An Attempt to Clarify and Communicate with Family and Others about Me:

In a letter from -B- that I received when I was living in Bellingham, WA during fall 1995, the letter contained a closing line of: "opinions are like assholes, everybody has one."

I remember that the letter was two pages on front and back of one page and that I thought it a rambling letter until I read the closing line, which struck me as implying that I was an asshole for having traveled to Bellingham, WA via Maine and across the USA originating from Gaborone where my decision to leave -EH- and -JL-'s compound in Gaborone culminated with -JL- shouting at me and kicking a white, plastic chair towards me at an outdoor lunch table.

The argument between us was that I wanted to learn how to write and wanted to go to libraries and read so that I could learn to write.  -EH- and -JL- offered me one of two other choices for me to keep busy while in Gaborone: aerobics instructor class or scuba diving in a swimming pool.  I did not want to do either class, but I enrolled in aerobics class during evenings at the gym and spent days at the University of Botswana library.

I left Gaborone due to irreconcilable differences between -EH-, -JL- and myself in that I did not have space to pursue reading in libraries and learning how to write as I was practically illiterate at the time with only a high school diploma, which did not amount to much in terms of educative processes for me.  I was almost "stupid" at the time and knew it.  

So, I decided during fall of 1993 after my first hospital visit in NYC when I was attending SFSU that I wanted to "learn."  Learning for me meant reading and writing.  Upon arrival in Bellingham, WA: I immediately sought out the university library and spent twelve hour days over three years reading and writing in the library while sleeping in my vehicle over the three years.

During June of 1995, I enrolled at a community college in Bellingham, WA and signed up for an independent course study titled: "Write like Hemingway."  The professor with whom I studied writing like Hemingway whose initials were -CV- stated to me at the conclusion of the course that I had found my "voice," as in a writing voice.  -CV- issued an A for the course at the end of summer 1995 and shared my writings with his literature class.

However, during June of 1996 when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia: I literally lost the "writing voice" I had garnered during the write like Hemingway curriculum in terms of not being able to verbalise coherently or write coherently.  I thought and mentioned to -EH- in an Oregon motel room where we stayed over a weekend trip at the time that I needed a "home" as to a reason why I was diagnosed, given that for everybody: it is 50/50 environmental/biological; with some people 30/70 and other people 80/20, depending on ratios.

Part of my thinking as to a reason for my diagnosis was such that I had never known a home base in my life with my family spread out all over the world and no personal contacts or networks to whom I could go to for reprieve in Bellingham, WA or anywhere.  I knew nobody but the one so called friend -K- whom I originally went to Bellingham, WA to visit with -K- stating to me that I had come to his "turf," i.e. Bellingham, WA.

So, I decided to move to Maine upon invite from -B-.

Since moving to Maine having been diagnosed with schizophrenia during June of 1996 in Seattle, WA and hospitalised once before 1996 during June 1993 at a hospital in NYC where I was immediately put into an isolation room on the ward for three days without anybody to talk to other than a doctor for five minutes of each day that I was in the isolation room, I have been called as many epithets as an auctioneer can spit out in a spiel.

I would posit that I won't repeat the epithets that I have been called for sake of not turning this piece of writing into a "rant" and keeping the tone communicative, but I will repeat them anyway with a disclaimer that the epithets have hurt my feelings over the years.  Whereas I would be angry a lot due to the frustration of being called epithets because of whatever reason (stigma? judgement?), I am now concluding that epithets I have been called are what people think of me: as in peoples' opinions of me.

Epithets that I have been called since moving to Maine during October 1997 are: pathetic; crazy; teatsucker; motherfucker; schizo; you hear voices; alkie who swills his drinks with sperm; it's all in your head; zero credibility; faggot; mentally ill (as in "what are doing with him: he's mentally ill" to two different girlfriends of mine over two different dinners); chicken; basically nuts; don't have anything to do with him, he'll make your life a living hell; manipulative; lunatic; I'm going to fuck you, fuck your family and god is going to get you; money talks, bullshit walks; you have milked schizophrenia for all it's worth; why doesn't he pull himself up by the bootstraps; etc.

