A LOOK BACK! At 60DAYS SOBER, ... I once concluded that "I JUST have an UGLY face." However, despite the devastation of disfigurement, I was/am still conscience & cognizant of the fact that my Seventh Chakra shines – Sahasrara : "The Thousand-Petaled Lotus" – "signifying & assuring QHereKidSF of his supreme consciousness & sublime connection to the cerebral, spiritual & physical worlds" (cf. http://youtu.be/gg8mjhUqSpw – below).
At 1YR. CLEAN, I affirmed "BEAUTY!" ... "But, only at God's speed. God willing" : the choice words Director Daniel Cardone & I used to frame the closing of CONSTRUCT, our "epic" (not in length, but rather in magnitude of reverberation & depth) experimental docu-short, filmed as part of The HIV Story Project's STILL AROUND 2010 compilation (Exec. Producer: Jörg Fockele; Producer: Marc Smolowitz), which together feature a day-in-the-life of 15 individual PWA (i.e., People With AIDS) protagonists.
Now, today... At 18.5MTHS. OF HOPE (not dope!), I take the stage in a short time to proclaim how indeed I am finally & once again ablaze with "DESIRE" : red hot & risen, redeemed & reborn; as a "PHOENIX a'FIRE" (cf. "Resident Alien" - the Sins Invalid Artists In Residence Show), who prances, dances and sings poemsongs of Paphian pleasantries, indulgences & delights...
As my Sins Invalid artist bio reads, I am: "grateful for God's boundless love of & faith in [my] own purely imperfect and human desire 'for elaborate beautification & solemn self-betterment" (cf. CONSTRUCT, 2011). "But, then again, I'll be quick to say: We live to die and die to live... Forever! Come what may." (cf. JEER NOT! FEAR NOT!!; "Resident Alien," 2011).
STAY TUNED!! for my "flagrantly unfettered" foretelling of a future full of fortitude, good fortune, and truly "fag-o-licious fabulosity" of face... SUBSCRIBE TO MY YouTube® CHANNEL – mindflux | matt(e)o | mayhem : http://youtube.com/qherekidsf.
Cheers! Ciao & Namaste...
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
matthew@qherekidsf.com
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf
San Francisco, CA USA
[20110125T071435PST]
Showing posts with label sobriety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sobriety. Show all posts
25 January 2011
11 January 2011
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.
Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
Artist In Residence
SINS INVALID
San Francisco, CA USA
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf
[20110111T235237PST]
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]
14 July 2010
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
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
"Language Or A Kiss" : YouTube.com
People like to tell me that I am a gifted writer; however, more often than not, I dismiss the compliment as shady, insincere flattery, nothing more than a mere measly attempt to win over my good graces and high esteem. I'm not easily moved to accept such praise as genuine; instead, I seem to enjoy being so cripplingly self-critical that I find flaw in nearly all of the creative work that I produce. Flagrant masochistic introspection and judgment are the most debilitating characteristics of my intellect.
Recently, I've gained a very acute, salient awareness of this fault of mine when I sat down to begin laboring over the writing of a narrative for the experimental documentary short film in which I will be featured as part of The HIV Story Project. As soon as I put pencil to paper, I arrived at a major road block. As Daniel Cardone, the director of my documentary short, expressed in his proposal of narrative beats for the film; he said (I paraphrase, albeit only slightly!), "How 'bout you tame up on the emphatic use of alliteration?"
YUP!! Semantic syncopation of syllabic constructs seems superficially smart; although, aggressively assertive, obtuse alignments of the Anglican alphabet in alliteration are ever so much more unabashedly awkward and asinine than astute or impressive. Alliterations heavily harangue the human ear e'er so often in my hand's writing as to be yet another aspect of my aimlessly affected artistic arrogance. AWFUL! I am more than mindfully aware...
So, I have to harness the potency of my "emphatically alliterative" writing style to produce something coherent yet stylized enough to sound like spoken word when read aloud, when performed as narration. The challenge has proven ever so garishly gargantuan and heavy-weighted that I've been more apt to toss my text o'er my shoulder and shudder in exacerbated ennui than to scream excitedly in the act of forcing a fluid flow of whimsically written word on whatever pad of paper presents itself to me so pleasingly to be prettified by my elaborately eloquent enunciation.
YIKES!! There I go again! Can't you see? If crippling not be my self-criticisms then these confounded constructions of collected consonants ought clearly be called out as such: CRAP!!
Failing at first to find a friendly unfettered flow of thought from my fabulously and freakishly flamboyant frame of mind to a much more mellow, mundane manifestation or monstrance of my mind's majesty e'er writ in words of wistful wisdom, I set out alternately to ponder and play with possible themes, motifs and concepts that could in effect guide my writing away from excess and more toward realism, or at least toward naturalism.
After speaking at length with Nomy Lamm, the Artists In Residence (A.I.R.) Program Director for Sins Invalid, about my background, back story, and of the context in which arose the opportunity for my story to be featured as part of a compilation of short films commemorating the thirtieth year of acknowledgment of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), I discovered my own overriding affinity for an idea that I had been incubating ever since said opportunity presented itself to me.
Today is a very important milestone for me. The Fourteenth of July (i.e., Bastille Day!) marks the anniversary of my sobriety (i.e., my CLEAN DATE!), and to celebrate, I'm a convening the production of my experimental docu-short, lead by a superbly talented team of queer film production professionals all associated pro bono with The HIV Story Project. In fact, there only remains a few more than thirty minutes before their arrival to my home to begin shooting.
As I celebrate today my one-year anniversary of sobriety, I have all but been able to ignore the crescendo'ed confluence of my creative energies and impulses around the progress of both my recovery and my reconstructions. All is explained in lucid detail by the video blog I posted to YouTube.com about ten days ago, entitled "Language Or A Kiss" after a beautiful acoustic ballad I discovered that morning, only after more than a decade of listening, on Indigo Girls' album 1200 Curfews (Live).
