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For My Son and Part One - Cindy

from Life by Love Chaos

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about

LIFE:

A PERSONAL DIARY. A RECOLLECTION OF THINGS PAST. A JOURNAL. A PACK OF LIES, EXCUSES, DISTORTIONS, SOME MAY SAY. LET THEM SAY WHAT THEY WANT. THIS IS MY LIFE. NOT THEIRS.

By Thomas Timons, for his son, Daniel Phoenix Timons.

A NOTE FOR YOU, DANIEL,

I've written this as a way to document the last few years ... I could've gone back further, back to when I was born, but that would’ve been another thing altogether ... what I need to express most urgently to you are the last few years ...

If I'm not alive when you read this, please keep in mind that I loved you when I was ... and through this manuscript, in case there is no after-life, I will still love you through these words ... I hope this will help you understand who I was ... and perhaps you can use it to help yourself ... because, unfortunately, in life you will need all the help you can get ...

All my Love,
Your Father,
Thomas

(in the track on the album it skips ahead to a passage in the middle of Part One in the book and not at its beginning) -

CHAPTER FIVE.

SUICIDE.

A few weeks later, Cindy and Kurt got into the canvassing groove, meaning, started making money. They were doing pretty well, despite Cassandra's opinion they needed to inform themselves on the issues more. But however well they were doing, Cindy began to get bored of the job.

Cindy and I were canvassing in the wealthy homes of Westwood one day, after transporting everyone else to their drop-offs. We were putting our clipboards together with literature when I looked at her and sensed an unease. She looked back with a deep, penetrating glance. Her glances were amazing, and this time it caught me off-guard.

“How's it going?” I asked her.

“Okay.” she answered with a quick smile. Something was wrong.

“Nothings bothering you?”

“Nope.”

She couldn't let on her attraction to me. I was oblivious.

“You getting bored of the job?” I asked.

“Kinda.” she decided to open up a bit, then quickly opened up even more. “It's just we do the same thing every night. We go to a different neighborhood, knock on people's doors, they either slam the door in our face, or if they talk to us, we give our rap, tell them how bad the Bush administration is, how bad nuclear weapons are, then try to get as much money out of them as we can, then walk away like we don't care about them, and then go talk to thirty more people the exact same way! And every night! It's boring! Ugh! I wish we could do something else tonight. Come on, Tom, screw canvassing. Just for once. One night. Let's go to a liquor store and get a 40. I know you wanna get drunk! Come on!”

“Of course I'd like to do that ...” I said with a smile. I loved her spirit and she was right in a way. But I still believed in the Cause at that point. I wanted to be a responsible field manager. “But we gotta go out there and get some money. If we zero out tonight and come back to the office with no money, that's going to bring both our averages down this week. It'll look suspicious as well.”

“You're such a Workers For Peace whore, Tom!” she laughed and exclaimed dramatically, all in tenderness.

“How about this. Let's go canvass for a couple hours and make a little bit of money, then go to a liquor store, get a couple of 40's, then stop drinking an hour before the end of the night and chew gum and smoke so they wouldn't tell we were drinking.” I suggested, hoping to be persuasive. I would've rather have done what she wanted, but I just couldn't do it.

“Okay. I only compromise for you, though.” she said with a telling smile, then checked herself. “And Kurt, of course.”

We proceeded to finish putting our clipboards and bags together when she stopped and looked at me.

“Do you ever think about suicide?” she asked in her typical casual, quick bluntness.

“Suicide?”

“Yeah, suicide.”

“I used to ... a couple times when I was in my early twenties.” I replied with hesitation. She caught me off-guard again. My mind was set to get out of the van and go knocking on people's doors. Now we were on suicide. Based on the look she had and how much I liked her as a human being, I couldn't dismiss this. It was suicide after all. “Why, what made you think about it?”

“It's just everyone makes such a big deal about it. All it is is someone decides to stop living. They're not killing anyone else, are they?”

“No.”

“So, if someone feels it's, like, their time to go, why should anyone try to stop them?”

“Is someone you know thinking of killing themself?”

“No, not now. But back in Plattsburgh there was a girl I knew who actually did it, went all the way.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About three years ago.”

“Were you close?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry ...”

“She really wanted to do it, and it was sad seeing her the way she was, so at least now she's at peace.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“All kinds of things. She had a fucked up relationship with her parents. Her dad hit her a lot when she was younger then acted like it never happened. Her mom was a creep and always told her she was worthless. Her brother raped her when she was 12, and both her mom and dad thought she was lying to get attention and make her brother look bad. They thought she was jealous of him. When she was 16, she got pregnant and her boyfriend left her for one of her friends and never helped with the baby. When we were all, our group of friends, first experimenting with drugs, at around 14, 15, mostly just pot, she wouldn't do it. But later she started getting into H, heroin you know, and some other stuff. She got really bad, really addicted to H especially. It was the only thing that made her feel good, she said, nothing else did. Not coke, not speed, not pot, just H … Most of her friends acted like they didn't give a shit about her, and I don't know why, but they didn't. She didn't have anyone she could turn to.”

