Last Day of the Year

Little sweetheart, it’s the very last day of 2018. It’s New Year’s Eve.

I think I’ve never had much use for the holiday. Maybe when I was a little boy, when the excitement of staying up until midnight - and fading, falling asleep and being carried off to bed well before - was a thing. I don’t think you and I ever had an New Year’s Eve together.

What I do remember was talking to you on New Year’s Eve. Talking to you on the phone - me here in NYC, you in SF - and making plans for the New Year. In 2008 it was about me coming there, possibly forever. In 2010, it was you telling me you were at a party with Danya but that you’d just booked a flight here - like excused yourself into the bedroom, gotten on your Air Book and bought a ticket. That you’d be here next week.

It still feels so close to me, my little sweetheart, that feeling that you’re only a plane ride away. Maybe you’re even closer than that, now. Maybe you’re far closer than I can imagine and all I have to is to listen quietly for your presence. All I have to do is as you would have me and sometime, sometime very soon, we’ll be together again and forever.

As this year draws to a close little sweetheart, this year when I got hit by a car and actually died for ten minutes before coming back to life, let it be a thing that I hold dear - you. To remember and honor and be like you. To do our work, speak our truth, say our prayer and finally, when called, fly to you.

With all my love on this last day, which is also the first, the first of the next. And you. You. Forever.

Around Me, Home

I flew home to NYC on the overnight flight from SMF last night, little sweetheart, and arrived early this morning. It’s a cold, grey, rainy day here and I spent nearly all of it asleep after taking the AirTrain and “E” train home, climbing the stairs and dropping my luggage in the kitchen.

When I awoke, it was twilight, the day vanished behind me but my heart full and comforted with your things and hundreds of pictures all around me. I somehow get used to it when immersed, surrounded by what Sylvia calls “the heavy walls” of this place. But after being away for nearly a month it both strikes and comforts me to be home with your presence both spectral and photographic all around me.

How grateful I am for you. How grateful I am to you. How very much and deeply I love you. Forever, little sweetheart. Forever.

Writing Your Christmas Note

While everyone is opening presents, little sweetheart, I’m taking this time to write you a Christmas note and slip it into your stocking. There’s quite a few in there, I do this every year. Our stockings hang together, side by side, on the mantel. And your mom has added a stocking this year for Sylvia, too.

In the note I tell you lots of things you already know - how much I love and miss you, all that’s happened this year (which I know you know because your presence is always near and knowing, watching, guiding me).

I find myself thinking now and always of our Christmas here together eight years ago. How we sat together on the sofa and I wept with joy and gratitude to be at your side.

Happy Christmas, little sweetheart. Love you forever.

In Your Holy Room

I’m in your room in Davis, little sweetheart, sitting at your desk and writing you a letter, a note of love.

Just entering at the door, turning the handle and walking over the threshold, your holy presence and everlasting goodness overwhelmed me, as does the flood of memories of our times here together - waking with you under the canopy of your bed, hearing birdsong as we would stir and rise, distant train whistles and nearby owls as we lay quietly entwined at night.

You are the blessing and reason, you are my life, my love. How I long for you! I’d so like to just stay here, closing my eyes and wait for you to lightly touch my shoulder, call to me, crawl into my lap and tell me you’re back or perhaps rather that I have joined you, found my way faithfully back to your side, this time forever.

It’s so hard to leave this place, little sweetheart. Didn’t you always say so? But I know and pray we will return, perhaps we have always been right here and are even now, although I can’t see or understand that quite yet, I know that you will show me, teach me, guide me, as you always do.

I’m sitting in your holy room, little sweetheart, and all my thoughts fly to you. With all my love.

Stay

Maybe it’s too personal to share, little sweetheart, but it still shakes me how broken I feel when I first kneel before the angel where you are commemorated. I stop first, as we always did together, at the Nugget Market. I find flowers to bring and then sit with you, often for hours. In those first moments, I just cry and cry. I miss you so. I know this place is not where you reside. I know that you are untethered and everywhere and all at once in way I can’t understand because time is not what merely mortal I know it to be just now. I know you simply alight here as I visit to comfort and guide me. There’s something so powerful in it and I’m never regretful to weep. I welcome every feeling, even the saddest ones, when they bring you near me.

The Tree

We got the tree, little sweetheart. It’s much earlier than usual. Often it isn’t until the 23rd or so that we managed it but we went over to the place tonight and picked it out and they delivered it an hour or so later. It’s full and beautiful and we’ve decorated it with lights and ornaments.

I carefully chose a few and hang them -  one is beautiful little cupcake which so reminds me of you - and your mom tops the tree with the beautiful red headed angel, whose wings unfurl and whose arms open to embrace and invite our spirits to find each other with generosity and love, just as you so exemplify and taught me.

Over the days and nights to come, little sweetheart, I know I will come quietly into this room, sitting before this tree, gazing at it and thinking of you, in quiet contemplation. How I love and long for you, my little sweetheart. Please always be with me. And take me to you the moment Heaven will allow. With all my love forever. At Christmas!

Review from France...

There’s a beautiful review this morning, little sweetheart, of both the 2018 albums - Sometimes in Dreams and Til Morning Is Nigh -  from France. Citing you by name, of course, and some of the songs most bound up in your beautiful spirit, they call the new album “Dreamlike, luminous and enchanting” and have much to say about Sometimes, as well. I’m posting the full link in French below but here’s a translated excerpt:

“We couldn't talk about 2018 without mentioning Bipolar Explorer. The New York dreampop/shoegaze duo continues to deliver. Once again, the couple Summer Serafin (spoken word, vocals) and Michael Serafin-Wells (guitar, bass, percussion, tape loops, vocals, spoken word) send the listener into a parallel yet reassuring universe with Sometimes In Dreams. With this double album, Bipolar Explorer bring us with them diving into their intimacy in the most solemn and purest way possible.  Alternating between Summer Serafin's spoken word passages and Michael Serafin-Wells's emotional flights of lyricism, the New York duo astounds us beauty. Both cathartic and luminous, this eighth album of the New York couple puts shoegaze back into a state of grace…”
 - Les Oreilles Curieuses

As ever, my little sweetheart, it’s all for you. All for you, my gorgeous girl.




Les Oreilles Curieuses full review

Waking Up In NorCal

On a plane for the first time since getting hit by the car, little sweetheart. The doctor told me to get an aisle instead of my usual window seat, so I could move around a little, which is what you’re supposed to do  after you’ve had a pulmonary embolism, like me. But they never turned the seatbelt sign off during the whole flight, there was so much turbulence, so I didn’t wind up moving too much, anyway. We did get in a little bit early, though, and your Dad picked me up. “I’m alive!”, I said as we hugged.

Your mom and dad are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary later this month, so he’s taking her to the Galapagos Islands for am adventure. I’m house sitting while they’re there and Sylvia is coming from France to help too. It’s her first time in California.

I’m in the room next to yours, upstairs. I just woke up, birdsong in the air from the orchard outside. It’s a bit like how I imagine paradise and always makes me feel so close to you. The light is on in your closet, your make up table sitting there, and it’s like you’ve just left to step into another room for a moment.

And that’s actually so, isn’t it, my little sweetheart? Your presence lingers and hovers and draws so very close at times I can almost touch you and can very much sense you. Someday soon, I’ll understand so much better and so much more more and know that you are always with me and me with you.

Until that day, please help and guide me, won’t you, little sweetheart? And take me to you the moment Heaven will allow. With all my love.

Solemn Vow

Little sweetheart, packed and dressed and nervously waiting to head out, I'm thinking of all we've been through. All of it. Not only but also just this year with me nearly dying and all it's taken to recover and keep recovering, all I've wanted to do and been trying to continue.

I'm so glad we were able to complete the album. The record with Sylvia is almost done, too, it'll come out in February. I made such progress on our memoir, our first book of three, in the first couple of months of the year.

The events of April and the ensuing medical issues have made it hard to get back with as much momentum as I had hoped. And we needed to work hard after all that to make sure Til Morning came out in time.

But I promise you, little sweetheart, it is very much at the forefront of my thoughts, as are you always and forever. And the first book, Summerlove, will indeed by published this coming year. It is my solemn vow, my little sweetheart.