The ten minute home-made webcam movie features "yours' truly!" pontificating the plentiful platitudes and prettiness of a poignant, powerful idea: that of using the foreboding, intimidating, meaningful act of kissing (Romantically, that is!!) as the central motivating action of my docu-short film narrative. The YouTube.com video explains in detail the significance of this convergence of energies and ideas. The webcam movie monologue also describes the profound meaning behind this particularly challenging choice around which I hesitantly aspired to shape a cinematic sketch of my life. My aim would have been to create a piece that might have touched, moved and inspired an audience perhaps to live safer, healthier, more sane and sober lives be they suffering or not from either HIV/AIDS, drug dependency or disfigurement.
Language Or A Kiss: QHereKidSF (a.k.a Matthew Blanchard) contemplates the
convergence of his creative energies around his one-year anniversary of clean
time. With sobriety comes sanity and surety enough to explore either
"language or a kiss" both in experimental theater/film performance.
(i.e., http://sinsinvalid.org/; http://thehivstoryproject.org/; etc.)
Recently, I've gained a very acute, salient awareness of this fault of mine when I sat down to begin laboring over the writing of a narrative for the experimental documentary short film in which I will be featured as part of The HIV Story Project. As soon as I put pencil to paper, I arrived at a major road block. As Daniel Cardone, the director of my documentary short, expressed in his proposal of narrative beats for the film; he said (I paraphrase, albeit only slightly!), "How 'bout you tame up on the emphatic use of alliteration?"
YUP!! Semantic syncopation of syllabic constructs seems superficially smart; although, aggressively assertive, obtuse alignments of the Anglican alphabet in alliteration are ever so much more unabashedly awkward and asinine than astute or impressive. Alliterations heavily harangue the human ear e'er so often in my hand's writing as to be yet another aspect of my aimlessly affected artistic arrogance. AWFUL! I am more than mindfully aware...
So, I have to harness the potency of my "emphatically alliterative" writing style to produce something coherent yet stylized enough to sound like spoken word when read aloud, when performed as narration. The challenge has proven ever so garishly gargantuan and heavy-weighted that I've been more apt to toss my text o'er my shoulder and shudder in exacerbated ennui than to scream excitedly in the act of forcing a fluid flow of whimsically written word on whatever pad of paper presents itself to me so pleasingly to be prettified by my elaborately eloquent enunciation.
YIKES!! There I go again! Can't you see? If crippling not be my self-criticisms then these confounded constructions of collected consonants ought clearly be called out as such: CRAP!!
Failing at first to find a friendly unfettered flow of thought from my fabulously and freakishly flamboyant frame of mind to a much more mellow, mundane manifestation or monstrance of my mind's majesty e'er writ in words of wistful wisdom, I set out alternately to ponder and play with possible themes, motifs and concepts that could in effect guide my writing away from excess and more toward realism, or at least toward naturalism.
After speaking at length with Nomy Lamm, the Artists In Residence (A.I.R.) Program Director for Sins Invalid, about my background, back story, and of the context in which arose the opportunity for my story to be featured as part of a compilation of short films commemorating the thirtieth year of acknowledgment of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), I discovered my own overriding affinity for an idea that I had been incubating ever since said opportunity presented itself to me.
Today is a very important milestone for me. The Fourteenth of July (i.e., Bastille Day!) marks the anniversary of my sobriety (i.e., my CLEAN DATE!), and to celebrate, I'm a convening the production of my experimental docu-short, lead by a superbly talented team of queer film production professionals all associated pro bono with The HIV Story Project. In fact, there only remains a few more than thirty minutes before their arrival to my home to begin shooting.
As I celebrate today my one-year anniversary of sobriety, I have all but been able to ignore the crescendo'ed confluence of my creative energies and impulses around the progress of both my recovery and my reconstructions. All is explained in lucid detail by the video blog I posted to YouTube.com about ten days ago, entitled "Language Or A Kiss" after a beautiful acoustic ballad I discovered that morning, only after more than a decade of listening, on Indigo Girls' album 1200 Curfews (Live).
The ten minute home-made webcam movie features "yours' truly!" pontificating the plentiful platitudes and prettiness of a poignant, powerful idea: that of using the foreboding, intimidating, meaningful act of kissing (Romantically, that is!!) as the central motivating action of my docu-short film narrative. The YouTube.com video explains in detail the significance of this convergence of energies and ideas. The webcam movie monologue also describes the profound meaning behind this particularly challenging choice around which I hesitantly aspired to shape a cinematic sketch of my life. My aim would have been to create a piece that might have touched, moved and inspired an audience perhaps to live safer, healthier, more sane and sober lives be they suffering or not from either HIV/AIDS, drug dependency or disfigurement.
Language Or A Kiss: QHereKidSF (a.k.a Matthew Blanchard) contemplates the
convergence of his creative energies around his one-year anniversary of clean
time. With sobriety comes sanity and surety enough to explore either
"language or a kiss" both in experimental theater/film performance.
(i.e., http://sinsinvalid.org/; http://thehivstoryproject.org/; etc.)
[TIME ELAPSE] » As I type, my production team is shooting extreme closeups of the interior textures of my apartment. The cinematographer has just lifted himself from the crouched near-fetal position he took to "get lost in a bunny" rabbit knitted Christmas ornament that hangs from the cord of my venetian blinds, swaying ominously in a shadow of light just in front the sullied, dirtied retractable screen that props my window open. I'm not sure what they're filming now, as my back is toward them while they traipse around my studio capturing the phenomenally complex idiosyncrasies of my mundane, boring abode.
Turns out that my director, Daniel Cardone, hasn't yet had a chance to view the YouTube.com video I've posted above; so, in all likelihood, there will be no true central motivating action for this film narrative. We have no plans today to shoot me kissing anyone, and it is far too late in the game to go out on the street to find some random Polk Street callboy we could pay twenty dollars to try their damnedest at getting romantic while maneuvering their lips gently and with compassion onto my muddled monstrosity of a mouth. HAH! Could you imagine?