The epithet: "it's all in your head," triggered me into hanging myself at the property in Portland, ME on May 29, 2008 because I had had enough of -EH- saying "it's all in your head" to me for years on end since 1996 when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  To this day: I cannot and could never communicate anything with -EH- on a verbal, communicative level.  As of late, -EH-'s twin sister concurs with my assessment in my trying to communicate with -EH- in that -EH-'s twin sister has said to me that she was my age now before -EH- would let her finish a sentence.

During 2010 over the phone, I mentioned to -JL- that I would give up trying to talk to -EH-.  -JL- said to keep trying to communicate with -EH-.  Since 2010, I have tried to communicate with -EH- to no avail.  It would not matter if I told -EH- that the sky is blue.  -EH- would not take my word for it and she would have to consult somebody else about it.

The conclusion that I draw is that epithets I have been called are reflective of my family, my family's friends and strangers' opinions of me and the definitive conclusion might be for me to disappear as it is obvious that I am considered a kind of pariah to other people (including family) because of whatever reason.

However, I have a cat and dog to think about in life: not to mention a wife!  So, I am not sure what to do at this juncture in my emotional state concerning family.  I understand that it is almost impossible for an impression to impress upon an impressionist who created an impression, but I need to know if the communication herein is clear enough to elicit a definitive conclusion about me from -EH- and -JL-, among others in my life to whom this piece of writing might be of concern.

Am I going to be threatened with eviction?  Am I going to be banned from -EH- and -JL-'s home, as has happened?

Bear in mind: statistics show that 90% of the two million people who are diagnosed with what I am diagnosed are unemployed.  95% smoke.  77% of cross genre media depict people diagnosed with schizophrenia as psychopathic criminals.  3% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia are in jail: a statistic which reflects inmates from general populations of the USA.  Lastly, my doctor has said that a lot of people in the community have "misjudged" me.

So, as a last ditch attempt to elicit a definitive conclusion about me from people whom I have known all of my life: do people wish me "dead" or to disappear because that is the conclusion I draw and the conclusion which has been impressed upon my conscience in light of herein context?

On another note: I am a self published author who may have an opportunity to be hired as a Peer Educator in a psycho-social class at a college in Maine.  If I secure a position as a Peer Educator at the college, I may be able to vend my books and/or require reading of my books for students in the cla$$.  I am currently engaged in talk of my securing a Peer Educator position at a college with a State of Maine vocational counselor who has read some of my writings and raved about them saying to me that I am an "excellent writer."

It would seem that "reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting" in that I have regained my voice in writing which I lost during 1996 when I was diagnosed and that my writing voice might pay off in the not too distant future, as of October 2014.

Other prospects are odd jobs to which I apply and sometimes secure and other times do not secure. Some jobs that I have held in that past were at a university for eight years simultaneously working as a superintendent at the building where I live in Portland, ME until I hung myself and quit everything due to the fact that I gave up life because of epithets impressing upon my conscience without my being able to communicate otherwise about myself or experiences: just deemed "basically nuts!"

In the coming weeks I am going to decide if something on the communicative level with people in my life has changed with this herein last ditch effort to communicate myself to people in my life and if not: I will be taking the dog and cat back to their respective pounds where I adopted them, leave the vehicle in the driveway at the Portland, ME property and board the Greyhound to eat baloney sandwiches outside of San Francisco City Hall where homeless people convene, or, die in a ditch.

I was never on a so called "acid" trip or called -JJ- when I lived in SF like -JJ- insisted during February 1993 and -PL- asked if I was on acid or that I called -JJ- in a call -PL- placed to me at 7PM PST February 23, 1993 while -PL- was in Rochester, NY in order to ask me if I made that call in my dorm room at SFSU on 802 Font BLVD, SF, CA.  I did not know -JJ-'s phone number at the time, as -JJ- contested that she did not know my phone number from notes on record during the time.

At the time, I was beginning to go to A.A. with a sponsor in S.F. and when I heard that I was accused of calling -JJ- with baby at 5AM CT during the previous week of February 23, 1993, I was livid at some New Yorkers with whom I went to school in New York because I thought that the New Yorkers with whom I went to grade school had pranked -JJ- stating that they, the New Yorkers with whom I went to school, were me saying "I am eight people" and that I was on acid and that they, the "pranksters," would take care of me.  (I have since read -EH-'s notes from Gaborone about the incident at the time and have the notes in possession today, October 26, 2014: the which I have thought that I might scan and post on a blog).

