Day Out of Time

"Let your Spirit guide you," was the only thing I could hear from the dream I just woke up from. What the fuck? I mean I've had this idea of just getting up and walking to see where I get. Maybe I could get to the Rainbow Gathering in Allegheny National Forest. I figure it's about 350-400 miles from this corner to that one. Wonder how many miles I can walk in a day? Spirit guide me... Spirit, "Son, you have many things going on your life. Your son, stranded, do you really want to leave him." "Spirit, you've showed me what I'm getting out of this paper pushing interaction I've been dealing with in regards to the relationship of custody I have with his mother. Her vendetta for my flesh has dictated my resolve not play into it. If I stay, I will have to be present for another bout that's only conclusion is another series of hearings. Having no way of a new decision being made at this proceeding. My responsibilities are finding no common ground with obligation." Spirit, "Being his father, you are the guardian of his spirit. Do not think that he is not with you, just because you aren't together in flesh." "Yes, Spirit, lead my feet forward and remind me that I'm whole and have movement. I just want to see Aviv soon." Spirit, "Take only what you need then. And walk. As long as you listen, you will never loose me." Knowing how familiar the surrounding area is to me, I decide to keep my trajectory the sunset. Spirit, "Follow the train tracks. And do not worry, everything is working itself out." And that's what I did. Took my backpack, a sweatshirt, two books, a frisbee and a gallon of water. Step into my worn,and unbound sneakers and stepped out into the Sunshine. Having just done some Chi Gong, my body felt up to the task. Weird how we really do take care of parts of ourselves in different ways. Listening to our spirit, invoking trust in that light. Making sure our mind is clear and connected to our body, and that our body has enough nourishment to maintain it's balance. Dipping from Forest to Railroad tracks, I find myself crossing very little of the city in broad daylight. Funny how we always run the grid, by our favorite streets and passageways. Where, on feet I can make sure I go the way I want and nothing else need find interference in my passing through. Finding my new thoroughfare I step behind the wings of a hawk and pads of a fox and glide West. What is my motivation for my hike? Love and the ability of everyone to reflect the energy we need to keep ourselves together. "I Love you," and "Freedom" managed me through every town and suburb. Freedom, man, if it weren't so important for me to be this right now, I think I'd be outside Aviv's Mom's house banging down the door on a lecture higher than the senses. I can't find reason to keep Aviv in the middle of fight that has no end. So again I put my foot forward and ignite a little more passion for being able to just live. If I go through with this court stuff, we keep fighting and nothing changes. If I walk away today, maybe I can come back later and things will have a chance to change. So, I walk another step forward and Sing. "Spirit, tell Aviv that he needs to let go of someone saving him, that in order for that to happen, he must first say he wants to be saved...fuck it. Spirit I need salvation too. As I move forward, no matter how far I go, no matter where I go, please protect me from any energy that does not mean to let me continue forward. Allow Aviv to move freely, and to hear his daddy's true intentions in his heart, and to be able to embrace the spirit of Freedom wholly and infinitely past his current transgressions." With another step I move forward. Sneaks off, bare feet on cool grass I walk through each town along the path to Perkiomen. Watching bikers whizz by, to bidding them "Peace" as they head back pass me, on their way to where they started. With another step I move forward. I have nothing to bother me today. Just the wind traveling past, sunshine on my face and birds singing in trees cascade along the path. I reminisce about how wonderful the whole world is. How wonderful it is to see that just from putting one foot in front of the other. I walked by old stomping grounds, old girlfriends, old mills, and construction. I walked pass me at 14, 15, 16 and 17. Hair in a ponytail, my shadow falling just in front of me. Like a Sun dial I pass it on the left. Moving forward, I find exaltaion in the confidence that I haven't left it behind and excitement in the anticipation that it will meet further along in my journey as a friend would stand against a light poll to wait for my arrival. I haven't forgotten where I am from, nor where I am living, but continuing forward towards my goal, a future I will to see. I move forward one step at a time. As