morning pages

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures are
All I can feel

it's snowing this morning in denver and i woke up early to an extremely quiet and white landscape. it all seems so peaceful and safe here inside my little bohemian love pad. but it can't stay that way. i have to trudge forward, shovel the walks, stop by the clinic, go to the hospital, drop by the pharmacy, see clients, do paperwork, do follow up, drive up north, teach 2 classes, and make it home in 13 hours to do much of it again tomorrow.

i have been operating under this schedule 3 x week for the last nine months and i must say i am starting to feel it. at first it seemed simple because my full time gig was not as full. i didn't have a full caseload, and i wasn't doing groups there. but now, with increased responsibility, i am finding that downtime is becoming more inportant. i'll get there no doubt. just not sure when.

i had this idea about helping get a long time sobriety recognition dinner going under the banners of the local advocates for recovery organization. last year, when i was on the bod, we did a training with ccar and learned that hosting annual dinners is one way they grow capacity and celebrate recovery in their state. of course there are individual potlucks and get-togethers here withing 12 step fellowships, however, there is nothing that encompasses a little of all of them and highlights long term recovery so the idea was to have it on mother's day- an idea i have heard before for the lgbt recovery community, and i think it's a good one. and the lgbt organization didn't use. i think that after one or two years, it would become a highlight in some family's celebrations. after all, whose mother isn't relieved when their child stops using to the insane pace addicts and alcholics use? 

so i pitched the idea to the afr and sbr chairs, and have offered to host a holiday party for the board members to further pitch the idea.. 5 months is a good amount of time to plan this kind of event.

i am starting to work "the artist's way" again this morning. for the next 12 weeks i am to fill 3 pages with my garbled and repetetive thoughts every morning before i get my day started. whatever blocks i have in my creative flow most likely are residing in my head. i have been inundated with insecurity and paranoia, and am hoping this will address this recent trend. or at least help get me closer to the root of it. i am facilitating a group during the week that is also engaged in this process and i wanted to participate in this with them to reflect and share their experience.  i am excited about the group.

i think i'll catch a few more zzzz's before i write this morning. it's only 3:30 and i like to look at my eyelids once in awhile. i have a long day ahead and can use the extra sleep. but before i do, i think i'll post today's sound choice. i heard it while watching "pedro" last night on logo- the film about pedro zamora ( of real world san francisco fame) i hadn't seen the film, and am glad i fnally caught it. there were so many things i remembered and so many things of which i hadn't been aware. the "take-away" for me was a reminder of how crushing the hiv diagnosis was (and is) and how the fear that it instilled created so much anger which created so much change in our culture. i ended my rememberance of  World AIDS Day 2009 in awe of the power of "nothing to lose". and the benefit of not giving up...

ps... that's me in the lower right hand corner of the pic on top. It was 1986-  the first year I was positive and it's at a party I had for myself  at my beloved apartment on logan blvd when I was leaving Chicago. I believe I am the only male in the photo still alive.

here is the cure with "pictures of you"




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lead

today's sound choice is the flobots performing "stand up"

4 minutes

as usual, i am typing my post the night before. tomorrow, i am emceeing the world aids day recognition ceremony at the denver capitol. it is held outside, and i will be introducing the lt.governor, the mayor, the head of hiv treatment at state health, and two prominent hiv doctors from our city. each will have about 3-5 minutes to get their message out and heard.

at the end, i have been asked to share a bit of my story, and as i have 3-5 minutes to speak, i guess i will try to say the following:

my name is rod rushing. so i am humbly standing before you on world aids day 2008. the theme this year is lead, empower, and deliver. i have experience with aids. i tested positive for hiv in 1985 in my then home of chicago. my best friend paul died 1 month after my test results came in. i was then 27 and have live almost half my life as a postive person. what followed paul's passing was a long stretch of fear and denial, as i basically went through the motions of my life anticipating that i would develop aids and die like so many of my peers. i moved to denver in 1987 with all expectations of dying in the home of my family here.

a quick death from complications from aids was not to be the path for me though. hiv has not been the deadly disease for me that it has been for so many. i cannot explain this. i did not always want this, either. but here it is. it is my story. hiv does not have to be a death sentence. it can be a manageable condition that can be kept in check with good nutrition, exercise, and eventually medication. almost everyone can have a long, healthy and emotionally full life. and this full life will best be achieved if everyone knows their status. ask the people you know their status. ask strangers. make hiv part of the conversation and impact stigma. work towards a safer city for hiv positive persons. and for non-positives. don't assume.

the advancements of science and medicine around this virus are both a miracle and mind boggling to me, as is the terror and pain that same virus is causing worldwide. but beyond those, there is a spiritual component of living with this virus. hiv has heralded a spiritual awakening in me. there has been a huge lesson and rejuvenating for me that i could not have foreseen in those early days. i had been engulfed in the wake of terror. i was frozen or numbed for over a decade. the voyage i am now embarking upon is to learn to live. to learn to manage. to learn to heal. to learn to forgive. and to lend a hand. and to me "living" is why there is a day of remembering. those friends are not forgotten. that pain was not for nothing. we must allow every affected person to have his/her own awakening. i- we- are waking up and looking beneath the surface and finding a better way to live. to laugh. to love. to lead.. to empower.. to deliver....

thank you..

today's sound choice is a remix of madonna and justin timberlake's "four minutes"

maestro

larry levan and two turntables- well before "and a microphone" even reared its head.