I love you with all my heart and soul. As I often say, whether in prayer or as I did so many times when you were only getting up to get something in the next room - don't go too far away.

With all my love forever. Forever.

Before I Go...

Waking up this morning, little sweetheart, I say our prayer as I lay in bed, before rising and lighting your candle.

Then making coffee, I look around at the things I've laid out and the lists I've made of things to pack and things to remember before I leave. Ever anxious, I try to slow down, quiet myself and listen for your celestial, healing, eternal, guiding presence.

Please be with me today, little sweetheart. Let me know that you are near. And take me to you the moment Heaven will allow.

With all my love forever...

One on the Aisle

I'm feeling anxious, tonight, little sweetheart. I'm traveling tomorrow. I suppose I always am a little (and that you'd be quick to tell me) before I go. But I think it's even more keen tonight because I haven't been away in some time. Not since the accident. Not since the hospital. Not since I was supposed to go in May but was so badly injured that I couldn't fly. Tomorrow I'll be on a plane, though. In an aisle seat instead of my usual window because that's what the doctor instructed.

Something about travel makes me sad, too, because I remember how it always meant that by journey's end I would be again in your arms. I think I'm feeling all of these things tonight. The sadness and longing for you. The anxiety about disrupting this tiny pocket of comfort and routine - how small my life has become in your absence.

Please be with me, little sweetheart. Please help and guide me. Let me know, as you often do, in the most unexpected, surprising ways that you are near. And take me to you the moment heaven will allow. How I love you! And always always will.

Last of the Year

Tonight was the first night in about a month, little sweetheart, that I was able to get up to that little church I've told you about, where they have the nice Wednesday night candlelight meditation service. I always insist on walking there and back and that's a good hour or two plus the service itself, so sometimes, when things are busy, I just can't quite make it happen.

I'm so glad when I do, though. It's good that there's air around it. It's good that it makes me leave things behind for a few hours. It helps me quiet myself and when I do, I can hear and find you better. And that's what I need more than anything. It's so good to sit quietly mindful, sing the chants, light a candle and say quiet prayers, our prayer, and speak to you. I'm always so much better when I know you're near.

Please help me, little sweetheart, to know that you are and to do as you instruct. With all my love forever. Forever.

Til Morning

The new album, our 8th, Til Morning Is Nigh, is out today, little sweetheart. We've already had some very kind words about it. As ever, it is so very much of, for and about you. As ever, my thoughts are of and with you. Forever, little sweetheart. Forever.

On Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving, little sweetheart. It's also your Dad's b'day and Sylvia is here from France. Between calling your dad and whipping up the meal with Sylvia, I'm thinking of you so very very much. How grateful I am to have been found by you. How much I love and long for you always. It's a very small circle around me now. Your parents and Sylvia. And your eternal presence, which makes itself know to me in the moments I most need. In the moments I most need you, you still find a way to find me. How grateful I am for you you. How grateful I am to you. How I love you! Forever, little sweetheart. Forever.

39

It's November 13th, little sweetheart - your 39th birthday. I've been thinking of you all day, as I do most everyday already, and feeling a rush of emotions - sadness, joy, gratitude, longing, wonderment and so very much love. You are always with me and I love you with all my heart and soul. Please be close to us today, let me and all those who love you know that you are near. With all my love forever.

All Souls

Good morning, little sweetheart. It's November 2nd - All Souls Day. I'm up a little early on this Friday morning. It's grey and overcast and I have an earlier than usual physical therapy appointment. But, like every morning, as I woke I said our prayers and lit your candle and then came in here to write a few words to you. Please know that I love you forever with all my heart and soul. Please be near me today. My thoughts are always of and with you, my little sweetheart, my gorgeous girl. I'll look for you in quiet moments today. I will listen. With all my love...

At The Shrine

On our last day in Ireland, little sweetheart, we drove back down the coast to Cork. En route we stopped at this beautiful little place, it's actually a National Park and Landmark - Gougane Barra.

The source of river Lee begins there and there is a forest in its surroundings. St Finbar was said to have set up a monastery there in the 6th century. And there are wonderful caves and a beautiful church there, as well.

I remembering setting off that day and Kris mentioning the stop but you didn't quite know what it was. You were slightly annoyed, you told me later, because you thought he was just going to a bank or something!

I don't know how that got mis-communicated but the moment you saw the place, you were enchanted. There is also a beautiful little hotel there and you very much wanted to return - just you and I. It's also a popular wedding spot and I very much wished that one day it would be our own, my little sweetheart, my love.

Inside the shrine, I'm not too sure they're keen on people taking pictures, but I had just lit a candle for you and as you stood there, I couldn't resist.

It's a very resonant and treasured image for me now. My treasure at the shrine. On our last day in Ireland.

That we know of yet... because time is not what we think it is, is it, little sweetheart? And when I finally join you I'll know that, won't I? We can go anywhere and be there and other places too together and forever.

Thank you, my little sweetheart. Please be close to me today. I need you always.

You Are Everything

All the way out at the end of the Sheep's Head and a bit exhausted at the end of a long day of exploring, little sweetheart, we rested for a minute and made plans to go to The Snug in Bantry for dinner.

As we sat there at a little picnic table, the sun began to set. And I stepped away to take this rather breathtaking picture of you with the sky and sea and landscape beyond but somehow also a part of you.

I understand that so much better now, my little sweetheart. You are a part of everything and all around, me always. You are more a part of everything, indeed - you are everything. Love you forever.

Mermaid Landing

One day on an epic walk, little sweetheart, we found ourselves all the way down by Bantry Bay.

Coming to the water's edge, you saw a flight of stone stairs that led to a little kind of dock. All in black with your pretty red hair down, flowing and luminous, you stood there for a moment and I snapped this picture. Like a landing spot for mermaids.

I think this was one of your favorites. Mine, too, little sweetheart. Mine, too.

Clear Eyed and Grateful

On our walk led by our little Jack Russell pup, we stopped and looked all around, little sweetheart, at the lush green surroundings, in the cool autumn air. I was so grateful to be there with you. So grateful for you. I will always be.

Two

That same day, little sweetheart, on our hike to the lighthouse, we came across a stone circle. They’re really rather holy places. We stepped within and stood inside it and held each other close.

Once we got all the way out to the lighthouse itself, you stepped over the landing and sat on a big rock there looking out at the surf and sky that stretched as far as one could see. You called me to you and gathered me in your arms. And you took these two pictures, little sweetheart, with our heads close to one another.

I’m posting them both because even though taken just moments apart, they show how in just an instant your spirit could overwhelm me with gratitude and love.

Find me again, won’t you? And keep me with you forever.

Looking Back

Kilcrohane is at the edge of the middle of three peninsulas at the top of County Cork on the western coast of Ireland, little sweetheart, and one day we decided to go for a walk all the way out to the very end, to the lighthouse.

It’s quite a long walk there and the trail is not very well marked. We actually got lost coming back and I got very panicked because it’s rugged out there and the sun was about to set. I kept running ahead a bit to see if I could find our way back and at one point I stopped to see how far back you were. When I did, I saw a sign, only facing that way, only visible from this angle, turned back to look at you, that pointed us to the middle path that led back to the main trail. Looking back for you is how we found the way home. Gah.

But all that later excitement aside, including that happy ending, we had a wonderful day climbing and taking in the sweeping vistas of the mountains and the Atlantic Ocean.

When we got to the little lighthouse there was a short red railing all the way around with a sign that said “Danger, do not cross!”. So, of course, the first thing you did was to cross!

That’s where the first of these pictures was taken. There are two more I’ll get to in a minute. This one was also the picture we used for the back cover of Of Love and Loss.

My beauty, my treasure. Love you forever. 

Miracles Alight

One night we drove in Bantry, which is sort of the biggest town nearby. There was a lovely little place we always liked to go called The Snug. The food was good and it had a very homey vibe. The tables were almost like big tree trunks and there were vintage signs hanging on the walls and a big fireplace. It was very comfy and cozy.

The only problem ever was that it was sometimes quite crowded but this night we were about the only people there. Kris & I always had sat at the bar because you couldn’t get a table. This night we had our pick of them.

You loved the place. Neither of us often had red meat but all their meat was local and organic and grass fed, so we often would actually have steak there. You wanted a burger. And they had something on the menu that was actually two burgers. So, as was often your wont, you eat one and saved the second for later.

