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FREQUENTER

I was passing hors d’oeuvres at a PGA (Producers Guild of America) event I was catering for and Spike Lee showed up within minutes of the event starting. I hadn’t expected this, at all. If anything, I thought this would be a relatively mundane shift, as it was my first time catering in quite some time. Spike had on a PSG (Paris St. Germain / Nike / Jordan) pullover, some stylish glasses, a winter hat, and some probably limited edition Nike sneakers. It was a little surreal, to be honest. I mean here is this guy, this director, this titan of cinema, of which I grew up watching his movies--from “She’s Gotta Have It” to his latest film, “BlacKKKlansman” (which I’m happy to say was a return to vintage Spike form). There were a couple of moments in which we interacted, but they were pretty regular. I think in passing, after briefly shaking his hand, I told him how grateful I was for all of his work. A little later I offered him the Little Big Mac, but he said he was good with his drink (what looked like a glass of wine or some Coca-Cola). It wasn’t exactly an ideal setting to have a conversation, after all, I was working. I did the best I could, though. With respect to all of the interactions with celebrities that I’ve had over the years, this one was pretty straightforward. It wasn’t as bad as Shia LaBeouf, wasn’t as brief as Ansel Elgort, it was pretty regular. I mean, I’m not even sure what I’d tell Spike. I’d probably just go into detail about what made “Do the Right Thing” one of my favorite movies and maybe if the time extended I’d pick his brain about cinema, ask him his favorite movies, and see what some of his dream projects might be.

This event was a few hours after I found out earlier in the day that the apartment I was hoping to secure fell through. The manner in which I found out was pretty unprofessional and when I went to the office to speak with a representative in person I got nothing more than a talking head who was intent on reinforcing the stone wall that I had received earlier. I’m starting to feel like landlords and management companies in New York are absolute trash. Just shady shady individuals. On the one hand, I am learning a lot more every day. Learning how the system of housing and getting housing really doesn’t help the artist, at all. For example, the mere mention of a guarantor or having one as security is enough to scare some landlords away. Even not having an available credit score can raise an eyebrow or two. In all honesty, I wouldn’t want to be in a landlord’s shoes, but Jesus Christ, I’m starting to assume that every landlord, every management company owner, is just a snaky fuck of an asshole. And I take this type of shit personal. It’s like this amalgamation of individual vendettas that continues to grow and festers like a virus until my frustration just boils over into blind rage. How often I am left to stifle the things that I really want to say to these people, things that I believe they deserve to hear, but might never. Suspecting that this could always happen, I had a backup plan available and I’ve decided to move forward with the backup. It’s in the same-ish area, just some blocks away, but I was looking forward to what I deemed a step forward, and a sign of personal growth to move into a two-bedroom as opposed to a three. The evolution of more privacy, more responsibility, you know? I guess that step will just have to wait.

So I’m passing those hors d’oeuvres right and I just finish a round and one of the other guys I work with talks about how many famous people were at the event. To my knowledge there was just Spike—I didn’t recognize any of the hotshot producers that were probably in the room. He mentioned that Ben Stiller was there, to which I obviously flipped. During my next round, with my friend in the lead, he showed me that, sure enough, Ben Stiller was in attendance. This was another surreal moment for me. I mean, I had watched this guy’s movies my entire life, grown up seeing him on the screen. Ben Stiller! “There’s Something About Mary”! “Meet the Parents”! “The Royal Tenenbaums”! Anyway, there he was. I went to do a few more rounds and every time I stopped by his little group that he was talking to—making sure that I wasn’t being too invasive and not leading them to believe that I was frequenting his group more because of him—they wouldn’t pay attention to the snacks. Finally, I just assumed that he really didn’t want something to eat. A little later, as we were closing in on the last ten minutes or so before shut it down down, I brought a buddy of mine with me and told him about the situation. I told him that Ben Stiller was intent on ignoring every offer of food and that he should watch, so I could show him what I was talking about and just as I was finishing up, he and I head into one direction and out of nowhere Ben Stiller says that he really liked the double chocolate sweet but not the S’more treat that I had been handing out. I was stunned. I legitimately thought he had just heard what I said. My friend and I start cracking up, I go a deep red in the face, and I offered him one last S’more before he declined again, laughing, almost as if he was in on it the whole time.

And that was that.

PIACERE

I must admit there has been something missing. Something that I haven’t been able to determine or locate, something that I haven’t been able to pinpoint or rediscover (assuming that I had even discovered it to begin with). There are moments where I look at myself naked, in a full body mirror, and just stare because all these attempts by my brain to see through the bullshit have been unsuccessful. I haven’t been able to pierce my own skin, see through my own obstacles, and figure out what’s been eating me at my core. What is it that’s been missing? I ask and ask and ask. I try to be transparent with myself and it always feels like I’m not trying hard enough. It always feels like I’m going around whatever problem there is instead of confronting it head on. It’s like every action, every subway train ride, every time I swipe my debit card, every meal I eat, every time I step out into the cold—there is this feeling of avoidance. Not doing what I should be doing. Being content without having reason to feel content. A retreat of some sorts.

