Austin home searching.

It's a strange thing looking for a home in a city that I have only visited twice.  It's impossible to answer the questions asked from realtors about what areas and in what proximity?  All I do know is that I want to be in the real Austin, and I have now learned that is in the South side.  Locals draw a hard line through the city and tell me that anything North of this line is basically Dallas.  I lived in Dallas for four years can't really say anything nice about my time there or most of the people I met.  In Austin, strangers start conversations and shake your hand.

I feel like I have seen a hundred houses, and they all look the same.  Finding something unique will prove to be a difficult task.  I'm not sure how easily I can adapt to living in a normal setting after living in  a show stopper of a house before.  There is some old footage on HGTV of me in my studio back some years ago, I doubt I can match this place again.  Anyway, time to move out!

Fire is the great equalizer.

Cork screw willow would be a really terrible choice wood to use if you were smoking a pig or cooking a  burger.  It's really not even a great wood for burning.  I thought that I might like to have someone carve a walking stick for me from the tree, but the wood isn't good for that kind of use either. What they are good for is growing fast, real fast, the providing shade over a large area.  They are also real good at crushing bones.

So, I had friends over for the ceremony burning the tree that almost killed me.  This was a gathering of some of my most frequent visitors of the 540 in the ATL, and probably the final gathering of people I will have.  I'm in Austin Tx right now looking for my new house, the line up seems promising.  I'm hoping that this time around I might get a little peace and quite in my new home.  I'd also love a great large workshop, in fact I'd like it to be a workshop with a house in the back yard. 

Ashes to ashes

It is with the upmost of respect that tonight in a small ceremony, I will burn the remains of the tree that tried to kill me.  Then, I'm putting the ashes in an urn and taking them with me to Austin.  I think when I get there and finally settle in I'll plant them under a new tree.  People might ask why?

The second the tree destroyed my leg I knew I had to make one of two choices.  One of the choices would have been to look at the accident as a set back, and to make choices in my life that would add misery to my life.  The other was to hit the reset button and set plans forward to make me and my life better.  Not a real tough decision really.  It was strange.

I spent a week in the hospital and when my stay there was done, they pushed me through the front door with a giant jar of Oxycontin, and two refills.  I guess this is how they treat all their patients, it's easy to do and it makes people not complain about pain.  I looked at the pills and weighed in the harm they do along with how addictive they are, then, I threw them away.  From then on it was Motrin and marry jane.  Then, I gave up drinking and winged myself off of the three antidepressants that I had been taking for twelve years.

So here I am.  The tree that almost killed me ended up being the one most positive influence in my life.  I started walking without a cain weeks ago.  I still walk with a limp but I'm working that out now.  My progress has been astonishing to everyone, especially my doctor.  I started making plans for my new life and took actions on those plans.  All of the sudden I started getting lucky, real lucky.  Not just once or twice, it was happening over and over and over.  Alex Kennimer is one of my best friends son and I let him crash on my couch while he looks for a job in Atlanta.  A great kid, smart.  He was here during a string of luck that he was a part of.  I got three photo jobs out of nowhere and I was able to hire him to help me.  During a discussion of my good luck he told me that luck isn't an accident.  Luck is a sign that a person is on the right track.  Sometimes I guess the worst of things can end up being the best of things.

I suppose If you are the kind of person who needs details, and you have a strong stomach, you can see the drama unfold.  Yes, my camera was rolling when this all happened.  I thought I would be catching a tremendous blooper on film, not  my close call with death.

Warning, this is bad.  Real bad.

The tree that almost killed me.

Well at least this is whats left.  Back on the 19th of December I woke on a cold windy morning to see her leaning towards my neighbors house.  The tree had been in an active process of dying for going on to two years now, but this particular morning I could hear her death rattle.  I real sense of urgency, really panic hit me in that I was afraid of the damage it might cause by falling.  I could see the roots coming up and the chair that hung from it leaned drastically to one side.  The wind was howling and it seemed as though time was of the essence, it needed to be cut down now.
Through the years when things like this happen to me, I just do it.  When an engine goes bad and needs to be rebuilt, I pick up a book and learn how then I do it.  Now the tree needs to come down and it needs to come down now.  So I borrow a chainsaw from a friend and, I just do it.  Through the years this has been a process that has taught me all the things I know.  I can torch down a flat roof.  I can weld a rolling gate. I can pull an engine out of a junkyard car, rebuild it and use it in another. cutting down this tree was no exception,  In fact it taught me some of the most important lessons in my life. One minute I'm hanging happily with a motorized chain of destruction, the next Im on the ground fighting for my life.  Both bones in my left leg were crushed by a swinging limb and an artery was severed.

Now, here she stands.  I planted her from a stick.  I saw this tree grow unlike any tree I have see in my past, within seven years of being planted it shaded my entire courtyard.  It is a corkscrew willow tree, they grow fast and then die.  I have actually had conversations with this  tree, sounds funny but when the tree was sick and dying I tried to talk it back to  life.  I'd tell it to fight and come back and she fought to her last dying breath.

Now back from the trenches together I live to see another day, and I will send her to the great beyond in a pile of ashes.