We stayed for some time, enjoying ourselves and we stepped back into the night and looked out at the bridge over Bantry Bay, we could see that a dozen swans had alighted there. We stood there and watched them for a quite a while.

It was another magical night with you, my little sweetheart. Swans, butterflies, all manner of miracles come near when you are with me. With all my love forever.

In The Village

Kilcrohane is just a little village,my sweetheart, mostly filled with farmers. It has one church and three pubs.

The third of them, The White House, was really not much more than what we’d think of as someone’s den here in the US. It had a short bar with taps and stools and a little pool table and was only open at the night when the owner came home from working in the fields. It was at the very edge of the village.

In the middle of town was the church and the other two pubs were to the front and back of it. The one to the front was as hotel bar nestled into the little lodge there. And the main pub was called Fitzpatrick’s after its longtime owner but known to everyone as Eileen’s, since she’d been the publican there for so many years.

Sadly, for us anyway, Eileen was gone that whole week we were there and never got to meet you, little sweetheart. But everybody else that did was very taken with you.

This is picture of you with everyone there at Eileen’s. We’d just come from visiting that nice old man, Johnny, at his house up the lane and had walked back settling in at one of the tables. Kris and Joy and Johnny all have a pint or half pint and you’re enjoying a hot chocolate with your feet up.

I think it’s a wonderful picture of you and it makes me so grateful that we made it there.

Down By The Pier

Little sweetheart, I remember waking  up with you one morning there in our little room in the cottage and deciding to set out on a long walk heading toward the end of the peninsula.

We started out that way and once we were a good ways beyond the village turning instead toward Bantry Bay and the pier at Doneen. The surrounding area there is lush and green and there was also a curious and sightly dangerous blowhole that dropped to the water below, a protective fence around it.

A longer walk would take us to the cliffs and as we set out, that little Jack Russell pup came flying seemingly out of nowhere to run just a little ways ahead of us almost the rest of the day.

This picture of you and I is from all the way down by the water. How complete you made me, little sweetheart. The other half of my soul. Love you forever.

Emerald

Little sweetheart, here's another photo of you in that beautiful meadow just beyond the cottage from our first day in Ireland.

It's been on my mind because it's also going to be the first photo inside the gatefold of the new album, Til Morning Is Nigh. The inscription, the dedication reads:

"For Summer, with love forever. A thousand angels watch, bless and keep you."

Indeed, I know they do, as you do me, as you watch and keep me and all of us who love and miss you and strengthen our faith that we will be with you again, soon and forever.

Til Morning

Little sweetheart, the new album, our 8th, TIL MORNING IS NIGH, is approved for digital distribution and the CDs are in production. The official release is next month on November 23, the day after Thanksgiving, and a special preview and pre-sale of the album begins on your birthday, November 13th.

As ever, it is entirely of, for and about you. Your vocals, both sung and spoken, are at its center, and when one opens the gatefold there is a beautiful picture of you standing in a meadow in Ireland, with these words in dedication:

"For Summer, with love forever. A thousand divine angels watch, bless and keep you."

Indeed, my little sweetheart. Love you forever.

At The Edge of The World

One of the days, little sweetheart, that we were in Ireland, we got in the rental car and Kris drove us all out to the end of the Beara peninsula.

We were staying in Kilcrohane which is at the end of the lower, actually middle, of the three peninsulas, the Sheep's Head. The Beara is a bit more wild and rugged geographically at at its very edge is a trolley that goes to tiny Dursey Island. It's the westernmost point in Europe.

There's a little signpost there, with signs pointing in various directions and telling you how many miles or kilometers away various places are from that spot. One is for New York (3000 some miles, with a little swimmer icon), another for Tir na nOg - Irish for "Land of Youth" and, of course, the title of the play that first brought us together, how we met.

I gave Kris my phone and he took several pictures of you and I there at that sign. This is one of them. It was one of our last days in the car. You much more preferred going places on foot even if it didn't take us as far afield.

Just seeing you so close at my side brings me such a sense of calm, of peacefulness. You're always near, aren't you, my little sweetheart? Nearer than I can imagine. 

Together in the Meadow

In keeping with that idea I talked about, little sweetheart, to post a picture and tell a little story from our trip to Ireland, here's one from the very first day.

We had to get up awfully early in the morning - seems like it was around 4:30AM! - to go to Gatwick airport and fly to Cork. Then we got in a rental car and drove up the West Coast of Ireland until we got to the little village of Kilcrohane, where we were staying. By the time you and I got to our room, you flung yourself across the bed (I've got a picture of that too!) exhausted. Nap time! We lay down together for a little while before rallying, having a cup of tea in the nice little kitchen looking out at the bay.

Kilcrohane is at the end of Sheep's Head Peninsula, Bantry Bay on one side and the Atlantic opening up at its edge. We could see the bay in the near distance from the kitchen window, so we headed out on a walk, through the garden and out into a meadow beyond. That's where Joy snapped this picture of us.

You look so at home and I am, as ever, grateful to have you in my arms. With all my love forever...

In Ireland

Little sweetheart, it was this week, eight years ago, that we went on our trip to Ireland together.

Although I hadn't been there since 2001, it was one of the first things you and I talked about when we met - my travels there and how very much you wanted to go with me sometime.

After my mom unexpectedly passed away in May of that same year, I knew even more than I had before that I needed to be with you as much as possible and that even though you were already so good at seizing the moment and doing things NOW, not waiting for some mythical "someday", that we needed to plan a trip there.

You were going to be in France in late September and I had to go to London around the same time, so we settled on October. We traveled with my friends Kris & Joy, who had been with me on my previous visits to the emerald isle, and we rented a little cottage in Kilcrohane, a small village at the end of the Sheep's Head Peninsula, a place we'd come to love all those years ago.

You and I went for long walks, one epic one all the way out to and around the lighthouse and another past Doneen pier when a little Jack Russell dog suddenly appeared and ran a few feet ahead of us, seemingly taking us on a tour, for nearly an hour.

I'm so grateful that I have so many wonderful pictures of you on that trip, almost 300, I think. Maybe I'll post a few of them here over the next few days, little sweetheart, and tell a little story.

I'm so very glad we had that trip together, just as you so wanted. It's hard not to feel the sadness begin to rise in my chest at the thought of how much you loved it and had spoken of new plans to return - there was a lovely old man there, Johnny, who had taken such a shine to you, and we had planned to return in the spring when it happened to be his birthday. So many of the village folks that got to meet you were taken with you and your mane of red hair ("where are all the redheads?", you asked one of the locals in the pub, I recall, and he said "they're all in Scotland, lass.").

This picture is one from that day when the little dog led us around the twists and turns of the path down to Doneen pier. May you lead me even now through my own arduous travels and bring me safely home again to your side in the Forever. With all my love...

First Night Back

Little sweetheart, tonight was the first night of the new season of Taize - that little candlelight mediation service held on Wednesdays up at that sweet old little church I told you about on the Upper West Side. They take the months of July, August and September off.

I’ve been working on my recovery from the injuries after getting hit by the car in April, so it was very nice to be there, sitting quietly in the back, singing soft harmonies to the chants, coming forward in the near-darkness to light a candle for you and say our prayer, repeating it yet again once back at my seat before falling into silent contemplation.

Please be near me today, little sweetheart. Help and guide me. I love you with all my heart and soul.

Shower Curtain Girl

Little sweetheart, I have a series of beautiful photos of you in the soft daylight streaming through the bathroom in your apartment in the Inner Sunset. You took them in front of the shower curtain there, a montage of images of old Hollywood movie stars. My favorite of these photos is enlarged to poster size, framed and hanging in our bedroom.

But it also reminds of another wonderful memory of you.

Sometimes after you’d closed the door and I’d hear the water running as you were washing your hair or something, I’d hear you call out my name (it brings me to tears just to think of that sound - my name on your lips - is there anything, any sound more blessed?). You’d forgotten something. Maybe you needed a new bottle of conditioner or something and you’d ask me to retrieve it from the hallway closet (even as I type this I can remember perfectly the smell, the smell inside that little linen closet of yours).

I’d find whatever it was that you needed and bring it to you, standing under the cascading stream of hot water. You’d peak around the show curtain, your sweet beautiful smiling face and I’d lean in to kiss you, your hair wet, your skin warm and aglow from the heat.

