Raymond to his brother Gary's: looking forward to a visit

Raymond called me a couple of times on his way to Phoenix, the last time in Flagstaff to ask for his brother's new telephone number, so I expect to see him soon! I don't know if that will be today or not.
He did say that a theater friend had invited him to go see "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" at the Herberger this Saturday night. I said, "Good, now you can represent me!" as I had finally made up my mind it would not be a good idea for me to try to climb to the rafters to see this play when I can barely make my way up the stairs of an unpopulated movie theater. I just don't do stairs very well any more. As I recall, that theater was the most difficult for me to navigate even back 7 or 8 years ago, let alone now.
Raymond is having his own website created, so he is going to work on that with someone. He has a date in Austin for Thanksgiving with his GF Diana Trevino to meet members of her extended family. I always love seeing Raymond but I know that Austin is calling him now as he had formed his own band in Boulder and is thinking about doing the same in Austin. Downtown Phoenix where Raymond did theater for years was just not a good fit for his country western musical roots. All his dad ever thought about was singing since he had such a beautiful unique voice, and Raymond has an equal love of performing as a singer along with honing his guitar skills. His dad relied on his cousin Pole for his music, but Raymond has been determined to accompanying himself well and has played with a lot of musicians learning from them as he was developing his singing ability. I love it when he is able to combine his own music and song with dialogue in a play, as he has done in his show about his dad's disappearance, "Bohemian Cowboy".
He and I keep a close watch on what westerns are successful in the movies, as of course making a country western movie with music and song is what he is also aiming to do. His ancestors on his Grandfather King's side were all cowboys, practically raised on horses. His dad had the great voice and musical ability and even the good looks go with it but not the emotional stability to become a 'star'. Raymond has taken star quality further and further, becoming at home in big cities as well as in the country, not letting any setbacks throw him or keep him down long. He keeps doing what he needs to do to make a name for himself, I think.
I knew my health was going to hold me back. I wanted a long life with my family more than I wanted fame and a short one. So that is what I aimed for. Becoming a star takes stamina and I did not have it. So it will be exciting to see what Raymond is able to do in Austin this winter with renewed determination, a year of complete sobriety, and the will to win with his many talents.

P.S. How do you like the beautiful new header Connie made for me?

