafter.

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
matthew@qherekidsf.com
http://www.qherekidsf.com
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf

San Francisco, CA USA
[20110321T200037PT]

MY BRO' BRAD: Comeuppance as Prodigal Son

When U.S. Navy Musician First Class Bradley Blanchard was in his adolescence, he was a typically rambunctious deviant child who liked to disobey authority at every opportunity he could find and with all the force & fervor he could ever possibly muster. As his younger brother, with a fork scar slashed down my belly to prove it, I often was on the receiving end of the blunt blows of his teenage boyhood violent rage.

YOKOSUKA, Japan (Feb. 1, 2010) - Musician 1st Class Bradley Blanchard of Virginia Beach, Va., plays a trombone during a 7th Fleet Rock Band rehearsal held at Fleet Activities Yokosuka. The 7th Fleet Rock Band, ORIENT EXPRESS, deploys with USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19) and supports events throughout the entire U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet area of operations

http://www.c7f.navy.mil/imagery/galleries/monthly/2010/02-February/index50.htm

February 01, 2010, U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist Mike R. Mulcare; 

(accessed 13:45 UTC March 19, 2011 via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Music_Program)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C7FBand_MUBlanchard_20100201.jpg

Call it angst or anxiety over never having amounted to much as a child, compared to his overachieving brown nose of a brother! Or else, call it simple recognition of & rebellion against the authorities' inability to control, confound or even cajole into question the genius of his intellectual & artistic talents!! Whatever possessed my brother to give up in school, act up at home, fall into miscreant criminal behaviors, or in the very least to joist a fork into me just above my bellybutton, we may never know! But, I do have my suspicions...

You see! It is my understanding (albeit naively biased and begrudged under boyhood battery) that my one-year older brother, Bradley, came across as an awkward, tubby, ill-tempered & tough-taught teenage trouble child by choice, as if simply to cover up his own quite coveted prodigal musical talents, as well as to scoff in the face of his younger brother's exhausting track record of academic excellence & extracurricular achievements from early elementary school through to high school graduation.

As I'd expect to hear from any critic on the matter, it would be inappropriate, pompous & self-conceited of me, that younger "better than, but best unbegotten" brother of his, to venture any conclusion which conceives to acknowledge and/or appraise (however lowly) the pantheonic pedestal upon which I was so uncomfortably perched by parents, teachers, and fellow pupils alike.

A comparison between the idolatrous accolades & aplomb that I received as an academically overachieving adolescent and the unfortunate reputation Brother Bradley earned for being a lower life do-dumb deviant denigrate who didn't know the a-squared from b-squared or c-squared of the Pythagorean Theorem, or else, who didn't care too much to make it known what he really knew for fear of risking his supposed illicit & ill-natured set of mores & morals revealed as quite the opposite, would serve a great injustice against my brother, while only reinforcing my naive bias as his battered, yet so long beloved, younger brother.

For, my big, bold, daring & now quite dapper do-good brother, was then during childhood (just as we all might witness him to be today) quite as prodigal in his musical talents, as I was in my scholastic, artistic & leadership-related achievements. Unlike his young brother, Matthew Blanchard, however, big brother Bradley didn't cringe and crave for the positive affirmations of attention & accolades as a child, adolescent or teenager.  Bradley was kindly humble enough to recognize that recognition & a reputation of positively perfect accomplishment was all I lived for as a student; and, therefore, it seems to me that at an early age, Bradley relinquished any possibility of positive achievement to me, the younger of us two, out of mere kindness of heart and perhaps even in a awkwardly silent attempt to express love to his kindred spirit, his family, who forever so seemed his foe.

Nevertheless, true talent cannot (should not) forever go unnoticed or unappreciated by the masses. For my elder brother, Bradley, recognition & reputation for his prodigal musical gifts came only finally when he made what should have been a quite difficult decision between serving six-to-nine month stints underwater as a nuclear technician of a U.S. Naval submarine or traipsing around the globe on a better-than-average rock star salary as a U.S. Navy Musician First Class and lead vocals of numerous U.S. Navy Rock Ensembles throughout the World.

The decision between the substantially better pay-grade and advancement patterns of an enlisted submarine tech or the hyped up happiness and good humor incumbent upon a career in music for the Navy was instead quite simply a matter of greater-than & less-than logic for my brother, who valued his happiness (obviously) well over his pay rate or the terms of his possible rank advancement. Obviously, my very intelligent, very impassioned musical prodigy of a brother chose love over logic; such was the logic behind his decision to follow the passion which had dutifully & determinedly defined the unfathomably focused good fortune that befell him at every awkwardly successful instance of achievement during his young life, while in the arms of music.

In honor of my elder brother, Bradley D. Blanchard, I am privileged to offer this living testament to the tremendous talents possessed by this one damned terrific young man. Not only is Brad an extraordinary father and husband, much loved by his wife & son, but he is also an ungodly gifted musician, who could, should & will one day take the world by storm; what if not to the likes of America's next popular television talent search or else by the grace of one or two generous celebrity patrons of his art who might promote and make possible an on-air performance by my brother, as lead vocals of the U.S. Navy Commander, 7th Fleet Rock Band (Twitter® - @C7FBand / Facebook® 7th Fleet Band) : ORIENT EXPRESS.

U.S. Navy 7th Fleet Rock Band: ORIENT EXPRESS (August 7, 2010; YokosukaFSD, JAPAN)

"I'm Yours," lead vocal by MU First Class Bradley D. Blanchard

http://youtu.be/CnTbD5bCmyc

 

It is with great pride that I post this video of my brother singing lead vocals to "I'm Yours," with the U.S. Navy Commander, Seventh Fleet Rock Band: ORIENT EXPRESS. I remember vividly the first time I heard my brother sing. It was on the occasion of my visit from Florence, Italy (where I was studying graphic design, at the time) to Naples, Italy (where my brother was stationed with the U.S. Navy Band, at the time). 

We were both in our mid-twenties. I was reeling from a "GREAT DEPRESSION," brought on by my then relatively recent sero-conversion and diagnosis as HIV-positive, though I didn't muster up the courage to tell my brother this until after the trip down south.  My brother on the other hand was glowing happily, unabashedly in his youth, and tried with all his might to share his happiness with me, to let it roll off his husky, well-built shoulders on to mine.

His manner of sharing was unique to me; I'll say that, in the least.  Bradley invited me as a special guest to a gala performance showcase for his U.S. Navy Rock Band somewhere up the western coast of Italy, near about to Cinque Terre. The band set up amongst the lavish & luxurious decor of the sumptuous entertainment hall at a hanky-spanky swanky five-star Italian riviera hotel, and I was their surrogate helper or stagehand for the day...

Once the equipment was set up, the musicians (not the vocals, i.e., my brother & his female counterpart) began to rehearse. I settled in to a deeply intriguing discussion about my brother's soon no longer to be boyhood lifestyle contrivances with the wife of one of his military cohorts, but was to my astounding delight brashly interrupted by the sweet, melodic, perfect on pitch and in tone sounds of my brother's voice singing "Stand By Me!" That was the cover number with which he chose to open the show, and he honored me in singing it, "I dedicate this song to my only brother... God knows I love ya'Man!!" God knows, I love him, too!!