What a wonderful memory, my little sweetheart. I’m so blessed to have it so very close to me, so close that I can nearly touch evert sensation, nearly touch our life, nearly touch you.

Thank you, my little sweetheart, for finding me. Please let me know that you are near me today and every day. And take me to you the moment heaven will allow. With all my love forever.

Carrying the Torch

Little sweetheart, I was thinking of something the other day, a very dark time in those first months after your tragic passing.

There was an old Todd Rundgren song from his double-album Something/Anything. I’d known the record well for years and used to listen to it a lot once winter when I was living in basement in DC. It had been in heavy rotation then.

One track, a very mournful, sad tune filled with longing and regret came to mind here one day, in a new far darker light. A track called Torch Song. It builds and builds to a climax of grief expressed in the words “somewhere in the back of mind it’s there/and every day it finds me and reminds me.”

I sat here at my desk that day, little sweetheart, playing it over and over and just weeping, wailing, keening, shaking with grief. Some might say I was nearly torturing myself but it’s so hard to unwrap everything.

Sometimes the pain, I think, is hard to let go of because there’s a feeling that even inside the pain itself there is something of your essence, of your presence and I would rather die than to ever let go of that, let go of you.

I think you try to teach and comfort me and guide me, though. To know that you are near and that the pain is not you, the memory is, but maybe not the ache exactly. Please help me to know, little sweetheart. And to do good in all things as you would have me. I love you with all my heart and soul. Forever. Forever. 


Forgetting Any Other Home But You

Little sweetheart, I was doing my home care yesterday - the physical therapy exercises I have been given to do here on days between sessions, to rehabilitate my shoulder post-surgery - and in the middle of them I thought of something and quickly wrote down a note to remind myself: “talking about and reciting ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with Summer”.

Acting and the theatre seem so far away from me now, little sweetheart, so unimportant in light of the light that you are, that guides and blesses my life. But I remember so clearly talking with you about the play and reading it to one another over the phone in the first days when I was here in New York and you in San Francisco and longing for you so (as I do now).

How impatient we both were to be in one another’s arms again and how the phone had to do for the moment, however inadequate. I’d sit for hours either in the kitchen floor with the old landline or laying on the plaid couch in the front room with my bottom of the line Nokia (the free phone they’d give you for signing up) balanced on my ear talking to you for hours every night, usually three hours at the least.

In one of those early epics calls between you being here and my being there or both of us being somewhere else together, we began speaking lines of the play’s dialogue to each other from memory. I’d played Romeo in school and you’d done a proper production of it at a company in Oregon shortly after you’d graduated from Oxford.

The lines that came to mind last night “letting me forget any other home than this” (“home” meaning you) flooded forward and I remembered the ache and wonder of speaking them to you and hearing you reply as we poured them out to one another until you reached a passage and said that we needed to stop there because the next lines were something you could only say when I was within your reach and you gazing intently into my eyes, your voice an impassioned whisper of truth and love.

How I long for you my little sweetheart! How blessed I am to have ever been found by you! Please don’t go too far away. Please let me know that you are near and hear me. And please take me to you soon and forever, the very moment that heaven will allow. With all my love.

The Reason We're Here

Little sweetheart, I’m working hard on the new album and my physical therapy too, as I’ve told you, and finally at the end of the day, sometime around 9pm or so, I’ll watch an hour or two of something (often The West Wing because it brings you close in my memory and comforts me) before I say my prayers for you and us and finally go to bed.

I was watching last night when something made me decide to look at something else, something new, a kind of talk show on Netflix. It was amusing and king of mindless but then Drew Barrymore came on and I was more interested because she always makes me think of you.

In part, I think it’s because you had that picture of her in fairy wings clipped from a magazine as part of the collage you’d made and hung in your bedroom in Davis while in high school. It had all your heroes and referenced your friends and family and dreams of life. When I finished the band’s first album for you, Of Love and Loss, I made a collage myself filled with photos and memorabilia, your pictures and words and you and I together. We took it to the roof and snapped high res photos of it so it could be reproduced as a poster included within the folds of the double-CD. And the collage itself - filling an entire large cork board - graces the red table room always, the center of the shrine as you are the center of my life.

But anyway… Drew Barrymore.

Like a lot of things, I never had given her much thought until you brought her to my mind. And then I saw how her kindness and genuineness reminded me so very much of you. On this show there were several instances that brought that and you to mind but maybe above all was an exchange where she said what a blessing it is to have interactions with each other, if even only in a moment at the grocery store when you look into another person’s eyes and speak to one another. To have that opportunity to share kindness and lift each other up.

I think more than anything, little sweetheart, this is the most important thing I learned from you - how you told me that you knew why you were on earth and that it was simply to love, to share your love with others.

What a treasure, what a blessing you are, little sweetheart. And how I long and aspire to do as you would have me and to be more and more like you each day. Please help and guide me, my little sweetheart. I love you with all my heart and soul. And I’m listening. Always. Always.

Light Eternal

Little sweetheart, yesterday as I was writing about you, writing about our first trip to London together, I suddenly smelled wax and a faint puff of smoke and I knew that the candle before your picture, two rooms away, had just burned out and you were telling me it was time to go light a new one.

I love how thoroughly I felt your presence in that moment and others - memory flooding forward with thoughts of you and all senses doubtless heightened because of that, perception deepening.

Please let me know you’re near, my little sweetheart. Please don’t go too far away. And please take me to you the moment heaven will allow.

With all my love forever.

The More That Simply Is

Little sweetheart, it’s four months since getting hit by the car and I only just today thought of something...

Both events - getting hit and two weeks later having the pulmonary embolism - happened on a Tuesday. And the latter, when my heart stopped for ten minutes was Tuesday May 8th, so very like the tragic accident that took you from me, which happened on Tuesday March 8th.

Numbers sometimes surround me in strange ways, little sweetheart. Some numbers will just very insistently come into my head. Often the angel numbers - eleven eleven - will appear as I glance at a clock. Or sometimes I’ll wonder what time it is while out walking, say the time out loud, then walk past a parking meter to find that is the exact time precisely.

Numbers and birdsong and glancing celestial light striking objects. A watch, long stopped, that begins suddenly ticking again, awakened. Dreams where you appear to me. All these things continue to confirm and comfort me with the knowledge that there is so much just beyond my grasp or sight or apprehension that nonetheless is. And I know I’ll be with you again soon and forever.

In Every Way

Often, little sweetheart and I tell others (and even more often tell myself, indeed pray) that I long to be more like you. To be as brave and kind and wise and generous and just to be the man you wanted and were helping me to become - and still are helping me become!

How could I know that in so many other ways I would also become more like you. Doing things you had to but weren’t exactly crazy about. Three weeks in the hospital was not my idea of trying to be more like you but it happened and helped me understand things yet deeper.

Because of the pulmonary event, little sweetheart, I have to take a medication for six months (I’ve got two months left). Twice a day I have to take this little pill. Sometimes I would take it but couldn’t quite remember if I had. I’d carefully empty the bottle and count the pills to see if there was an odd or even number of them left to confirm.

On my phone I’ve set up an alarm. It goes off an hour before and again at the five minute mark - 9:55 (I have to take the pill twice a day, at 10am and 10 pm) - before it’s time.

And it was only yesterday that I thought how that’s, of course, something that you had to do twice a day. That I even have your big weekly pill box with all the compartments sorted by day to remind you and that you traveled with and finally left in London on our last trip there but I made sure to bring home with me.

Again, the note to self - “Take Pill!” - is me being like you. I’ve a piece of paper that says “take pill” on one side and “took pill” on the other and I flip it over to remind me and confirm.

In every way, even these prosaic ones, I guess, I seek and find myself to be more and more like you, my true love, my best friend, my little sweetheart.

I Look To You

I’m doing my best to do my best, little sweetheart. I have physical therapy for my shoulder every other day and am also working on the new Bipolar Explorer album and a second one with Sylvia for the new project, Native Tongue. She’s just gone back to France after a long visit and I’m trying to get even more things done in her absence.

Around 9pm or so, I finally have some dinner. By 11pm going on midnight, I’m pretty exhausted and ready for bed. How different than when you are with me! You love staying up late! I think the injuries and recovery really tire me out, little sweetheart. And I want so to keep making progress with all of our work.

