In recovery for another seizure that mangled the nerves in my left foot and essentially left my foot dead, unable to move of it’s own free will, I am now seeing doctors, neurologists, doing physical therapy, wear a foot/leg brace (that helps a lot), walk with a walker, more. I am living in Bellingham, Wa, at my mother’s house, the town I grew up and lived in until I was 16 yrs. of age, when I ran away. I had ran away to get away from my mother and start a new life, and that’s what I did. In my current being alive state I’m trying to find myself but I am so scared.
Ahem, well then. How about I try to unravel the chaotic mess of my mind a bit and try to get the history of my life, the events and changes and paradox’s and such, out and into a sort of understandable narrative. Let me say that my memory of past events in my life is not really a cohesive whole, it’s patchy and sometimes blank and it will be hard to weave events into a personal tale/history thing. I guess we’ll see how it goes.
All right, so I don’t know where to start. From the present to the past. Maybe that’ll help me figure it out. So let’s go, At my mothers house in Bellingham, Wa because I had a seizure in Westport, Wa and I was in the Grays Harbor hospital for a while (16 days) and Bellingham was a place I could go and get physical therapy and doctors and such. Essentially, my life was displaced by me having a seizure and I lost a lot. I had had big plans and plans that were already enacted and stuff that I was in the middle of. I had gone down to Portland to see Sean and Blodgett and then gone down to Corvallis, Or where John and Katy (and now their newborn daughter) live and mowed their lawn and petted Isla, Katy’s baby inside Katy’s stomach and hung out, smoked weed with John. Then, instead of going south to Santa Barbara and Yosemite, I went back home to Westport because I had formulated an idea that I was just going to go “chill” in Westport and then come back and continue on my way from there. Which was good because there was a gathering of some really good friends going on at the end of August, 2011 under the banner of the Yosemite High Camp alumni, or some such thing and I would now be more well-timed and be able to go to Yosemite for the end of the summer and then go to a party at Benton Hot Springs with a bunch of friends. Well, anyway, such plans would not see the light of day because of me being cocky, thinking I’m over it, not taking my pills regularly (or at all, really) . So, having a seizure found me with a mangled left foot and a lot of time in the hospital. So I came to Bellingham from Westport (both Washington). In Westport I lived next to my father and enjoyed it, at the same time I hated it. I had a steady source of medicine, both herb and pill kind. The pill kind was anti-seizure medication and the herbal variety was marijuana for my wellbeing. I had my bike, 1972 Schwinn with one gear and pedal brake that I spraypainted tie dye (and still have) and I could cruise around that flat, sandspit of a town pretty well. I had local acquaintances just from being sort of a regular, at the store, pharmacy, beach parking lot, etcetera. I had the internet, no rent, a fridge and bathroom and more and I thought I was pretty set. But yeah, umm, had a seizure. Woke up in the hospital and stayed there for sixteen days, seizure, kidney failure, blah blah blah. From there I just went to Bellingham, my mom and her boyfriend ended up getting most of my stuff and now I am typing these words in the town I grew up in and ran away from, Bellingham. Woops, big plans- gone.
I’m going to interrupt this train of thought and record some thoughts and the main reason on why I was living in Westport and why I have seizures and the like. On July 25th, 2006, I was climbing Mt. Hoffman in Yosemite national park with some friends and I don’t remember how but I happened to fall 140 feet and receive a traumatic brain injury and a 2 month long coma. This fall made me disabled. I lived in the Modesto hospital where I was evacuated to and spent time trying to live. Coma, then trying to walk and talk and such. I had a trachea tube, a catheter and well, a bunch of other tubes and gizmos that went into my body and did shit. It was so fun. I remember having the catheter taken out was amazing.
I don’t really remember the next phase, a little bit of it, apologies.
I was taken to Santa Barbara, where my Aunt (mom) and her family live and was living at sort of a group home type thing called solutions. This is a spot where my memory goes kinda blank, sorry. I was totally disabled, and starting on the road to recovery. The walking came back, balance was still pretty bad. I went up to Humboldt and ended up crashing with my friend Chris Dubois (who’s married in Oakland now) in Eureka and then finding my own place (studio) in the top floor of an apartment building that had a good view and a sort of balcony/fire escape thingy that had a ladder to the roof where I could sit and watch life roll by.
I made my first visit back to Yosemite and went to Vogelsang, Merced and May Lake High Sierra camps, Tuolomne Meadows and got to see a shitfuckton of people I knew. Kinda skipped the valley. At May Lake I climbed the mountain I fell off of (Mt. Hoffman, 10,852 ft.) with the person who is pretty much responsible for me being alive, Brian Shoor. May Lake High Camp manager and E.M.T. . May Lake is shadowed in the evening by Mt. Hoffman and my friends notified him that I had fallen and was out and not breathing and he called for a helicopter and then came to where I was laying and breathed air into my lungs so I would survive. Holy fuckin’ shit, I owe that man so much for saving my life. Medevac-ed to Modesto where I began pretty much my new life. Basically up the west coast, Santa Barbara to Eureka to Portland to Westport to Bellingham.
So I lived in Portland a bit but I’ve lived in P-town so many times and with so many different people that it just kinda blends together and gets mixed up. I love that town so freakin’ much. I don’t really want to go into all the amazingly wonderful stuff that Portland, Oregon offers ‘cause I could just go on forever but umm, it’s pretty cool.
Maybe I’ll delve into it a bit. It started with Burnside, and shows, and Voodoo doughnuts, and way more and then it expanded its levels of cool and awesomeness to unforeseen heights. The amazing amount of Dreamland/Grindline built public skateparks, the zines and graphic novels (contributed to by kids I useta live with in Westport, we’ll get to that later), the amazing amount of people that were awesome and friends with me, the bike riding, Mt. Hood and how you could sometimes see Mt. St. Helens, the Japanese Gardens, the graffiti (some of mine even), the Max light rail transit system (which I haven’t really paid for but used a lot), it feels like I could go on forever. Oh yeah, the food, umm, so good.
