Thirteen months later

It still brings me to tears to think about my dashed dreams from 13 months ago.  It partly brings me to tears because I feel like it took so long for that dream to travel to the one place on earth I really wanted to see, and now I feel like I will just never get to go anywhere outside of the USA.  The basic desire to travel and see things will never happen for me.  That's the way it feels.  Say what encouraging things you will, but it doesn't feel that way.  I don't sense I will ever again leave the borders of the USA.  Even now it still brings tears to my eyes.  People travel to and from other countries with ease, and I marvel at how they accomplish it.  I just don't know why it has always been the unobtainable for me.  It hurts.  It hurts every day.

So I can say right now that I don't have any dreams for the future.  I really don't.  It's like I went sailing and wound up completely stranded in the middle of a desert.  There is no way to sail again.

To live a life without dreams, without goals... that's where I'm at.  There's nothing left I really want except perhaps to live out the remainder of my days in relative peace and quiet and to write as the muse leads me.  I have little to no ambition to try anything new.  I have no energy or motivation for anything new.  I have no energy or motivation to hope for some goal in the future.  There is only now.  There is only today.  There is only my art, my creativity, my writing.  Everything else was given away in preparation for being in Europe (and I was glad to be rid of it regardless, although I do somewhat regret the loss of the three framed movie posters, but I had nowhere to store them or way to ship them).

I do not miss my car.  That is really something I was so glad to be unburdened from.  It was always a stress with street parking and moving it from one side to the other for street cleaning days.  If anything went wrong with it, I was pretty much strapped to fix it.  Not to mention the licensing and fees and gas, which is why I mostly ride my bike.  What a huge relief of stress that has been.

Ah the bike.  The bike that hasn't been ridden in nearly a year although I did just pump up the tires.  Perhaps now that the weather is a bit cooler I will go out again.  That's what I tell myself, but somehow that part of me has died too.

Now, I should also say that since arriving here in San Gabriel that it has honestly been the best year of my life.  It has been a year of near zero stress, a place of calm and quiet.  I finished writing one book that I was about half way through when I was on my way to England, and I am just about to finish its sequel.  Then I will write the third one in the trilogy, but there won't be a 4th in that series.  Also, the third book has to be finished before Jan 1, 2017 since that will be when S4 of SHERLOCK airs.  As these books are fan fiction based on where the stories left off at the end of S3, they will be null and void when S4 comes out, but I don't care.  They are still good books and I've been able to really sharpen my skills on them.  The first one is called THE BLACKBIRD SINGS AGAIN, and the second one is called THE BLACKBIRD AND THE SPARROW'S NEST.  The title of the third book has yet to be determined.  If you have not seen all 9 episodes of Sherlock, they will make no sense.

 

No, they will never be officially published.  No, I will never make a dime on them.  No, I will not be submitting them to the creators of the show to see if they want to do anything with them.  No.  Just no.  They are fan-fiction, and they will stay right where they are, and that's all there is to it.  However they are still copyrighted works.

Back in August 2014 when I was still two months away from heading to England, a purchasing frenzy happened in London for tickets to see Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet.  100,000 tickets sold out within a couple of hours for a show that wouldn't even begin for a year.  I was online in the wee hours of the morning trying my luck to get one... any ticket... and I got one.  That ticket was for Oct. 27, 2015.   I paid the full price which came to about $125 USD, and I asked them to hold it at the box office for me since I didn't really have an address for them to send it to anyhow. I figured that no matter where I was in Europe, I would be back to London in time to see Hamlet.  Such, was not the case, and the ticket remained at the box office.  I couldn't go claim it to resell it or give it away.  I asked the Barbican Theatre to at least send me the ticket for a souvenir, and I just got it.  So, it's an expensive souvenir. I will get it framed.  I didn't miss out entirely, however, as the production was filmed by the National Theater on October 15, 2015, and it was broadcast to cinemas around the world that same day.  Luckily I was able to see it in the same theater where I saw Cumberbatch in Frankenstein this time last year.  However, that was another $20 for Hamlet.  Now it is playing again on November 10 at the same theater, and I will go see it again.  Hamlet has turned out to be quite expensive.  I will see it in cinema as many times as it plays, which won't be much.

What will play in cinemas in early January, however, is the new episode of Sherlock called "The Abominable Bride."  It will air in the USA on January 1, 2016 and have a couple of cinema showings within the following few days.  Luckily for me it will be at the same cinema as Hamlet, and I plan to go both days, mostly because I just want to be with some other Sherlock people.  I've never met in person another Sherlock fan, and they are out there for sure.  I'll make up extra jewelry, especially charm bracelets, and I will take them to sell to other fans.

I won a year of free DirecTV back in June and just had it installed so that I would make sure I didn't miss this episode.  It is a one-off and is not connected at all to the other episodes.  The producers/writers decided they wanted to do one episode in the Victorian times just as a lark, and apparently everyone loved the story line so off they went and filmed it this past spring.  The story line is top secret, but there are official trailers for it.

So yes, there's a lot about Sherlock here, but I write it, so I live it, breathe it and inhabit it.

And yet still there is pain.  I won't deny it.  Pain of dreams lost that now seem so far out of reach that they can't be reached at all.  Pain that still brings tears to my eyes.  I know that it was God who shut the door, and no matter how much I wanted it open, He would not open it, despite the way being paved.  Despite everything.  Was it just to get me out of the situation I was in with rent I couldn't afford and a job that was eating my soul?  Was the bike only meant to get me this far and no further?

Here I am, just over a year in this apartment, and I am only just allowing myself to settle in, to put my stamp on it.  It is only now that I am starting to feel it is a home for me - not because of my landlord or neighbors but because I wasn't quite ready to say I was settling here.  Part of me always feels I am ready to pack the bike and go again, but the Lord doesn't really want me to spend one day without a firm roof over my head, and that's why He brought me here.  Make no mistake, I am blessed to be here.

I just don't know how to dream again.