Anyway, I do finally take an hour or two to just unwind and watch something on my laptop - like you would say, “watching a story at the end of the day” adding “with my partner” and making my heart swell with pride and love to be called your own.

These last few nights I’ve put on The West Wing. I think it’s often my go-to, a kind of comfort in it and a reminder always of you, little sweetheart, because it was you that so lovingly brought me the first four seasons of the series on DVD from your home in Davis for me to watch and to think of you when we were apart.

Your mom once told me how proud you were to have been the one to have turned me on to the series yourself. And how proud I am of you, little sweetheart, for everything you that you do and are and so thoroughly exemplify. Someone once remarked about how I express so many things, feelings about you - love and gratitude, of course, but also, quite markedly, admiration. Your not only my soulmate, my true love, my little sweetheart, you’re also my conscious, my guide, my teacher. I long to do as you would have me do, as you yourself would do in any given circumstance.

In so many things, perhaps in all things, indeed, my little sweetheart, I look to you. With all my love forever. 

A Backwards Glance... forward!

I’m always so grateful to be visited by you in dreams, little sweetheart. I took too long the other day after waking to write down what I remembered. Darn it all! But I do have some memory of one last night.

It’s a bit blurry and short on details but what I do remember is that I was with you in someone’s car. They were driving and you were in the passenger seat with my right behind you in the back one. They had a lot of things to ask you and since they were giving us both a ride you were very conscientious to answer them but you did keep stealing glances back at me to let me know you were with me.

It reminded me of that time we were at a play together with Chris and Sheri and you came at the last minute but could only get a seat not with the three of us but several rows behind. All through the play I kept turning around with my back to the stage and my eyes reaching out to you with such longing! And you returned my desperate gaze with the kindest look in your own eyes as if to say, “I know, I know but just watch the play right now and we’ll be together as soon as it’s over, in no time at all, just the blink of an eye.” 

May that be so, my little sweetheart. May I be with you soon, again and forever, in just the blink of an eye. How very much I long for you, my True Love. My Angel.
 

Days Remembered

I’ve been so occupied these last weeks, little sweetheart, with the new album (weighing in at 23 tracks, it’s quite a handful of work) that I haven’t been able to keep as diligent as I’d like in banging out our first memoir but when I resume, which I hope to do by the end of the month, I’ll be nearly at the point of recounting out first trip to London together. And it’s actually the 10th anniversary of those very days, so so much of it is flooding back in the memory.

You’d just been here in NYC for a week and we knew we’d have England together in the months ahead because you needed to attend a friend’s wedding and I was going for several weeks to work on one of my plays with Wilson. I was staying in Kentish Town with Kris and Joy and missing you terribly. You’d drive up to the house in Davis just to be able to get on a landline and call me, eight hours behind, from California, to talk each day. When we weren’t on the phone, you were sending me epic emails, every single one of them treasured and saved. I’m looking over them even now, my angel.

When you finally arrived, I saw you coming down the stairs to the basement flat. You’d cut your hair! Just the front, cut it into bangs or a “fringe” as you liked to say. I’d asked Joy if it was okay for you to stay with us and she of course said yes. She loved you right away too. You and Kris were sort of an odd pairing - the two of you are so different! - but it didn’t matter. You were here, we were together.

You knew London, you’d lived there after finishing your degree at Oxford, but I still liked taking you to all my favorite places. We wandered The Heath and took the Tube down to The Embankment. Walked across the bridge together. Lingered on The South Bank. Saw Shakespeare at The Globe. Had a 99 from a stand near The Thames. Got tickets for The National Theatre and later Donmar Warehouse. Bought groceries at Tesco and made a delicious crumble once we got home. Got locked out of the bedroom one night when no one was home to help us and you picked the lock expertly with a hairpin. Cuddled and made plans and belatedly discovered a Cure song as it blared out of the boombox on Fortess Road “Friday, I’m in Love”, which became our anthem.

One night on the walk back to The Northern Line, looking out at the city spread before us, doing everything I’d longed to share with someone special, forever lonely but with you finally squeezing my hand healing every wound, every slight, I began to weep. “Don’t cry, don’t be sad yet or miss me - I’m right here!”, you said, knowing my heart, my way instantly and better than I myself.

These days are still so fresh in my mind, my little sweetheart. And I thank God for you and know that you are near, nearer than I can imagine. And that we will be together again and forever. Indeed, we already are. I just need to pass - when it is my time, not yet, you’ve already turned me back to wait - to know it. With all my love. 

How Many Songs Are There?

Little sweetheart, our dear dear Sylvia is here from France working on the two new albums with me, keeping me company and helping with everything so very much. She was very moved from the very beginning to hear your story and our own and of my boundless devotion to you. And she is very kind, little sweetheart, and caring.

The other morning as I was making us some breakfast I had WFMU on in the background and Jeffery Davison played “Where Does The Time Go”, which brought me to a complete stop, as I stood there weeping, remembering how you loved that song and how you first played it for me in your room in Boston. I told Sylvia all about it between sobs and she hugged me.

Then this afternoon as I was doing my home physical therapy exercises for my shoulder post-surgery, again with the radio in the background and Sylvia in the next room, I began to cry and cry. She heard me and rushed into the room. “Is it the music”, she asked, ever so kindly. With tears streaming down my face, I nodded. And then, cautiously but with the gentlest kind of concern, she asked, so sweetly “how many songs are there?”

It was at once lovely, thoughtful and not a little hilarious. It’s something you would do, little sweetheart. And were you to hear it asked in that very moment (as I suspect you did) would probably make you smile, even giggle, cheering right up and give her a hug yourself for being so thoughtful, worried and probably not a little overwhelmed.

Honestly, there are a lot of songs. And countless moments, as I move through what remains of my life, when I am seized with thoughts of you, little sweetheart, and overwhelmed myself with so many emotions - of longing, of love, of affection, of gratitude.

Please help and guide me in these times and all times, won’t you, little sweetheart? And know I love you with all my heart and soul forever.

August 16th

Today is August 16th, little sweetheart - your mom’s birthday.

I got a few little things together from the gift and card shop, Delphinium, on W47th Street that we like so much, wrapped them up and sent them her way.

I’ve also discovered a nice service online that delivers birthday cakes. I often get one for your Dad on Father’s Day or his own birthday and your mom really likes their Vanilla Bean one, so I sent that along as well. I like being there on the day, of course - I made her a lemon cake with buttercream frosting a few years ago when I was visiting - but I can’t fly right now after the pulmonary embolism. Hopefully I can go at Christmas.

One of the things I like most about visiting your mom and dad, little sweetheart, is cooking for them, because it’s something I so loved doing for you. Lots of your little treats and special things are still right here on the red table or inside the top shelf of the fridge.

I know we’ll be together again and forever, little sweetheart. And I don’t know how things work after we die but I hope and suspect there will be a way for me to make nice things for you somehow. Maybe time turns out to be not linear at all and we can just alight and linger anywhere - the kitchen in Davis, say, where I can cook and bake for you and we can cuddle on the sofa afterward and watch a story together before bedtime.

I’m thinking of you always, my gorgeous girl, my bright angel, and sending love forever.

Haircut 100

Little sweetheart, I need a haircut! It’s been ages. Two years! I know!

I actually had planned to get one right after Christmas. I was at your parents house in your beautiful room sitting on your bed when I emailed the girl who’s been cutting my hair for the last bunch of years. She wrote back right away and said, yes, she could do me as soon as I got back to New York, just call Seagull (the salon where she works) to schedule it. So, a few days after New Year’s, when got home, I did. And they said she was on indefinite leave. That she was on a trip around the world rock climbing. Seriously. I follow her on Instagram and, there she was, hanging from a boulder with green hair, somewhere in Texas.

But I’m so fussy and loyal, I wanted to wait until she got back. I thought I might finally suck it up and try to find someone else around my birthday in April but then, of course, I got plowed over by some guy driving his car and wound up nearly dead in the hospital.

Thankfully, my angels - you foremost and guiding them, your earthly and celestial charges - intervened and now, four months later, I ambled down to the West Village (it’s been so long Seagull had actually moved - from their old storefront on W10th Street to a place twice as big on the second floor of a building tucked away on W4th) with Sylvia in tow to get shorn by someone new. Everyone was really nice. The receptionist remembered me and our new guy, Topher, knew all about pulmonary embolisms and even the medication I’m on. He and his wife also really like cooking, so we had a lot to talk about.