I've never simulcast the writing of a blog entry with live action. To be frank and forward, it's quite nerve-racking and unsettling. I wonder whether or not anyone in the room knows that I am writing about them as they toil around my studio on a voyage of cinematographic discovery
As I type, the warmhearted, bundled-up in a sweater and gloves, uber-zen sound technician is recording "room tone" with his boom microphone perched as ominously as my bunny rabbit just over my shoulder, so as to capture the sounds of my fingers tap, tap, tapping away on the keys of my laptop. I am terribly conscious of the fact that I tend to backspace a lot, which probably dashes his hopes at capturing a cohesive rhythm. Alas! Oh well...
"Alright! Stop. I've got another idea now...," says Daniel, the director, as our cinematographer completes a rack-zoomed extreme closeup of the grains of wood on my floor. Now, the production team is duplicate-framing a similar shot of the MUNI Metro & Busline map than hangs on the wall in the hall way next to my front door.
It is indeed a very good thing that as an artist, I've learned how not to be too utterly disappointed when one's vision is not wholly and fully adopted by every member of a production team. Blame the absence of a ironically romantic kiss between tweaked-out twink Polk Street callboy and my still quite sane and sober Skid Row mutant, monstrous, alien, Audrey II-like lips on the capricious whims of the film artist's mind. Although, unlike the sound technician's hopes which fizzled with the realization that I am not quite such a melodic typist, my dreams have not yet been dashed.
You see! I still have the theatrical medium with which to toy around salaciously and sexy-like. The kiss could still come to pass as I see it! I've got six long months to workshop scenes for Sins Invalid which perchance could center around this challenging, compelling, confrontational act of compassion and enduring, caring love. Those who follow me in the blogosphere must just wait patiently to hear word soon of the developments that unfold with my experimental ensemble performance work.
And in the meantime, both all of you and I must also patiently await the post-production work on and premier of my experimental documentary short film, entitled "(TBD)!" If the work we have completed already today is any testament to the quality and caliber of Daniel's artistic vision, then I'd have to say that we are surely heading in a "positive" direction (pun intended!). A thousand thanks to Daniel, Jörg, Josh, and Doug: my production team! It's been a real joy working with you all. And so the work continues... Who's a Movie Star? I'm a Movie Star!!
Respectfully Submitted,
Turns out that my director, Daniel Cardone, hasn't yet had a chance to view the YouTube.com video I've posted above; so, in all likelihood, there will be no true central motivating action for this film narrative. We have no plans today to shoot me kissing anyone, and it is far too late in the game to go out on the street to find some random Polk Street callboy we could pay twenty dollars to try their damnedest at getting romantic while maneuvering their lips gently and with compassion onto my muddled monstrosity of a mouth. HAH! Could you imagine?
I've never simulcast the writing of a blog entry with live action. To be frank and forward, it's quite nerve-racking and unsettling. I wonder whether or not anyone in the room knows that I am writing about them as they toil around my studio on a voyage of cinematographic discovery
As I type, the warmhearted, bundled-up in a sweater and gloves, uber-zen sound technician is recording "room tone" with his boom microphone perched as ominously as my bunny rabbit just over my shoulder, so as to capture the sounds of my fingers tap, tap, tapping away on the keys of my laptop. I am terribly conscious of the fact that I tend to backspace a lot, which probably dashes his hopes at capturing a cohesive rhythm. Alas! Oh well...
"Alright! Stop. I've got another idea now...," says Daniel, the director, as our cinematographer completes a rack-zoomed extreme closeup of the grains of wood on my floor. Now, the production team is duplicate-framing a similar shot of the MUNI Metro & Busline map than hangs on the wall in the hall way next to my front door.
It is indeed a very good thing that as an artist, I've learned how not to be too utterly disappointed when one's vision is not wholly and fully adopted by every member of a production team. Blame the absence of a ironically romantic kiss between tweaked-out twink Polk Street callboy and my still quite sane and sober Skid Row mutant, monstrous, alien, Audrey II-like lips on the capricious whims of the film artist's mind. Although, unlike the sound technician's hopes which fizzled with the realization that I am not quite such a melodic typist, my dreams have not yet been dashed.
You see! I still have the theatrical medium with which to toy around salaciously and sexy-like. The kiss could still come to pass as I see it! I've got six long months to workshop scenes for Sins Invalid which perchance could center around this challenging, compelling, confrontational act of compassion and enduring, caring love. Those who follow me in the blogosphere must just wait patiently to hear word soon of the developments that unfold with my experimental ensemble performance work.
And in the meantime, both all of you and I must also patiently await the post-production work on and premier of my experimental documentary short film, entitled "(TBD)!" If the work we have completed already today is any testament to the quality and caliber of Daniel's artistic vision, then I'd have to say that we are surely heading in a "positive" direction (pun intended!). A thousand thanks to Daniel, Jörg, Josh, and Doug: my production team! It's been a real joy working with you all. And so the work continues... Who's a Movie Star? I'm a Movie Star!!
Respectfully Submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.07.14@15:03PST]
24 June 2010
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:
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!!
_____________________________________________________________
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]
29 May 2010
ISRAEL&I : Preserving Progress
Evidence of an enduring friendship. Remarks made to console and cajole into contemplation the otherwise tamed vacancies of intellect that bridal us with ignorance and loathing prejudices. This essay is not meant to proselytize about the potency of or the pandemonium in the Israeli State, but rather, this blog entry is meant to demonstrate the intense intimacy of my relationship with my next door neighbor and In-Home Supportive Services provider: my friend, Israel R. Toro.