the sun sets, I sit, drink some more water and eat a dinner of apples, peaches, and a pancake. Making sure to show as much appreciation and abmiration for my body as I can muster, having walked for over 6 hours. Having no reason to stay, I move on. Maybe I'll find a bed to sleep in tonight. Having no company and very little interaction with the people passing by, besides saying hi. I needed something to entertain me. So I sang, I whistled and then a bird told me to talk. Realizing I was thinking way too much in my head. I began to whisper about how I had met Hillaria. See, Hillaria is Aviv's mom, and one of the most disuaded people I have ever met. Having a lot of issues that stem from her childhood, it was damn near impossible to penetrate through all the excitement generated by our meeting and her becoming pregnant. But I always knew that she only knew a certain level of depth to interact with people. She couldn't get attached because no one had ever allowed her to. Having grown up in an environment, in a town, that was anything but diverse and very rich. Her dynamics never gave her the opportunity to feel comfortable enough to show her true self around anyone. People were all around that really cared about her. And in the first 9 months of our meeting, maybe even 6 months, I watched her cut every one of them out of her life. This included old teachers, neighbors that had known her her whole life. When her house had burned down. The whole town chipped in and bought her Mom a brand new one. When Hillaria had had enough of the violence that her mom put her through. One of my best friend's, from high school, parents took her in and actually helped her emancipate herself from her mother. When I met Hillaria, I had actually just made it through a year of depression and anguish stemming from post-traumatic stress I had been dealing with from having been robbed at gun point inside a friend's house. I was in rare form. Couldn't keep a positive thought in my head and I was sure I had been possessed by the devil, who wanted to turn me into some KKK wielding white man. I mean, telepathically, the word Nigger had literally been transplanted into my brain. Couldn't figure it out, couldn't get rid of it, but I knew I knew how to work it. I'll talk about that some other time. In any case, it was no time for me to be having a baby. Well, I was riding my bike up from South Philly on Broad St., where this young but ok looking dark skinned woman turned as she walked down that side walk and tried to flag me over with her finger. I remember thinking to myself, "Do I really want to stop and talk with this girl?" Knowing my head was in no way in a place to be with a girl and the fact that I hadn't been with anyone but a week earlier for over a year, I was fully entrenched just to keep moving. But, why kick a gift horse in its mouth? So I turned my bike around and hopped on the curb and said hello. She was real bubbly I remember. We introduced ourselves and I asked her where she was from. She replied, Haddonfield. And I'm like...Haddonfield...I have two incredible friends that lived in Haddonfield. Do you know my friend Ted? And she goes, "Ted? Ted's my brother!" "Huh," I said, "no he's not." And after a few emphatic affirmations, it came out about how his parent's had adopted her when she 16, the year he had gone off to school. So I had never known her. I had fleeting memories later about a girl who had been doing dishes with his mom a couple times in their kitchen, but never spent enough time with her to really remember her. And then, there was this party I had at a house a bunch of friend's and I had just moved into. I had just been in a car accident, where the air bag took the vision from my right eye for 72 hours. Just having my vision start to return, I moved my belongings in the night of the party. Having little energy and being heavily medicated, I spent the majority of the evening in my room, where we started an impromptu drum circle. I remember there was this annoying 15 year old girl who really wanted me to teach her how to play drums. Having taken a perkocet or two, all I wanted to do was hit the drum, I was barely functionable to carry on the conversation to say no. So I told her to just hit the drum. Getting bored with such precise instructions, she soon left me to play my drum all to myself. Well, the day she passed me on the street, after we talked, we parted ways for the afternoon and decided to meet up after 9 back down near Broad and Tasker. When we did, I had just bullshitted away a couple of hours up at Rittenhouse Square. Having lost contact with most of my friend's the previous year, I didn't have the stomach to really talk to just anyone. But alas, I did make it down to S. Broad for my rendez-vous. We met up, hugged, walked