As I sat there and Sylvia snapped pics on her phone and sent them to your mom (who was relived - one of the occupational therapists at the hospital had fashioned my hair into a man bun atop my head and even your mom, ever polite, had to exclaim that it looked awful), I couldn’t help but think of you and the first time I was shorn at your own behest.

You’d directed me to Lee’s, just down the street from your apartment in the Inner Sunset, insisting that I’d look so much better with shorter hair and a good deal less “like a crazy old man”. I was a bit startled in the stylist’s chair that day, reaching to the back of my head to discover how short it was but when I got home to you, you embraced me instantly saying “I love it” and making everything better, as you always always did and still do.

So, two years (or is it nearly three now?!) on, I’m finally back to a neater look. You, Sylvia and your mom cam all breathe a sigh of relief, I think. I’ll join you. Girls, the best ones, are always right, after all. Isn’t that so, little sweetheart?

The Days Ahead

Little sweetheart, our dear dear Sylvia arrived from France on August 3rd and we’ve been at work both on a new project, Native Tongue, and the eighth Bipolar Explorer album, Til Morning is Nigh: A Dream of A Christmas. Sylvia is doing spoken word with us on the BPX album. I give her the passages to read, she translates them into French (we’re using the most archaic translations so that they have a more poetic and timeless feeling) and she speaks them over the guitars.

I know you’d love how this album is coming together and unfolding. I’m sure of it. I can feel your presence with us and even more so when your spoken words and soaring vocals fill the room blasting over the monitors and I piece things together.

In these days ahead I’ll be working on that very thing - bringing in your voice to join and guide our efforts yet further, providing the soul and conscience of this new work. We both feel you around us as we diligently do our best to make you proud. And not for the first time I must tell you, my little sweetheart, I need you more than ever. With all my love.

Angel Frequency

I’m at work on the new album, little sweetheart. Basic tracks - for 23 songs - are completed and I’m recording bass, percussion, backing vocals and other parts now.

One of the new tracks I’m most excited about has you, of course, at its center. A sound college of your spoken word envelopes the piece and dancing around and underneath are loops of found sound and low droning vocals and… our first use of synth on a track.

When I first got home from the hospital, I wasn’t at all sure I’d be able to play guitar or bass for some time. Ortho initially told me August and this was in May. I did find a way to play while seated even with such limited range of motion in my broken shoulder but I got a couple of new instruments I thought I might be able to play and compose with with just one hand if need be. One of them was a keyboard. I thought it would be just an inexpensive little practice one but it turned out to be really good. It reminds me of the Privia you started writing on our last Christmas together. But what’s best about it is that it has a couple hundred different settings and among them are some very good sounding organ and synth ones. They have infinite sustain and even start folding back, resonating overtones to the brink of feedback if you keep them going.

I’ve been listening almost non-stop to ambient music this year, little sweetheart, especially that Austin duo we like Stars of the Lid. The new track is called “Angel Frequency” and it invokes both the celestial presence that I find visiting me when I feel or sense you near, as well as the experience I had in those ten minutes when my heart stopped in the hospital. This track feels like the very centerpiece of the new album and a signal as to where the band, with your ethereal guidance, is headed.

I’m so heartened and excited by the prospect, little sweetheart. Please remain near me, won’t you? Don’t go too far away. I’m listening carefully. With all my love forever.

Shh...

It's the last day of the month, little sweetheart and I think I have basic tracks for the entire new album. There's spoken word with underscoring as well as the songs themselves so it's quite a few tracks, 23 in all. I'm doing my PT and working on this and as well as the book, just trying to make sure I do at least a little of everything every day.

I'm worried about so many things, little sweetheart. My heel is starting to hurt again and I really can't bear the thought of yet one more injury to have to work through on top of everything else. But I guess I just need to do the best I can and hope for the best too and try to quiet myself and listen for you.

I'm going to say some quiet prayers to that very point and go to bed now. I love you and need your help as I always do. Please be near me. My angel. The other half of my soul.

Trials, Memory, Gratitude.

The days are long here at the moment, little sweetheart, and also, somehow, not long enough.

Every morning I wake up and say prayers and before I've even made coffee, begin to feel a bit overwhelmed by how much there is to do. A lot of it has to do with my recovery from being run over by car three months ago, breaking bones, gouging my legs, collapsing days later after a pulmonary embolism, my heart stopping for ten minutes. I haven't really taken in all that I've been through, honestly, so maybe it's not surprising I get this feeling... that's it's all too much, that I don't have much time.

I'm trying, tho', little sweetheart. I'm doing physical therapy three times a week and doing all the exercises they give me like homework on the other days right here, three times a day. I'm working on our book and the next album and another with dear Sylvia, the earthly angel who has done so much to help and comfort me. Even on hard days, I try to get a little something done just to keep the flame going.

It feels like a lot and it sometimes brings me down.

At night, around 8 or 9pm, after dinner and before bed (I go to sleep much earlier these days, little sweetheart, often before midnight, usually a little after 11pm), I watch something - a baseball game or a show - like we used to. Remember? "Watching a story at the end of the day with your partner." That's what you used to say to me. And my heart swelled with pride to be called yours.

Lately, I've been watching The West Wing and it always makes me think of you because it was you who first lent me your own copy of the series on DVD. You told me that it made you so proud to have been able to give that to me, to show me that world yourself, and your mom told me that's exactly what you told her.

There's a lot of noise in the world just now, little sweetheart. And personally things are hard. Thank god for your parents and our dear Sylvia! But sometimes it feels very very hard indeed. These quiet moments before bed somehow help me. I need to know you're near. And when I most do, you still find ways to find me.

Thank you, my little sweetheart. However hard things get, you remind me - I've much to be grateful for. Please don't go too far away. Love you forever.

Places Both Temporal and Eternal

Little sweetheart, there was an article online this morning about the last Blockbuster closing in Alaska. They say sometimes things take 10 years to get there, so this may explain why they held out so long. People were very sad to see it go.

And it mostly reminded me of the one in Davis where you and I used to go.

Often it would take a long time to make a decision but I loved the tradition of going there with you and bringing a DVD or two back to the beautiful house, making dinner and later settling in on the big sofa, cuddling and watching together. Or as you used used to say "watching a story at night with your partner." My heart always swelled with pride to be called yours. As it swells with love now thinking of you and the Eden that were the long, delicious, leisurely days we'd spend together in that lovely place.

I know there's another one, a beautiful new place that my mortal eyes cannot yet see but that is there and where I will again be at your side where I belong, this time forever. I love you with all my heart and soul.

White Courtesy Telephone

Little sweetheart, I had a wonderful visit from you in a dream this morning just before I woke up. You were here with me in New York but it's also like we were in a different time, maybe 50 years ago. We were, I think, in the lobby of a hotel. It was big but comfy, almost like the living room of your parents house. We were very much at home, just lounging around, making plans for the day, when you were called to the telephone at the front desk - one of those things where they page you, ya know, "Miss Summer Serafin, call for you at the front desk, please."

I actually already knew what it was. Your parents were here too, in the same hotel, I think, and they had a surprise for you. Either your mom alone or maybe both your mom and your dad had met someone and told them about you and made a special appointment for you on your visit here. You were going to meet Oscar Hammerstein. I don't remember if Richard Rodgers was also going to be there but they wanted you to come by their studios and sing. There was a list of 30 of their songs and they wanted to work through each one with you. It was just with them. Old Oscar was going to play the piano himself. You just had to call the number and let them know you were coming by.

Your dad was on the phone with the news and the number for you to call. I knew about it already and was so excited for you.

Isn't that a wonderful and altogether unusual dream, little sweetheart? Being together in the 60's as we are in the early 2000's, everything around us a bit different but we as we are?

You were so very typically yourself taking the call too, excited but immediately focused, ready to go to work.

It's such a comfort and a blessing when you visit me like this, little sweetheart. I'm so grateful. I wonder what other messages are packed inside this vision. Lead me to them, won't you, my little sweetheart? As in all things. I love you with all my heart and soul.