The point: I implore family and others to "not judge, lest ye be judged" and to open a communicative with conclusive, conversational relationship with me for the first time in my life at my being 41 years old.  I have tried to communicate the details herein verbally for years on end to no avail and I have supposed that it has been wasted time for me to try and mend trust bridges with family over "lies" about me.

Hence: if I am not able to communicate to -EH- about -EH- paying $229/month to the cable company between 2013 and 2014 when the subscription cost is $118/month or that squirrels come into the attic at the Portland, ME property off of tree limbs in the back yard and the limbs need to be cut back by an arborist with -EH- retorting that squirrels come in the attic off of power lines in front of this property: that the power lines need to buried, etc.; then, I give up and either need money to maintain the dog, cat and wife or disappear. 

Meanwhile: I continue my search for some kind of a paying gig and/or community involvement so as to offset accounting from -EH- with a job shadow on October 27, 2014 @ 8am until noon at a dog kennel or else odd jobs and I will be hearing about a Peer Educator position by next week or the week after next week. 

Otherwise, if my relationship statuses with my family continue on the tract that they have been on since eons ago: then I might just have to disappear.  I just can't stand the love/hate relationship that my family and others present to me in my communications with family.

If I tell y'all on January 3, 2014 that it is fifty below outside and that it is predicted to be a coastal storm with no more than two inches of snow and thirty degrees above 0ºF the next morning and to put the dogs in the mud room on paper instead of letting the dogs outside to pee: then please believe me and do not call me "lunatic" and "mentally ill" while locking me out of the house without my dog in fifty below temperatures!  

I hope that this message clarifies and communicates with family and others to whom it may concern about me and my being.  I only ask that I be afforded a little respect as a human being, the kind of respect that Russ, the dog, taught me in how to treat Patch, the dog: "it is important not to overlook love." 

Sincerely, -JB-

NPR Facebook Exchange about Ebola:

me: their blood transfusion donations are worth millions...

xyz: Oh good idea! Let's exploit them since they're poor and have no options. Do you really think that, if their blood was used, they would receive any benefit from it?

me: My statement is a facetious statement about the way of the world much in the same way that a flat chested woman can raise 100,000$ for a b00b job and I can't raise $2 for http://peersponsorship.blogspot.com as well as the fact that 1% of the world's population who live on NYC's Park Ave. has accrued more wealth than the poorest 50% of the world population leading to profound income and quality of life disparities in populations up to and including a lack of clean water and food for at least 75% of the world's populations while people fill a pool in Vegas (a desert) so a dog can swim in it.

Depletion of world, natural habitats through exploitation of resources (which caused the Ebola outbreak in the first place along with civil wars and mass scale devastation to human and animal habitats) is just so Steve Jobs, et al. can own a super yacht and you and I can type away on a crappy computer that would not work were it not for exploiting the Congo of its minerals causing militias to manifest over greed. Don't talk to me about "exploitation" when I am chronically unemployable even as a dishwasher and must panhandle to rub two dimes together!

"Johnny on the Spot:"

"Richard!?  Richard!?"

Richard hears his mother call his name with urgency from the front door while he lounges on the sun deck out back drinking beer and smoking cigarettes on a crisply, cool fall evening in New England at a log cabin.

"Coming..."

Richard immediately rises from the lounge chair on the sun porch and enters the door to the house off of the deck.  His father is half on a couch and half on the floor in the living room recovering from a hospital visit and cannot rise to go to the bathroom while Richard is visiting having driven his mother and father to the cabin home from a hospital twenty miles away.

"Alright.  Take my hand," Richard says to his dad as his father tries to lift himself up off of the couch and half on the floor, but his father slips with socks on the slick wood floors of the living room and falls back onto the couch.

"June!  June!"

"Here.  Take my hand again," Richard says propping his left foot against his father's right foot at an angle.  "You won't slip.  Look at the angle."

In a sudden moment of confidence in his son, Richard's father grabs ahold of Richard's hand and Richard at 155 pounds pulls his dad of 250 pounds off of the floor and couch into a standing position while Richard leads his dad to the bathroom, holding his dad's right elbow with his left hand and holding his dad's right hand with his right hand.

