adios 2012

Dear 2012,
You have been a bit difficult. You put me through a living hell and tried to kill me about halfway through. For the first time in my life I had to face the fact that you might indeed be serious about it this time. You pushed me to reconcile a great many differences with others and rearrange my life, ultimately for the better, but certainly not with ease. You were filled with fears, tears, pain and bruises. In the final stretch you finally let me feel comfortable again and seem to have brought me a most unexpected bit of good fortune and happiness.
I'm glad we're finally through with one another and it is time to move along to 2013. Hopefully all the things we did in 2012 help me appreciate the fact that within some kinds of uncertainty there is an abundance of hope and beauty. Aside from that clear lesson there isn't really much about you that I care to repeat.
You certainly were not the best of years, but as I look back over it all at least I survived you and manage to find ways to thrive.
Thanks,
Lanceroo

recently obsessed...

I find myself wandering a great deal lately.

In a place unfamiliar with foot traffic I still walk in an attempt to clear my head...but the head is never entirely clear, the WIP is always a companion to these journeys.

Though Caleb is still as soft spoken as ever, he has become a man in full and finally has some fairly strong ideas of his own about the world and his relationship to it...and that accent that was once humiliated out of him has changed greatly. The years of vagabonage have made him a foreigner in almost any land. Those close to him have their ideas of where he belongs or where he may be from, but he has come to a place where he feels compelled to claim something, someplace of his very own.

He lives under the sovereign flag of a few ideas...

• art, or rather...aesthetic.
• isolation/privacy.
• love. 

He has grown to realize that after the years of wishing to belong that his true heart and self has lost that desire. What he actually wishes and dreams for is a retreat.


It will come.

He will go to great extremes and distances to get it.

To do so he will have to let everything else go. He will finally silence all his ghosts.



 

The Day That Almost Wasn't.

Between June and August my health was the worst it has ever been.

In the most simplified terms, my immune system crashed.

I entered the hospital with a rare form of pneumonia, a form that a great many friends over the years went into the hospital and never recovered from.

I found myself both ill and terrified. Drifting in moments of hopelessness. Doing so alone. A partner of four years that could say little more about the situation other than, "I don't want to have to deal with coming home and finding you dead."

Too far from my family to have them at my bedside when I needed them. I had spent most of my adult life in exile, a self imposed and diligently fulfilled exile.

A brief set of thoughts were constant in my mind:

• I need my Dad.
• I want to write another book, the one just isn't enough.
• I want to fall in love and be loved again.
• I want to find a place that feels like home.
• I want a puppy.
• I fear I will not have the time for any of these things to come to pass.

My father passed away almost six years ago. The books will someday come. Love, though something I do indeed think is one of the greatest experiences of life, needs to wait until I've taken some time to enjoy my recent discovery that for the first time alone does not feel lonely. I have finally found a place, a culture, that feels like home here in Texas. A puppy is a major commitment that will come when the time is right, probably far in advance of another partner. Even though I very clearly almost died three times in the course of two months, I have recovered and have a great many years left ahead of me to begin to dream again.

Just a few very difficult months ago I was fairly certain that this birthday would not happen. The grave situation I found myself in seemed to suggest that Lance Reynald would indeed be dead and buried by forty-one years of age.

It is with the most humble gratitude that I thank everyone for all the beautiful birthday wishes sent my way today, truly from the depths of my heart I am most thankful to each and every one of you.

The greatest gift this year has been the day itself, the one I was certain wasn't gong to come to pass.

Thanks to everyone that believed even when I didn't, I know your wishes, energy and love were all a part of my making it through.

All my love, all my heart, to all of you. For always.

xo. LMR

audio influence

It is no real secret that I'm influenced greatly by music, or specifically; lyrics.

It is and had always been the way I write, perhaps a trail effect of being the first MTV generation, my mind hears and "sees" music as inspiration for literary vignette.