I’ve had a few opportunities to see some movies at the theater in recent weeks and it’s not the same as I remember it. There has been a moment during these outings (and, in all honesty, it’s not just when I go to the movies) where it’s like my brain disconnects and I just start to feel lousy. I start to question why I’m there and I start to question the content I’m watching. Ultimately, I start to get sickeningly cynical. I start to get so overwhelmingly critical that, at times, I wonder if I’m enjoying anything. And it’s not fair. I can hear myself talk and I can hear myself think and I don’t like what I’m hearing. It’s like this big, fat cloud of negativity hovering over me.

Right now I can’t seem to figure out what really makes me happy. What turns my clock and what makes me go. What makes me want to get up in the morning. It’s like all I have are these made up reasons that I’ve spent years convincing myself of that, in reality, maybe I don’t believe. Why go the gym? Why go to an audition? Why live in New York? Why why why why why? All of these questions all of the time that, when night finally falls, I’m mentally exhausted. I’m drained. It’s like I’m consuming my own MSG and it’s knocking me the fuck out.

I don’t even want to get into social media. It all just makes me really sad. Facebook makes me sad. Instagram makes me sad. The Internet makes me sad. There are these temporary uplifters—music every once in a while does the trick or even a fond memory that brings out a laugh—but these highs tend to fall into lows before I know it.

I was talking to my brother today and we seemed to echo a few of each other’s sentiments. We both are searching for fulfillment and we both are struggling. Money came up at some point, but we both agreed that that wasn’t the answer to our problems. Having more money doesn’t necessarily equate to being able to enjoy more things or doesn’t automatically mean our lives will be more fulfilling. I was thinking about this throughout the day. If I had more money I’d maybe live in a nicer apartment. I’d go out to eat more. I’d get more clothes? But at the end of the day the alternatives coinciding with not having as much money really aren’t that bad, which led me to believe that it wasn’t really about money at all.

At the end of the day, it’s something inside. It’s something personal. There is something in my makeup right now that isn’t adding up. The sun is rain. A smile is a frown. Beauty is ugliness. Hot is cold. I am a most uneven scale.

I hope to find my balance.

Mi piace una buona conversazione

On the underground part III:

Riding a new wave of optimism despite my frozen left hand I slowly started to approach the tall, lanky man down the hall, but despite closing the gap and half expecting him to flee at any minute, he did not. He just stared back at me blankly, almost as if I was supposed to make the first move or like he was expecting me to ask him a question that he had been waiting to answer. Sensing a booby trap awaiting me I began to become more wary of my steps and my surroundings until I was about ten feet away from him to which I decided to stop completely. I was exhausted and my breaths could be heard, but he was so quiet and still I thought I could hear his heartbeat and see a speck of dust floating from his hair. He acknowledged that I had made it to whatever type of next checkpoint this was, turned around, and continued on down the path. It didn’t occur to me to ask him where he was going or where he might have been taking me. At this point, I didn’t have much of a choice but to follow. After what seemed like a mile—seriously, this back area never ended—I asked him where he was taking me. Had I waited a couple more moments I would have been able to discover the answer for myself because the man was leading me towards a steel door that reminded me of one I had seen in a submarine that required a turn instead of a pull. The tall, lanky fellow made a long turning motion and let go while the handle continued to rotate like a spinning top. I couldn’t look away. I was completely helpless. The door swung open and the man politely bowed, motioning me in to the next unknown corridor. Seeing that I was far enough inside, the man closed the door and began to spin the handle so that the door was absolutely shut.

Where was I? An anthill? No, but the structure was eerily similar. Tunnels and burrows and levels piled onto each other as far as the eye could see. It was like a skyscraper going through the ground with all its roots visible, completely deconstructed like a building with no walls just tops and bottoms. My mind couldn’t fathom the depths that these buildings reached. What were they being used for? Did people work here? Did people live here? It was hot and musty, a far cry from the water universe in Central Park. This place seemed void of all air ducts and ventilation canals, resembling a coal mine without the fires. I began to wander and observed the new world I was taking in. There were incoherent street signs pointing nowhere—or it seemed as such; up, down, diagonally, you name it, but that wasn’t the half of it. Hanging from above like salamis in a deli were full-length subway cars with wiring coming out like used electronics. I couldn’t even imagine how much they weighed or what type of cranes or devices were even higher up that were strong enough to hold them. Spliced in the middle of each car—it looked like they had been hollowed out—were long winding poles delving deep into the nest with hundreds of people armed with power tools and construction gear. It wasn’t quite a fireman’s pole because those had a finite length and were intended to go from one level to the next, but with these, there was no telling how far they’d go. In the spectacle of it all I lost my train of thought until a loud booming horn brought me back to life and I realized I was standing in the way of an old-fashioned bus that clearly needed to get by. I jumped out of the way—careful not to go too far because there were more spaces that led to deep falls with no foreseeable return. Hollowed out subways. Old fashioned busses. Was this?—but after looking directly past the winding poles I was able to answer my own question. Sure enough, off in the distance was a gigantic “M” that clearly resembled the—and there were the other letters, the “T” and the top of an “A” way down deep.