On owning people

I am thinking this morning that owning people is a bad habit humans can hardly resist trying to do. I do not know what happened to the man trying to kill himself but I just ran into the alcoholic he was drinking with on the elevator and he had since fallen and broken his arm looked like, mashed his nose and teeth and had a black eye, hazards of the preoccupation of drinking. But the other man came through the wall last night which assured me he was still alive. I introduced the idea to this man of traveling to see me, invisibly, so we would not be subjected to the abuse I encountered with the last man in here I publically connected to. Other women felt they owned him and I was barraged throughout the relationship with threatening phone calls, evil looks, etc. Even after he died, a rather scary man paid me a visit saying he had come to collect my prisoner to take him back to his rightful owner in California, his ex wife. I had never seen a woman more determined not to give up ownership of a man. It was literally almost to the point of if I can't have you, nobody else will, when he up and died, no doubt helped along by her change of heart over the divorce and his ownership.
So the next time I ran into an attractive man I really liked I was a lot more wary. I thought up the idea of just meeting in thought rather than in the actual flesh. Since he was psychic, he liked the idea of traveling out of his body it seemed, but I never discussed it with him again, for fear that he might mention this to someone else and thus alert the media. I just simply noted whether he still seemed to be thinking of me from time to time.
In the interests of Doc I did tell him that I had this psychic relationship which would undoubtedly continue if he was impaired by his alcoholism to the point he could not think about any woman, or do anything with her should he like her. There was no question of a physical relationship. This was fine with Doc. He was prepared to pay the price of his alcoholism. I made as good of use of him as I could with his wide interests in the arts, film, acting, comedy, etc. He was still able to do most of those things better than many sober men which gave him the illusion that alchol was being kind to him.
But he has gradually become possessive and likes to give the impression of owning me whether he actually does or not. If I fight this he gets angry, so the alcoholic takes his toll. I can only fight so much then I have to stop and rest.
In the meantime a pleasant relationship with the other man was suddenly lost by his deciding to drink again. I did not see that this was going to help anything, but he was only human I suppose and thought to return to his former ways of indulging himself. Wherever he is right now, I am sure he is in bad shape, but he still comes through the wall occasionally. I asked him if he was all right last night and he said yes, as well as he could be. He is not sure if he can survive this fall fron grace but he is apparently still on the earth and trying.
I haven't seen him around here for a few days, so it is possible someone was able to persuade him to stay in treatment longer, so he had a chance of sobering up here. If he is still here, he will turn up in worse shape outside on his his beer runs to Circle K. Alcohol eventually runs out.
In the interest of helping him I have now revealed our psychic connection. So he will know that I have fought over the right to be free from ownership, especially by an alcoholic, up to this present date. I thought he was agreeable to the plan because he did not like to be owned either and was very wary of a public commitment. He did indeed finally connect to a woman in here who I thought suited him quite well, and I figured that our psychic connection would grow thinner and thinner until it perhaps disappeared, which I thought it was doing for a while. Then suddenly he did the worst possible thing to this relationship he could have done, he began to drink in a most disgraceful fashion as though he intended to drive every woman away for a thousand miles around.
Since I had never tried to own him in the least possible way this did not affect me too much as far as public humiliation went. However, since he was my only connection to a sober man, I started to suffer quite badly when the binge went on and on and it began to look as though he might die.
I asked him in a psychic conversation if he was angry at me for all the stuff I was doing with Doc. He responded that he knew drunks and Doc trying to act like he owned me did not impress him much. I told him outside one day last week if he knew that I had been in love with him for 5 years. He said of course I did. So I carried on this conversation telepathically.
I said I told him this in the interest of trying to help him, this time, no matter what anybody said. Or to help him on his way if he were to die. I wanted to tell him how much his sobriety had meant to me. It cheered me up every morning when I woke up. I was pretty sure I would encounter him bright eyed and sober that day so I was happy.
I said I was afraid that you lost faith in the power of your sobriety. But I thought I was doing what you wanted by not trying to own you. Had you wanted more of a connection to me I thought you would have made that known.
He said that he remained wary of any connection to a woman because of this ownership thing. He feared what freedom he had would be taken away without enough joy to take its place. And this fear became self fulfilling and was the trigger to ending 5 years of sobriety.
He said if he was to recover he would have to go back to having less and expecting less, as he knew he had ruined trust. He doubted if the other woman could still love him through all this. He said either way he intended to set her free. She would surely be free if he died and she would want to be free if he lived. He thought it could all be worked out amicably either way.
He said that his relationship to me was much less binding, ending each time he thought about me or I thought about him without knowing whether it would resume again. I said that was fine.
He said he had a tough time accepting Doc in my life but realized he had expected me to accept his relationships. I did accept them, including the last one.
Doc cannot claim me without sobriety to start with. He is scornful of that. So he has to try to act the part. Real life is not acting. It does not work. It only works in plays, but drinking men don't think that well.
I hope the other man is sobering up before death really does pay a call.

Colfrey takes off wig baring her bald alien head (Blue play reading Scene 3c)

I must explain that Blue, the alien, is the sober man in our society who is able to communicate telepathically, fly to the stars, triumph over aging and death, and all sorts of wonderful things, and he is helping the dying sister to find the life in her death.
The drunks represent the addicted members of our society who have lost their vision of what they can be in substance abuse. They cannot get off the ground. They cannot keep up with Blue. Of course these superior beings in our society have to practically remain invisible, their powers unleashed, because ordinary mortals are too jealous to stand them. Thus we see the lure of substance abuse in order to be accepted. The woman playwright is a threat also, as she is too all seeing to be loved. The more insight she develops the less apt she is to get a 'showing' on earth. People will not 'see' her just as they don't see the alien. She will find herself growing more and more invisible while still alive.
This is the way people have always greeted writers. They are suspicious and distrusting of them, so they try to get control of them by rewarding them with riches and fame if they will just stop laying quite so much truth on the protesting public. A good woman writer will very likely not be recognized in her time. And will generally be regarded as a failure if considered at all.
Lesser writers on the other hand will have no trouble finding fame and fortune. It will be a snap.
The alcoholic has tried to sabotage this play, but he has not altogether succeeded. The writer's stamp on it remains despite everything he can do to claim the credit for himself. Women playwrights must make do with addicted actors who are better than no actors at all. They do not fear them. They know the public will eventually get the play sorted out, and will recognize the power of sober Blue who looks with shrewd insight on the antics of the drunks. The drunk is the freak, not the extra terrestrial.