The following is text of a letter I recently wrote to Israel, which he will not have yet read by the time this post is published. Maybe he'll get a hint that a letter's waiting for him, when he sees a notification of this blog entry post on my Facebook Profile. This would mean that he has access to the text of the letter without having the illustrated pages in his hands first, but that's okay. It'll still be something special for him to receive the hand-written four page letter in person when he returns from vacation in about a week. At least, that's my hope!
I wanted to post this text prior to delivering the letter to Israel himself, because the simple act of writing these words has inspired in me a sense of urgency in recognizing and recording the significance of this very important relationship in my life.
What's true is that I enjoy writing (and illustrating) letters by hand to the people most important in my life; in small part, because I figure that if one day I reach infamy or celebrity or renown, then such hand-written souvenirs could be cherished as truly valuable objects. But, my immediate aim in not to reach renown. I'm not presumptuous, or even pompous enough to think that celebrity is a possibility for me in any way, so I'll settle for touching the hearts of those few and far between important people in my life who merit such gifts of graphic gab scribbled onto loose leaf paper. That's what I hope to do with this letter: touch Israel's heart!
Maybe he'll read my blog post via Facebook, and either comment there or access my blog's true URL: http://qherekidsf.blogspot.com, to leave a comment there. We'll see! Maybe, he'll just read the letter on loose leaf and give me one ginormous grateful, gentlemanly bear hug!! GRRRRRR. CHUB!! :) Peace Out, All! And Peace, especially to Israel! May he have a safe voyage home, and may our friendship survive the tempests and turmoil of time!! Truth be told, he's tamed me. My gratitude is immeasurable. THANKS, IZ!!
Respectfully Submitted,
Matthew D. Blanchard
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.05.29@18:40PST]
The following is text of a letter I recently wrote to Israel, which he will not have yet read by the time this post is published. Maybe he'll get a hint that a letter's waiting for him, when he sees a notification of this blog entry post on my Facebook Profile. This would mean that he has access to the text of the letter without having the illustrated pages in his hands first, but that's okay. It'll still be something special for him to receive the hand-written four page letter in person when he returns from vacation in about a week. At least, that's my hope!
Dear Israel,
Today, you left on a camping trip with your boyfriend to Washington State, where there's quick sand and where you're going to be soaked with rain. I'm home alone, listening to the silence through my walls, re-reading the hand-written note you posted to my oven fan and the text messages you sent me earlier in the day. I can't help but play back the conversation we had sitting at my kitchen table, recalling your anxiety at the thought that I possibly will no longer be your neighbor.
Frankly, I regret having been so caught up in my own excitement at the prospect of transitioning finally into independence and (hopefully!) better circumstances, that I didn't have forethought enough to anticipate your reaction or to consider your feelings. And, for that I am deeply sorry. On the other hand, I feel blessed by your reaction. Why? How? You might ask... It may seem insensitive of me to find satisfaction in your frustration and worry, but let me explain...
Through the harrowing happenstance of disease, depression disfigurement, delusions, devastation, death -- but, then through survival, salvation, sanity, sobriety, sympathy, serendipity, solace, surety, safety, serenity and yes, even through some selfish satisfaction for it all! -- I have come to believe that only one thing can sustain me in life, onward from my fight with death, and that is... FRIENDSHIP!!
Friendship is essential to my life, and since I call you proudly and gratefully a friend -- you are absolutely essential to my life. Your unexpected reaction -- unexpected to me, at least -- to some unexpected news essentially demonstrated the deep, genuine sincerity of our relationship, making real and tangible to me the enormous significance and value you bring to my life.
Essentially, by reacting with such shock, fear, anxiety and very real sadness at the prospect of losing your proximity to me, you proved to me how essential -- how necessary -- you are to my life, to my survival, and to my happiness. Don't you see now why and how I could/did find some satisfaction in your suffering?
Your pain made me happy for a brief moment, but as soon as I realized that what I was feeling could very well be wrong (or at least totally inappropriate and shameful), I shifted my perspective and my focus onto you. My focus right now is not on this satisfaction of mine that I've defined here, but it's on abetting your worry, healing your anxiety and pain by reassuring yu that I will do whatever I can that is humanly possible to preserve the status, shape, sincerity, intimacy, growth and progress of our friendship, if I am no longer to be your neighbor.
You make me happy, Israel!! You make me laugh. You make me worry. You make me proud. You make me feel lucky, special, unique, grateful...as friends should do!! I guess really that's exactly just what I want to say, and I want to thank you for saying yes, when I asked you to be my IHSS worker. Thank you for hanging out with me when times were low. Thanks for supporting my sobriety, my health, my sanity. Thank you for taking suck great care of me and Tanner!!
You deserve so much gratitude in return for all the generous gifts, sympathy and friendship that you have bestowed upon me in the past seven years as my neighbor, and especially for the sacrifices that you have recently made (and that I hope you will continue to make) as my in-home care provider.
The mutual reciprocity of our relationship (personal/professional, or otherwise!) is what gives us such trust, intimacy, potency, pride and strength when we're together; and for that, I hope never to lose you -- or our friendship. I WILL FIGHT TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH FOR YOU!! Because, in fighting to preserve our relationship, I fight also to keep my life on track, heading in the "right" direction.
NO! I don't mean to insinuate that I'm going to turn Republican on you , but I do in a way mean to say "CONSERVATIVE" -- in such a way that I'd like to conserve/preserve all the greatness, the grandeur, the bliss that has found its way into my life recently; thanks to you. BUT, I'M A TRUE PROGRESSIVE! I believe in PROGRESS.
As my priest would say: "We are all imperfect people reaching, aiming for perfection." I personally do not know if I will ever reach perfection before I die, or if it will instead come posthumously once I enter into the gardens of ELYSIUM, but I know that in the meantime, I will only act in God's graces, and I will only surround myself with people like you. People who are not "perfect" -- per se, but whose indomitable strength of spirit only supports, encourages, buttresses (and does not contend with contemptuously) my journey toward perfection. Those who join the journey with me, only to follow their own path in the same general direction.