to a park right around the corner and talked. She seemed cool, mad flighty but I was down to make out or fuck, if she was down. The connection with Ted, really messed me up. Having been so tight with him during high school, I couldn't imagine having missed such a big event like his parent's adopting a black girl. I mean I knew they always meant well, but I was like damn. She must be top knotch. She was spiritual enough for the things I was into then, and she knew a bit about the reptiles which floored me, cause I hadn't really had much chance to talk with more than a few people about them. Definitely not a girl. So I invited her to my friend's spot and we hung out for a bit by ourselves and watched TV with him. I kissed her, by asking her if it was ok. Taken aback, never having been asked before, she almost refused. But her thick african, carribean lips were too hard to resist. I mean I couldn't stop thinking about how much I wanted to taste em. We kissed in the doorway between their dining and living rooms. But, then my friend came back from going out. So we couldn't really make out after that. To get home, I had to walk. From Broad and Dickinson to 46th and Baltimore Ave. We're talking like 50 blocks and it was sprinkling. A fine mist across the land that didn't do anything but make us damp. Maybe it rained but I think we had an umbrella between us. After an hour and 45 minute walk, we arrived at my house, pealed off and got naked. I had a dark skinned woman, in my one room apartment, all by myself and no curtains. Having turned on a light, I allowed her to know how the whole block was going to see her titties. She let me know, if they haven't seen a black woman naked before, they have now. We got into bed and made love. And I mean, I got it in. She was all young and thought she was the shit. Well, after 4 hours with me, worn out, sweaty and exhausted, she told me to stop, and we fell asleep. I always thought that was the night Aviv was conceived. After that, whew, it was all down hill. She, I remember, had this thing about toys and tools. But where as I learned about inanimate objects being titled such, she talked about all the men she had been with in this context. I couldn't believe it, but who am I to judge. I was just happy to get some nooky and she liked it enough, she was immediately addicted and ended up at my house for 5 days. I didn't see her for like 3 weeks after that. She just reappeared and spent another 5 days at my house. All we did was have sex and smoke herbs. I love having sex. So did she. After this stay she went down to Atlanta to visit her mom and I didn't see her for like another 3 weeks. This time, no different than before. Except, she ended up waking up at 6 o'clock in the morning three days in a row throwing up in my toilet. First day, I thought she was just ill from a beer she had had, so I went back to sleep. Second day, I asked her what was wrong and she just said she didn't feel well. Third day, I made sure to get the truth from her. And she eventually gave it to me, she was pregnant. She was pretty sure it was mine. But not a hundred percent and that she was just going to move back to Atlanta in with her mom. Over the previous few weeks that she had told me about what it was like growing up like that. When she told me that she was pregnant and moving back to her mom's, she immediately picked up her stuff, so not to cry in front of me, and ran out my door, down the steps and all the way to the end of the block to wait for the trolley to pick her up. Tears streaming down her face as I ran to catch up with her. She told me to just leave her alone. I persisted for a moment, but let her be when I saw she was clamming up. Sitting a couple feet from her a step or two away, always below, I'm tall as it is. She let me talk to her again and I asked how she could leave the Philly area and go to a place she didn't know anyone, to live with her mom, whom she had divorced and who had beaten her her whole life? Well, she didn't want to, and she understood the necessity of people that care about her around her, especially because she was gonna have a baby. So, she never got on the trolley. She came back inside with me and we decided to put it all to rest for the day. It took me about 3 weeks to figure out how to tell my parents. When I did, I let them know everything. That this was someone I didn't really know, wasn't sure the baby was mine, like most men I find, and that we weren't sure why we were keeping him. The pregnancy was pretty dramatic. She started bleeding 5 weeks into it. We had to go into the hospital, the emergency room, and make sure she was ok. After about 7 or 8 pricks to try and run an IV, a tech, a dude who looked like he had just been mopping up another room, stepped up to her