I had been led to or at least had found myself at the epicenter or control center of the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. I had always wondered where the headquarters was located and I guess I had found it, but believe me there were plenty of questions left to be answered. For one, why was it located down here? This place looked like a never-ending pit or did that just give more fuel to the theory that New York was an ageless wonder? How could there be so many faulty technical issues and problems with the MTA when it seemed like there was an innumerable amount of people working down here to resolve them? Is this the reason the train system had never been updated because the executives didn’t know how to overhaul a system so ancient? I knew there was more to it, indeed. I scanned the underground nest through and through until I found what I was looking for: a small circular core right in the middle that had to be where the operations manager resided. How to get there was the real question. Despite all the levels and the poles none of them appeared to lead there. I asked an older woman who was wearing grungy boots and army pants if she knew how I could get there? She replied, “How old are you?” I don’t know why it took me a second to answer, I guess I didn’t really know who this woman was, but I answered “25.” She chuckled, “Well, you might live to see the day” and walked off. I didn’t bother to run after her, but before I could get a word out she turned around and said to me wistfully, “Appointments are booked up for the next 37 years.” Ah, well. There it was. I watched her as she took one step in what I thought was the wrong direction—falling to her impending doom, but after I looked to the side of the cliff I could make out a freshly blown out parachute floating dreamily down below.

I took to the stairs, which really looked like apartment fire escapes, precarious in design and only allowing room for one person ascending or descending at a time. I had to get down to the core to speak with the MTA head. I chose stairs that didn’t look very occupied and made my way down as efficiently as I could be. In the meantime, I let my attention run wild and admire all of the truly extraordinary architecture that called this place home. Curved ladders looking like double helices taking capacity filled boats from one surface to the next, tubes and pipes reminding me of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and along every wall were numbers, engineer math equations that could have been new age hieroglyphics painted in no defined order like a Jackson Pollack canvas. It was a dreamy world I was walking in, albeit an unbearably humid one. The stairs kept going and going and the progress was being made, but at a tortoise pace. Had it not been for my measured speed I would have missed one of the most horrific sights yet, no less than a thousand falling New York rodents—rats, mice of traumatic proportions—with, get this, fucking wings. Yeah. Rats, which notoriously can collapse their torsos to fit through holes the size of a quarter, must have evolved into the scariest animals of all time down here. Now, I was officially scared. And maybe that’s what I needed because, to avoid the winged rodents, I found an energy that I had been missing and to my amazement, my frozen wrist had thawed back to normal. I hadn’t even thought of it, but now it made sense that I was able to go down the stairs with the much needed facility. The further and further I went and the farther and farther in the distance the core appeared, until at long last, it was in plain view.

Unraveled from the bottom of the core were two tunnels, one that looked like it wrapped around the back and one that connected to the bottom. Crouching down to make my way, I stuck my head into the tunnel and began to crawl, not knowing how long it would take, but just hoping I was going the right way. I felt like Andy Dufresne in “Shawshank Redemption” just without the valuables attached to my ankle and without the thunder, lightning, and rainy weather outside. I came to an intersection, one path leading in a small incline ahead and the other leading to the left. I made a decision without thinking, but quickly second guessed myself. With all that had happened this seemed too easy. The tunnel leading up was going to be the tunnel leading to the core just because that’s how it looked from the outside. I wasn’t so sure anymore. For no good reason at all I took the other tunnel and wished I hadn’t because for a half-hour I was crawling and crawling aimlessly. This was the equivalent to a slow death and this was so much worse than the narrow hallway that I had no idea what to do. I turned around for a breather and laid straight on my back, longing for a view of trees, and the fantastical forest outside. Instead, I was welcomed with a man hole. I took a deep breath, pushed the hole with my arm and felt it give way and with a lifetime worth of relief I brought myself up to a standing position, with my legs using the tunnel for support. It was dark in whatever room I was in, which told me I hadn’t reached my destination yet. I had to be close though. After about five minutes my eyes got acclimated to the dark, eyes fully dilated, and I could see a glimmer of a door handle. I pushed myself through, making painful contact with scalding pipes along the way. With all the hope I could muster I reached the door, ice cold to the touch, hoping that truth awaited me in the next room.

My eyes were met with blinding light. A searing pain blasted through my body and in fruitless attempts to open my eyes, there was a force that was keeping them shut. I fell forward, made contact with the ground, and winced until the pain slowly…slowly…began to subside. I opened my eyes and thus my brain and my mind. Visible in front of me were what looked like a million buttons and keys with letters and colors, names and levers, more than I could fathom, an infinite circuit control board. I didn’t dare press any of them out of fear that I might commit an irrevocable crime. I just stared in amazement. Over my head was a map of the city, more detailed than I had ever seen, with every train within a 15-20 mile radius and other maps that showed places that I had never seen or been to before. There were flashing lights, unknown algorithms, little voices from hundreds of speakers mixed with police blotters with important announcements. I stood in the middle of that room, in the middle of that core with more questions than I had ever had before. I wished so badly to have someone to ask them to, but didn’t mind the solitude. I was sure I was in a place that few people had made it to, a place of history, and a place of secrets. I looked out of the birds eye windows at the nest outside and tried to wrap my head around the entire operation, but unsuccessfully so. This was beyond me. And that was OK. Some things weren’t meant to be understood, I guess.

