better things

Here I sit at a friend's house. Getting my life back togther bit by bit. I'm getting word of new apartments opening up.
I'm getting the lowdown on the money situation. I'm getting calls and emails from family and frends. They are all offering love and material thins to help me. I'm hearing word of an all star benefit concert for me. Yesterday I felt like this wasn't really happening, so there was a lot of humor in the day. From phone conversations, to shopping sprees (Red Cross gave me vouchers for clothes and today I'm a new man) to lunch at Miss Flo's to diner and Red Sox at NingBezo.

These things happen when your apartment is no more. When your bookshelves are wet and black. When your computer and TV are melted. When your cat is dead. When your scrapbooks are ashes. DVDs, CDs, vinyl..ditto.

I was not home when this all went down. I've been spending half my nights at a friends place and last Monday night, I had told her that I felt like my cat really wanted me to sleep in my own bed tonight. And I sort of did too.
However, after Sitting Next to Brian practice, I said "alright, I'll come over". Her persuasiveness saved my life. She now deserves another award beyond the design ones she won last week.

The fire started--no one knows for sure--either on the porch above my room, or in my room. How, I have no clue. My room has very little in the way of plugged-in stuff. And none of it was on.

How would I have gotten out? Would have I gotten out? I don't want to think about that. All I know that what's left is me, my drums and my car. And 10 years of journals/writings. If that's not a clue to what I need to take seriously in life I don t know what is.

I always secretly wished I'd someday be so famous that photographers would aim their cameras outside my bedroom window.
Be careful what you wish for.

Yesterday's Hampshire Gazette had two such pictures. But in the first one, flames are engulfing the window while water shoots from firehoses; and in the second one the window is merely a gaping hole in the back of the house.

I spent yesterday occasionally losing it when thinking about my cat, Marianne. So I should be fine as I write that, this was the same window that Marianne would sit at when she heard my car pull in. She'd meow and meow while watching me get out of the car and make my way down the walkway--as if to remind me how to get upstairs. I'd wave and blow her a kiss and 20 seconds later I'd be upstairs telling her about my day while she patiently listened while thinking "whatever--where's dinner?".

I nicknamed her "Mm" (M.M.) after the sound she'd make when being pet. Wanting to meow but too happy.

She was a good, good frend--the most beautiful calico I've ever seen. Thank you to Max for introducing me to her back in fall 2000.

I don't know how or where they found her and I don't want to know. I just want to think that she's now drinking from an endless stream of tuna juice (that stuff you drain from tuna in water--her all time fave), clawing at a catnip-releasing tree trunk (oh how she liked to get high) and snuggling at night in the warmest softest hills of fleece.
I'm so sorry. I love you Marianne.