“But you?”

“We were friends and I tried to be there for her but the worse she got, the less she wanted to be around me and the more she wanted to be around the friends who were mean to her, who, of course, either shot up H with her or got her the shit or whatever.”

“Damn ...”

“Committing suicide was the last place she could go ... after a while, it seemed everything she did was going in that direction ... I remember her telling me she thought death was probably a lot like H … everything just seemed to float away …”

“Did she OD on heroin?”

“No, actually … she slit her wrists. In the bathroom sink at her parents house.”

“How old was she when she killed herself?”

“18. She was a year older than me.”

How many young women were like this? It was an all too common story. The fact that this poor girls life sounded like millions of other women’s stories made it even more tragic. The commonality of it, almost a normalcy, the way Cindy talked about her friend so matter of fact, as if it was accepted this happened all the time, was heartbreaking. This story may have been shocking to most people in the 1950’s, 60’s, or heck in the 80’s, but now, in 2002, it was no longer shocking. It was simply sad.

What could I say? The girl should've stuck it out, should've stayed alive for her baby, should've stayed away from drugs, stayed away from the cruel people in her life? Of course, she should've done all those things, but knowing what she should do is a completely other thing than the living of her life. All the weight, the hurt, the baggage of her past must've always been in her present. She had no secure place to go within or outside herself.

“What do you think? Should she have tried to stay alive?” Cindy asked me after a moment of silence.

“I don't know.” I replied. I didn't want to moralize. “My first response is yeah, she should've ... but then I didn't go through what she did. She was tortured by her life ... what her brother did to her, how her parents treated her, her boyfriend, her friends ... she had a long list of cruelties ... it's too bad she didn't turn to you more ... it's too bad she couldn't get out of that town ... every town has its shit problems, but I think it would've helped her to get out of there, get away from her family and people she knew, start a new life with her child somewhere else ...”

“You would've liked her. She was a cool person. It's too bad she didn't meet you ... you would've been a good boyfriend for her.” she said with another intent look and smile.

“You think?” I said with surprise. Cindy could make me uncomfortable in a good way.

“Yeah. ... I still feel sad about her, you know ...”

“... I don't blame you ...” I started to cry … I felt this deep pain for Cindy’s friend … as if I knew her myself … perhaps in my own way I could empathize with the girl … I didn’t go through what she did, but I understood … I understood pain very well. Cindy looked at me and was surprised and moved by my tears but felt embarrassed to say anything. I continued, trying to minimalize my crying as much as possible. “Death is unfortunately something that's always there ... at every corner we turn, it's there ... whether it's someone we knew like your friend, or something that happens in our life ... death never seems to leave us ... the attitude we take towards it and towards life, is important ...” I began to smile as I turned to Cindy.

“Just laugh at life and death?” She responded to my smile with her own.

“Yeah …we have to … besides try to understand it, life. If we lived in a more humanistic society, one which actually cared about being human, all those horrible things that happened to your friend would not have happened. I guarantee you. But since we don't live in a society like that, you're right, we do have to laugh. Look at the people we canvass. They make us laugh. Look at everyone on the planet. It's like that old French saying – 'If you look for the Ridiculous in everything, you'll find it.’”

“Ha, that’s a cool saying.”

“I know, I like it, too.”

“Well, anyway, enough about suicide!” she changed moods immediately, smiling and laughing. “Let's go canvass!”

We went out and canvassed the neighborhood for the whole night, checking in with each other, enjoying ourselves, the trees, the houses, people's odd behaviors. By the end, neither of us made a cent. The rich Westwood families weren't biting that night. Somehow it didn't bother us. We made fun of the people, laughed, took pleasure in the sheer experience of those four hours, knocking on people's doors. Without the perspective we reached through our conversation on suicide, it would've seemed just another boring four hours of canvassing. Instead, we found The Ridiculous, and we loved it.

credits

from Life, released December 14, 2014

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Love Chaos Los Angeles, California

Love Chaos (Derek Hunter) has released 9 albums on Bandcamp:

- Black
- Love and Death
- E.I.E.
- Black Light, White Dark
- Life
- Waiting for Amanda
- Surrealist Saints
- Major Arcana
- The Light and the Dark

He has also written and published 5 books.

For more info go to -

www.love-chaos.com
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