Life after Spinal Cord Injury
Getting lost before the journey begins...
Link Upton's notes from Deep Closets & Electronic Avenues -07.27.05
What is this about, this Future Link, Deep Closets, and Water to Air? 

Intro & Explanation

I'm about to expose myself and up-load these notes & drafts before they are fully edited. Hey, who will actually get to this page anyway? For many years I've written & spoken of myself in the third person; this I have to stop doing. So from this point in time forward I'll speak in person. Future-Link is the vehicle to use to accomplish this feat of getting from there from here. The there is actually here as there is nowhere else to be; for me anyway. Edit. My future is now. Some of this writing will make little or no sense to you at all & this is okay; it's a process of writing in the train of thought mode introducing the characters that inhabit Water to Air & sometimes the train gets derailed.

Who am I writing to anyway? More or less to myself. A journal maybe? Perhaps to an imaginary audience who may be reading this sometime in the future which would be my past when they are reading it. Oh man, does this does need editing! Writing needs to start somewhere, it needs to get itself noted, saved, archived, & rooted as it may forgotten by the time it gets back to me. 

What is Future-Link all about? Two close friends who helped me through the early years of my life as a paraplegic, Samson & Jaseen, were the ones who came up with the business name Future-Link for their ISP, the first in Marin County California way back when in 1992. What you are reading is the way that I am choosing to write the introduction to a novel about those years. The plan: Write about these friends and our lives together, not in a story/novel mode, but in a way that introduces them to you. Before we begin, the note about me on the bottom of the Man in the Maze page is almost the truth & about all I want to share with you about my past at this time. 

Another friend, Derrick, owned a Solar Power business. I worked for him off and on when he needed help and I needed money which was more often than not in both cases. We met Samjas; (Samson & Jaseen's together name, I'll elaborate on this later) when we did a large solar power installation on their home in Marin. 

The four of us quickly became close friends & eventually business partners. That was about 1994, again, my mind fails me when it comes to dates! I been so fucked up lately, had the flu, bladder infections, fevers, my mind is craving for clarity as my son Fathom & I are just recently re-establishing our relationship and the chronic pain that my body has my mind living with. 

Future-Link ISP closed down several years ago. (Note: 07.07.05 I just found this old html file we used on our Web Site. It'll give you a glimpse into the fun we had at Future-Link, and how nutty we all were. See Back Door) The name has a good sound & feel to it & goes well with & fits today's technological & medical advances; both important to folks with Spinal Cord Injury. The link to the future is our lives today, now. The link itself is what we are doing each moment living with a disability that has us each day dealing with every imaginable situation as we roll into our future with a wheelchair. In that split second when I realized that my legs were paralyzed I knew my life was going to be different. At that moment the future was not going to be what it used to be; or what I thought or imagined or hoped it was going to be. It took me a long time to............. and I still am. 

My girl friend at the time dumped me, she split fast after visiting me in the hospital the third day after the accident. Never saw her again. She was a dancer and a runner; you can see her rational can't you? The years twisted and turned every which way after that, setting up the perfect roller coaster ride rolling me over & over me the next ten years.  

That's about it for now, when time allows & the mood is good, I'll get back to this writing.  Meanwhile read about Derrick, open the Back Door & check out the old code wrecking yard. -Link U.

Okay, The future is not what it used to be?

I first heard this phrase  in the movie 'Happy Accidents'. It connected some dots in my mind & it actually gave me a tool that I use for stabilizing my life. The movie: Ruby Weaver (Marisa Tomei; I love her!) has a problem. She meets a guy who seems to be the perfect one in many ways. Sam Deed (Vincent D'Onofrio; I like him!) is a funny, likeable, a little odd, and loveable guy from Dubuque, Iowa who claims to be from the year 2470... A Good romantic funny thought provoking movie. See it.

---

I stuck this article below in here because it is someone paying attention to a way to play with time,
which is one of my hobbies & no I didn't get permission. However, this e arrived, from Brian, a week after posting it: "Consider permission previously granted in present-future-past." -Brian Burghart  

Funny feeling 
By D. Brian Burghart - Reno News & Review
Welcome, too, to the past-presents-future. 

I do an editor’s note like this every few months. It’s a function of deadlines. As I sit here typing, it’s Sept. 1, 04, a new issue of the RN&R will be on the stands tomorrow. By the time you see this little note, it will be Sept. 9. You see, next week’s deadlines will be befuddled by the Labor Day Weekend. We’ll lose a day to the holiday, but more than that, I’ll be in the desert attending Burning Man for the five days prior to the Tuesday when I’d usually write this column.

So, do you see what I mean by past-presents-future? I’m writing in the past about an event that will happen in the future....

Let me try an inside joke. OK, since I’m going to explain it, I guess it’s not all that inside, but here goes. Instead of writing the Burning Man story while I’m at the festival, I’m going to try to get participants to write my story and take my photos. I think that’s funny because I can only think of one time that I actually got the story I was trying to get at Burning Man. Anyway, I promise not to change this editor’s note on Tuesday, when I return and know the future-present-past. I should be busy enough as my friends and associates and I try to put together a cover package on deadline... - Brian Burghart What Brian does

Derrick's Roots  indefinite  Man in the Maze  infinite  E mail Future-Link