So, now that I've gone ahead and made this video available to my blogsphere of fans & followers, either via http://www.qherekidsf.com or else via my Facebook Profile Notes at http://facebook.com/mblanchard79, then I hope to receive comments & feedback from all y'all folks out there with opinions on the matter that I might maybe could share with my big Southern Puppy Brother, Bradley!! Please be courteous & kind; although, critical remarks are not uninvited!! I look forward to hearing back from some gentle, tasteful souls!! Cheers! Ciao & Namaste: I bow to the gods with you...

Respectfully submitted,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF

Matthew D. Blanchard

matthew@qherekidsf.com
http://youtube.com/qherekidsf
http://www.qherekidsf.com
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf

San Francisco, CA USA
[20110319T07:4513PT]

Alien Annuciation: Unearthing My Sacred Self

The following is a dramatic monologue I prepared for my SINS INVALID Artists In Residence "Resident Alien" Performance Showcase; however, this exact text will NOT be performed the evening's of the show. I therefore am now at liberty to share some of the copious work I have been preparing for performance during the last nine months for review by my peers. Please indulge me with your insights into this work; provide your own critical response and feedback, and I will be happy to take whatever you have to say to heart when considering revisions of the piece for future performance.

ALIEN ANNUCIATION:
Unearthing My Sacred Self

Fuck! Face it!! I’m a fagged-out, ferocious, Fog City funambule Freak Show — or Peep Show, depending on the scene [chuckles] — fabulously fucked in the head — HOLE! — for far too long [laughs outright]. FUN? For sure!! If by chance, you get some crazed, cracked-out, masochistic satisfaction from — OH! SO SAD! — strangely spiritual & surreal stories of catastrophic crystal-lined “Quarter-Life” crises, then maybe I’m your man!!

The mindflux & mayhem of this “MATTO” Matteo manifest as anxiety, manic depression, numerous non-specified personality disorders, coupled with devastatingly detrimental drug dependency and HIV/AIDS disease — BAM! Axes one through five, in no specific order!! My psychiatrists would all be proud. During the long-stretched syndrome of illness, disease & disorder that is my dismal, abysmal life, I was only ever once lost to languid torpor; torpor which turned out tantamount to torturous (i.e., id est… the ten to twelve days I laid unconscious, inactive & still; the skin & bone of my once boyhood beautiful face pressed flat, flush, firm & dying against a putrid, pestilent pillow).

Yet, for a time, prior to my tragically traumatic end, back before my whole “Fuck! Face it!!” mantra came into play, I once touted myself better than plainly pretty & princely. Back before my very real ruination ripped apart my smile; before antipsychotic psychotropics pretty much fucked up, tore down and all but annihilated my lachrymose libido, I spent my days super-speedy, sexed-up & salivating for raucously wild & raunchy “fag-fornication” – E, K, G… Crystal Methamphetamine sure’nough spewing from my sweaty, slimy skin!!

For lack of food, lack of sleep, but with no shortage of insanely over-indulgent fucking, I was led libidinally through a caustic, quixotic, voraciously vivacious and virulent six month schizoid-delusional messianic mania (i.e., id est… “crazed and cracked-out,” I told you!!). Here’s how the story goes…

After twenty-four-plus hours of positively preposterous unguided, temper-tantrumed and tweaked-out tantric yoga, I found myself falling flat on the floor from a backbend. In a glorious instance, I could both hear, feel and fear my mightily tight military neck flicker from firm to flaccid to flat with a couple of cracks and a crunch. 

Then, out of nowhere, but to my tearfully giggled and enraptured delight, the “cycloptic” serpentine energy force of my kundalini uncoiled itself three & 1/2 fold from deep within the pit of my scrotum, as if a cataclysmically massive monster cock was fucking me from bottom-end to top-end entirely. My phallic kundalini snaked its way like speed-lightening straight up my squarely smacked flat spine, erupting explosively through each of my leveled & loosely lain chakras. Past my shoulders. Into my head. All with a sparklingly celestial shudder of glee!!

My voraciously virulent kundalini energy force broke the blood/brain barrier with the cracking and collapsing of my never near too straight again neck, and was free!! At that moment, deep from within a blinding, brilliant light, I saw the rebirth and renewal of all life, the reunification and redemption of retaliatory religions of the World, embodied as a dying leafless triple-branched tree: a familiar scenic device of Beckett’s brain, symbolizing the existential nihilism inherent in “waiting for God…”

But, the tree at the center of my powerfully immaculate vision was quite unlike the grey, lifeless, hollow-trunked, death-determined tree that so thwarted the mindless meanderings of Vladimir and Estragon. The tree at the center of my celestial light budded a new growth, new birth branch with a single, glowing emerald green leaf which dripped dew of heavenly angelic gold from its tip.

Two Men Contemplating the Moon, ca. 1830
Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774-1840)
Oil on Canas, 13 3/4 x 17 1/4in. (34.9 x 43.8cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Wrightsman Fund, 2000 (2000.51)

My kundalini force thrust me thankfully toward my heavenly father – at least, I’d hoped it would – through ungodly, goliath insanity and bliss. Thus began the potent perversion of my intellect, my psyche, as I set off on a profoundly esoteric and spiritually pious six month search for the “One,” Almighty God.

Six days to six weeks, I spent alone, shut up in my sparse, stark and sullen studio apartment, spiraling my insanity into a chaotic hoarded mess, savagely searching for God. No, I didn’t find him…or her…or them. Well, maybe them!! If you’re one to consider the sublime god force a pluralist spiritual entity, then I’m almost certain that my schizoid-delusional miscomprehension of individual life forces, as being all parts of a prophetically benevolent community of angel/aliens who had come calling for me as a veritable “MATTO” Matteo, would have intrigued and enticed both your own spiritual and intellectual curiosity.

So, I didn’t find Him (or “Her”) in my search for the Divine, but I did find my own angelic alien annunciation as a “Gift of God” : Matthew, for I believe with all my kundalini life force that during this six month psychosis, I was being suited by a community of angel/aliens for my god-given, divinely apostolic duty to proclaim to the World the imminent arrival of a purely peaceful, nonviolent, anti-diabolic Armageddon.

I was called upon, or so much I wholeheartedly believed, to return from the “deathspace” transexualized and impregnated with an angel/alien Christ-child to usher in the climactic rebirth, re-growth and cultivation of a global unifying force: a “Garden of Eden,” Elysian Fields, Les Champs Élysées leading into more than just a city, but rather into a World of lights, illumination, rapture!!

I speak of chakras and kundalini sparingly here; even though, these words as psychic phenomena seem to predominate my prose. But, don’t get me wrong! I’m a good faith, good Catholic, Christian boy of Franco-Polish Hebraic descent; therefore, the word “RAPTURE” should make more sense!

You’d sooner find me carving a Cherokee totem disparaging my colonial heritage as self-proclaimed proudly pompous, well-educated elite alum of Jefferson’s own “Alma Mater of Our Nation.” Hell! You’d sooner find me rigging a home-made I.E.D. car-bomb in my Fresno-based meth-lab storage garage while bowing toward Muslim Mecca – No, not GAY MECCA!! – as I pray in istikhara, and offer supplication for divine guidance on how best to cripple and destroy Judeo-American neocolonial forces.

