Photo Essay (Sorta) - "Why I Have An Insanely Good Life"
 

I don't seem to write much lately. Coupled with the fact that I lack a decent digital camera, it makes me sort of hesitant to attempt this particular mode of self expression, but I hope that my Cellar family will forgive the artistic shortcomings and share with me what I want to demonstrate in this thread.

I have an enviable life. For all of my vulgarity, obesity, poverty and lack of sophistication - I live a life that, fifteen years ago, would have seemed impossibly unattainable. My world is so rich, so rewarding, so filled with love, friends, family and purpose, that I sometimes become overwhelmed.

Let me start with my wife. She is beautiful, intelligent beyond all reason, dynamic, frustrating, stimulating. She draws both men and women to her like moths to a porch light. I look at these pictures and wonder what the hell she's doing with the likes of me...

Here we are at a friend's recently purchased bar/pizza place, a greasy dive in a bad part of town...and it is perfect. The second pic is her at our last Samhain open ritual, a goddess incarnate, a priestess, witch, educator and friend to the otherwise friendless. Wow.

When Selene and I first met, I was a single father trying to steer a cognitively disabled 13 year old son back into a life that had been completely eviscerated by the frailties of his body and the departure of his mother from his daily life. The first pic is of my son Stephen, now 26, a young man lucky to be alive. A young man I'm lucky to have as a son. Sliding down beside him is my grandson, Joseph.

I never really wanted other kids, especially given the trauma that Stephen and I had undergone, but damn if I haven't been blessed by two more boys who have grown into fine young men as well. The second pic is of my stepson Colin, now 17, and his beautiful, intelligent, articulate and devoted girlfriend Kaylee...and my ever-present beautiful wife.

The middle child in all of this is Clifton, my 21 year old stepson. Socially semi-inept, nonstop talker, anime and hentai fiend, despiser of the outdoors...and mature and hardworking enough to have gathered together a group of his friends to live with him in our old house, paying rent and keeping us out of having to sell it for a major financial loss...all while being the sweetest kid you'd ever hope to meet. And his girlfriend beside him...

More amazing yet is the fact that I am part of a vital and spiritual community of Pagans who support each other, share the same sorts of events and interpersonal rituals that more mainstream Americans share. The second pic is the Wiccaning (think of it as a Pagan christening) of the grandaughter of Joni and Michael, a child born of a drug using mother; a child almost certain to have cognitive disabilities and physical handicaps as she ages. They adopted her...at nearly 60 years of age, this couple adopted their granddaughter so that their son, who was unaware that he had procreated until the child was born and the mother called him from the hospital, could continue his own growth and life progress. How special is *that*?

Oh...and see the tiny redheaded lass to the left, the lady with the Yorkies? She is a very good friend indeed. :-)

Oh my is SHE a cutie - your boy is real lucky!

Sorry to interrupt your great thread to admire hot women but i've learned from the best - you!

I have several more pics and words to share, but the hour grows late and family Xmas beckons come the morrow. Bear with me, share with me...and thanks for being here, one and all.

This is wonderful....! Keep going.

Elsopde, thanks for sharing such an intimate part of your life with us all. You have done very well for yourself and are a lucky man.

Beautiful life brother.

.

Lovely spode! More I say!

(when you've got the time o'course ;) )

Couldn't happen to nicer people.

I am again in awe of all that is you - what a wonderful and amazing family and life you have. - blessings to all of you.

Thank you, Elspode. This thread is inspiring. Please post more pictures. :)

I have a lot of awesome friends and associates in the local Pagan community. The first pic is my friend JC, my successor as President of Heartland Spiritual Alliance, and just a really great guy, drunk or sober. This pic was taken of him while he was preparing to do a sabre battle at Renfaire this past Fall. He'd make a great pirate if we lived anywhere near a large body of water, and he could go home to his wife and kids each night after a hard day of raiding.

