Fire 1951 to 2015

I was born under triple fire signs, Aries sun, Sagittarius moon, and Aries rising. I have so much fire in my life that it is no wonder that at three years old, playing with matches I caught my father’s cherished car on fire and burned it much of the way to the ground before the fire department could put the blaze out.

For me fire is a tool, from an oxygen acetylene torch I have owned for fifty years, propane oxygen mini torch in my jewelry studio, ceramic kiln, and arc and MIG welders. I’ve installed wood stoves in every building on our property. I use the lowly match to light my gas range and to burn ten foot tall slash piles. I even light incense sticks to confuse and ward off the spring invasion of mosquitoes. Fire is my life and so it should be that it is a friendly force for creation rather than destruction, most of time.

Once in a while it does get out of control more as a reminder to me of it awesome force than any possible destructive abilities it can be capable of.

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13 Days in an El Paso Texas Jailhouse 1966

EL PASO TEXAS/JUAREZ MEXICO 1966

Craig Johnson and I decide that we wanted to go to Mardi Gras in Louisiana. We’d heard about Bourbon Street and the endless party that rolled all the way to Lent; the sacred Catholic tradition. I thought it was fitting that the biggest and longest party would be held to commemorate the austere days of Lent that followed.

There were two weeks left before the party began and we worked as diligently as two punk kids in their late teens could work to devise a plan to get there. In other words, we sat around talking about it as we passed the pipe. Oh, there were many pipes and many dreams in those days and a scant few actually came to full ripening. Continue reading

Flamenco Flood #22

CHAPTER #15 EPILOGUE

They forced me to commit myself to one year inside the protective walls of Sunvale Sanitarium, fifty miles south of Phoenix. From within those walls, through my lawyers, I negotiated a long-protracted settlement with the affected parties. To pay the settlements, I was forced to sell off more properties for less money than I’d ever considered or admitted.

I’d been inside the fluffy walls of the hospital more than six months before I began to compose my letter. Book cover of Flamenco Flood by author Nik C Colyer Continue reading

LOOKIN FOR HEROIN 1967

I was nineteen, wild and free. I knew everything there was to know and I had been smoking pot since I was fifteen and couldn’t understand why the authorities had lied about its addictive qualities.

I spent the next eighteen years trying to kick my non-addictive marijuana habit. Most of that time I smoked every hour of every day. Finally in 1984, with lots of support, I took my last destructive puff and threw the stuff away for good.

I was lo-ridin’ one night in a Burgundy ’64 Chevy with five cruising buddies. We were fresh out of high school and looking for something new when we decided to try Heroin. Continue reading