You’d sooner find this white-bred, white trash, euro-mutt, slut, goy-boy American speciously boasting either indigenous or Islamic roots, rather than spiting my own just and good Judeo-Catholic heritage by following blindly the wisdom & stricture of Sanskrit/Hindi yogic faith teachings, if not just as a Eurocentric fad of the intellectual and spiritual post-colonial diasporas…

Yet, sadly still, contrary to my Judeo-Christian biblical heritage and learning – if even as a namesake, merely!! – I did neither see nor encounter my single almighty God, the Father: The Maker of Man, of me, of my mindflux, mayhem and misery. But, I swear on the last remnants of sanity and semblance of beauty that this mad, mad monstrosity of a man may have, I swear…

I saw something! Something real. Unimagined. Something immaculate. Holy. Sublime. In fact, I saw many things, which I remember vividly and in distinct detail, despite near half a decade of dutifully downing each dawn & dusk the fists full of psychotropics my doctors order me to take to keep pace of peace and order in my boyish, good goyish brain.

I could go on and on and on without a single smile – I could, and I should, but I wont! Anyway. – I could catalog… In fact, I HAVE cataloged pages and pages describing the many multitudinous manifestations of my immaculate enlightenment. I could retell my rapture. I could narrate my nirvana; translate my transcendence for you all – I could, and I should, but I won’t! Anyway…

And, why not? Because, trust!! You’d only spurn and scoff at my seemingly spurious, counterfeit, tall, tall torturous tale; even though, it be not torturous, but tender, touching truth!! Unless, of course, you are curious, and have come across us angel/aliens in our own right with open minds and open hearts, then there’d be no point in proclaiming the snippets of specifics of my all too perturbing albeit prophetic schizoid-delusional messianic psychosis.

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
Artist In Residence
SINS INVALID
San Francisco, CA USA
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf
[20110111T235237PST]

ACCESS POINT – Point d'Accès

Depuis des jours, je me suis échappé à une vide créative, qui durait à peu près 4 ou 5 mois. Alors, je tente à faire travailler le côté gauche de mon cerveau, puisque j'y ai découvert un point d'accès à un trésor d'idées fortement originales. DIEU MERCI!

Some days ago, I escaped a creative void, which had lasted as much as four or five months. So, I am attempting to make the left side of my brain work, since I discovered there an access point to a treasure of highly original ideas. THANK GOD!

STATUS UPDATE – ORIGINAL

Depuis quelques jours, je me suis échappé à une vide (mieux dite: "une absence," un soif ou une faim) de créativité, qui durait certes à peu près plus de quatre ou cinq mois... Maintenant, je tente à bien travailler le côté gauche de mon cerveau, -- Là, d'où fonctionnent, non pas l'intellect mais, plutôt mon esprit critique et mes impulsions créatives! -- puisque j'y ai découvert un point d'accès à un trésor d'idées fortement originales.

La "découverte" et la "recherche" de ces idées et impulsions, ces expériences sont celles-là qui m'amusent, m'assouvissent et me satisfont par-dessus tout. Donc, c'est en reconnaissance de tous ceux-là que je proclame sans doute, ni honte, ni crainte:

DIEU, MERCI!! Vous m'avez certes béatifié et béni! Vous, DIEU, qui êtes le plus bienfaisant de tous autres saint-esprits! Dieu, je Vous dois ma vie!! Ne Vous inquiétez pas, car il n'y a rien à craindre. Je vous revaudrai toute celle-là. Je vous la promets!

Retournons alors au travail!

Sauf d'abord, il vaut dire à vous tous qui lisez mes mots et les comprenez bien, "SVP, Souhaitez-moi la bonne chance!!" J'en aurai certes besoin! Car, même si j'aie trouvé la capacité et des facultés avec lesquelles je puisse accéder à ma créativité, ceux ne sont riens sans une forte dose de chance...

Some days ago, I escaped a void (better said: “an absence,” a thirst or a hunger) of creativity, which had lasted certainly almost more than four or five months… Now, I am attempting to work well the left side of my brain, – There, from where functions, not the intellect but, rather my critical self and my creative impulses! – since I found there a point of access to a treasure of strongly original ideas.

The “discovery” and the “research” of these ideas and impulses, these experiences are those which amuse, satiate and satisfy me above all else. Thus, it is in recognition of all of this that I proclaim without doubt, nor shame, nor fear:

THANK YOU, LORD!! You have certainly beatified and blessed me! You, GOD, who is the most beneficent of all other holy spirits! Lord, I owe you my life!! Do not you worry, for there is nothing to fear! I will return the favor. I promise you that!

Let’s return to work!

Except first off, it is worth saying to all of you who read my words and understand them well, “PLEASE, Wish me good luck!!” I certainly will need it! For, even if I might have found the capacity and the faculties with which I may gain access to my creativity, these are nothing without a heavy dose of luck…

Cordialement,

Respectfully submitted,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF 

Matthew D. Blanchard

San Francisco, CA USA

http://bit.ly/qherekidsf

http://pulse.yahoo.com

[20101110T222547PST]

UBIQUITY OF MY UGLINESS...

Years before a corrosive, killer HIV/AIDS and Crystal Meth Combo cut a gaping hole in the middle of my face, stealing of me my beauty in one nightmarish turn of a page, a more curious and less caustic HIV/AIDS Crystal Meth Combo calamitously curtailed my intellectual and creative development.

The first chaotic combo interrupted and/or either suspended my bright young life for a good long while by stealing of me my sanity, my serenity and by forcing me into a manic messianic schizo-delusional psychosis.

Coincidentally, while my second doomsday downfall damn near destroyed all real remnants of my tangible, physical beauty, the AIDS & Crystal Meth Combo of my first foray with death through delusions brought be into a celestially sublime connection with the pure essence of beauty.

Back when the better bastion of boyhood me beamed smiling and sexy, you would have heard me brag in brash whispers of secrecy that my unmitigated drug dependency, coupled with my not-yet-medicated, unmonitored manic depression and HIV/AIDS disease likely stole a few good inches from my inseam and waist line. Drugs, depression and disease had turned me into the tweaked-out top-hungry twenty-something twink slut barebacking bottom boy I was better off born to me. By God!!

With legs freshly shaven, I used to like to try my way at prancing and dancing in heals. I had the posture of a princess back then, or better yet, of a QUEEN!! Taut, toned, tender and tanned, my thighs tightly tucked into tawdry, sultry, see-through silk-striped stockings, topped with frilly, flamboyant, fluorescent pink tutus & leotards, a black leather-laced bodice and breasts of bagged basmati. I dreamed of doing DRAG!!... And, my delusions brought me as close as I'd ever be to a diva's starlit status.

What are the odds that a poor, sorry, solitary, sad, sick, insane queer kid for sale on the streets of Skid Row, new to San Francisco, might remember in rich vivid clarity, in multi-dimensional Technicolor timbres and tonalities, his actual psychological demise from climax to cure, from onset to overture? Well, I do!!

I recall with great delight the drug-induced, yet truly transmundane delusions that seemed — For six months, let's say! That's a safe bet. — more reasonable and real, more true to me than ordinary and onerous everyday life, thanks to the immaculate bliss and beauty that back-lit every waking instant of my insanity.

