It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
L
Somewhere In New Mexico
“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”
This post was composed under the very magical influence of Peaceful Easy Feeling by The Eagles
I came across a story today that really, really touched my heart. Darcy Ward was born with nerve paralysis on the right side of her face. Nothing on that side of her face works for her. She’s 51 years old. Starting at an early age kids would tease and torment her to no end.
Darcy WardDarcy Ward at 3
I’ll let Darcy tell you her story….
Hi,
I was born with 7th facial nerve paralysis on the right side of my face. Nothing on that right side works.
I am a 51 year old woman who can’t get comfortable in my own skin.
As a child, I was tormented and traumatized by other children and even adults. I would run home everyday from school to hide and cry. And it was everyday. I had such anxiety when Sunday night came, I knew I had to go to school the next day, and it was terrifying. Things they would say would hurt beyond my understanding at that age. “Freak, retard, nobody likes you, nobody wants you here”. While all of this was going on, my parents were going through a divorce, and my brother was dying of cancer at 16, I was 11.
I am still very much hiding from life. If I go to a restaurant, I will always go to the dark booth in the back. Even at this age, some people are not kind.
As I went into junior high school, 7th grade, I thought it would help with kids being a little older and more understanding. It was even worse. I was set on fire in an art class, because a boy didn’t like my face, as luck would have it, my older sister was the teachers aide and she ran to the bathroom with me to put out my clothes, which were still on fire. I had a few minor burns. As in grade school, I was mocked, teased and told “your so ugly”, “go home retard”, “don’t look at me”, etc… I was all alone.
I didn’t finish high school, I couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to commit suicide. When that didn’t work, at 15, I found relief in cutting myself. Before anyone even new what cutting was. I didn’t know, I just knew I felt relief from it.
At the age of 18, my grandparents looked for a solution to help me. They found a micro surgeon in Portland, Or. I was so excited to have my surgeries, I couldn’t wait! I was going to be normal!! I was so naive. I looked so much worse. I had stitches in my laugh lines, all around my eye, on my leg, on my head. I had all these scars I wasn’t prepared for. My right eye is much smaller than my other eye. They were attempting to get my eye to close all the way, it didn’t work.
I understand that was a long time ago, in 1983, and in the world of medicine things have changed drastically. New and amazing things can be done now.
I am married now, and my husband loves me the way I am. We have modest a life, but we don’t have any extra money. I would give anything to have confidence in myself and to look more symmetrical and NORMAL. I am not looking for a miracle, I am very realistic. But an improvement could change my life.
I have applied to the “Botched” & “Botched by nature” shows on E, with no response. So this is my last possibility of getting my surgery done.
I have done the research and I have found a board certified reconstructive plastic surgeon, and he is willing to take me on. My surgeries would include, facial implants to even and fill out my right cheek, I will need 2 of them, cost $5000, reconstruction on my eye $2500, surgical center, $2500, Anesthesiologist $1500, I will be able to stay with relatives in Ft. Lauderdale. That saves me the cost of flight and motel. I am trying to raise this by the end of March.
I know that this will give me the confidence and strength to finish school and come out of hiding. And live the life I was meant too. I am a strong person, but this has always stopped me in my tracks. I have never asked for help before… can you please help me? I can not express how grateful I would be. Thank you for taking the time to read my story.
Sincerely,
Darcy
I have more pictures in the updates.
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The part below where she wrote this is where I lost it.
“I am still very much hiding from life. If I go to a restaurant, I will always go to the dark booth in the back. Even at this age, some people are not kind.”
Some people are not kind…. Tell me about it!!!
Some guy set her on fire in the 7th grade???? Un-effing believable!!
$755 donated as of 1.19.17 Let’s revisit Darcy in 6 months and see what happens.
You know, this blog is rather a diary of sorts. No one reads it except for a few. No one lives the way I do except for a very few. I don’t get zillions of page views a day. So what I say here is mainly for myself. A way to record my thoughts and look back in a few years and see where I was and where I have gone. That said I wanted to vent a little. I’m going to conduct an experiment. Six months from now I am going to reread this post and I will bet you I will be laughing at what happened 2 months ago. I have always said no matter what bad thing or things happen to you, in six months you will be laughing about it. You see, I have a very bad problem. I trust people. I look for the good in people. That’s my downfall. Probably along with being the laziest person on this rock I am one of the most trusting. To an extent. I guess I am a bit out of the ordinary, or perhaps a lot out of the ordinary. I don’t take orders too well. I don’t put up with BS. I don’t compromise and I don’t steal and rip off folks. I don’t shove knives in people’s backs, twist it and toss them overboard halfway to Hawaii. Those that do I try to stay away from as far as possible. I try. But then sometimes every once in a while a faker gets through my radar. A little voice inside me that speaks to me without words tries to warn me but I don’t heed it or sort of ignore it.