That is why you are in my life. Because, in your support and through our friendship, we both come all that much clsoer to enlightenment, salvation, redemption and perfection. You sustain and nurture, cultivate and catalyze my shaping of self. And I can only dream of doing the same for you. In brotherhood, Israel, our love for one another endures... Know that I cherish you, and that there will always be a place for you in my life. Forever. THANKS!!
With Love,
Matthew
I wanted to post this text prior to delivering the letter to Israel himself, because the simple act of writing these words has inspired in me a sense of urgency in recognizing and recording the significance of this very important relationship in my life.
What's true is that I enjoy writing (and illustrating) letters by hand to the people most important in my life; in small part, because I figure that if one day I reach infamy or celebrity or renown, then such hand-written souvenirs could be cherished as truly valuable objects. But, my immediate aim in not to reach renown. I'm not presumptuous, or even pompous enough to think that celebrity is a possibility for me in any way, so I'll settle for touching the hearts of those few and far between important people in my life who merit such gifts of graphic gab scribbled onto loose leaf paper. That's what I hope to do with this letter: touch Israel's heart!
Maybe he'll read my blog post via Facebook, and either comment there or access my blog's true URL: http://qherekidsf.blogspot.com, to leave a comment there. We'll see! Maybe, he'll just read the letter on loose leaf and give me one ginormous grateful, gentlemanly bear hug!! GRRRRRR. CHUB!! :) Peace Out, All! And Peace, especially to Israel! May he have a safe voyage home, and may our friendship survive the tempests and turmoil of time!! Truth be told, he's tamed me. My gratitude is immeasurable. THANKS, IZ!!
Respectfully Submitted,
Matthew D. Blanchard
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.05.29@18:40PST]
07 January 2010
POTENCY OF "POWERLESSNESS!!"
Midweek already and I feel like I’m living a dream. Not a schizoid manic maneuvering or mulling over my own misery and mayhem, but a blessed vision of beauty, betterment & beatitude… “Plentiful Beatitude” is what I see here sat slumped over my computer at an unconscionable hour, a reprehensible hour of late night / early morning rambling rumination and running in circles. Naw! I kid. For, there is a very distinct clarity to my vision, my dreams, and my self-revelation.
I’ll keep the text of this journal entry simple and succinct, relaying only the remaniés of my ruminations on recovery and reconstructions via an embedding of my most recent YouTube® video upload:
But that which was forcedly stricken from my meditation on mis(sed)-fortune – no longer! – is mention of the mindful, miraculous, meditative revelations that came of me subsequent to this seemingly sagacious soliloquy, only after I was ironically able to enunciate an elaboration on this exquisite expression of my unsuspected/(ing) shift in perspective on the Program, its potential and its “promises.”
My realization came quick, pounding my peripheral lobe with the profound potency of powerlessness and the plentiful pretences and possibilities for perfection (i.e., the “spiritual awakening”) of which the Twelfth Step presupposes, after I posted my most recent, previous entry, entitled “May Today There Be Peace Within…”
I’ll keep the text of this journal entry simple and succinct, relaying only the remaniés of my ruminations on recovery and reconstructions via an embedding of my most recent YouTube® video upload:
Mindflux | Matt(e)o | Mayhem -- Meet ME!! : Matt, Matthew, Mathieu, Matthias, Mattia, "Il MATTO Matt(e)o!!" My sweet enunciation of sacred self : "Gift from God," a story of blessings, beauty, betterment & beatitude -- "Plentiful Beatitude!!" QHereKidSF celebrates six months of sobriety and his sixth surgical reconstruction, ever more grateful of his own once fabled (now forever) fortune, fortitude & FABULOSITY!! -- © 2010 QHereKidSF (a.k.a., Matthew D. Blanchard) | All Rights Reserved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V_-P6n9ZJQ
http://www.youtube.com/qherekidsf
The good humor and clarity with which I express myself in this video is not so sterile that it's striking; but rather, the jovial, unsanctified spirit of this monologue surmounts sterility and vapidity to tend more toward an extemporaneously tender, telling exposé – an elaboratively "sweet enunciation of sacred self," as so poignantly posited in the description of this video upload and post (above.)
But that which was forcedly stricken from my meditation on mis(sed)-fortune – no longer! – is mention of the mindful, miraculous, meditative revelations that came of me subsequent to this seemingly sagacious soliloquy, only after I was ironically able to enunciate an elaboration on this exquisite expression of my unsuspected/(ing) shift in perspective on the Program, its potential and its “promises.”
My realization came quick, pounding my peripheral lobe with the profound potency of powerlessness and the plentiful pretences and possibilities for perfection (i.e., the “spiritual awakening”) of which the Twelfth Step presupposes, after I posted my most recent, previous entry, entitled “May Today There Be Peace Within…”
I came to a timely, telling conclusion – No! I shouldn’t call this a “conclusion.” A word exists, I know, that better evokes beginning, rather than end, for that is what this is: a seedling, a serendipitous sprouting & savoring of spiritual revelation…and yes, perhaps premature “awakening!” – during a group therapy session at my LGBTQ Mental Health and Substance Abuse Recovery Center here in San Francisco, the day after my surgery (i.e., only just yesterday!!).
I must respect the unequivocal expectation of confidentiality in this retelling of my in-group revelation, so I ask both my readers and the well-respected, well-meaning members of my Abstinence Support Group to allow me the liberty and right to tergiversate an equivocation of my in-group pontifications and feedback without any indulgent unveiling of identities through ambiguity and ambivalence.
Here’s a synopsis of my statements to my Recovery Community that I’d like to make available on the public domain as a testament of the potential for a consummate conclusive curtailing of our old misguidance and of a tendency toward a cyclic sharing of life’s lessons learnt through long-lasting, sustained sobriety:
These past few weeks – especially, the last three days – have been quite transformative for me, and I mean “transformative” both in the literal and figurative sense, in the physical, mental and emotional sense tending toward a complete shift in perspective and a reshaping & saving of face.