Yet I couldn't, wouldn't waiver on the whims of consciousness long enough to remember much the long stretch of days three years ago that would prove to be so much more dramatically life-changing for me: twelve days of comatose confinement caged up in my stuffy, sterile studio, asleep, unconscious. My face pressed flat onto a putrid, pestilent pillow, under the heavy weight of my aching, dying brain. Saliva dripping down my cheek and chin to the sullied, soiled, sickening sheets only to invite infection in!!

Context may help! ... Here goes!! Far before October 2007, when I was found alone, half-dead in my apartment; on the brink of dehydration, starvation and brain damage; desperately in need of dialysis; having survived only by some heavenly happenstance the devastating detriment of PCP pneumonia and a necrotizing poly-microbial bacterial infection of the face... Far before a team of California's leading diagnosticians, doctors and surgeons attempted valiantly yet albeit failed so sorely to salvage my once so cute and charismatic, gorgeous gay boy grin...

Far before I woke from coma to gasp and gawk at my godforsaken, gruesomely grotesque, ghastly, ghoulish gaping hole of a grimace, I was so long ago quite blessed — Or cursed? However the story goes! — to have had a right entrancing, sexy smile.

Before my brutal, bestial, ferocious fall from grace and yet thanks still then too to drugs, depression and disease, I could boast the beauty of a primped, polished pansy boy physique made potent by the unrelenting rush of salacious, sex-crazed hedonism which happened to hammer out haphazardly into hormonal hot flashes and "meth'merized" highs.

Oh!! And shan't I forget the illicit, alluring beauty of my tight little tush and thighs that tempted and fed far too many a head-spun, tail-furious tweaker top tucked away either between the bathhouse backrooms of Berkeley or beneath the bent, broken branches and burning bush there best past bedtime in Buena Vista Park.

Now, today, post-op eleven-fold with twelve more surgical reconstructions on the books, I'm nothing but a torn, tattered tapestry of scars, skin grafts and flaps of flesh festooning my funny, freakish face.

My legs, once softened and smoothed by the razor's edge, are now covered in patches of naked, hairless, flimsy flesh only a few layers fine. Coincidence now predominates, for the large surgical scar that defiles to devastating depths my sorry specimen of a lower left leg seems to be far smoother and softer, far more delicate and lady-like that it e'er had been before, despite the patterned ripples of a serrated texture that rises and rolls along the "miscontours" of my crippled calf.

I should be thankful then that hair still groups from the pair of embossed rectangular skin graft scars that are slowly fading from the front of my lower left thigh. But, I'm not grateful to have my torso tarnished by the twisted pucker of a scar in the middle of my gut where a G.I. tube once hung for fourteen months, two weeks and five days past the point it first proved futile at feeding me.

I call it my "Octo-Orifice!!;" although, it's shut tight & leaks no more. I call it also my "Second Bellybutton," because in all actuality, that's exactly what it is. Yet, instead of being nourished by placenta pumped to my stomach through an umbilical cord, I was this second time around, at the moment of my rebirth, fed synthetic, high-protein, carb-loaded "blender'ized" slop seeped into me through a twelve foot long number three plastic tube that hung between my belly and an upside down bottle of so-called sustenance like a drip-line. In all actuality, that's exactly what it was...

Moving onward and upward, we arrive at the loosely bandaged, still wide open hole in my neck, where my tracheotomy tube once hung. Honestly, I don't know whether or not I am more grateful to be rid of the tube that took so much time and attention to tend to, or if I am madly resentful of my own eight layers of healthy, still living skin and of the thick musculature of my tender trachea for taking so long a time to heal up and seal up.

So, still I wait... Committed to a daily ritual of stripping Xeroform® and four-by-four gauze sponges from the sweaty, scratchy hole in my neck, still I wait... I wait only still to be enslaved to a stolid, chin-strapped schedule for showering, in which I must each morn tightly velcro a water-hazard choke-guard security-sheath above my shoulders and below my chin, before stepping in to let my cleansing begin.

No wonder that I avoid the shower spigot like SARS or Swine Flu: the plagues which passersby suppose sicken me. ME! The sorry, sad face behind the surgical mask who meanders mindlessly, miserably amid mankind's miscreant misjudgments of much of my own mad, mad melancholic misfortune.

And, By God!! I sure as hell am not one infinitesimally small grain of grit grateful for this muddled mutant monstrosity of a quasimodo mouth I've been melded into for the moment. I don't have enough fingers or toes or hairs growing from my forehead flap of a nose... There are a lot of them; mind you! Bet your life on it! Hairs grow hoggishly long and hamstrung from the impenetrable depths of my makeshift nostril, nose and septum to curl down the coarse discolored curvature of my leg flap look-alike lip. And, Hell Man!! Fuck!! Do they itch or what??

Truth be told; I don't even have enough holes, appendages, protrusions, flaps of flesh, scars or skin grafts on my body to be able to begin to count the magnanimous mind's eye momentum of hatred and disgust that I have for this gruesome, ghoulish, ghastly grin of mine!

And, Yet Alas!! I've stayed safe, sane and sober over one full year, and for what reason? Because despite the ubiquity of my bitterly unbecoming and brutish ugliness, I've somehow retained remnants and remembrances enough of a time in my life when in my bitterly unbecoming and brutish insanity, I discovered the true meaning of beauty.

Beyond the awkward, obtuse, abstract, anthropomorphic aesthetic of the Tina-torn, AIDS-quilted, quizzical contours of my monstrosity of a mouth, I seen endless opportunity for elaborate beautification and solemn self-betterment. Buried not too deeply behind the dug-out disfigurements of my blasphemed, begotten, brutalized body and face — For sure! I'm certain. — there lies alive immaculately innocent, blessedly beautiful baby blue boy eyes...

Respectfully Submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.07.14@20:29PST]

AIDS IS A PERVASIVE PANDEMIC THAT BLEEDS THROUGH
THE LINES OF COLOR, CREED & CAPITULATES TO NO ONE BUT
THE POSITIVELY AWARE & PREVENTION-MINDED SURVIVORS.
— Matthew D. Blanchard

THE SUBJECT NO LONGER HAS TO BE MENTIONED BY NAME.
SOMEONE IS SICK. SOMEONE ELSE IS FEELING BETTER NOW.
A FRIEND HAS JUST GONE BACK INTO THE HOSPITAL.
ANOTHER HAS DIED. THE UNSPOKEN NAME, OF COURSE, IS AIDS.
— David W. Dunlap

OVER & OVER, THESE MEN CRY OUT AGAINST THE WEIGHT OF
SO MANY LOSSES — NOT JUST A LOVER DEAD, BUT FRIENDS,
AND FRIENDS OF FRIENDS, DOZENS OF THEM, UNTIL IT SEEMS
THAT AIDS IS ALL THERE IS AND ALL THERE EVER WILL BE.
— Jane Gross

FERGUSON : A Loquacious Look Inside...

Daniel Cardone, an Australian film/television producer & director living & working in San Francisco, was recently matched to me as a subject for the three to five minute HIV/AIDS survivor's story film documentary he has been commissioned to direct as part of a compilation of 15 to 20 short films of various genres that is now being called The HIV Story Project.