Well, about five years ago I met a person that was rather down on his luck. Let’s call this person George. George had a family and wasn’t doing all that well. I remember one night he asked me for $10 so he could buy a chicken dinner at the grocery store for his son. He didn’t even have $10 to buy food. He had sunk that low. Over the next few months we bantered back and forth about new business ideas. We came up with a new business idea and because he was not technically inclined nor did he speak English very well it was up to moi to start things up and get things up to speed. It was a lot of work on my part. I set up everything. I researched everything. I implemented everything. George offered advice from time to time but it was rather like a 10-year-old offering advice to a pilot flying a Learjet.
From the beginning we split the profit. We ran this business on a handshake. (My first mistake) It took quite a while to become profitable but after a year or so the profits started building. I was still doing all the work, more or less from 6am to 6pm while George hung out at his home. According to George he couldn’t really deal with customers due to his poor command of English and could not handle the technical details because he did not know how to set up the technical part of the business.
Over time the business grew and that’s actually what allowed moi to go on this road trip back in February 2015. Once the business took off and was placed on autopilot I could run the business from my trusty laptop.
Over the last year and a half I noticed George was spending more and more of his profits while I was banking most of mine. It got to the point a year ago that he started spending my profits. I called him on it and he said don’t worry, it’s temporary. Each month he would spend his share and more and more of mine. But he kept saying don’t worry, don’t be paranoid, it was just temporary. A year ago he had reached the point where he had spent a mid 5 figure amount of my share of the profits. I called him on it then and for a few months he spent a tad less per month but at that rate it would take 3 years or more to pay me back. Whatever. That silent voice in my head goes off again and I don’t listen, well I started listening a little better but I was not that concerned too much. This summer (2016) I started getting really bad vibes about the situation. That silent voice again. This time I listened. I told George if he cannot pay me back then it would be best to split the business and he could do whatever he wanted with his half and he could spend whatever he wanted with his half and I would be free to run my half as I see fit. At this point George realized I wanted to dissolve our handshake partnership. Well, over the next couple months he was harder to reach and his spending habits were as high or higher than ever. The silent voice in my head was speaking to me more and more. I was getting really bad vibes but once again George said not to worry. Can you guess what is about to happen?
About two months ago early one morning I get a skype message from our team leader saying he cannot login to any of our accounts. That’s weird I thought. I try myself and I cannot get into any of our accounts. I called one of the accounts up and they told me the admin password had been changed by the “owner”. There’s nothing they can do. I tried calling George, no answer. I must have called him over 100 times that day, no answer. In hindsight I sorta figured things were heading downhill about 2 months before the lockout when he actually hung up the phone on me when I was talking to him. I took measures then to try to protect myself by backing up all our business data. But still I had no idea what was ahead.
Turns out about 2 days later after the lockout he texted me a phone number to call. He never picked up his phone to speak with me but he did finally text some number to call. Guess whose number? It was his lawyer. Can you believe it? George locked me out of all our business accounts and now he was going to steal my half of our business and steal my monthly share of the profits. And he did. According to George and his lawyer it is now his business because George’s wife’s name was on most of the business startup documents due to tax reasons. (My second big mistake) So now technically it was George’s business even though I did 99.9% of all the work over the last five years and I set up 100% of the business myself due to George’s poor language skills and poor technical skills.
After this happened I had the opportunity to speak to many people in George’s past that all had a similar tale. He was a MF that ripped them off too. The largest amount was for over 100K yet George drove a beat up ten-year old car. Kinda makes you wonder what he did with all the money. A ton of people came forward and gave me the real 411 on George.
George thinks he is a king now, he’s now got my monthly share of our profits and he now has my half of the business valued in the mid seven figures.
Thankfully I took action in mid 2016 to somewhat protect myself. It could have been a lot worse. But still, this guy that I loaned $10 to buy a chicken dinner for his son 5 years ago comes full circle 5 years later and shoves a knife in my back, twists it and tosses me overboard halfway to Hawaii and sails off in our boat while laughing at me how stupid I was.
