I was born in Miami on April 5th.  My father was born in Keckovce, Czechslovakia in 1931.  His name is Imrich.  My mother was born in the US with German decent. 



Since birth I had this compulsion to follow the strangest of paths.  To learn the peculiar things in life.   I have always looked to the unseen, the secret, the hidden for the answers to life.   As a child I knew that there was more here than meets the eye. 



My family broke apart when I was 5.  I have a half brother that I spent the first several years of my life with, he had a challenged childhood because parents sometimes don’t understand their children and their needs.  He has now found himself, his life and has created his own family.  He grew up to be a good, stable father, husband and man to be reckoned with.  He saves lives everyday.  My admiration to see how difficult his path was and how he made it to a point of happiness and stability inspires me.



So my father kept me and my mother moved no-too-far-away.  I a good foundation in growing up.  One home, one father, and a fantastic step-mother that was and is an angel in my life.  She did for me what no-one had shown me before, the little tiny things, the love shown in everyday tasks, the menial, but given and done with love.  In her I realized the power of the little things in life and how they form who you are as a person as you grow older.



My father was a creator of things.  He could really make just about anything, out of just about anything, metal, plastic, wood.  I learned from him how to mold the physical world around me.  He worked hard supporting his family and a good foundation for his family.  Some of my earliest memories were me in diapers holding a power tool working on a boat my dad had bought.  He always believed in letting me start early in trying things, power tools included!  What a cool dad! 



During my teenage years I was accepted at one moment by the cliques and the next moment pushed aside.  I became withdrawn from school and never really like the fashion of "teaching" that was used.  Most of the teachers I had were adequate and some were fantastic, but school was frustrating and drove me futher away from a traditional life of going to school, college and getting a "career" and raising a family.



Also during this time I started to realize how different my thinking was as a person.  I saw things others did not see.  Ghosts or mists in and around me, lights of strange origin.  I would see little balls of light float by frequently.  I could swear that I could understand what cats were trying to say to me.  Needless to say, I pushed most of that aside as crazy.  But I did have a healthy interest in the occult and alternative thinking in general.  I was a good alter-boy at South Miami Luthern Church for many years and learned the bible.  (One of the Sunday school teachers said I was the most inquisitive student he had taught).  And at the same time I would read heretical books on the Old Ways of thinking.  The church fell away from my life as politics took over the church for a short while and I lost my desire to see such God fearing people battle over money and power.  (The church has since become better than it ever has been, from what I hear).



I found love in my late teens and really lost my way.  The girl was more important than school.  I had a good grade point average in my senior year, but they said I had to repeat the year because of absences.  So I dropped out and got my GED (99.9 on the GED) and went right into college (that’s right, I was in college before my peers were out of high school HA!).  I took every science course I could get my hands on and once that was done, I dropped the idea of school all together.  They said I had to have a degree and that I needed the math/english to continue and I wasn’t allowed to take any more science...OK Bye bye school!  I learned more going to the outdoors and the zoo and spending hours watching the animals, how they interacted, how the existed in their microcosm and how life really ’is’, than from any book, any person, anything else in life. 



I chose to disappear for a while and dropped off the grid completely for almost a year.  Went to the woods and lived the ancient way.  Almost died, was resurrected and came out a different person.  Animals were my friends for a time, I saw things as they did (I think).  Enjoyed that time and realized the importance of being in the modern world.



In my early 20’s I met a woman who had a child from another country.  (I am writing this with respect to everyone involved I hope).  The child’s father wanted to take her back to the other country and she did NOT want to go.  So we bought a motorhome and lived a slightly alternative life avoiding the father for a time.  She turned 18, moved out and within a week I was out too. I know that the child grew up to be a responsible person and I pray that I had some small hand in helping her keep her freedom and finding her way in this confusing world.  The mother had a difficult time in life and I tried to help her along the way.  I fear that she hates me, but I often look in to see if she is OK and it appears that both of them are living a good life.