gurney and in one try, slipped it in and ran her blood work through. That was amazing. Three and a half months later, we ended back in the hospital because she had been barreled over in pain for a few days and it wouldn't go away. This was the first time I saw Aviv. They gave Hillaria an ultrasound and here was this little tiny baby, just 5 weeks old, in utero, waving to us from inside. It turned out that what was hurting her was a fibroid (a fibrous cyst) that had grown to something like 6 x 7 cm on a ultra sound screen. They said that most women, who get these, find they disappear after a while. But the next three weeks were excruciating even for me. She was riling in pain, could barely eat and didn't move from our bed for nothing but going to the bathroom. She was the biggest trooper I had ever met. Took each blow of Aviv moving around with plum and gusto, or moxy which was what she deserves. She is almost one of the strongest women in my life, if it weren't for her tired brain. But like most of us, her mind keeps her from really getting to the depth of things. I remember her running a fever lying in bed, writhing in pain and with the threat of bed rest for the last two months of the pregnancy on heavy narcotics, I remember her turning and telling me that wasn't gonna happen. I don't think they were giving her anything, and the over the counter stuff was limited to a very small dosage. That night, I put my hands on her belly like I always did, and Aviv and I began to heal her. I just remember telling him to love his mommy like it was the only thing in the world and pouring white light in from the outside, we managed to let her feeling body take over and she relaxed. I don't know what happened, or how, but soon after that, we never heard from that Fibroid again. The pregnancy went real smooth after that. We only had one other emergency room visit, I'll tell that in a bit though. The only real issues we were having were with living situations. She ended up moving into my apartment building a month after telling she was pregnant. There was a girl that moved in right before I had met Hillaria and her roommate left right like a month later. So, Hillaria took her room. She had been living with this dude she called a tool who didn't add up to much, I was always curious about who he really was. While we were moving all of her stuff out of his house, I was taking a suitcase down from her room, I remember her stepping into this dudes face and calling him a loser. I knew where she was going from then on. And it wasn't gonna be my house. Well, she moved in and within the first 10 days, a friend of mine came to stay at my house. He was homeless, him and his dog, Yona. Yona was a beautiful white dog, with german sheppard shaped ears. She was like a little wolf, but all white. Having them staying in my 20 x 26 ft. studio, made for tight quarters, living. So I was upstairs more than in my place for obvious reasons. Yona kept my friend in my place longer than I needed but she is forever loving and supporting everyone around her, especially my friend. I think he was in my house for like 4 weeks. By the end, Hillaria was getting kicked out of her apartment and my friend couldn't get his head together and I needed my space back. Hillaria actually was the one to tell him to leave and then hooked him up with a place to stay where he helped a guy with special needs for his board, like a block up from where we were living. Just having my place back, I was not interested in letting anyone else moving in. We, Aviv's mom and I, had to have a serious conversation. "You need to find your own place, get yourself together and make sure you have the support you need, to have this baby," I said to her. There was no way I could see her five, I mean five of the biggest suitcases I ever seen, fitting into my apartment. We didn't really know each other, and had very little in common. I mean, she didn't even know if the baby was mine. How is she just gonna roll up in my crib? But she did. No second thought, I was easy. She had not a clue who I was, nor what I expected. She just moved right on in. Set up shop, put her two duffel bags under her bed and filled the whole apartment with her clothes. At this point, I hadn't had a television, a phone, nothing. All I had was my stereo and a bookshelf full of books. When she moved in, we got a T.V., phone and eventually satellite dish. All things I didn't feel we needed. But very convienent for a woman having a baby and for a loving couple that spent most of their time at home. Well, if I haven't said it before, I'll say it here. Living in a small apartment, neither person really moving or working. It was really hard getting along with each other. I don't suggest having a baby the way we did. But I think we made