The Memorial Day "Special Gift" . . .

Oh, Dear, Dear Patrons,

We pride ourselves on being the keepers of "EVERYTHING", particularly keeping those bits of flotsam and jetsam that could prove MOST embarrassing to our friends.  Well, all I'll say now is that I have found a precious gem of a memory and will be preparing it for duplication and distribution to the patrons lucky enough to have reserved a spot at this year's Memorial Day BlowOut. Or . . . in the common vernacular . . . I got the goods on one of you !!!!

Be Here or Be Talked About!

 - Q

The Song Remembers When . . .

And so . . . you're standing in line at a deli . . . box of fix-your-own salad from the salad bar . . . and a song comes over the muzak . . . and it's all you can do to pay for your lunch, make it to the elevator, then up to the office, where you shut your door quietly . . . and let yourself cry.

Walpurgis Night . . . 2009

Tonight is often the night designated as Walpurgis Night, the night before May Day, the Festival of Beltane (whose opposite way festival is Samhain  . . . or Halloween).

And tonight is the night that Julia and I went to see Fleetwood Mac, and Julia and I got to see Stevie Nicks perform "Storms" which they are doing on this tour for the first time ever.  It is the lyrics from "Storms" that Deb selected for her Memorial Plaque (So, I try to say "Goodbye" my friend, I'd like to leave you with something warm / But never have I been a blue, calm sea / I have always been a storm).

And tonight is the official end of my dark period, although I've been struggling my way back into the light for the past week or two.

But I've learned a lot, and I did manage to avoid any visits, or any major events during April, was able to take care of many minor (and a few major) details along the way, which has certainly contributed to my sleeping a whole lot better than I have been.  And I feel like after three years of being "de-constructed" after Debbie died, that I've laid the first few tentative bricks towards the "re-construction" of Quentin Faust, whatever that will finally look like, who knows.

I certainly know what I don't want, and often times in my life knowing that has pointed me in the right direction, and I hope it holds me in good stead at this cross-roads as it has in the past.

May will be a busy month (although maybe not if they keep closing things down in fear of this swine flu, but don't get me started on that tonight).

Julia has many performances, banquets, and activities this month, my nephew Jaedan graduates in two weeks, and I'll have the group down for the Memorial Day Weekend, when The Hotel Abandon officially opens for the Summer Season.  But I am hoping that as I "ramp up" again, I don't go full tilt into the craziness that was  my life before this "April Darkness" that has been so kind and so instructive to me at the same time.

I wrote these words down right before a very significant turning point in my career, almost ten years ago, and tonight, they seem appropriate, and I hope they are as prophetic for the next ten years as they were for the last . . . 

"Now is the beginning of the end of your searching"

"Praise be to all of your ghosts and guardian angels"

- Q