Well George, we will see who has the last laugh. In six months I will return and post an update on this story and like I have always said I am sure I will be laughing at the situation. To be honest I’m still in shock as I write this but time heals all wounds. I know the business like the back of my hand. It will take time to start it again from the beginning but if that is what I have to do I will do it.
There is so much more to this story, what I wrote is rather the tip of the iceberg. What I learned is you have to listen to that little voice in your head that speaks to you in the language without words. Call it whatever you want to call it. Things could have been a whole lot worse that day he locked me out but I had been preparing for something like this. The final straw was when he hung up on me about 2 months before he locked me out of all our business accounts. Hey! at least he knows how to login to accounts and change admin passwords.
So, in six months I will be back with an update on this story. Will I be laughing? I think so. I don’t think George ever read The Count Of Monte Christo.
Let’s meet up around May 31st 2017 and see.
L
Somewhere In New Mexico
“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”
This post was composed under the magical influence of Peaceful Easy Feeling by The Eagles
Sometimes when I am riding I start to be overwhelmed by a feeling of saudade. Now this is a word most are not familiar with. It’s rather difficult to explain. It’s a Portuguese word. It’s not nostalgia, it’s not sadness, it’s not longing, it’s not missing something, it’s not sorrow, it’s not a rememberance of days past, it’s not pain, it’s not pleasure, rather it is a mixture of all of the above and then some. There really is no word in English to describe it. One person put it as a pleasure that is lost, a pain that is welcome. Memories flood my mind when I am on the road. Even while I am doing 75 mph instantly in my mind I am transported back to some distant place that is so real and vivid it’s like I am actually there. I guess I have the world’s most vivid imagination and perhaps the world’s most vivid memories. I can close my eyes and I am there! Some call it a waking dream. Instantly I am taken back to someplace in the past and for a few moments I can relive it as if it’s happening right now. Little details jump out at me, things I have not remembered in years. Yet, for a few moments it’s as if I stepped into a time machine and was transported back to relive a certain moment in time. Sorta like my own personal time travel machine.
Highway hypnosis, you know how sometimes you wake up and discover you just traveled 10 miles but you don’t remember it? Your mind was somewhere else yet your conscious mind took care of things like the other cars, your speed and staying in your lane. It was automatic while you were in a distant land inside your head. That’s what I love about motorcycling. It transports you to somewhere else. Yes, you are riding with all the normal things you need to do to stay alive yet once you get up to speed and start to play some of your favorite tunes you are transported to another world. It’s like flying a biplane. If I had the money I would own a Stearman or a Travelair and spend my days traveling all over the country, Canada, Mexico and South America. Perhaps one day… In the meantime it’s motorcycles for me.
Travelair Biplane
Did you ever see that Christopher Reeve movie where he is a Stearman pilot flying mail back in the 30’s? His boss hires out a passenger for him to fly along with the mail. The future of aviation his boss tells him! I love that movie. The cars, the planes, the locations, the free spirits of Christopher Reeve and Rosanna Arquette. Especially Rosanna Arquette!! In this movie she plays a real wildcat. Not content with what her rich, old money father wants for her life, she wants to go her own way. I can relate. If you ever get a chance, watch this movie. I think if I was born around 1905 or 1910 this is how I would have ended up. A Stearman pilot alongside Pancho Barnes doing things my parents would never approve of but those things satisfy my soul like no other. What satisfies your soul? What really, really satisfies your soul? Deep down, deep, deep down. What is it? Can you put a finger on it? Is it something that others expect of you or is it something buried so deep in you that you have never told a single soul? Something yearning to get out. Something that drives you mad because it has not come true yet.
I used to ask folks what they would do in their life if their room and board was taken care of. In other words, what would you spend your time doing if all your bills, rent and overhead was taken care of. I don’t remember a single one saying they would keep on doing what they were currently doing. They were trading their time for money doing some incredibly boring, soul sucking work. Very few people get to do what they love for a living. What is it you love to do? What is it you would do for 12 hours a day for the rest of your life? For free. What is it??? Think about it and think about how many years you have left on this rock.
Let me leave you with this quote. I think about it every day. Can you guess who said this?
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, “If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”
It made an impression on me… and since then, for the past 33 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today.”
And whenever the answer has been, “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything: all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure… these things just fall away in the face of death… leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked; there is no reason not to follow your heart.
(Later in the speech…)
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Right now, the new is you, but someday not to long from now you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited; so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
The Aviator 1985
The Aviator 1985
Sara – Live 1980 Tucson
L
Somewhere In New Mexico
“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”
This post was composed under the very magical influence of Sara by Stevie Nicks