"Don't reach for that!  It has wheels and will slide out from underneath you.  It won't support you," Richard says to his dad as they walk a few paces to the bathroom and his dad reaches for a table with wheels.  Richard's mother, June, hovers in the vicinity of the son and dad seeing to it that her husband is put to bed in the downstairs bedroom after urinating in the bathroom.

Richard stands by holding his dad's right elbow as his dad urinates into the toilet and then they shuffle at his dad's pace to the downstairs, guest bedroom in the log cabin.

"There.  Now aren't you glad that you sent me to that Iowa wrestling camp?"

"Yes.  Yes, I am."

"What did he say?"

"Never mind."

"No.  What did you say?"

"All I said was aren't you thankful that you sent me to that Iowa wrestling camp ..."

June, Richard's mother, removes her husband's sweat pants and underwear at the door of the bedroom while Richard's dad stands about to sit on the bed, but the pants are swaddled around his dad's ankles and Richard exclaims:

"Why did you do that?  Oh!  Jesus H. Christ!  Alright, dad ... talk small steps to the bed, very small steps.  Shuffle or you'll trip."

Richard's dad sits on the bed just in time before falling on the floor again tangled in his sweat pant bottoms around his ankles.  June brings the urination bottle that the hospital issues earlier in the day at discharge.  Richard's dad lies down and asks for a phone.

He calls his friend who lives up the road.

"Should I take the medicine?" Richard and his mother overhear Richard's dad say over the phone.  "I can't manipulate anymore ..."

Richard and his mother stand at the kitchen sink within steps of the downstairs bedroom door and overhear the conversation.

"Why would he call Gil for medical advice?" June, Richard's mother asks.

"Because he plays a doctor on TV," Richard retorts: a joke at which his mother laughs.

Later in the night after Richard's dad is asleep and after Richard helps his dad once with urinating in the bottle that the hospital issues saying "just stick that cock in there and piss," Richard checks the urination bottle to see if it is filled, but finds out in the morning that his dad empties urine from the bottle throughout the night without Richard's help.

Locales of My Life:

La Luz, New Mexico
Current city

Bethel, Maine
Moved on October 1, 1997

Seattle, Washington
Moved on June 1, 1996

Bellingham, Washington
Moved on September 1, 1994

Gaborone, Botswana
Moved on January 1, 1994

San Francisco, California
Moved on August 1, 1992

Atlanta, Georgia
Moved on August 1, 1991

Southborough, Massachusetts
Moved on September 1, 1989

New York, New York
Moved on August 1, 1983

Bracknell
Moved on September 1, 1981

Freetown, Sierra Leone
Moved on September 1, 1973

Lubumbashi, Zaïre, (Democratic Republic Congo) June 1973
Hometown

What I Know about Ebola:

Ebola is a virus first detected in villages along side the Ebola River and it is named after the Ebola River in the Congo during the early 1970's.  At the time of the first detected outbreak of Ebola, the Ivory Coast soccer team is supposed to play against the Congo (then known as Zaïre) soccer team, but the Ivory Coast contends that the team doesn't want to go to the Congo because of Ebola. However, the governing soccer franchise administrators say that if the Ivory Coast team does not go play the game in the Congo, the Ivory Coast forfeits.  The Ivory Coast team goes to the Congo, plays and when the Ivory Coast scores the first goal, the Congolese crowd stands up and jeers: "Ebola! Ebola!"

The 1970's Ebola outbreak is either stemmed or runs its course with several of the Western doctors in the Congo at the time succumbing to the virus.  It is thought that the Ebola virus is transmitted through an exchange of bodily fluids between people and people are first infected with the virus by eating so called "bush meat," such as bats and monkeys.  (Monkeys are also thought to have infected humans with the AIDS virus, or, HIV through someone being bitten by a monkey at some point in time.  AIDS or HIV is also spread through direct, bodily fluid contact, but unlike Ebola: does not survive in open air).