Jörg Fockele, a German film/television producer & director who is Executive Producer of the project, was introduced to my story when I met him as a youth liaison member of the Board of Directors of Bay Area Young Positives, Inc. He was searching for youth to profile for the film project, but was coming up short with the membership of BAY Positives and the clients of Larkin Street Youth Services, Inc. Assisted Care/After Care.
I did what I could during the conversation between Jörg and myself to advocate as well as I could for a focus on youth-aged subjects for short film exposes, but we were running into an obvious brick wall. That's when Jörg asked me how it came to pass that I had been associated with the project.

I gladly explained that Derrick Mapp, an HIV Health Counselor and L.I.F.E. Institute Facilitator from The Shanti Project, had told me of the Project and was immediately moved to get me involved either in a development capacity or as a short film subject. Derrick incubated the original idea of a short film compilation commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the emergence on the scientific scene of the "Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)" as a nominal spoken word diagnosis for the then popularly known "Gay Cancer."

Then, sitting there at an empty desk in the back of the BAY Positives' office(s) with Executive Director Curtis Moore, MPH (a dear, dear friend of mine, as well as one of my most distinguished professional colleagues) at my side and Jörg Fockele sitting across from me, I downed my mask and recounted my story of disease, drug dependency, delusional psychosis, and just short of death, disfigurement, etc. Jörg was stoic in his reserved response to my story, and in a very unexpected matter-of-fact sort of way, he confirmed Derrick's assumption, "Yes, you'd surely make a decent subject for a short film. I'll have to see if I can find a director who is up to the challenge." I, in turn, smiled in delight and then just waited to discover who he c/would find to direct me in my own short film documentary!!

Of course, in light of all the anticipation of knowing that I would soon be collaborating on and starring in a documentary short film about my climactic curtailing and confounding of my desolate doom in a destitute room: a slovenly studio begrimed in blood, urine and other gross indecencies of death at the door, I eagerly awaited the opportunity to meet my director. 

More so however, I eagerly anticipated the opportunity to broad cast my nevermore nefandous net to work my story through communities of survivors: a story of a reluctant rebounding, a refusing at first of the miserable misfortune that was meant to map out my unfathomably forlorn future of disconsolate discomfort and disdain, to reclaim courageously, confidently, and above all conspicuously my right to life well-lived.

Thus, in waiting for eventual contact with the film director assigned to document my story, I went ahead and proclaimed to the world that I was going to be a star. Short of posting the news to my blog for all the world to see, as I'm doing now, I've told everyone I know that I am going to be featured in a short film as part of The HIV Story Project. And just in time for me to begin to substantiate my claims to stardom, Daniel Cardone has entered my life as a true Godsend!

The following text is taken directly from my most recent email to my documentarian, regarding our struggle to find a logical link between the performative spoken-word aspects of the excessively loquacious, prosaic pedantry and pomposity of my creatively written exposes or essays (or whatever you'd like to call my boisterously shit-for-brains, blabbering behemoth of a blog?) and a certain naturalism of the cinematic narrative.

Yesterday evening, after pondering further the myriad of possibilities for juxtaposing the performative spoken-word with stoic straightforward naturalism in film, I realized that the production dates that Daniel had proposed to me perfectly coincide with my one-year anniversary of sobriety.  I realized also that a speaker's visit to Ferguson Place, my Recovery & Rehabilitation House (spotlighted in previous blog entries) was long overdue and that one could easily coincide or conjoin with a community celebration in honor of my "WATCH" (i.e., my achievements and accomplishments since first establishing my sobriety a year ago).

Below, you will read a very intimate depiction of Ferguson Place, as well as a downright dutifully dramatic portrayal of my personal experiences disclosing my disfigurement and disease(s) to my community there. In writing this email and sharing it here as a blog post, I have no intention or desire of breaching confidentiality clauses or the confidences of my confidants there.  I can only say that I intend with this presentation of text to pay homage in a very real and honest fashion to my friends and family at Ferguson Place. Enjoy the read!! Thus, I quote:

Let's see.. What happens/ed at my Recovery House?

Well, Ferguson Place is a Triple Diagnoses Residential Substance Abuse & Mental Health Rehabilitation & Recovery House for people living with HIV/AIDS. To graduate from the program, one must transition successfully through four phases:

a.) ORIENTATION PHASE: a two-week in-house lock-down usually meant to empower the recovering addict to recover completely through the withdrawal of most illicit substances and to attend to medical and psychiatric appointments, putting their schedule into place for the subsequent three phases;

b.) PHASE ONE: the recovering addict can only attend medical and psychiatric appointments on their own; at all other times, s/he must be accompanied by a PHASE TWO or THREE buddy to all social activities and out-of-house recovery meetings (including 12-Step);

c.) PHASE TWO: INDEPENDENCE = recovering addict (usually after one month of in-house semi-lock-down recovery) can leave the house solo as s/he pleases but only to pre-approved recovery-related appointments and social activities.  The purpose of this phase is to prove your ability to maintain sobriety on your own through near independence, while demonstrating that you are able to be relied upon by other housemates in lower phases to accompany them to appointments and social activities;

d.) PHASE THREE: TRANSITION = During this final phase, the recovering addict is meant to focus all of their time on maintaining their recovery and health regimens, as well as to devote concerted effort toward the process of transitioning into short-term to long-term co-operative Baker Places, Inc. sober-living housing. During PHASE THREE, recovering addicts/residents/clients are expected less to accommodate to the needs of their housemates and more to focus on their own individual transitional needs.

During these four distinct periods of progressive recovery, the client/resident partners with their primary counselor to set their weekly schedule of mostly recovery-related activities. Primary Counselor's are all extensively trained in substance abuse recovery, mental health disorders and their psycho-social treatment, and HIV/AIDS health promotion and advocacy.

___________________________________________________________

With the primary counselor's guidance during ORIENTATION PHASE & PHASE ONE, the client/resident sets the following "PLANS" for their time in residence at Ferguson Place, as needed:

a.) RELAPSE PREVENTION PLAN: a step-by-step worksheet with numerous questions related to trigger identification & monitoring, and exploration of safety/sobriety response tactics that the client/resident would use ultimately to prevent relapse. In this plan, you also define the repercussions to any unexpected relapse, including demotion from your present phase, one-week lock-down, urine test, properties search, etc.

b.) HIV/AIDS HEALTH PROMOTION PLAN: a progressive plan meant to augment one's HIV/AIDS HEALTH PROMOTION practices through regularly scheduled appointments with specialists, any necessary additional appointments to follow-up on important HIV/AIDS health related issues, and prescription regimen adherence. In this plan, the client/resident defines the requirements s/he must meet to eventually hold their own meds; otherwise, meds are kept locked in the main office and are monitored and administered under staff supervision. The purpose of this plan is to optimize one's HIV/AIDS Health through weekly rehabilitative activities during the entire length of stay at Ferguson Place, with the hope/expectation that the client/resident would maintain the activities, therapy, psycho-social and prescription regimens well after they leave the program.

c.) MENTAL HEALTH REHABILITATION PLAN: much like the RELAPSE PREVENTION PLAN, this plan starts from a comprehensive fill-in-the-blanks worksheet which challenges the client/resident to define the triggers of symptoms of their mental health defects or disorders. The Primary Counselor offers general guidance and community health education about the client/residents' specific mental health disorder(s) and suggests to them avenues for ongoing treatment needed to maintain mental stability through difficult and challenging times (especially as their mental health is integrated with their substance abuse disorder).

d.) TRANSITION PLAN: This is the final "plan" that a client/resident completes, only after having defined their day-to-day psycho-social & medical treatment structure. This plan is meant to be introduced and initially adopted during PHASE THREE of the program, challenging the recovering addict to devise a three month schedule of recovery and rehabilitation-related health promotion activities that they would follow once they have graduated the program. This plan often has ulterior foci, including vocational education development, financial planning, residential/housing planning, and recovery maintenance.