As if some soul or spirit could hear the fear within me, a light began to flash on the board. I don’t know why they always show up in the form of green buttons, but as soon as that button began to flash so did all of the reds and the yellows and the oranges, browns, purples, and blues. Suddenly it wasn’t as obvious. So, without so much as a doubt in my mind, I pulled the lever. Nothing happened, but when I tried to pull it again it didn’t budge. No matter how much I jostled and jolted it wouldn’t move. All of the lights went out as if I had turned off the entire system. Without warning, I shot up off my feet through the map above. I tried my hardest to see what was going on around me, but it was all a blur. Higher and higher I went, and finally I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Higher an higher. I was greeted with a deep, frigid air and the ability to open my eyes. I was falling through the air out of the fountain of the reservoir and fast. SPLASH! FUCK the water was cold! I went under and tried to open my eyes, but it wasn’t clear anymore. I swam as fast as I could, hoping to build up some body heat in the meantime. I made it to the border of the reservoir and with all the energy I had pulled myself to the wall and climbed over. Exhausted, but with no time to relax because it was freezing. In the brief time on my back I could see that all the trees were without leaves. The sky was a cloudy shade of grey. A man came up to speak to me. “Hey, buddy, are you OK? Must be freezing in there.” “It was,” I replied. “It was.” 145 pounds sopping wet I got on my feet and ran to Brooklyn, never looking back.

On the underground part II:

I thought that landing on the stairs of this cellar would hurt but nothing could have prepared me for the pain I was going to endure. The moment my feet met the stairs a pain shot up spine and I felt like i had been paralyzed and for the time being I was rendered immobile. Once again, I was lying flat on my back—this seemed to be a theme today—but instead of having dreamy trees to comfort me I had the bottom of a door that was in place of what had been a water wonder world. I figured it would be a good time to think of the obvious: I had just been swimming and the reservoir had been vast, delving hundreds of feet below—probably even thousands. I tried as hard as I could to remember because now, more so than feeling like I had the wind knocked out of me, I felt like I might have suffered a concussion. I recalled seeing structures that reminded me of Venice. I could vaguely remember certain paintings, but not with the clarity I had hoped. The unmistakable sound of a MTA screech. A subway train with a letter that I didn’t recognize. And then the fall. Feeling like I was being pulled further and further beneath until I got here—my new home by the stairs. This wasn’t the peculiar bliss of being lost in a seasoned Central Park or a holographic forest, but hold on…where was the leakage? I was supposed to believe that this regular old, rusty, cellar door was supposed to be strong enough to keep whatever I just came out of at bay? There was no leakage nor the slightest drip-drip that would seem obvious in this scenario. Even the water that had come through with my arrival was nowhere to be found, but instead replaced by sweat trails on my forehead. I must have laid there for ten to fifteen minutes and tried my best not to fall asleep, just in case I really did have a concussion. It reminded me of times I used to pull into the drive way back home and just sit there, with my seatbelt still fastened, stuck in an unblinking hypnosis and too lazy to simply go in the house and lie down. Yes, this was a little different. With a little help from my newly mobile arms I pushed off from the stairs until my body slid down like sludge onto the floor. It felt like I was in a basement of some sort or maybe a restaurant? Now that I had my senses back I could smell the disgusting stench of cigarette smoke, which seemed to be emitting in the direction of a long reaching tunnel of sorts to my left.

I got up slowly, shook off some of the rust and started towards the smell of smoke. On both sides were solid brick that looked like a fine wine. The lights were going in and out, flickering, dangling from the fixtures above. Nobody in sight. Not a peep…until the smoke could be seen coming from underneath a shoddy little door that looked like it was coming of its hinges. I opened the door. Inside was nothing less than the biggest poker hall I had ever seen in my life—or I thought it was only poker, but upon further examination I realized there were all sorts of games being played down here. Poker, yes, but Chinese checkers, roulette, Romanian whist, dominos, pinochle, and a whole bunch of others that I didn’t recognize. It was loud. It was chaotic and besides the one man who glanced in my direction when I opened the door, nobody seemed to care, especially since they could tell I was all alone. Some of the hands got rowdy; as I filtered through the sidewinding weave of card table after card table I witnessed more than one incident of someone coming across the table and visibly throwing punches. For the most part it always died down and in the weirdest way—I’d see the dealer mutter something under her breath and the players would return to their seats. The further I walked the more serious the faces were and the quieter the games got. The ash hanging from the loose cigarettes were the most energetic organisms there, getting to a point of maturity where they would fall off, land on the surface, and the player would take his or her subsequent drag. I was now in the corner of the hall, but something froze me in my tracks. A man had laid down a card as a reveal of some sort and another player had taken out a weapon resembling the long barreled gun in owned by Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver” except here and now there was no mistaking who this player was talking to. If it was just one guy pointing a gun that would have been easy, but it wasn’t. The moment the man had pulled out the Smith and Wesson in retaliation to the card reveal, every other player—there were seven—took out their own guns. I was dead where I stood because I had seen how the ending of “Reservoir Dogs” turned out. A whole bunch of guys shooting at each other usually meant that everybody was going to die and I didn’t want any part of this reenactment. No words were spoken only the exchange of glances. There must have been some unspoken language taking place that I didn’t understand because after a minute or so stand off, where so much as a move in the wrong direction would have been the turn that nobody wanted, they started lowering their guns one by one. The dealer didn’t budge. This one didn’t dare mutter anything under her breath. When there were no guns left and the man who started it dropped his head in anguish, a group of about six men in sunglasses (the room looked dark enough already) came to the table, took the winnings of the hand in the middle, spoke to the table in a dialect I didn’t recognize, and left. The players got up from their seats and started walking in my direction. I avoided eye contact with them all because I didn’t want another problem to arise, but what caught my attention instead were the six guys who had come over to defuse the situation. Two guys worked together to remove the eight chairs, and a few others basically flipped the table completely. I thought at first that the table might have been contaminated because I didn’t see any reason for making the change. Still, the captain just stood back and watched the steps flow into motion as another guy coming from the back with a new table to be placed down, applied the finishing touch. I watched in amazement as those guys set up a restaurant table in less than ten seconds and then stood in awe as they dispersed throughout the entire hall, whispering in the ears of the dealers, and the entire gambling arena was flipped into a dining area. Hundreds of men and women flooded in from doors that I didn’t realize were there. From above, from below, in nooks and crannies that I had obviously overlooked, six of them, seven of them, and more and more and more, targeting each table, cleaning them, taking the last hand’s winnings, and then bringing in the tables for the restaurant set up. It took no less than ten minutes for every player to leave and for every table to switch and when it was over I couldn’t even remember the room I walked into. A loud bang was heard, removing me from unconsciousness, as the last door closed and the last person filtered out. What…the…fuck…was that?