During the 2014 outbreak of the Ebola virus, news reports are stating that the Ebola virus could mutate into an airborne contraction of the virus akin to the flu: if the epidemic in West Africa is not stemmed.  (The CDC admits that Ebola might be airborne on October 14, 2014).  As of October, 2014, approximately 9,000 people in West Africa are dead of the Ebola virus and two confirmed cases of Ebola are contracted by health professionals outside of West Africa: a nurse in Madrid, Spain, whose husband is quarantined and whose dog named "Excaliber" is euthanised, and a nurse in Dallas, TX, USA, whose husband and dog are quarantined while authorities burn all of their possessions and vacate their neighbours from adjacent domiciles.  There are other suspected cases in the USA at regional hospitals, such as at Mt. Sinai in New York City and Maine Medical Centre in Portland, ME, but tests prove Ebola virus is not detected in those cases.

Also, at least six Med Sans Frontier doctors in West Africa contract the disease and are life flighted in a specially equipped plane from West Africa to Atlanta, Nebraska and on October 13, 2014: a German doctor is life flighted to Germany for treatment of Ebola.  The German doctor dies of Ebola in Germany on October 14, 2014.

Further, it is thought that the first case of Ebola during 2014 is in Sierra Leone by one individual who then transmits the virus through bodily contact with a relative who then contracts the virus and Ebola spread.  The entire country of Sierra Leone is put on lockdown while health workers go from house to house searching for Ebola victims so that the victims can be isolated immediately.  Concerns are that people touch one another, fawn over sick or dying family members and then contract the virus themselves through bodily fluid contact, such as sweat.  A lot of mistrust towards governments and health workers in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea at first is shifting to heeding the calls of best health protective measures by, for instance, thumping a chest when saying hello instead of shaking hands.

Lastly, news of Ebola is causing widespread panic in the USA and elsewhere as people do not understand what the virus is and there are no definitive explanations of what Ebola is and is not other than it is deadly.  Best advice: don't mention the word Ebola (not even a joke) on a plane, in a school or anywhere people might misconstrue what is said and then HazMat is called!  

One wonders if Ebola is the "end all" of the human race in that nature is taking its course to restore natural habitats that are depleted by humans in that there is less than 40% left of the world's wild lands or natural habitats without influence of humans (a statistic which mirrors the extinction of the dinosaur on the earth in that the earth could not support the populous dinosaurs).  So, nature runs its course through releasing a virus like Ebola out of earth's elements coupled with depleted food sources and natural habitats.  Thus, extinction, or, the threat of it! 

HUMBUG

I guess that I really am a "humbugger."  It dawned on me from what people say to me that nobody can stand being around me.  I don't know how my wife puts up with me, if nobody else does.  And, a lot of the time: my wife doesn't put up with me!  This phenome seems to recur all the time in my life: where I find other people cannot stand being around me.  The guy from the next door house out back used to call me "Mr. Annoying Man."  I overheard another neighbor say to someone else do not have anything to do with me, I'll make their lives a living hell.  Other people have said that I am difficult or eccentric, hyperverbal and even hologramic, like a Robin Williams.  Other opinions are that I am a hard person to get to know, but once you get to know me: I am a good person to know.  One recent person that I met said that I am hard to listen to.  Never minding all the epithets that I have been called in my life by people near and far ...  Not to mention a diagnosis of SZ!  A doctor said to me recently that a lot of people in the community have misjudged me.  I am not sure what to believe or what the solution is so that I don't burn all proverbial bridges with people and continue to try and grow within the world of life by being employed and biting my tongue more often.  

Short Life History of JBS:

The large, open-spaced house is nestled on a lush hillside off Spur Loop Road with a westerly overlook onto the Atlantic Ocean in the tropical city of Freetown, Sierra Leone.  Spur Loop Road is a road which circles a ridge of a hillside replete with cinder block houses and corrugated roof tops so that when it rains during monsoon seasons, the patter of rain is thunderous on roofs of houses.

The doctor who stitches my forehead when I fall head first onto cement from the top of washing my mother's Renault 4 automobile lives a half mile down the road.  The doctor is the same doctor who administers seven rabies shots in my stomach when I am bit by another neighbour's dog.  During the seventh rabies shot, the doctor releases hold of the syringe with needle in my gut and I stop screaming at the pain, bewildered.  Rabies shots hurt.  Doctors, lawyers, wealthy business people, government officials, etc. live in the Spur Loop Road neighbourhood.