Fortunately, after indulging the heed by my Sponsor of my obligations to the Program to acquire and begin to read the canonical tome of Twelve Step literature: The Big Book, I found that I had been suddenly and spontaneously convinced by the sumptuous eloquence of its words, and that my perspective had suddenly shifted in its logic and leanings.
I live today in stark contrast to the shape & form of my former perspective, reason, logic and emotion: that of “active” addiction. There has been so much drastic imminent change in my life, both physically and spiritually, during the last two and a half years – particularly, during the last six months, and I owe it all to my sobriety. That’s an amazing, self-affirming realization for me and a lesson to others.
For prior to my discovery of the “promises” of the Program, I held such a indomitable contempt for life and for circumstance and for fate and for kharma and for my Higher Power’s so-called “plan” for me. But now, after so much transformation physically and emotionally and circumstantially, my perspective on the Program (and on my blessings, beauty, betterment & beatitude – “Plentiful Beatitude!”) has subsequently transformed into something distinctly positive and grateful.
This is what I did not mention in my video: an erstwhile realization or discovery to which I have only hitherto come. This is the essence of my share with the Recovery Community, and I sum it up in a solemn spiritually promising message to the Newcomer(s): Keep coming back! It works!! I am only evidence of this otherwhile indomitable truth and promise of the Program. Thank God for that! Amen. Alleluia!!
Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.01.07@5:03PST]
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WHEN WE HONESTLY ASK OURSELVES WHICH PERSON
IN OUR LIVES MEANS THE MOST TO US, WE OFTEN FIND
THAT IT IS THOSE WHO, INSTEAD OF GIVING MUCH ADVICE,
SOLUTIONS OR CURES, HAVE CHOSEN RATHER TO SHARE
OUR PAIN & TOUCH OUR WOUNDS WITH A GENTLE AND
TENDER HAND. THE FRIEND WHO CAN BE SILENT WITH US
IN A MOMENT OF DESPAIR OR CONFUSION, WHO CAN STAY
WITH US IN AN HOUR OF GRIEF & BEREAVEMENT, WHO CAN
TOLERATE NOT KNOWING, NOT CURING, NOT HEALING AND
FACE WITH US THE REALITY OF OUR POWERLESSNESS,
THAT IS A FRIEND WHO CARES.
— Unknown
http://twitter.com/QHereKidSF
http://qherekidsf.blogspot.com
http://qherekidsf.myspace.com
http://facebook.com/mblanchard79
http://qherekidsf.stumbleupon.com
http://www.last.fm/user/QHereKidSF
http://www.bebo.com/aimsn/cheesefryz
http://www.flickr.com/people/mblanchard79
http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewblanchard
http://www.xtreak.com/go/QHereKidSF/141027
http://www.pandora.com/people/mblanchard79
http://www.google.com/profiles/mblanchard1979
WHEN WE HONESTLY ASK OURSELVES WHICH PERSON
IN OUR LIVES MEANS THE MOST TO US, WE OFTEN FIND
THAT IT IS THOSE WHO, INSTEAD OF GIVING MUCH ADVICE,
SOLUTIONS OR CURES, HAVE CHOSEN RATHER TO SHARE
OUR PAIN & TOUCH OUR WOUNDS WITH A GENTLE AND
TENDER HAND. THE FRIEND WHO CAN BE SILENT WITH US
IN A MOMENT OF DESPAIR OR CONFUSION, WHO CAN STAY
WITH US IN AN HOUR OF GRIEF & BEREAVEMENT, WHO CAN
TOLERATE NOT KNOWING, NOT CURING, NOT HEALING AND
FACE WITH US THE REALITY OF OUR POWERLESSNESS,
THAT IS A FRIEND WHO CARES.
— Unknown
01 January 2010
"May Today There Be Peace Within..."
As many in this world stand poised foul-footed & faulty, skeptical of “so-soon-should-be” stability and drowning in the dim dark dawning of a new decade of hopes, nope & never minds, some may very well find themselves focused unflinching on the rightful remonstrance of their real, wrong, reprehensible ruination. And, others still may presume themselves victim of obviously obtrusive, abject, awful circumstance, such as so-called “calamity” or worse yet still, “catastrophe.”
But in sharp contrast to these many multitudes of madmen who moan in misery when met with mindflux & mayhem, I myself stand poised on solid ground, garishly gleaming in the glow of great gifts of good tidings and telling tales of betterment, blessings & beatitude…”Plentiful Beatitude!”
With the arrival of the new year and the end of an old, I’ve witnessed a coalescence or convergence of some commonly, characteristically distinct threads of thought that are now together guiding me toward goodness in the graces of my Greater Power. These thoughts, these systems of reasoning, these philosophies, maxims or mores divergent to a degree in my mind until now, seem today to be bound together by one common cord – a theme best expressed in a simple statement that once seemed to me to be a clichéd convention, but which I recognize now as an almost divine truth: “Faith without works was dead.”
Those fateful words are bracketed and emboldened by the glimmer of graphite marks carved onto page fourteen of the most recent addition to my fledgling “Religion & Recovery” library. This is the Fourth Edition of the Big Book, the Basic Text of Alcoholics Anonymous, the hardcover book reads on its glossy paper jacket.
During the last week and a half, I have made an enthusiastic effort specially to celebrate in proper fashion the blessed spirit of the Holiday Season, having invited many a friend into my home for a festive dinner party and the presentation of miniature stockings stuffed with candy and perfectly well-chosen and appropriate gifts.
May I boast a bit? Permit me, please! I must say, the satisfaction and appreciation expressed by my guests tells me that I am quite the host and played well the part of not-so-secret Santa.