To Hear The Angels Sing

Little sweetheart, I'm working on getting better, healing after the accident. I'm going to physical therapy three days a week and doing all my exercises at home on the off days.

It's still pretty hard and there are lots of things I can't do but I am trying as best I can to work on the new album. It's called Til Morning Is Nigh: A Dream Of Christmas and it has both spoken word (in English and French) underscored by ambient guitars and Christmas songs re-arranged and performed in our signature dreampop style.

You'll be on it, of course, and one song I was working on this week especially made me think of you and exactly where we should hear your voice swell and soar. It's during the repeated phrase "to hear the angels sing".

We're mostly still in the basic tracks phase of recording, laying down the initial guitar with a reference or guide vocal, but just singing that phrase as I played made my eyes well with tears and I could feel them coursing down my cheeks as I continued.

I was watching something last night before bed, little sweetheart, I can't remember what, and there was a scene where someone began to cry remembering a beloved and the person they were with said that it was a blessing because that keeps our angels close to us, it lets us know that they, that you, are near.

I love you with all my heat and soul, my gorgeous girl. Please don't go too far away. I'll quiet myself to listen for your celestial voice, your every whispered word. With all my love forever...

Visited!

Little sweetheart, I had my first dream last night where you came to me in the hospital. God knows (literally) that is the last place I want to be again let alone dream about but it was also in that kind of dreamlike way where a place is both like a place you know and completely different at the same time. It was, in a way, more like being home and more like you coming to take me home, too.

You were very concerned and concentrated on making sure i was taking the medication they'd prescribed me. And I ... was overjoyed at the sight of you.

Sometimes in dreams, you and I are as once we were, as we were before all that's befallen, and fine. Other times, in dreams that can sometimes be darker even in the light of your presence, the terrible thing has occurred but you're either still here or returned.

In this dream, somehow, you had never gone but were simply 'laying low', having wanted to get away from all the things that were confounding your life and just quietly regroup. You were here now both out of concern for me and also to let me in on your secret, sorry that you hadn't been able to before but knowing that wherever I was would be the first place they'd come looking. So, like a relocated witness under Federal protection, you'd had to keep up the fiction even with me.

But you were here now, in my arms and altogether real and whatever happened before was past, the future ours and forever.

I'm not sure exactly what the dream may foretell but it seems altogether hopeful, uncannily current and, as ever, comes as a relief and blessing - because whenever you alight in my sleep, my treasure, I am again and finally whole. How grateful I am!

With all my love forever.

Let It Be So

Little sweetheart, today is the 4th of July. I'm mostly busy trying to get back to some of the projects that have been on hold for the last two months since the incident.

Two big music things - the side project I told you about with dear Sylvia (we call the band Native Tongue and the album title is Interiors) and the new Bipolar Explorer record (which, of course, you will be on), which we hope to release in time for Christmas. My arm is still very limited in range of motion but I've found that I can play guitar if seated and not flying from one end of the fretboard to the other. I'm trying to make up for lost time, get back on something closer to schedule.

But mostly what I'm thinking of today, unsurprisingly, most wonderfully, is you. We certainly had a memorable 4th of July a few years ago, didn't we little sweetheart?

It had only been a little over a month since my mom had passed away. I got the news in the middle of the night in an email, of all things. I was in London, alone, and it woke me up. You were the first person I got on the phone after I woke up Kris and Joy in Wales to find out how to dial internationally from their landline (I was staying at their flat while they were gone for the weekend). You took care of me, took care of everything. Got me on a plane. Flew yourself across the country to meet me, waiting in the airport all night to meet my plane. Stayed with me that whole week - coaxing the cats out of hiding, still traumatized from my mom's fall, helped plan the service and select the flowers, found mom's music to play, listened as I read you the eulogy moments after I typed it on her computer. You stayed and helped me, comforted me, stood me up and supported me in the crush of grief that whole week when I buried my mother.

Soon, you were here in NYC with me. And after that you brought me to you and with your family on a vacation that 4th of July weekend on the Oregon Coast.

Your dad rented a lovely house for the weekend that your brother nearly burnt down (a pretty wild exaggeration but it seemed like it at the time!) when the fireworks show went awry, we had a lovely boat ride down the River Rouge, visited a crazy "Prehistoric Village" where there old timey sculptures of dinosaurs (I have a picture of you kissing one) and famously went dune buggy riding.

You were excited to take the wheel, even as the proprietors warmed us "no matter what you, do not drive near the coast on the wet sand". So, naturally, as everyone else tackled the huge mountains of sand, you sped the two of us away right to the edge of the crashing waves and along the wet sand because it was fun! I have the most wonderful video of you on my phone, I'll try to post it on here.

We're speeding away, the engine roaring, a seagull or two taking startled flight off your path, as the waves roll in around us, the sky brilliant and you, helmeted and face wrapped in a scarf like some daredevil bandita. At one point you finally pull it a little ways away, revealing your beautiful, smiling, angelic face and wave to camera. I linger on you as you return your gaze to the path you're blazing ahead, before you turn to me with that loving look of yours acknowledging my utter devotion, my longing for you even as you are only an arm's length away and smiling as if to say "I know, but we're busy right now, I'll hold and kiss you in just a minute, when we're done and forever." 

Let that be so, my little sweetheart, my love. Let it be so and forever.

Closer

Little sweetheart, in the weeks I've been home from the hospital I've only gradually begun to settle in and actually see and remember and lay hands on things as they are.

Part of that is due to some of the endless clutter of this place being shifted a little - by dear dear Sylvia, the earthly angel who has done so much to help me - to clear a path as I, very hobbled at first, in a sling with each leg connected by hoses to a small machine, tried to shuffle about in here.

And partly I think I'm just awakening a bit from the fog of trauma and struggle and can actually take things in, resume, however altered.

A little while ago within these pages, little sweetheart, I mentioned that there were some things I had been thinking and writing about before the incident that I meant both for posting here and for continuing work on our memoir.

Often, as you know, my beloved, I write little things down on scraps of paper. Some are reminders or the shorthand scribble of an idea to develop and expand upon and others are almost mantras - something instantly resonant, seemingly transmitted from the ether and eternity to me in a celestial whisper that I hurriedly scrawl into remembrance and tape to the wall.

It's one of the former kind, a sort of note-to-self for further expounding, that I found while looking for something else on my desk this morning, little sweetheart.

It says "'Where Does the Time Go" awakens me from my nap".

Reading it takes me instantly to the moment I wrote it, pre-incident.

In the late afternoon of an April day before all this, I had laid down to close my eyes for a few minutes, with WFMU on softly in the background. And as I stirred, I heard that song, that wistful lyric and haunting melody, first known to me when you sang it angelically in your room in Boston the weekend I came up while you were working there on your birthday.

In that moment, I caught you gratefully in my arms.

In this one, immortalized by the handwritten note to self, I instantly felt the closeness I did in that moment - knowing that there's more than we can imagine, more than mere coincidence, if only we quiet ourselves and let in the extra sensory, the feelings and thoughts and messages, the sounds and sights (and even the olfactory ones - I more than once have suddenly been aware of your scent filling the air when no one else is around, haven't I, little sweetheart?!) that are there to bolster our faith and let us know, let me know, my beloved is ever with me.

Please help me, my little sweetheart, to find my way again, to find my way anew, as I work to overcome all that's befallen. Please help me with gratitude and love to honor you and know the true way. You're closer than I could ever imagine. Please don't go too far away.

With all my love forever. 

Just Remembered...

Little sweetheart, remember I was telling you about your childhood friend Liz who has been in touch and sent me those wonderful drawings with stories about you from primary school? Well, I was just thinking about a story from the same era, when you were a little girl, that your mom told me.

She said one day your elementary class went on a school trip to a farm and that you were very excited to meet and see all the animals. But when you came home you were a little miffed about the pigs.

Apparently, when you fed them they rather boisterously came charging and proceeded to gobble up everything in sight with great speed. "Well", you said, with some distaste, "I can certainly see why they call them pigs!".

I love this story to the point of madness. Honestly, has there ever been anyone remotely like you? I think not! God, how I love you!

Thinking of you on this hot June night with affection and gratitude. And love forever.

First and Last (for now)

Little sweetheart, I was finally able to get back to that nice candlelight meditation service I've told you about. It's on Wednesday nights and I was going to go on my birthday but, of course, I was in the hospital. That was two months ago.

