Letter on a friend's birthday

So, it's September 13th again, and that's when I always think: "Happy Birthday, T.J., brother!" When we re-united over the 'Net in '09, I told him I'd start this blog, to spin him stories and keep a window into what we found, made and experienced, you know, in San Diego. That was a fun idea. I never grilled him about reading it, but T.J. gave encouragement like no one else could. We had a lot of people sending support in those days; you find them in these posts, too.

This spring, we not only did yardwork- we started new jades, and a little garden! We began to realize, we could use this yard and an array of pots to put the life and beauty we feel out there to the world.
My sister was here a lot, and fortunately, I think we built the best rapport we've had since we grew up.

This letter's a re-convening of the Stump Meetings, there in the trees on the hills beside the old GA-53. I didn't want to spend too much of the summer online. I don't mind telling of it, afterwards. To me, it's mostly a story of plants and flowers.
I wanted to do some new things. I didn't want to feel obliged to write about plants. Truth to tell, I do have a concept for a Kid's storybook, which is about right, as our peers will be looking for things to give their grandchildren.

This summer, I first officially graduated Univeristy of Alabama. That, to me, is a funny story, and it's rather easy to recollect your laughter-but it did assemble more Paynters- and my sister and her squeeze Lenny- than this yard's ever before survived!

You know, right? You were there in spirit! It was a day for spirits, drank and spilled alike. I invited a friend of our own ane Everthing! It was a good Sunday over at Mom's- as memorable a Cinco de Mayo as the day Anj and I hopped off the Greyhound in Escondido and flipped a coin in the sprinkling evening mist- I never saw more people have a good time here!

You always loved coming over. Imagine if we'd had the nurturing temperment to hang out in my yard and grow things! Mom, Anj and I started modestly- a few tomato plants, and Angela's Jades, for bonsai. The inspiration for more veggies came a bit late for the proper growing season; I had to do another round, leading to many little cups. I started cantaloupes, though, and even watermelons. Why? i picked out rewards one week from the packets of seeds at hand. It was late for some flowers, but here in September, the ones who were in time give radiance to the sunrise side of my family's yard.

I fondly remember having friends over to spend the night, and no one came over more, or first, for that matter! I felt a bit of nostalgia for those times, when we tried to help out a fellow I'd worked with, who hit a rough patch. It's a long story, but this guy, sad to say, didn't have the fight in him you did, and he didn't turn out to be ready to use anyone's help to get estalished. But he did come out to join me in yard work, which must've made me look so much like Dad, you'd laugh again.

See, as kids, Deb and I took in what Grandpa knew, but we weren't really taught, so much as obeyed the family activity or played in the yard. Even if we had taken notes, only watching could begin to tell you of the labor involved in a garden, large enough to sustain a household. Our pal Nena has been at this in her own yard a few years, now, if not longer, I'm not sure, but I'll bet having a yard was a big draw to establshing the life she has with her family- and many organic experiments!

I think I learned a lot along the way, but I didn't try writing much at all about my new hobby, all summer. I let the plants speak for themselves. I'm under no illusion of their prize-winning qualities, but hey, I lost like ten, twelve pounds. Around this house we push mow!

I still think up songs as I do yard work, or if I'm alone, errands. Pieces, really. It's more amusing than depression, right? I remember, after you lit out for Oklahoma, basically for good, you'd write about summers there, and band camp, and the farm. I wouldn't be shocked if some of those letters have remained, even after I helped Mom with the Herculean Labor of unpacking the Disharoon residence.

Well, in this present day and age, even we two hicks would've had more pictures together. Those are few and far between, and I may dig one out when I finally open that huge photograph cart with Mom. My memories will have to stand in, but for every picture I want to describe, there's at least the proverbial thousand words.

I know your family misses you sometimes, but you envisioned a life for us all that would outlast yours. I'll spend your birthday, writing about kid friendships, and this Drawn Into Adventure will be every bit as fun- and easier!- than the Seeds story. I will even see how much I can draw, but I already find myself hoping for gifted illustration collaborators!

The year you died, TJ, we spent your birthday, days later, on the beautiful, unique top of Screamer Mountain. When I used to first think of a time I'd be no more, I would vaguely see my ashes belonging to such sky-reaching wilderness and mossy basins. I was happy to be invited. Geez, then we were in our only car accident on the way home! Whew!

I'm a bit sorry I never sent that painting to your aunt Marty while I still had it, but ...it wasn't technically great. But, I know she felt differently, because it was you and Steely. I'd love to make her a new one. I'm just happy that playing guitar and writing are taking the time my gardening did.