I am confident that each of the close friends I invited into my home for the holiday were tenderly touched by my gesture of gregarious generosity and hospitality, and that they are indeed grateful. But more importantly, I am grateful. Extremely grateful! And I’d like to believe that this my guests would most gladly appreciate to know.
I wish I would have remembered to document the occasions in photos, but I forgot to borrow the digital camera from my neighbor, who was in fact a guest at both events. The two resoundingly intimate and joyful dinner parties I hosted for the holiday were quite the success and a perfect way to end the decade.
While I did nothing of significance to celebrate the actual eve of the new decade, I did however commit the first day of 2010 (in its entirety) to a very significant and commemorative exercise, introducing myself finally to the canonical tome of Twelve Step literature that my sponsor has been pressing upon me to read. I read from the preface to the final pages of the first chapter of the Big Book, and scribbled copious notes into my recovery journal from them.
In irregular, sporadic intervals I would break from reading and return to the computer to check email or to chat it up with buddies online. To one particular “buddy,” I ended up elucidating extemporaneously an elaborate plan in which I expressed an interest to involve myself.
My intention, as I described to my friend this morning and inspired by the seeming convergence or coalescence of certain variant themes on Religion & Recovery in my life at the present moment, is to reinvigorate my efforts to post regularly to my blog during the new year and to coordinate my spiritual and sobriety work into thoughtful written ruminations on these convergent themes.
Coincidentally, this morning a striking, peculiar, and poignant convergence of these themes manifest itself in my email inbox, with a blessing sent from my loyal, loving chaplain, Reverend Father Stephen Barlett-Ré [+]:
This blessing is in absolute accordance with the themes common to both the preaching of my pious priest and the very relevant first chapter of the Big Book: “Bill’s Story” (pp.1-16). The idea that “Faith without works [is] dead” resonates so powerfully with me in this moment of convergence that I must leave my own indelible mark on both the ecclesiastics learnt from my chaplain and the parochial piety of the “Program,” through rumination, reasoning and a reworking of this wide-eyed wisdom.
But, I’ve no talent in comparative literary analysis; or at least, I’ve not the time and energy to commit to such a studious examination of these separate texts and teachings. I will however simply cite some single passages that cohere conveniently to this wisdom, and courageously collect my thoughts around the words I find most enlightened, revealing and inspirational.
I’ve already presented the text of the blessing of Saint Teresa de Ávila above, but I’d like to draw my readers’ attention (as mine was so drawn) to the specific sentiment similar to the revelatory “Faith” statements of Big Book Bill. As the blessing rejoices, “May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you,” so Bill’s monstrance of a similar theme is told in his eloquent narrative, as such:
Clearly this idea of “self-sacrifice for others” is the central paradigm of all that I have learnt from my priest, my sponsor, my program and “in the rooms” during the past six months of my sustained and assured sobriety. Reverend Father Stephen often preaches to me that the very real possibility of divine Salvation lies solely in the manifestation of our Faith through an imparting of that faith onto others and through a retelling, a sharing of the glory and love of God.
In understanding the significance of these words and of the convergence of this common unifying thematic thread of wisdom in Faith, I find myself more readily willing to comply with the urgings and pleas of my sponsor to demonstrate my commitment to the Program through sustained, accountable action and service.
After the cycle of another six months of sobriety, I will soon be allowed to share my story (my “gifts”) in the Rooms, and I eagerly anticipate the opportunity I’ll have received to impact profoundly the lives and perspectives of others through an expression of my faith, love and trust in my Higher Power. I have a story of such spiritual significance to share!!
And, I imagine that this exercise in rumination, reasoning and rewording of wisdom here and now will greatly influence the shape, structure and spirit of my message to others when the time comes for me to share my story. I may even use the blessing by Saint Teresa as the prayer of my choosing to adjourn the meetings during which I eventually will share. God willing! And for now, Godspeed!
Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.01.01@21:34PST]
http://twitter.com/QHereKidSF
http://qherekidsf.blogspot.com
http://myspace.com/qherekidsf
http://facebook.com/mblanchard79
http://www.last.fm/user/QHereKidSF
http://www.bebo.com/aimsn/cheesefryz
http://www.flickr.com/people/mblanchard79
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KINDNESS IN WORDS CREATES CONFIDENCE.
KINDNESS IN THINKING CREATES THE PROFOUND.
KINDNESS IN GIVING CREATES LOVE.
— Tao Te Ching
CONTENTMENT IS NOT THE FULFILLMENT
— Anonymous
LIFE ISN’T ABOUT FINDING YOURSELF;
LIFE IS ABOUT CREATING YOURSELF.
— Anonymous
But in sharp contrast to these many multitudes of madmen who moan in misery when met with mindflux & mayhem, I myself stand poised on solid ground, garishly gleaming in the glow of great gifts of good tidings and telling tales of betterment, blessings & beatitude…”Plentiful Beatitude!”
With the arrival of the new year and the end of an old, I’ve witnessed a coalescence or convergence of some commonly, characteristically distinct threads of thought that are now together guiding me toward goodness in the graces of my Greater Power. These thoughts, these systems of reasoning, these philosophies, maxims or mores divergent to a degree in my mind until now, seem today to be bound together by one common cord – a theme best expressed in a simple statement that once seemed to me to be a clichéd convention, but which I recognize now as an almost divine truth: “Faith without works was dead.”
Those fateful words are bracketed and emboldened by the glimmer of graphite marks carved onto page fourteen of the most recent addition to my fledgling “Religion & Recovery” library. This is the Fourth Edition of the Big Book, the Basic Text of Alcoholics Anonymous, the hardcover book reads on its glossy paper jacket.
During the last week and a half, I have made an enthusiastic effort specially to celebrate in proper fashion the blessed spirit of the Holiday Season, having invited many a friend into my home for a festive dinner party and the presentation of miniature stockings stuffed with candy and perfectly well-chosen and appropriate gifts.