The second pic is Russ. Russ and his mother own the longest running, most ridiculously successful Pagan/New Age store in Kansas City, in business for nearly 20 years now, while many others have risen and fallen. Russ is a consummate jeweler, a rake nonpareil, and just a generally good person to know. It is his place of business where I do the bulk of my sound gigs. My musical relationship with him goes back to 1991, when my longtime partner Lane and I, along with another Pagan talent, did the first real serious public performance I ever was involved with in his old location's performance space. Russ and his mother Barbara have provided our community with a nexus of sorts for nearly two decades now. HSA, the organization which puts on our local Pagan fest, meets there once a month. If you go there and spend more than five minutes, you'll see at least three people you know, and they don't even work there. Oh...and Russ has a totally hot girlfriend who is about 15 years his junior, a local newsgirl who has perhaps the finest pair of real boobs ever displayed at our festival.

This pic is from the Witches Ball this year...Russ was Pan. He made his entire costume, including the hooves.

I'm not very creative, so my own costume was primarily made of really inconvenient makeup. As usual, my wife was the main attraction, as evidenced by picture #1.

A week later, we had our own Samhain party here at our house. Firepit burning out back, and a whole lot of generally sexual drunken energy flowing all night long. See pic #2 for proof. See the Betty Paige clone Selene is mackin' on? She used to be my office assistant. Remember, the theme of this thread is "I have an insanely good life..." See the little redheaded girl to the right of the Selene/Paige cluster? She's a *very* good friend indeed.

Much as I wish I could portray my life as a complete sybaritic cluster fest, I'd be misleading you all. In truth, we are pretty run of the mill people once you get past the Paganism, Polyamory, partying and generally non-mainstream behaviors. As proof, I present you with pic #1, Selene with the children of her office assistant, whom we were babysitting one night awhile back. Yes, people trust us with their beautiful children. I believe they were having a tea party. These kids are bright, beautiful, open, trusting...in short, the very kind of kids that you would be totally scared to trust to anyone other than your local priestess and priest...

Pic #2 requires a bit of explanation, but it is a significant part of why my life is, in fact, so great...and I'll elaborate in the next post.

And now, the promised elaboration. The event pictured was back in September. It was ostensibly a combo birthday party for myself (9-25) and my lovely blonde friend and bandmate sitting at my left, Jill (9-16). We were the second and third youngest members of our graduating class, respectively (class of '74, Grandview High School).

The high school part is especially relevant because the combo birthday party was also a band party. Unfortunately, we don't see everyone's face in this pic, but all here are significant. Moving toward the camera from Jill, you see only the lovely hair of the lovely Kathie, wife of my lifelong friend and bandmate, Rich (also GHS '74), ridiculously talented guitarist, who is in the blue shirt with hands folded 'neath his chin. Apart from being his current bandmate, I have also had the honor of having been his Best Man, not once, but twice. His wife Kathie (his second wife, BTW) was the girl in my "cake" at my bachelor party the first time I got married (the cake was a cardboard refrigerator box with the work "CAKE" scrawled on it in magic marker). I think she was 17 at the time, when she emerged in a yellow bikini while pulling the cork on a bottle of Cold Duck, which exploded all over both of us. That was in 1978. We then proceeded to lie on the floor and watch Super 8 porn videos featuring John Holmes. We both nearly puked when the money shot occurred. One of the most remarkable memories I have of Kathie is the fact that, when I first met her, she drove a Ford Maverick that had a complete formal dining room set done in doll furniture on the rear window deck above the backseat...as in table, chairs for eight, sideboard, china cabinet, hutch, serving cart, candelabra on the table and a carpet. She retains an acute decorator's sense to this day. Beyond all reason...

Sitting directly across the table from me, in the blue top, is yet another bandmate, also named Kathy. I first met this Kathy about ten years ago when she responded to an ad placed in the UMKC student newspaper by Selene, seeking a musician to join the band configuration we were in together at that time. Kathy is a recovering lawyer, now a Masters level law librarian at UMKC, and is working on becoming an ordained minister. Next to her is her husband Jim, also a lawyer, who has recently bought into a small practice in Southern Missouri (Branson, basically). They live apart five days a week and commute back and forth to see each other. Yow. Kathy plays the shit out of hammered dulcimer and guitar. She's an old hippie/folkie, and one of the smartest, kindest, neatest people I know.