The first plan listed: the RELAPSE PREVENTION PLAN, is the most important and often overrides the stipulations and expectations of all other plans, for the simple reason that RELAPSE DURING RESIDENCY is taken very seriously (albeit, less seriously than I would have liked!!). Client/Residents are only permitted TWO (2) relapses during their residency at Ferguson Place, and with each consecutive relapse comes more severe repercussions.

Client/Residents sign an universal substance abuse testing release, granting any member of the Counseling Staff to test all residents for the presence of illicit substances (including everything from alcohol to amphetamines, from barbiturates to opiates and other narcotic substances) in their urine at any time of any day for any reason or under any suspicion of use whatsoever.

____________________________________________________________

Ferguson Place houses a total of 12 recovering addicts with HIV/AIDS and mental disorders on a rollover basis, meaning individual addicts enter into residence at any time that there has been at least a two day vacancy. While I was a resident for three months at Ferguson Place, from July 14 (Bastille Day) to October 11, 2009, I saw only five residents graduate the program, not including myself. Evidently, the program was much more difficult to maintain for others than it was for myself.

In total, I saw 25 residents enter the program and 19 leave before they had graduated the program, either due to relapse, or psycho-social tensions in the house, or because they simply felt that they were ready to move on. Across the board, every resident of the house who was unable for whatever reason to graduate the program, left only to relapse within two to three weeks (usually in much less time).

As for the graduates, we are all invited back twice a month for alumni activities, where we can keep a pace of each others' achievements (or failures) at maintaining sobriety. I've counted four graduates that I know of since my residency at Ferguson Place ended who have relapsed. The sobriety and health maintenance success rate of graduates of Ferguson Place is somewhere around 7 to 1, success to failure (for lack of better phraseology), I would estimate.  Which, I believe, are outstanding figures.

____________________________________________________________

Ferguson Place is like a second home to me: home away from home. The veteran Counseling Staff there and the alumni I still have relationships with are like family. They play a significant role in helping me to sustain my sobriety, because I know that no matter what happens (sobriety or none, recovery maintenance or relapse at any time), I will be accepted there with love and admiration, compassion and care, sympathy and a strident strict hand of accountability.

My individual experience at Ferguson Place was quite very unique. I arrived there on July 14, 2009 at around 11AM in the morning with my mask tightly taped to my face to completely cover my forehead flap and nose. I remember, everyone made a point to introduce themselves and to start some semblance of a conversation with me, even though I was terribly nervous.

And each new person I met brought to my attention in their own time the fact that my mask was making my glasses fog up, as it usually does when I'm sweaty or the tape is loose. Most of the residents there were kind enough to give me permission to take it off, but I had previously planned with the staff there to set aside a dinner plate, skip the meal with everyone in the kitchen, and to wait to unveil myself until after dinner during mandatory evening group.

I was my normal gregarious, outgoing self (just an understandably tense tangle of nervosity, with a mask on!) interacting with everyone one-on-one as I could; however, I didn't discover true, absolute, total comfort and acceptance of my uniquely tragic, terrible but immensely beautiful blessings of circumstance and survival, until I sat down with the entire group of residents and staff to begin to tell my story. My voice was cracking; tears were welling up in my eyes, but I just took a deep breath and committed to being 100% honest.

I told them about my accident, moment by moment; about my hospitalization and reconstructions, day by day, month by month; and I told them about the taut tight suspension cord I was delicately stumbling back and forth upon in pause, recollection and relapse, waiting either to fall again to my miserable demise (i.e., death by meth!!) or to continue onward to the other end of the tight rope, as a faithful master funambulist would do, to step square-footed in stable surety onto a platform miles high, where peace, serenity, self-acceptance and resounding love of others reside.

I expressed to them at that moment that I was standing at the center of a bowing, wickedly imbalanced tight rope, reaching in their direction for a helping hand.  I told them that I could not live in residence with all of them for three months with a mask on all the time.  It would have been unfeasible. How would I eat? How would I shower? How would I breathe when I slept? It was necessary for my safety and my success at recovery that I be accepted into this household without my mask on.

I admitted openly and without any shame whatsoever that what they would see behind the mask would surely frighten them.

"I'm grotesque.. a monster; however harsh or sad it may sound, but I ask you... I challenge you to look beyond the disfigurement and inside of my deep grey eyes or into my crooked half-smashed smile, where you'll inevitably find resounding, remarkable beauty," I told them with utmost confidence and courage.

I told them in true faith of my own pride and potential, valor and value, "Just try. Just look. Inside. Deep Inside, and you'll find a beautiful young man who's just starving for love."

That's when I deliberately dipped my fingers behind my ears to untangle the cords of my mask from my hair and began pulling it off my face.  I peeled the tape from my face that was securing the mask to my nasty mutant double-nub, single-nostril nose, and slowly dragged the mask along a horizontal directly in front of me, still blocking my face from view.

Then, "VOILA! A la Française! Quel dramaturge que je sois! Voici my quasi-moto mouth and flagrantly flagitious, nefariously nasty nose."  I had those lines memorized, as if to cap-off my performance with as much of a shock of language as of sight. "Happy Bastille Day!" I said, "I hope you'll have me."

One by one, each of the staff and residents there in my audience briefly stumbled through a silent pause of shock and trepidation, and then one by one each in his own time, curled their lips into broad outstretched smiles.  All I saw was a small throng of floating tooth-filled tender smiles.

Someone who would become a very close personal friend of mine: a heroine addict with a three year old daughter in foster care, raised her hand gently, bashfully from her lap and asked politely, "Matthew, do mind if I say something?"

I smiled back at all the smiles smiling at me, and nodded in her direction permission to go on.

She continued, "You might hear this a lot. I don't know. But, really, honestly, to be brutally truthful with you... and I don't mean to diminish your story or your pain, but you don't look half as bad as you make yourself out to be."

Of course, I had heard that before from kind, courteous paid professionals, but never from a real person. And never had I witnessed an entire room full of people adamantly affirm her observation with hugs, kisses, embraces...long, thoughtful, sincere embracing.

____________________________________________________________

That experience... my welcome to the world of Ferguson Place, to the world-at-large... was pivotal in my transition out of addiction and into good, sober health, because it was only then, in witnessing the immense impact that my story had had on this small group of strangers, that I realized that all the politicking my pious, plaintive, yet cheerfully cynical and lugubriously lonely priest had preached to me was true... Truer than true!!

Ever since first passing by my cordoned-off curtained corner of an obtrusively unobstructed and open HIV/AIDS hospice hospital ward where I wailed away the whys and wherefores of my worrisome woebegone and weary unwelcome melancholia, my priest has preached to me of our pathways toward purpose, piety, and perfection as ultimately imperfect invalids in the eyes of the Lord.