Where did everybody go? What was this place? Who were these people and why were they living down here? One guy must have forgotten to do something because from one of these camouflaged doors came a tall, lanky man who trotted over to one of the tables to drop a spoon and finally, for the first time all day (or night—whatever it was) I felt like someone had seen me. He stared right into my eyes like we were each prepared for a Mexican standoff and all either one of us had to do was shoot, but instead he just backed away really slowly and turned around. The only thing was, when I followed, he must have sensed that I was heading in his direction because his pace became a trot and then a sprint toward the doors. I got there just in time before he closed it, sticking my hand through to make sure it didn’t close but he pulled the door towards him in the hope of keeping me out from wherever he was going and I felt the bones in my wrist shatter. I wailed in pain, temporarily colliding with his pleas that I didn’t understand, and when he saw me collapse to the floor I could see him bolting off into the unknown. My wrist was purple and the slightest flex felt like the worst pain I had ever endured, but I knew that with every passing second that kid would be further and further away. I slowly removed my hand from in between the door and it would have closed had it not been for me sticking my foot in just in time. With a push I got the door open for long enough to keep it there and after hoisting myself up with my good wrist I moved onward. First off, how did that many people get through this passageway? For the next hundred feet or so I was stuck in the most narrow kitchen pantry, hall area that I had ever seen. This was enough to make an ant claustrophobic. I ran ahead in a sort of sideways shuffle like they do in soccer practice, but the lack of space and pain in my wrist was making me nauseous and dizzy. This hall didn’t seem like it was ending anytime soon and my energy levels were waning like never before today. I was sapped, my legs tired, my mouth dried and I fell forward and sadly, and unknowingly so, used my hurt wrist to brace my fall. Even though I was a second away from passing out the new, sudden, and growing pain in my wrist made me scream so loudly that it echoed through the hallway and shook off some of the pots, pans, and silverware from the shelves. I was hyperventilating now. If there was any doubt that my wrist was broken before, I was positive now, and either I was delusional or there was an ice machine a couple feet ahead that might just have been the best friend I needed. I got up, opened the machine and stuck my shattered wrist inside. A cool, icy wave came over my whole left arm and I tried my best not to be shocked when I saw my old hand had been frozen into ice. It wasn’t the type of showroom ice that was see through and shiny. I could feel nothing in my left hand anymore. It was completely void of sensation. Numb. Purple. And I was worried that if I hit it again, the whole damn thing might fall off. I didn’t want to go through with this anymore. Getting lost in an underworld maze suddenly didn’t seem so fun anymore and finding out wherever that guy had run off to had lost its appeal. So I went back. I walked all the way back down the hallway and to my disappointment the door was locked with no key in sight. Looks like getting out wasn’t an option anymore. So I turned back, again, and saw to my delight that the passageway had widened out. And sure enough, waiting for me in the distance, was the guy who had hurt my wrist.

To be continued in the final chapter, tomorrow.

On the underground:

For the second year in a row I missed a full season of opportunities to walk through Central Park in the fall when the leaves are at their most beautiful and the weather is perfect with a divine mixture of warmth and breeze. There is a jar full of excuses I could pick out of but none are too valid. The days were getting shorter. I don’t think so. The trains took a little longer. I don’t think so. I was busy at the time. You didn’t have any free days? I took that figurative jar of excuses and chucked it at a wall and watched the glass vanish in a puff of smoke. One day in the middle of January I was walking alongside Central Park West and saw that, for no particular reason at all, the normally naked trees with their “Night Before Christmas” branches were suddenly in full bloom. I did a double take and then a third, and a fourth, went through a couple hundred blinks and a furious rub of the eyes and sure enough, without question, I could see that Central Park had somehow revitalized its fall presentation. A couple was walking in my direction and just to be crystal clear I asked them to look in the park and tell me what they saw. The first couple looked at me, then looked at the park, then back at me and continued walking without answering the question. A runner sprinting in my direction was going to be the second victim, but I knew what was like to run and have someone try and stop me, so I let him go. I wasn’t as considerate to the older gentleman that was attempting to run, but was making the progress of a casual walker. I stopped him too, but he hissed at me and continued on. I thought to myself, “OK, someone is going to tell me that I’m not dreaming. Someone will tell me that it is odd indeed that the park looks this way at this time of the year. Someone will.” The problem was, after making this commitment to find someone that agreed with me, it seemed like everyone had vanished. There were no more runners. There no tourists on bikes. There were no old-money, upper-class, families peering down from their 20th floor balconies. I guess I missed my chance. There wasn’t even a car on Central Park West anymore. I looked as far down as I could see and I knew I could make out some people and some traffic down the way, but damn, I was left like a person who had just farted on the train. I was entranced by the sudden mystique of the time. It didn’t take long to find an opening in the wall of the sidewalk, descend the steps, and find a path to walk on and direction to follow.