Lately one simple phrase has been stuck in my head. Such phrases are subject to great scrutiny once I have them. Scribbled on scraps of paper and tucked into a pocket to considered, written on the margins in my journals, often placed somewhere in my mind to sit there as though waiting for the interrogation...in a solitary chair, middle of a boundless space under a bright bare bulb pendant suspended from nowhere in particular.

• who do you belong to? 
• whose heart do you live in? 
•  are you shared by two? by three? (often in the LR world, it does come down to 3. closet polyam, perhaps.) 
• Are you ever really spoken? Or are you something just known, felt? 

 a subtle kiss that no one sees

I believe you belong to two. You inhabit a moment in the beginning for them. You are the essence of why they are together. You are the most private part of them that some of the others don't understand. You are not a secret, but a reserve. A protective reserve. Tenderness that is everything to the two. You are the moment that makes the two of them feel complete. And you were never expected. You make their love for one another feel effortless.

unshakable images

there is a certain beauty in discovery. as a writer, such discovery is constant. every detail, subtle and nuanced has some potential to it. my mind operating as a camera or tape recorder attempting to observe, absorb.find the things that will set my imagination ablaze with elements for more work. years ago I thought I needed a muse. I've had a few, many of them lost forever, taken too soon. Unreachable. I've had two that are still out there that inspired me to strive and be a better me. One is my ex-wife, who is now the wife to a better man for her than I could be. The other is the one I wanted to make all my/our daydreams come true with. We still share some kind of bond but our lives just stopped syncing up so well. I think we both know the other is there, perhaps even in the realm of the one that got away...who really knows. Different lives in different countries, dreams and hopes that just didn't carry us through. C'est la vie. I've begun seeing the muse in life itself. Images that pass me by, observed. Staying sharp in my mind to be polished and embellished with daydreams and stories of their own. The modest struggling couple trying to plan their home over coffee. The late night breakfast a table away in an all night diner. The boy that got cold feet after sharing such beautiful words. The cowboy with the lollypop. Nights in the driveway watching the night sky and wondering where those other watchers might be. Stories are flooding my mind. New and old ones alike. The old ones so weighted with truth that they worry me. They do indeed need telling, but they may end up burning bridges...or, if I'm lucky they'll end up building them. There is much work to do, but in time you'll see them all. I hope by then you'll understand and think they were worth the wait.

recrafting

dear abandoned blog and possible audience, perhaps it is time I got back to you. it seems as though I still have a few things to say now and then. god knows i've been driving my friends and loved ones crazy these past few years, let alone the regular rants on facebook. perhaps this is a better venue.

Lance Reynald shared an Instagram photo with you

Hi there,

Lance Reynald just shared an Instagram photo with you:

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Thanks,
The Instagram Team

Thought...

of firsts.

Yesterday was my 40th birthday.

On my 25th I had reasons to believe that 40 would never happen, my life and circumstances were in a rather challenged space.

From my 13th on I've never really been too fond of my birthday, it has always been a day of errors, disappointments and far too much introspection.

Friends and loved ones either forgot entirely, got the day wrong or just found themselves so caught up in life that they somehow came up missing the day.

My mom stopped acknowledging my birthday around that time. It took me years to reconcile that this oversight was her defect and not my own.

I've heard that 40 is the time when your soul is ready to enter its era of wisdom.
In so much as I take any such things to heart this seems a reasonable thing to believe.
With that in mind I feel that for the first time in roughly 27 years I actually was able to make it through that single day without the senses of regret and foreboding...

Perhaps the era of wisdom has finally allowed me to just appreciate the day and truly let go of the unpleasant parts of what led to it.

I'm fortunate and even a little blessed to have those that remain an active part of my life and grateful for those that have passed from it. Though I still have certain doubts as to whether or not I'll manage 40 more years here, I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

Thank you to everyone that made getting this far possible.

xo. LR.

Up From The Blue!!!

I've been waiting years to be able to say this...

HAPPY LAUNCH-DAY, WONDERTWIN!!!

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best thing I've read in years!

UP FROM THE BLUE, the debut novel of Susan Henderson.

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