"We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it."
"We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves."

yesterday, i happened to catch a rerun of the documentary "maestro" on logo, which is about the underground origin of bouse music. it really highlights several new york (and chicago) clubs from the late 70's and features an homage to paradise garage. and no piece on this snapshot of american lgbt history (monumental if you are black and gay) could be without a bio on larry levan. he was the genius at the turntables at the garage, very much the heart and soul of the parties that happened there every weekend.

there are interviews with new york natives that talk about the underground and subsequent "club" feel the garage provided. several talked about how it helped them move from beyond their provincial and neighborhood attitudes and took them into a more metropolitan and more cosmopolitan sensibility. today we would no doubt call that global or multi-cultural. a few interviewed spoke of how having access to the garage, and spending so much time there, kept them from drifting into more dangerous and likely criminal lifestyles.

this is not to say that those days were not filled with rule breaking. drugs and public sex were very much a part of the scene. these particulars were interwoven into the fabric of those dance hall days. young persons experimenting with their minds, their freedoms , their bodies and their hearts, but all corralling themselves into dance halls to listen to beats and breaks, incidentally forming a movement and drinking in new ideas about acceptance, tolerance, and the value of personal expression.

larry was no doubt a genius. one can only listen to any of the hundreds of remix recordings available almost everywhere to get a hint of this. he understood and captained the direction of a subculture and helped careen it through one of the most catastrophic times in lgbt history. this was, of course, the onset of aids.

the themes in the documentary are very much the early years of gay liberation. stonewall happened in '69, and the beginnings of underground house-y music appeared at the loft and the paradise garage (and the warehouse in chicago) in the mid-70's. any of us around at that time can also remember vividly the stark difference in that decade's predominant attitude about drug use - especially cocaine that pervailed. the underground scene enveloped this popular attitude and sexual liberation just like a kangaroo. and these set the perfect stage for the wildfire of aids that shook the cities (and now the world) by storm. and i will probably never think of aids (in my own mind) without thinking of the dance hall culture that first became infected in america.

sadly, larry became engulfed in his drug use (as did many of us) and his own life cracked and crumbled as a fortune cookie does. as so many of his contemporaries died from aids around him, he began a far slower and perhaps more painful death from drug abuse.

there was so much that was bittersweet about our dance hall days. they held so much promise, gave so much supreme joy, and heralded so much terror. that generation definitely had a lasting effect on our culture at large in so many ways, but the fires of social change we conjured up in those dance halls is still burning wildly today. i can't go back and make the outcomes different and wouldn't really anyway. but i do believe that what was percolating in those mirror-balled testubes that we called our second home, has altered our modern world. i'm not sure if it's made it better, but i'll probably go to my next destination believing that indeed it has.

i definitely recommend giving "maestro" a once-over. the interviews are candid and very understated. the film seemed in black and white, although i was multi-tasking and unable to be sure. the interview with frankie knuckles is quite enlightening, capturing some aspects of him that don't always make it public, as he and larry were very good friends for many years.

today's sound choice is a larry levan remix of tracy weber's "sure shot"
sure shot baby- ain't no way we can lose...

warriors

image credit kirby sattler

i have been asked to emcee the world aids day remembrance in denver this year on december 1. it's a mixed bag for me. firstly, i would be blind not to realize that the problems that stem from aids are so much more daunting in other parts of the world. africa, india, cambodia, thailand just to name a few. the poverty levels that are part of the local cultures there exacerbate any of the ingrained issues of an hiv diagnosis. folklore, customs, traditions, belief systems, lack of education all lend themselves to help fuel an atmosphere of both internalized and external judgement around a diagnosis in many parts around the globe.

here in denver, there are no obviously visible signs of this. at least that we bother to look at. but there still is stigma here. and go outside denver, and the environment is completely different in rural colorado. in all of america i would presume. the passage of the anti gay-marriage legislation that has just taken place in four or so states around this nation attests to the fact that although fear and ignorance may not carry the day in metropolitan areas, they are alive and well around the rest of the country. and this creates an environment of nonacceptance, judgement, and fear for an hiv diagnosis.

you must be gay.... or bi.... or shoot drugs are perhaps the first thoughts that come to mind when it is disclosed. and i think those thoughts come to mind for the persons who are infected. this must be a punishment for my actions. i am evil.... i have been tainted.....i am not lovable.

these thoughts- and i believe they are real in people who are living with the virus- kick start a state of denial, secrecy, and ultimately the perpetuation and spread of the virus.

now i know that none of this is news. this is not an earth shattering post. i guess my question, as we approach another world aids day, is "what are you doing to stop the perpetuation of this environment of discord we have in our own backyard?" how do we resist the ease and comfort of letting it be someone else's problem? how do we help to unlock the shackles of guilt and judgement for the increasing numbers of minorities and impoverished americans who are undergoing seroconversion? how do we include this issue in the package of gay and lesbian civil liberties and become proactive and inclusive. how do we start to wrap ourselves in a rainbow flag and actually embody the concept?

i guess it starts with me.....

today's sound choice is definitely one of my alltime favorite artists... here is laura nyro performing "will you still love me tomorrow"

thanks to richard kearns at aids-write for the heads-up on this vid.

world aids day

There wasn’t a single story about AIDS on World AIDS Day.

an excerpt from a 2004 article posted on the actupny website

i hope you read the older article. crystal and hiv are still linked in the gay community. things may be starting to change, but it's not a done deal. and there are prisoners taken on a regular basis. today, i take a stand. i won't support the idea that somehow meth use is harmless. i will support your ability to make that choice, but i won't pretend that i haven't seen too much damage. i have seen it. i have been on the frontlines. i don't want to forget where i've been or what i've seen.

and i can say "never".
i can't be with you again. i never want these feelings to ever come again.
you'll never hear me crying. you'll never see my trying, to love you once again.
your love is so past tense.