One evening, on a Sunday night, after having spent a weekend out of the city at Tokeh Beach where I learn to steer the Renault 4 down sand tracks sitting on my mother's lap, my mother, father, brother and myself are sitting on the large veranda of the Spur Loop House playing board games when my dad is alert to a red and white, Coca-Cola box truck which is parked a short distance from the front gate up the driveway.

Sensing commotion, I venture up the driveway to the gate and peer into the culvert street where my dad is wielding a baseball bat banging on the box truck and yelling for my mother to call a friend and tell the friend to bring a gun.  My dad turns to see me at the gate and yells for to go inside the house, which I do but not before I glimpse the back of the box truck open and some ten to fifteen African men clamber out of the truck scurrying from my dad into bushes.

I wonder at the time how my dad knows the box truck is an ambush plot orchestrated by the gate watchman whom my dad employs, but now I see that it is obvious to anybody who can calculate many variations of any situation or circumstance from experience.  For one thing: it is unusual for a Coca-Cola box truck to be parked in front of the Spur Loop gate on a Sunday evening and not to have the watchman notify anybody in the house of it.  Either way: we survive possible mutilation, thanks to my dad's irate temper while wielding a baseball bat!

Africa is very beautiful.  "Ah!  But, Your Land is Beautiful," as Alan Paton's book is titled.  I am born in Lubumbashi, Zaïre, live in Freetown, Sierra Leone until 8 years old when I pack for English boarding school in Bracknell, Berkshire until I am 10 years old.  At ten years old, I fly to New York City from London, UK where I am greeted by my dad and brother at JFK airpot for a crowded subway ride into Manhattan on the afternoon of a rained out Diana Ross concert at which people riot.

At 15 years old, I pack for prep school in Massachusetts leaving NYC and at 17 years old: I find myself in Atlanta finishing high school at a public school because I am kicked out of prep school for drinking.  I apply to one university, San Francisco State University, leave Georgia and drive a pick up truck across the country to San Francisco meeting with a friend from grade school on his way to Washington State.

I live in SF for one year and a half until December 1993 when I drive with a futon in the back of my truck to Idaho where I meet my family over Christmas.  I sleep in the back of the truck on a futon in ten below temperatures.  I drop off the truck at an uncle's house in Arkansas driving across the country from Idaho with my dad, my second time driving across the country.  Leaving the truck in Arkansas, I fly to Gaborone, Botswana where I stay with my parents for six months until May 1994.

By June 1994, I am in Maine for a brief two weeks and on the road to North Carolina where I stay at a beach town sleeping in my truck.  I drive to Georgia where I visit with family and then across the country for the third time where I sleep a night at James Canyon, New Mexico, which is at a ten thousand foot elevation up a steep, mountainous road.

Long story short, I live out of a truck with a futon for three years in Bellingham, Washington where I catch up with the grade school friend whom I meet in Chicago my driving from Atlanta heading west to San Francisco.  In 1997, I move to Maine.

All told: I drive across the country eight times and visit Africa and Europe countless times over my life until 27 years old when I move to where I live now in Portland, Maine.  I live out of a bag for the first twenty-seven years of my life and call home is where you hang yourself now.  I seldom leave the house and do not like to with an anxiety off the rector scale about being stopped by police forty-five times in Maine.  I would not board a plane or travel further than within northern New England as to say if I board a plane: they'll reroute it to Bangor!  My primary wish for my life is to die never having been a convicted criminal.  In a world where "all cops are criminals and sinners saints," it is very easy to be falsely accused and such instances happen to me in regards to authority at about the same frequency as racially profiled people.

I don't know why people are scared of me that they think that they have to call police on me, but they call.  It is kind of like my "hurry up and wait" bumper sticker: I think that it incites road rage directed at me where some other drivers honk when behind me and flip the finger at me while crossing the double yellow to go around me when I am trying to parallel park.  If I parallel park with signals while someone crosses the double yellow to go around me parallel parking and I ding their vehicle, it is not my fault: the other driver crosses the double yellow.  Sometimes, I think that I am born just to be the cause of everyone's problems or that I live my whole life just for someone to invade my rented apartment, beat me up and have police tell me "don't call us anymore!"  Anyway, that is the most of what my short history consists without ranting, I hope!