Chasing my brother's demons.

I want to write a story called "genius or bust" about my brother. Unfortunately the title comes from a car commercial for Mercedes, I think,  that I keep seeing during the US Open. This is my brother who just died. There has been no shortage of shit storm in my family since his passing. At least for me it's been a bit of a wake up call.

I've spent most of the past weekend and much of the week chasing my brother's demons. His daughter has something wrong with her, she seems infected with his demons. I picked up the phone and talked to her today for a solid hour. She really wanted to be talking to her dad, she got me, poor bastard.

My brother was a hoarder, Not too bad. When he was a kid he was picked on, somehow he retreated from it in books. He went to the local, very rural, library and the librarians were encouraging and would help him request special books from other libraries that they didn't have. This sparked a life long love of books. His escape was feeling smart by accumulating books, Buying books fed him emotionally. When he died his hoard was books, and movies. He literally suffocated under the the weight of his accumulation. Unable to fill a clean cup with water or refrigerate food under piles of refuse. Unable to use 2 of his 3 bathrooms, the third was accessible if he sort of moved around some stuff. It was also one of 3 places one could sit in his apartment. The toilet also served as his music room where he probably didn't play one of his 6 guitars. When he didn't play them, that was where it was.

(imagine this without chairs... and with garbage on the floor)
   My sister in law called me last week, she seemed to be very caught in his problems. I get that.... I though, well sometimes crazy is crazy... they just want to suck you in, drag you around in their madness and convince you that you can't escape either. You can escape, but you have to stay off the train, cause it just goes round and round.

Simplify, simplify, simplify......