It had been ages and because they take July - September off, this was going to be the last one until the first week in October. I'm glad I went! It's about as far as I've walked since the accident - about 60 blocks round trip. It was really good to see some of the folks there, they're very nice, and to say quiet prayers and sing the chant-like devotional songs and to come forward to light a candle for you and to sit in the silence and the near dark during the centerpiece meditation of the service. Some sweet little birds were singing outside and if I hadn't already, I was quite certain then that you were near.

Part of the service includes readings, both secular and sacred. There's often a poem. They asked me to read Wednesday night's. It was called "Popovers" - again bringing you leaping to mind, as your special Summer Popovers recipe is right on the front of our fridge at home. It's a beautiful poem about love and dear ones and struggles and our desire to hold on to the precious things and... food! It's by Pam McAllister and is here:

What luxury, on this visit,
to hear rain falling in the woods,
then awaken to popovers,
like so many golden suns, spilling over
a birch-wood basket.
Our talk, too, spilling over and golden,
rises from a night of dreams and a universe
of books and memories, new ideas and old connections.
Here! we say, offering up a page of promise.
Listen! the morning air is filled with our reflections
as colorful and textured as the plate we pass
laden with melon wedges and strawberries
and unbelievable raspberries. We pose for pictures,
yearning to hold on to this moment, this abundance.
Outside, the air shimmers
and the only thing we know for sure
is that there are trials ahead for each of us
and for our world, our delicate, precious planet.
But at this table we have held each other’s hands,
offered thanks for all of creation,
and eaten our golden popovers
with butter and jam.

At the end, they welcomed me back and a few people came up to say hi. More than one, knowing that I had briefly left this life, said they were certain it was you, little sweetheart, who wanted me to finish just a few more things here before I join you.

I pray with all my heart to do as you would have me, to make you proud and, when the time is the time, to fly to your side again and forever. I'm filled with gratitude and love tonight, little sweetheart. Thank you. With all my love forever. 

Be True

Little sweetheart, I'm focusing on doing my best to get healthy and get back to our work and I think I really haven't quite yet taken in all that's happened, all that's happened to me, in these last weeks. Maybe it's too much to process just yet and maybe, as sometimes is the case in these situations, it's far more palpable to those closest to us than it is to ourselves, because they witnessed it and even though it happened to us, we were unconscious for all or parts of the events and may only have scattered memory of it all.

I suppose the enormity of it will eventually trigger my emotions and maybe I should be bracing myself for that. I'm only now really hearing about the second event, only now understanding that I left this life for over ten minutes when my heart stopped. What I do remember is that my mind was working, that I was still trying to communicate almost telepathically with those around me, earthbound, and that in those moments I felt as if they were understanding and responding.

One of the things that most bothered me after I was conscious was that I didn't simply soar to your side, but soon, and even now, I think that it wasn't quite time for that yet, that you yourself may well have had a hand in shepherding me back, keeping me in my earthly orbit for a bit longer, knowing better than I do myself that there are things I'm meant to complete here first.

I pray, little sweetheart, to know them and to dedicate myself ever more fervently to honor you and live up to the shining example of your loving kindness and character. In a word, (or two) to Be True.

And in the phrase that you shared with me and that, even after your tragic passing, your mom invoked and reminded me - because you and the great gift of your love are eternal and ever always present - don't waste the miracle.

I must be mindful, more than ever. I love you with all my heart and soul. In another of your oft repeated vows to me - Always.

With love forever.

Friends New and Old

Little sweetheart, while I was in the hospital, I got an email from an old friend of yours who went to primary school with you. She remembered you so fondly from childhood and wondered what you were up to, and just about the time of my accident, went looking for news of you online. She didn't know about the tragic events of 2011 and that you had passed on, my angel. But she found this page and left a comment and she found the band and wrote us at that email.

We've been in touch a bit since then and she shared some her memories - beautiful, funny, intensely moving - of you and your shared childhood at The Waldorf School. She remembered your wonderful parents, too, of course, and when I mentioned all this to them, they remembered her too.

Her name is Liz Mihalov and after writing me some incredibly beautiful accounts of your times together she drew some more - a kind of series of Summer cartoons, in a way - and sent them to me in the mail. The originals, no less. It was very very kind.

I scanned them all so that I could share them with your folks and also so Liz herself would have copies and she said it was okay for me to post one or two of then here.

So, here's one of my favorites now.

I'm so filled with love for you, my little sweetheart, and so very grateful for the kindness of new and old friends. With all my love forever.

Words and Music

One of the things I meant to post on April 25 - my birthday and the anniversary of your memorial - was this track from the new album Sometimes in Dreams.

It obviously is inspired by what I wrote and spoke for you that day in 2011. It includes much of what I said that night and goes deeper with new writing and thoughts and musical underscoring, as has become the way of us. I love you my angel.

I have a thousand thousand things to say...

The Choral Text Passage 


(from Bipolar Explorer's double-album, Sometimes in Dreams - c/p Serafin-Wells, Thirteen November Music ASCAP and Slugg Records)

Continued...

Little sweetheart, these last eight weeks have been hard. It's exactly eight weeks ago today that, a day before my birthday, I was hit by a car. There have been so many struggles and challenges in the days and weeks since then and I guess you could even say that for not a little while I was almost if not actually dead, because my heart stopped for 10 minutes.

But I'm still here, struggling a bit but grateful, especially to be home with the love of your wonderful parents - and the earthly angel, Sylvia, who very much saved my life along with your dad who was on the phone with her when I collapsed - grateful to be home with your pictures and things around me, grateful for you and your mom and dad and dear Sylvia.

And I want, as best I can, to resume these writings and our music and all our projects dedicated to love and your memory and example, as well as new blessings that I know you have visited upon me, upon us, with celestial guidance.

I may begin with a few things that I had already written down and meant to say and post just before the events and I'll continue as best I can while keeping up my recovery.

I love you with all my heart and soul. 

Works in Progress

Little sweetheart, I'm home but still struggling a bit with my recovery. I'm sad to not be writing more but will endeavor to do so as my health improves. At a follow up appointment the other day, the doctor told me that during the incident my heart stopped for ten minutes. It's something of a miracle that I am still here. As you are a miracle yourself and my earthly angels- your mom and our dear dear new one, the wonderful Sylvia - are as well. I've been listening to our cover of the traditional Scottish folk song, "Wild Mountain Thyme", which we re-titled from its chorus,"We'll All Go Together". I know that is true and that we will all be there one day, but I also know you and these earthly beloveds have need for me here just now. And I will do my best to get better and with love and kindness do what is set forth for me. With love forever and to be continued....

Celestial Intervention

Little sweetheart, I've gone quiet on the blog here because I was in hospital for the last few weeks after an accident I won't get into. Suffice to say that I know you were looking out for me and protecting me from events that could have proved fatal.

You have always filled me with gratitude and a sense of purpose. I remain connected to you spiritually and with all my heart and soul and simultaneously understand that I am to live gratefully to the fullest, with love for others and work to do.

These set backs of injuries only strengthen my resolve to live fully, joyfully, honoring your great spirit, the great gift of our shared love and the important work of honoring and remembering you. I know more than ever you are at my side, keeping me strong and focused. I love and heed your every whispered word.

We go on. With all my love...  

Morning Light

Little sweetheart, I had the most wonderful blessing of your presence this morning and into last night. You came to me in dreams. We were together in the lobby of a lovely old hotel. The weather was glorious as we walked through the doors together - mild and fine but not too warm, not too blindingly sunny, just the way you most like it.

And when we walked out of the day into the cozy, charming lobby there, so familiar and inviting, everyone seemed to know us, smiling and friendly and welcoming us back. The concierge called us by name and politely handed us our keys, delighted that we had returned and proud to tell us that they had prepared our favorite room just for we two.

As we walked upstairs together, I held you in my arms and I can still feel your body, which fits so perfectly into the curvature of my own, even now as I type this, even as I woke.

Indeed, little sweetheart, your signature sweet scent has mysteriously been in the air the last several days somehow, often in the hall late at night when I go out there. I know you are near. And I’m grateful and want more than anything to be taken, returned to your side, soon and forever. I love you with all my heart and soul.