With the audience, the friends, the family I had found at Ferguson place, I realized that all the merry mentioning of mankind's mighty miracles by my propitious priest was in fact not forlorn unfortunate fallacy, but pure untethered truth! I caught a clear glimpse of veracity in that very real instance of courageous communing.

I began to believe wholehearted then that holy hubristic happenstance looms over we the lowly licentious laymen only to transmogrify us as demonic lookalike leftover lovers of life,... as admonitorial addicts who have through hyper-tragic trails and tribulation taught themselves to be teachers above all else, community leaders or heuristic heroes to the still hungover and high.

And that truth, revealed before me in this breech backward birth of brotherhood between a garishly gruesome ghoul of a boy and his blind-sided brethren, painted my pathway and purpose toward a transmundane telling of my tragedy-turned-triumph testimonials.

Just then, I realized that my definitive purpose in the world, the purpose for which I had all but almost given up an aimless search that defined every waking moment of my yuck of youth and muck of manhood, is to share my story with the world in whichever way I could.

I would for thence onward broad cast the calamity, capitulation and comeuppance of my story through tender telling in any media and any form, so that I might ultimately save others from such sufferance, such mistakes and misery, mindflux and mayhem!!  

____________________________________________________________

There! Enough garrulous gab from the so-grotesque-he-makes-you-giggle gay boy!! Consider these past paragraphs petty practice and preparation for my sumptuous sophist spoken words of wisdom we'll frame in film for the future.

Back tracking... Besides the telling of my especially serendipitous story of survival to a group of strangers turned family in an instance of wonderful welcome, for what other reason could I reason myself to be rightfully removed from the common clientele of this Recovery House?

Well, unlike most other client/residents, I came to Ferguson Place with much of my mental health and substance abuse treatment already lined up and scheduled. I would have advanced to PHASE TWO directly from ORIENTATION PHASE had I not suffered a severe withdrawal-related anxiety attack and fainting spell by throwing a riotous temper tantrum after only a week in the house.

I was convinced that I would not be accepted by the folks there because of my disfigurement and that none of the residents or staff would ever be able to grapple themselves into an intimate enough understanding of my addiction, my disease and my experience(s).

So, in light of my hospitalization due to mental instability and to my general unease and discomfort with my position in the house, my Primary Counselor decided to extend my ORIENTATION PHASE by four extra days.

This was challenging for me to accept, so I immediately submitted a Grievance Report to the Program Director asking for a new Primary Counselor. The two of them met with me. Speaking very openly, honestly, and with compassion, they told me how much they cared about my success in the program and how much they worried that the instability I exhibited could be endemic of an underlying doubt or insecurity about my sobriety, I was easily convinced that they had made the right decision.

I accommodated, obeyed, followed the rules to a tee the rest of the way and was in the end a model resident, building very strong, intimate relationships with many people there, most importantly with my Primary Counselor and the Program Director.

____________________________________________________________

As for your question related to the frequency of speakers' visits to Ferguson Place to tell their success stories in sobriety, I'll answer by saying that during my three months as a resident there, I was audience to two alumni speakers. Both individuals had incredible stories to tell. I got to know them well.

Also, exactly three months, one week and two days after having graduated the program, I myself went to Ferguson Place to present the story of how Crystal Meth and HIV/AIDS had literally destroyed my life. I went there to share the story of how I rose like a phoenix from the hot embers of the hearth that resides at the core of this amazing place of transition and have gone on to achieve full and complete reintegration into society, to achieve great success in my sobriety, in my personal and professional life, in my HIV/AIDS and mental health rehabilitation, etc.

To be honest with you (since we are at that point now already in our acquaintance), the ultimate reason I went back to Ferguson Place after I had achieved the minimum six months sobriety to speak there was to reintegrate into the community, to take off my mask(s) for a new audience of would-be could-be friends, and to reclaim my proper place at HOME.

And in fact, the speaking engagement definitely worked in my favor; for a month and a half afterward, I would regularly stop by Ferguson Place for visits without my mask on to interact with the new and old friends I had made there, and BOY!! WAS MY IMPACT ON THESE PEOPLE IMMENSE, OR WHAT!!??

____________________________________________________________

To sum things up in brief... Ferguson Place should be entirely accommodating to me celebrating my WATCH (i.e., one year anniversary of sobriety) at the house after speaking to the residents there and sharing my amazing story with them. We'd have to get special permission from each individual who might appear in the film as audience members.

If we do this, I would plan on inviting all of my closest friends and providers to bear witness to my achievements and to testify as well to my accomplishments, to join in the celebration as audience members. All I have to do is talk with the Program Director of Ferguson Place who is a very close friend of mine to schedule my speaking engagement for Wednesday July 14, 2010, and I'm sure she'll be excited to support the cause.

One potential snag in the plan could be that Wednesday night's from 6:15 to 7:30 at Ferguson Place, is usually reserved for a mandatory meeting between the Program Coordinators and the Residents.  What's called "Client Council" is a venue in which residents can contend with any psycho-social and interpersonal issues that might be negatively impacting the community.

Also, if there have been any relapses or phase advancements by client/residents during the previous week, time is allotted to process these milestones as a group. But I don't see why we couldn't organize to have guests arrive at around 7:30/45 to proceed well into the evening with my celebration and the filming. I'll definitely talk to the Program Director pronto!!

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WOW!! What a terribly loquacious long-winded rambling about nothing but trifling tedium. I hope you don't mind how I've gotten carried away in this prosaic escapade of unequivocally illusive eloquence and pedantry.

Like I said, consider it all practice and preparation for my spoken-word narrative for the film. Tell me if anything I've written strikes a cord with you, or if it strikes a nerve!! Either way... I need to bridle my "boisterously babbling behemoth of a" brain, and learn to trim up the curvaceous corners of my ultimately square head.

Read in peace and in pleasure... I hope all this typing to which I've so tentatively (or should I say, tenaciously??) tended tonight (and into Thursday morning) treats you tenderly and touches your heart. Be well, and write soon.

Regards,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[MDB2010.06.24@09:59PST]

Old Dreams Needn't Die [JFT, p. 167]

"Lost dreams awaken and new possibilities arise."
[Basic Text, p. 91]

Most of us had dreams when we were young. Whether we dreamed of a dynamic career, a large and loving family, or travels abroad, our dreams died when our addiction took hold. anything we ever wanted for ourselves was cast away in our pursuit of drugs. Our dreams didn't go beyond the next drug and the euphoria we hoped it would bring.

Now in recovery, we find a reason to hope that our lost dreams could still come true. No matter how old we are, how much our addiction has taken from us, or how unlikely it may seem, our freedom from active addiction gives us the freedom to pursue our ambitions. We may discover that we're very talented at something, or find a hobby we love, or learn that continuing our education can bring remarkable rewards.

We used to put most of our energy into spinning excuses and rationalizations for our failures. Today, we go forward and make use of the many opportunities life presents to us. We may be amazed at what we're capable of. With our foundation of recovery, success, fulfillment, and satisfaction are within our reach at last.

Just for today: Starting today, I'll do whatever I can to realize my dreams.