The last time I remember being in Central Park with this much orange was when it was the subject of an art experiment. “The Gates”, as they were known, was a joint work of art by a Bulgarian Christo Yavacheff and Jeanne Claude. According to Wikipedia they put up 7,503 vinyl gates along 23 miles of pathways in the park. I remember the gates being orange, but being that this was New York and they were European artists, the color was known as “a deep saffron.” I was young at the time, so I didn’t mind the installation being all over, but maybe my opinion would have changed had I experienced it as a grown up. It had taken place in February and my father and I just so happened to be there during the two weeks or so that it had been up. The growing green on the ground of the February winter and the deep orange of the gates made it seem like it was fall, though. Wonderful earth colors. An open air forest surrounded by a city. It was gorgeous. I walked along one of the paths heading north and was taken back to this moment in time. It did freak me out when I didn’t see people within the park. Apparently there was an absence of life extending from the street to the park because I swear on my life I could see the mile or so to the east and hear the traffic that could only be audible in a bustling city. I hoped so, at least, but at this point I really didn’t care. The leaves, branches, oranges and variants of, and browns and variants of, had my full attention. In a dazed stupor I followed the army of trees as long as they would take me and they took me all over the park. Rights and lefts and straights and behinds; it was like I was doing a non stop pirouette. The state of intoxication distracted me so much that I didn’t realize that the paths were no more and after looking back apparently they had been for a long time. The ground in every direction was a mossy terrain covered in a wet dew and it was lucky I hadn’t slipped and fallen on my ass. Right on cue, however, I found an extra wet patch of green and did one of those balancing acts like someone who has skating on ice for the first time, flailing my arms in the hope of regaining an equilibrium, but ultimately doing a Daniel Stern in “Home Alone” and ending up with a “SMACK!” right on my backside. There was good fortune even in casualty. With my body lying flat on the ground I looked up a sky that resembled a scene from a Terrence Malick still. Long trees that reached beyond the heavens with their brothers and sisters having given birth to wispy limbs of unforeseen autumn rainbows.

This was a dream. This was a movie…or something. I got up slowly and felt very alone, but nonetheless as determined as ever to find the root of this magic. As great as I felt and as alone as I felt, I had to admit that whatever strange dimension was as transformative as it was fascinating. Recovered fully to a standing position I looked ahead to see a dirt road that appeared to lead to the reservoir, but when I looked to the left and the right to further take in my surroundings I was met with a shifts in ways I can’t adequately explain. Not quite a kaleidoscope eye and not quite an acid trip perspective, but a similar experience to looking at a holographic card when I was young. If you moved the card or moved your body to an alternate angle the image would change. So, you can imagine, looking at something already completely strange—a sardine packed forest of Cedar, Cherry, Magnolia, Beech, Hackberry, Chestnut, Oak, Elm, Maple with obscure seasonal extremities—and then turning your attention with a inch shift of the face and seeing a split in your vision to what now are several dirt roads leading to nowhere. It was nice to have the card in your mind because it was something small to control and there was power in that…but this wasn’t a card anymore. I journeyed ahead to the original dirt road and started to hear the howls of animals that were foreign to this forest. Howls that belonged to Howler monkeys, screeches that belonged to siamangs, and roars that made me feel like I was suddenly in “The Jungle Book.” I wasn’t so comfortable anymore, enamored with the fall in winter, or my initially welcomed solitary journey into an overpopulated arena and what was worse was the reservoir that provided an eyesore for the casual and serious runner, walker, tourist, and native was too still to make me feel comfortable. It would have made more sense if I saw a tsunami wave heading toward me that had been birthed from this body of water, but no, that would have been too much to ask for. That would have contributed too much to the fantastical and suddenly this presence of something normal in the park was now not normal at all.

I don’t know why I did what I did. There was nobody around, which made it an unsafe decision, but there are moments that call for the unknown. The screams in the undiscovered around me didn’t help, but the utter absence of human life comforted me. I knew the water would tell me a story and maybe the story I was looking for. Not even bothering to look around to see if I was being watched—the animals didn’t care and the trees already had their eyes shielded, I stripped off my clothes and stepped on the very narrow landing over the fence, which was an awkward challenge in the first place. I didn’t know how cold the water would be or if now, of all times, there were sharks lurking or man-eating piranhas. I couldn’t even remember the last time I went for a swim and that presented it’s own obstacle because I wondered if I could even swim or tread water long enough to find what I was looking for—whatever that was. Fuck it. I dove in and landed with a little bit of a belly flop into an ocean of supernatural liquid. I went up to get some air, but something—maybe my own curiosity—pulled me under without gathering a normally much needed breath. With eyes closed shut I opened them and did not see what I was looking for. But that’s not all. What I did see was what I expect parts of Venice will look like after it tragically finds itself under water. An Atlantis of sorts with soon to be prehistoric European architecture and only a overflowing of wonderment of what it could have possibly looked like long long ago. I was astounded at the clarity of what was visible underneath. From above, the water’s deep blue hue, gives no inkling that something like this could have existed. And that was fine with me. I swam and forgot about needing to breathe because I no longer needed to. The further down I went, the more I submerged myself, the more I realized that I was embarking on something that could prevent me from ever seeing the above again. I didn’t send any goodbye texts. Didn’t make any calls. Then again, who knows how permanent this was even going to be. I mean, for Christ sake, I was breathing underwater. This was no time to think of existence. I was too busy having my mind blown by the Venetian ghetto that Shylock once called his home, or Picasso’s “On the Beach” that must have ventured off from its home at the Guggenheim, or “Assumption of the Virgin” which must have broken off from the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, or the Rialto--which, at this point, was now suspended above me, levitated in the heavens.