May I boast a bit? Permit me, please! I must say, the satisfaction and appreciation expressed by my guests tells me that I am quite the host and played well the part of not-so-secret Santa.
I am confident that each of the close friends I invited into my home for the holiday were tenderly touched by my gesture of gregarious generosity and hospitality, and that they are indeed grateful. But more importantly, I am grateful. Extremely grateful! And I’d like to believe that this my guests would most gladly appreciate to know.
I wish I would have remembered to document the occasions in photos, but I forgot to borrow the digital camera from my neighbor, who was in fact a guest at both events. The two resoundingly intimate and joyful dinner parties I hosted for the holiday were quite the success and a perfect way to end the decade.
While I did nothing of significance to celebrate the actual eve of the new decade, I did however commit the first day of 2010 (in its entirety) to a very significant and commemorative exercise, introducing myself finally to the canonical tome of Twelve Step literature that my sponsor has been pressing upon me to read. I read from the preface to the final pages of the first chapter of the Big Book, and scribbled copious notes into my recovery journal from them.
In irregular, sporadic intervals I would break from reading and return to the computer to check email or to chat it up with buddies online. To one particular “buddy,” I ended up elucidating extemporaneously an elaborate plan in which I expressed an interest to involve myself.
My intention, as I described to my friend this morning and inspired by the seeming convergence or coalescence of certain variant themes on Religion & Recovery in my life at the present moment, is to reinvigorate my efforts to post regularly to my blog during the new year and to coordinate my spiritual and sobriety work into thoughtful written ruminations on these convergent themes.
Coincidentally, this morning a striking, peculiar, and poignant convergence of these themes manifest itself in my email inbox, with a blessing sent from my loyal, loving chaplain, Reverend Father Stephen Barlett-Ré [+]:
May today there be peace within.
May you trust your Higher Power that you
Are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities
That you are born of Faith.
May you use those gifts what you have received,
And pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing
That you are a child of God.
May Thy presence settle in thy bones,
And allow your soul the freedom to
Sing, dance, praise and love.
Saint Teresa de Ávila (1515-1582)
This blessing is in absolute accordance with the themes common to both the preaching of my pious priest and the very relevant first chapter of the Big Book: “Bill’s Story” (pp.1-16). The idea that “Faith without works [is] dead” resonates so powerfully with me in this moment of convergence that I must leave my own indelible mark on both the ecclesiastics learnt from my chaplain and the parochial piety of the “Program,” through rumination, reasoning and a reworking of this wide-eyed wisdom.
But, I’ve no talent in comparative literary analysis; or at least, I’ve not the time and energy to commit to such a studious examination of these separate texts and teachings. I will however simply cite some single passages that cohere conveniently to this wisdom, and courageously collect my thoughts around the words I find most enlightened, revealing and inspirational.
I’ve already presented the text of the blessing of Saint Teresa de Ávila above, but I’d like to draw my readers’ attention (as mine was so drawn) to the specific sentiment similar to the revelatory “Faith” statements of Big Book Bill. As the blessing rejoices, “May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you,” so Bill’s monstrance of a similar theme is told in his eloquent narrative, as such:
These were revolutionary and drastic proposals, but the moment I fully accepted them, the effect was electric. There was a sense of victory, followed by such a peace and serenity as I had never known. There was utter confidence. I felt lifted up, as though the great clean wind of a mountain top blew through and through. God comes to most men gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound
…the thought came [to me] that there were thousands of hopeless alcoholics who might be glad to have what had been so freely given me. Perhaps I could help some o them. They in turn might work with others.
My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. Particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic! For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us it is just like that.
(Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition; pp.14-15)
Clearly this idea of “self-sacrifice for others” is the central paradigm of all that I have learnt from my priest, my sponsor, my program and “in the rooms” during the past six months of my sustained and assured sobriety. Reverend Father Stephen often preaches to me that the very real possibility of divine Salvation lies solely in the manifestation of our Faith through an imparting of that faith onto others and through a retelling, a sharing of the glory and love of God.
In understanding the significance of these words and of the convergence of this common unifying thematic thread of wisdom in Faith, I find myself more readily willing to comply with the urgings and pleas of my sponsor to demonstrate my commitment to the Program through sustained, accountable action and service.
After the cycle of another six months of sobriety, I will soon be allowed to share my story (my “gifts”) in the Rooms, and I eagerly anticipate the opportunity I’ll have received to impact profoundly the lives and perspectives of others through an expression of my faith, love and trust in my Higher Power. I have a story of such spiritual significance to share!!
And, I imagine that this exercise in rumination, reasoning and rewording of wisdom here and now will greatly influence the shape, structure and spirit of my message to others when the time comes for me to share my story. I may even use the blessing by Saint Teresa as the prayer of my choosing to adjourn the meetings during which I eventually will share. God willing! And for now, Godspeed!
Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.01.01@21:34PST]
http://twitter.com/QHereKidSF
http://qherekidsf.blogspot.com
http://myspace.com/qherekidsf
http://facebook.com/mblanchard79
http://www.last.fm/user/QHereKidSF
http://www.bebo.com/aimsn/cheesefryz
http://www.flickr.com/people/mblanchard79
http://www.xtreak.com/go/QHereKidSF/141027
http://www.pandora.com/people/mblanchard79
http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewblanchard
http://www.google.com/profiles/mblanchard1979
KINDNESS IN WORDS CREATES CONFIDENCE.
KINDNESS IN THINKING CREATES THE PROFOUND.
KINDNESS IN GIVING CREATES LOVE.
— Tao Te Ching
CONTENTMENT IS NOT THE FULFILLMENT
OF WHAT YOU WANT, BUT THE REALIZATION
OF HOW MUCH YOU ALREADY HAVE.— Anonymous
LIFE ISN’T ABOUT FINDING YOURSELF;
LIFE IS ABOUT CREATING YOURSELF.
— Anonymous
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