Moving again towards the camera from Jim is Sherri Becker, aka as Senorita Becker. Why is she known as such? Because she was my high school Spanish teacher, and that's what we called her then. She and Jill were very close during high school, to the extent that Jill's minor in college was Spanish. Their friendship has remained constant over these 30+ years, even while Sherri married a Venezuelan national and moved to that turbulent country, eventually divorced, and returned to the States. Sherri was my first hour teacher in my Senior year, and it was a rare morning that I didn't walk into her class stoned out of my mind from copious quantities of 7:00 AM ganja, only to have her force me to converse in Spanish, sometimes in front of the entire class, usually in the most challenging possible way. I asked her the night this picture was taken if she was aware that I had, upon occasion, been in an altered state of consciousness while being educated by her, and whether or not she deliberately took advantage of this possibility. She just smiled.

To Sherri's left is Karyl. Karyl was a GHS grad in '75. She dated one of my other musician friends in those days, a crazed stoner drummer/multiinstrumentalist named Mark. He is now a Church of God minister. Karyl is a Special Ed teacher. By pure coincidence, she and Jill worked together in the late 70's in the Johnson County Kansas Special Services department (read: working with retarded people). In the 80's, Karyl came to a party at Rich and Kathie's house where an old bandmate of Rich's, Lynn, was keeping his studio following his messy divorce from a Guatamalan National who was eventually deported after they broke up due to her being busted for selling coke. Karyl and Lynn hit it off, and have been married for about 20 years now. In the 90's, when she wasn't patient enough to work with special needs clients for awhile, Karyl was my office assistant at a roofing company. It was never boring. Karyl is emotionally dynamic to say the least, but she is one of my best friends, someone with whom I can mercilessly throw pointed barbs of nasty humor, and get as good as I give. She belches like a sailor, cusses like a longshoreman, and sings like an angel. Karyl plays flute and recorder in our band, and sings her heart out. We used to have "Western Day" when we worked together, wherein I would play endless mp3's of Frankie Laine, Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers and other such antique fare, all to irritate our boss. Karyl's husband Lynn's thinning dome is center and front of this pic.

The nexxus of this motley crew is the lady to Karyl's left, Lane. It is sort of difficult to explain Lane in any brief way. I first met Lane when she walked into my Sophomore English class, a transfer student from Baton Rouge, with straight blonde hair down to her ass, clad in a miniskirt, knee high suede boots, and a striped, form fitting knit top. I was immediately stricken to my core, and have never really gotten over it.

Continued below....

I was going steady with another girl when Lane and I collided. She made it pretty clear that she was somewhat less sexually inhibited than the girl I was with, and it wasn't long before I let her prove it. It was a good move for a not quite 16 year old boy to make, as it turned out.

I won't go into the sordid details of our torrid hippie relationship, but it was life changing for me...and apparently, still is. While we eventually parted six or eight months after first hooking up, we stayed close. Our binding tie was music. In fact, the binding tie with all of the people I've been rambling about was - and is - Music.

Boyfriends, girlfriends, houses, jobs, body parts, friends, lovers...all have come and gone in the intervening years since we were all so young and earnest in our formative GHS years, but somehow, against all odds and defying all reason...we five (and our sixth, Kathy) have remained. Until this particular band configuration, none of us had ever all played together, but each of us has always played with the other, either casually, in a band, in twos and threes and such. In the case of Lane and I, our basically full time partnership now spans 17 years, but again, we've *always* played music together. Between musical efforts, Life has gone on, and jobs, children, deaths, joys, sorrows, crises and triumphs have been shared in some varying measure between all of us. I have helped move these people from humble homes to more suitable digs. They have helped me paint and patch and pack and proceed along my life path.

Lane and her husband Lou were the people who first opened my eyes to Paganism, and now my life revolves around alternative spirituality and the community which follows such paths. That awakening, and creative efforts associated with it is what led to me meeting my wife.
The seeds of my entire beautiful existence were sown in the furrows dug by the people in that last picture.

*Now* do you understand why I am blessed?

Damn Hippies... grumble, snort, always laughin' and smilin' and shit... get the hell off my lawn.

Thanks for sharing your life, Elspode.
I would love to hear a recording of this group playing together, preferably jamming, because with the kind of rapport you guys must have I reckon it would be great.

Heh, heh, heh, so true.

:biggrin:

It's a great life Ep! Thanks for the tour. :D