Suddenly, I was sinking even further and the mirage of Venice was no more. There was nothing to grab onto. Nothing. Just the peculiar sound, first, of subways taking off from their stations and then followed by the sight of a rusty looking train with the letter K shooting through the water like a bazooka. I was headed toward the first surface that I had seen under in this water world, something that resembled a sidewalk cellar door, and with speed that I couldn’t control I blasted through the cellar and landed hard on the stairs below, the doors allowing a whoosh of water in before creaking to a halt. Underground.

To be continued.

On what the teacher saw:

Everybody deserves a slap on the wrist. Just like everybody deserves a second chance. The question is: how many second chances does one deserve?

When he was young he beat the system because there was a life to live and he was going to live it. There were extra curricular activities that called his attention, girls that he needed to flirt with, stupid shit he needed to get involved in, and late nights that could not be squandered on account of studying, learning, and other hopeful book-smart endeavors. He looked in the mirror unshakably and without remorse knowing full well that he had circumvented the academic barricades and had avoided all possibilities to improve on intelligence. When some of his classmates would go to Office Max and Staples to do their spirited back-to-school shopping runs he would stay at home, watch basketball on his TV, and let his mind wander into an obvlilbion of lavish mansions, joyriding in cars he would hopefully be able to afford one day, and running naked in the street after drunken nights of tequila shots, oyster shooters, and expensive cuisines in the high hundreds. Scoffing on cue when he would see on social media the excitement others would profess when the first day neared he would follow by going into the shower and keeping the water on blazing for about 15-20 minutes, resting his neck, arms against the wall, while the water thudded on his lower back. This would be just another year of getting by, with great marks of course, but by taking the easy route. Getting close to the teachers. Befriending them when necessary and shaking his head at the mercenaries who would have shit fits if they saw anything less than a 90. Grave peril would take over their screwed faces and a shit eating grin would take over his. Getting into a good college wouldn’t be a problem and if there was ever the slightest question that his acceptance would be in jeopardy? Well, time to find another loophole.

You see, he was a smug fuck, but a confident one, nonetheless. He was arrogant, ignorant, and disarmingly witty. The teachers that weren’t in his good graces were on his back like a fly on shit, but he protected his own back better than a bodyguard. On occasion his cockiness would get the best of him. One test, the guidelines said “open note” except with a catch that it had to be written on one page. That wouldn’t be a problem, he thought, but if anyone thought he would take the time writing minuscule letters and unintelligible sentences they would be sorely mistaken. No, he’d take his notebook that he wrote in on occasion and would place it concealed on his lap under the table and during the test the teacher wouldn’t notice. Halfway through the test that he was supposed to have studied for, the rest of the class squinting at their one page of notes, he got his notebook and started checking periodically. Just like he thought, everything was going according to plan. The teacher, under the impression that his class would stand by the honor system, was unaware that he had a couple kids in the room who were dishonorables. His pages started to fill up with rapidity, the pages in his notebook going back and forth, and with a slight peek to make sure the class was doing OK, the teacher looked in his direction. What all people with shit eating-grins don’t know is that there comes a time where you will have to eat your own shit. Luck runs out. Smugness burns out. And the idea that a system can always be beat by cheating will eventually expose itself.

What the teacher saw did not exactly shock him right away. He was still trying to process what exactly he was seeing and what exactly the kid was doing, but what he knew for sure was that the periodic checks to something on his lap and the manner in which every subsequent scribble gave the kid more reason to smile most likely meant that he was up to no good. He waited for a couple more minutes to see if his theory was true and despite wanting deep down not to have to confront the kid and see if maybe he would finish before he decided to get up, he knew that he would have to. The teacher got up slowly, which he rarely had ever done before, and every student’s eyes darted up to witness the movements of a man who rarely moved. The teacher took a second to look at the palpable shift of attention in the classroom. To his knowledge this was the most attention he had ever been paid, but there was one set of eyes that continued to stare down at his test and they belonged to the kid. He slowly paced towards the second to last row while everyone else put their own tests on hold, under held breath. He arrived at the kid’s desk and was disappointed. Sure enough, the kid was staring down at a composition book and was going back and forth between the pages to find the correct note that would give him the answer to the question. He then lightly tapped the kid on the shoulder and told him to meet him at his desk just as the kid put the finishing touches on the last question. The teacher led the way and the kid followed. He sat down in his comfortable leather chair, held his hand out to take the test from the kid, and looked at him deeply in his eyes, which the kid avoided to look at the rest of the classroom who still had yet to continue with their own tests. When he met his teacher’s stare he watched as his test was placed on the desk. The teacher took a red pen from his jar, popped the cap open and at the top of the test paper wrote an unmistakable “0.” The kid furrowed his brow, looked at his score, looked back at the teacher and left the room without saying a word.