 Kitty and Catnip had found me.  This was a different way of living for sure.  Drugs, alcohol, women and money were all around me....   I learned computers and ended up staying with Kitty when the job ended.  I found true love in a sense that I knew we were a team through life, for life.  She would say to me "I want to be with you beyond this life" and I really didn’t know what to say.  I didn’t know what was around that corner and did not want to make a promise that I could not keep.  With Kitty (Juju, the coolest cat in the world and David, Kitty’s brother) we lived in many places in Florida.  We started in a place called penniless park (Pinellas Park) and we shared a faded, rusted yellow Dodge Dart/Aspen.  The rust holes were huge, but the car ALWAYS ran, never let us down, and I think we bought it for $200 or some rediculous amount.  We didn’t have power for almost two weeks when we moved in, we didn’t have the money or credit to make it work. We struggled and made it bit by bit.  Kitty’s optimism was infectious and led to many successes and chance meetings that led to better things.   Through time, we built up our assets and Kitty bought a condo in St. Petersburg.  We lived well and had much joy there.  I started a consulting service for computers and gained a foundation of knowledge that fed us for the next 12 years.  I worked for emedicine.com, learned the medical field and more of the Internet and marketing fields. 



She ended up selling the condo for a nice profit and we decided to get married in 2000.  David had left to live his dream in California to be a Screenwriter and we stayed in Florida.  We moved into a very nice apartment and found a servant that wanted to work for us in exchange for room and board.  "Stuart" was the steward of our lives and did a great job in serving us.  I think those were some of the best times.  Things were going so well, we wanted to make a change, see how things would be different in a different place. We moved to NYC (14th street between 7th and 8th ave)  We lived there for many months and LOVED the life we had in NYC.  Food was awesome, the people were awesome, everything was really damn cool.  Then Sept 11th happened, Kitty had a breakdown.  I watched the first building fall from my roof and I knew everything would change from this moment.  After a short time in lockdown (we did not have NY ID’s, so we could not walk the streets for a while) we had to buy food in quantity so we could lock ourselves away during this difficult time.  You don’t buy food in NY, you eat out, so it was not a fun time and the smells and dust were disturbing to say the least.  At the end of the month we moved back to Florida and moved into a beach apartment in Hollywood.  Beach living has its advantages for sure, we cleaned our minds and spirits up and then decided to take a trip to Los Angeles to visit her brother and to get Headshots by the reknowned photographer Kevyn Major Howard.  The trip was AWESOME, took 6 weeks to make the journey (www.startime.com/cc is the website) and we ended up staying in Los Angeles together for 6 years.  We made movies, lived the high life because the curious part was when we arrived here, opportunities showed themselves right away.  Before I knew it, I was the owner of a production company, a partner in a photography studio that was over 30 years old and very well established, not to mention the friends and business associates that we developed along the way.  We made a stand in Hollywood, CA for making something fantastic, helping the people around us realize their dreams and to lay a family style foundation within our inner network.  The stress was palpapable at times, but the progress was what held us on our course.  Kitty’s dreams held us on course too.  She ended up being an award winning director and screenwriter (and she was not trained in any of those things)  She had a natural gift for writing and the determination and dedication to be a great director.  But her real dream was to be an actor. 



I ended up buying a beautiful loft in downtown Los Angeles (www.startime.com/loft) and I live there to this day.  It is for sale at this time.

With me being drawn away to other projects and the forever drive to make enough money to be comfortable, we drifted apart and ultimately, Kitty left for the Netherlands to never return.  I think she found someone new, but I don’t know for sure.  She just needed to reset her life and she had the bravery to do so.  So now I am in the loft that I really bought for us and put my prayers to the heavens that the loft will sell soon, so that I can pay the debts we created being producers in Hollywood and find a new life in Florida.  The only thing that holds me in Los Angeles is the loft, once it is gone, I will leave and go back to my family (my father had a stroke over 2 years ago and is up and down health wise, he asked me to move home to be close to him during his last decade of living or whatever time he has left).  I have learned from this that the only thing that matters in the end is family as they are the only ones you have for life, if you choose it.  I found great saddness in losing Kitty, the greatest saddness I’ve ever felt in my entire life.  I wish her the best and want to walk away from the relationship knowing that I did everything I could to let us part in a way that the pain lessens through time.  But I still miss her, or I at least I miss what we had;  a team that worked together fantastically, love, dedication, someone you could confide in, someone to share the small things in life with.  I miss those precious things every minute of every day. 

tbc (to be continued)