the best of a really awkward experience, as far as the pregnancy went. Five months we spent in that apartment and it was hard. I mean she not being the most pleasant person to live with, we got into it alot. But, being that close to someone really made it hard not to love her. Being a white boy, dating a black girl builds a huge dynamic when it comes to the hood. Having no reason to find the bond stronger than history, I ran into all kinds of resistance, backward glances, insults. Being with a woman who had never lived in the city before and didn't really identify with being black, made it impossible to have much of a conversation about race. When we rolled into her home town of Haddonfield and were walking from the train station to her "parents'" house. This pick-up truck turned the corner and the kid inside yelled out the window, "What do you think you're doing with that Nigger?" Man, when I felt that, I was livid, I was beside myself, to hear that and to just watch them drive away, uh uh, I was gonna make sure that they knew how that made me feel. Hillaria told me, no, don't worry about that sort of thing...she was used to it. Well, I'd like to reiterate, uh uh, that's never been acceptable to me. Well, it wasn't till later, that I realized the flip of that. That it was acceptable to her to call people, ya means, because, there's a difference. Well, about November, maybe it was December, I remember waking up to a fight with Hillaria. She was straddled across me yelling in my face for some reason. Being well aware of her pregnancy (duh) and general mental instability, I moved to get off the bed and make more room, when she grabbed a hold of my arms, fearing I was coming at her. We were getting hype, but it wasn't getting physical, I remember, we were just on the bed and there wasn't enough space. So she grabs a hold of my wrists, and like a good Lifeguard, I uncrissed my arms, and broke free. When I pulled away, and she turned to me, her mouth was full of blood. I had been letting my finger nails grow for playing my guitar. Well, my pinky managed to slip under her lip, and graze right at the crease where her top lip meets her jaw. Not having actually touched with anything else, I had no idea I'd even touched her. But when she turned to me, her mouth was full of blood. Well, needless to say, she ran out the door and later that week, I was having to explain it to the whole neighborhood that I wasn't some over baring white dude. It sucked. Other than that, the pregnancy went pretty smoothly. It was amazing to be able to watch Aviv develop inside his mom's womb. But finding strength in having a child so suddenly was a huge task to overcome. I had a lot of trouble thinking I could do it. I was sure it was a mistake, that I was gonna fuck it up. I mean, I'm gonna be a dad? Sounded almost like a reality, but how could it be, I didn't know anything about raising a kid. Then about six months into it, I had run into a friend at a restaurant I was working in and he laid it out to me. Listen, he said, being a dad is easy. Kid's need their mom's to eat. You don't really have to do anything but change diapers and make sure she gets enough food for like the first year. Amazing I thought, maybe I can do this. That was the first time I was able to accept that I was able to be a dad. By the end of the thought, I had reaffirmed my masculinity and adjusted my priorities to, by the time Aviv was born, to being ready, both mentally, spiritually and physically to journey with this kid and be his dad. Not having much outlet to work out my issues with his mom. I spent the majority of my time while not working staying up late and playing my guitar and singing my ass off. Aviv and I knew right off the bat how we were related to each other. Nothing could have been more simple. It turned out to be a wonderful experience and he has the potential to be one of the smartest, most experienced people I will ever know, mind his mother and her inability to integrate into our community in a wholesome loving way. Atleast, building a better dynamic with me, would help him feel more grounded I'm sure. Having by this time walked all the way through Valley Forge, I was on my way to a friend's house and just as I'd gotten tired enough that it was getting hard to keep going, a kid stopped at an intersection and offered to give me a ride. I made it to my friend's house, but with no lights on and it being 12:30, I decided to find a nice chill spot to sleep a while, as not to disturb his young family. I came upon a stream with a tree that over hung the water. Sitting on that tree, perfectly craddled I slept a couple hours and around the time people start to wake up, I walked back to his house and waited for them to wake up. Happy New Year on the mayan side of things.