Angela and I, great, of course. Her plant work informed a lot of my own, and I'll share her pictures and process, too. It was a quiet summer...even if we did finally take our first Just Us Two vacation after all this time.

Thanks always for being a good friend. You inspire me still, like, often!

Be chill, Cease ill

A Better Place: for our blog's first and faithful reader, our friend TJ Jones

I started painting this three days after my friend TJ died. I may have laid the base coat the night of that final morning.
Those three days were surprisingly joyous; as I painted Rylo Ken and hung out with my wife, A. Dawn, we felt TJ's presence well up from deep in our core, the part of him that will be with us always, vibrant and strong, free to celebrate his freedom with his spirit. I had just begun painting in earnest this spring, and did not have a long history of frustration with it; painting fit right in alongside learning Japanese songs or electric bass with embracing new things of late. For these years I've been drawing in pencil, I've yearned to give you more color, and thanks to A-Dawn, we're acrylic and idyllic!

I came to see I'd have nothing suitable completed for his funeral, not even with overnight delivery. Then, I took a wonderful trip to finally take up a three year long invitation from my friend DAK, in the mountain- a good break to keep from the gloom. Now, we were in a crash that totaled our truck on the way back, but even then, we were basically OK as was Mr. Hahn, and fully covered, if dismayed. As Pop and Charlie drove us home from the Wal-Mart where we'd holed up thanks to the tow driver, we get a text: remember that movie we said we wanted to do? She got the Grant! We can start filming the documentary if you're still good!

We Good, We Good!

On some level, I got this painting to many stages where it looked in some way brilliant. Yet, my haste to send it to Oklahoma, absent of TJ himself, dissipated. I began thinking of it becoming an object to associate so much so with grief that it might be put away one day soon as a bad memory marker. So I waited. I learned a lot about painting this time out. There's still something wrong with it. But when would I ever want to finish a memorial painting for a best friend in the world like TJ? You NEVER want to face that. But you do. So much more intense for his wife and daughter. This is really for them, because he was really theirs, most of all.

Encouragement. Companionship. More real world trouble than 99% of the human race, but for the time he came on to chat or even share a call on the phone, he was these things 100% personified. He was honest from the start when we reconnected that I couldn't actually expect him to live anything like a normal life span now, and eventually he prepared me to begin making peace with the fact that one day, any day, the final message would come. In this life's world, anyway. Beyond a bit of death in the way, we're pretty much inseparable!

Here we are, singing one of his absolute favorite songs (favorite?) for his birthday in 2013.

By request from big Red himself:

This joy he strove to achieve in his agony reflects here. His daughter seemed very protective of her poor hurting Pa, in the sweet photo I modeled over and over again. His smile masked tremendous pain! But with Mama's help, they did make joy. The hardest part is going on to live a life while the person you love suffers alone at home, but TJ is beyond loneliness now, and pain. What a triumph it was to live. What a triumph it was to die. In their love, they found "A Better Place." That emotional place of family love, as viewed by the mother, is where the painting is set.

I will never forget his courage, for he has been part of my support system again not only these past six (at present)years, but on so many days when he could not reach anyone at all, and I was writing good stories about my lost friend as early as 2000 or so, this jazz-inspired story about us on the loose in Shannon as young'uns. He gave me a seat for his darkest demons, and allowed me to intuit many things too hard for emotional people to read, and tell him what I thought. We could do this because TJ, unlike so many people, never ever looked down on me, nor I, him. All his false sense of self-importance had been destroyed when the disease beyond diagnosis tore away his world beyond his will. Yet, he was glad for that, to be more pure as a spirit, while more crippled as a body. But yes, I know he missed a regular life, and there was no one more grateful for those who never really gave up on him.

Go to the very first post of this blog, if you want some idea of my friend; it's just a little thing, but I wrote it because I began this blog in Feb. 2009 for the purpose of TJ having my writing to read. It's time now to write this and maybe four other posts to tie up Volume One into a collection I can dedicate to Teej. He and I even began notes for a book about opioid addiction, with anecdotes included to make the case for cannabanoids.

I'm leaning on the first three years of posts for content, but many of my stories have a shot at appearing in Integr8d Fix vol. one by Christmas season. Besides, like TJ, I often have been at my best when I am simply a few words to read at your leisure. Our mutual friend Paula Hill Lewis asked me to make a printed book I think three years back now, and she'll be the first to know. Hope to end the month with Be Chill, Cease ill in print. Hope with me?

What a long, strange trip it's been.
RIP Troy Heath Jones, "B'Joy," "TJ" "Certified Electrician at age eleven."

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