©2010 Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

My meditation on this entry from the Narcotics Anonymous book, Just For Today, will be ripe with a certain degree of trepidation and doubt, as I have in recent days been faced with the daunting, disagreeable decision to end the working relationship I've had for the last ten and a half months with my sponsor. But, beyond all the fear and loathing lies an even more potent sense of self-satisfaction, coupled with an ubiquitously enthralling desire at last to claim my God-given right to a happy, home-bodied, not-all-too hamstrung, but hopeful future free from drug dependency (YES! I'd defend against that above all else!), disease, depression, destruction, denigration, denial, even perhaps... perchance by some off-willed shot of better than lazy luck, free from the indomitable dilemma(s) of my disfigurement, defined as dignity & disgust... (OOPS! SEE! That's where the doubt returns).

No more! Behind the doubt, perched proudly smack-dab in front of it, or even surrounding it entirely, exists my desire for a future. Beyond the stark surreality of my sins and sufferance(s) where realism takes hold again of the pious, pompous pedantry and post-dramatic spectacle of my insanity, there thrives an elaborate, extant and evocative desire for me to realize my dreams. Yes, in fact, for sure! I damn near dutifully desire to realize my dreams: new and old, unkempt and coveted, clamorous or quiet...a calming cacophony! Dreams that mesmerize the mind with their miraculous magnitude and magnificence. Dreams defined and buttressed by second chances and serendipity, serenity, solemnity, solace, smiles, or sometimes even signified by the most astute sort of scholarly study. Dreams dignified or disgusting, determined, daring, but... DAMN! Don't say it: DASTARDLY!!

NO, Not dastardly!! In no right measure would or could my decent, dauntless day dreaming be defined as dastardly nor despicable, contemptible nor cowardly. No need to pause a single second to say this: MY DREAMS MAKE ME A HERO IN MY OWN RIGHT!! My dreams denounce damned near death-defied destruction, delay and/or deter me from dipping back down the drug-drenched drain of dependency, diminish the degree of my disfigurement to near null, nil, zilch, zero. I am a hero! Thank God for that! I am a hero, if even only to myself.

Upon commencing down this path of sobriety, I have harbored much concerted, conceited consternation and contempt for the camouflaged courtship of co-dependencies that curtails 12-Step Culture via its customarily candid confabulations which cheat their critics of a cause. Hence, I am a hero for saying, "NO!" when the time was ripe for change. I am a hero for crouching no longer to the crutch of cliches of cult-like mentality. I am a hero for taking a stand, as well as for dismissing myself of such contrivances in a calm, gentile, friendly fashion. I am a hero in so far as I have saved myself from the insufferable uncertainty, the doubt (as mentioned before, and so damned near always there!), and the guilt that goes with gaming it like the "good boys" do.

Why such unabashed bellowing forth of bombastic boomerang backlash boasting of my better-than-brethren beliefs? Admittedly, there is no need to exalt myself in these pages. I get enough exaltation from every new acquaintance I meet who may or may not be hearing my story for the first time, and then even more from friends and family. Perhaps, its too late now to veil myself in an air of modesty, and perchance never too soon to lament in lambasting myself for lethargy, lassitude and lackadaisicalness? Thus herein, I have willingly succumb to surreptitiously sullying my good name with self-aggrandizing, simply since I have been in such complete and utter awe — bewilderment, even! — of my circumstances and situation so far.

My life was spared by some Greater Power from the chance tragic misfortune of never waking from such insolence as that which destroyed me already once. Furthermore, in being spared, I have learned to reinvigorate my commitment to all the tempting, tempestuous, torrid and tantalizing tickle-me-pink pretty things in life that help me breathe and smile still, such as art (in all its myriad forms), altruism, fighting for a right(-eous) cause, the capricious cataloging of my contemplations (just 'cause there's nothing else better left to do!), creative expression, academic pursuits, professional development, even people whom I hold dear to my heart, or hearts I hold close to my mind... Not to mention, Faith, religion, practice, prayer and communion with the Lord. I have a special affinity for my Higher Power, just as (S)/He holds me in high esteem, and that is plenty good news to keep me moving in a right(-eous) direction.

In closing, let me be a little less illusive with my tangled threads of thought, to speak conspicuously of the immense challenge that I faced until just recently. You see, I read this entry from Just For Today a week prior to its scheduled share, just because coincidentally, I was curious as to what my future held. When I read this entry for the first time, I found myself catapulted from a certain standstill stagnation of indecision and indecency toward a real awakening, or better yet toward a resolution. Immediately after first reading this entry a week ago, I sat down in calm, collected reserve, but with a certain sense of resolve and satisfaction, to draft a letter to my sponsor requesting that we terminate our relationship.

Why do such a thing? What on earth could have prompted such a move? Or better yet, what could have preempted it? I'll tell you what, squarely and straightforward, "Nothing!" What possessed me to even organize words on paper enough to fire my sponsor? I'll explain, briefly:

Ever since I entered into our sponsorship, I have been battling a resounding and resilient voice inside my head telling me that my sponsor was only holding me back. It got so bad early on, that it led to my acting out — not using, but buying a dog without his "permission" or joining the Board of Directors of a local Bay Area HIV/AIDS Youth Advocacy Nonprofit without first going to him for advice, not calling him at our scheduled times, lashing out when I felt mistook as nothing more than an anonymous client of sorts — not as a friend! Getting angry, sending exceedingly immature, melodramatic and hurtful text messages to him and another fellow when I was on the brink of quitting the program, and the list goes on... But all that outlandish behavior was ultimately rooted in a very real fear: I wasn't advancing through the program at a pace that I felt best suited my gifts and my potential...

Shall I put this into context for you? Let's just say that after tonight, when I slyly slipped my beautiful handcrafted stationery into my sponsor's pouch, it will have been a solid ten months and three and a half weeks since he and I began our fumbling foray through the fundamental tenants of 12-Step, and as of today, we hadn't even really breached Step Four. That averages out to be about four months per step!! So SLOW!! I mean, could we have gone any slower? I don't think so. I mean no offense to him however, for I know he only had the best of intentions for me at heart.

It's just that our pace wasn't in sync at all. And combine with that the disturbing suspicion that my sponsor was holding me back from realizing my calling: that is to say, prohibiting me from sharing at large speaker meetings, or from sponsoring a newcomer myself, or even just making simple and necessary life decisions, such as whether or not to apply for a job, or increase my commitment to my nonprofit, etc.

I know that everyone who reads this is going to have their own distinct and strident opinions about my choice to abandon my sponsor (especially if you are in the Fellowship!!), but let me tell you!! Since giving him that letter, I feel so damn free!! Focused!! Centered!! My sobriety has been reinforced and re-energized, justified even in my own head. Where once I had been shackled to my sponsor's own dogmatic determination to develop my sobriety at a snail's pace, unable and essentially prohibited from pursuing my dreams, now I have all my dreams spread out before me, beckoning me onward and upward toward accomplishment and contribution(s), toward learning and legacy...

See! I took this entry in the NA Meditation Book, Just For Today, very seriously. I told myself: "Just For Today, starting today, I will do whatever I can to realize my dreams." It's just too damn bad that I had to fire my sponsor for the sake of dreaming big, 'cause I sure as hell would have enjoyed having him at my side as I begin to conquer one new found challenge or obstacle after another, working ever so closer to some of the solid, surefire goals I've had a mind to accomplish for the past eight years... We'll see what happens, now!! God Bless You, JJ!!

Respectfully Submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
[MDB2010.06.16@00:48]