…

The quiz was for Greek mythology. Every student had been assigned a deity or figure, constructed a mask of their creation to resemble this person, and for the past week took turns performing and educating the rest of the class on who this particular important figure was. The masks were so good that the student would often finish and the rest of the class would realize they forgot to take notes. It was important to pay attention because after the week was over there was to be a quiz. 25 students altogether. Two questions per deity. 50 questions in total. Straight up, no multiple choice. The kid enjoyed the project too much to listen for the right information during each presentation. He was entranced in the difference in every mask and learning about people that he knew nothing about. When the night came after the first day of mask presentations, he emailed every single student in the class in a group message and asked if he could have their two questions. It wasn’t just for him, but he’d make a separate document so that everyone could have access. He didn’t want to pass, he wanted everybody to. Sure enough, the emails started flowing in. It was a concept that everyone sort of longed for but nobody would dare to go through with, so they happily obliged. By the end of the week he had all of the questions and like he promised he sent a full document to every one of his classmates so they could all get perfect scores.

Finally the day came to take the quiz and for the most part it looked exactly how they all expected. It was 40 questions, which meant that several were left off, but if anyone had looked at the answers they would be just fine. This was an open book quiz too, however, just like in every classroom there were a couple students determined on making life difficult. It would have been too much to stop taking notes in class while everyone was presenting, so there were a few that persisted. The teacher didn’t notice that by the end of the mythology week there were only a couple students even bothering to take notes, so when the time came for the quiz the teacher found it quite odd indeed that only a few people had their books open taken notes. One girl in particular decided to write all the answers from the digital document in her notebook, so she could have it in front of her. Halfway through the test the teacher went over to this particular girl and asked if he could see her notebook, in which the girl, startled, offered up her notebook reluctantly. The teacher was as appalled as he was impressed. He asked her how she got these answers and without thinking twice she pointed to the boy and told the teacher that he had communicated with the whole class and compiled a list of all the answers, so they all could do well. She wasn’t quiet about the reveal either, so when she pointed to him, his face went flush and then back to the quiz. They were finished one by one, each stopping by the teacher’s desk to hand in their perfect scores. The boy didn’t wait until the end to turn in his. In his mind, he had done nothing wrong.

The teacher turned in every student’s quiz the next day. They all were a bit nervous, but when the teacher came in to tell the class that the quiz would be curved, the students stared back wondering why. Everybody got their papers back and were relived to find that they all had received 100’s. The boy looked at his paper and did not see a grade, but he did see a note next to it that read, “CURVE.”

On blackouts:

…so I woke up at the Utica St. station, which was a full express stop and two local stops passed the correct Nostrand one and then waited for an A train that was headed back in the opposite direction because it was freezing cold outside, but then I fell asleep again and woke up at the Franklin St. station, which was one stop too far. At this point, I had no desire to wait for another A train because they rarely come at that time of night, so I walked outside into the sub ten degree weather determined to just make it home. The only problem was after a block of damn near speed walking, looking at my breath, and stumbling from the drunkeness, I checked the street and saw Classon Ave., which was the wrong way, again. Instead of being three blocks away I was now four avenues from my apartment. I wasn’t very happy. I might have yelled “FUCK!” at my predicament, but it was too late, too cold and I was too drunk to continue to remain idle and feel sorry for myself. Let’s see if you can envision what I’m about to describe. I don’t know why I took my braids out after only having them for a couple days, but I did on the train and it kind of resulted in my face and hair looking like an uppercase letter “T.” My borrowed trench coat was unzipped and flying in the breeze, my face was squished from the liquor, and I started hauling ass back home. At one point I looked at my shadow because I was drunk and taking a look at my shadow seemed really interesting, but I was frightened at what I saw. I was scared of my own shadow. The way this reflection looked I thought I was being chased by a madman. This resulted in me wanting to get home even faster, so I picked it up into a run and passed Franklin Ave., Bedford, Rogers, and finally got to where I needed to stop originally: the Nostrand Ave. stop. I don’t know why at 3 o’clock in the morning there was such a big crowd at the corner take out restaurant, but I truly hope I didn’t frighten anybody when I whipped around the corner, running from my own shadow. I got home about five minutes later, shedded the New Years clothing like it was lit on fire, and fell asleep like a baby.

How did I get to that point? Your guess is as good as mine. I never had a good understanding of what it meant to black out when people would tell me how drunk they got at a party or over the weekend. When I was young it too often got confused with knocking out and I definitely didn’t get how someone could knock out from too much alcohol. However, as I got a little older and a little dumber (shouldn’t work that way) and started to drink more often I began to know exactly what it meant to be so intoxicated that the next day there was a distinct moment in which you stopped remembering things. I remember everything about last night until about 12:30 to 3:00. It was New Years eve. I was hanging out with my brothers from Seattle. We ate dinner at a sushi restaurant. We went to a pre-game fiesta and started drinking everything from tequila to champagne to vodka jello shots, but because it was mainly tequila I didn’t feel myself fading that much. We walked about four blocks to the main event, noticing our breath crystallizing into ice in the air, observing the New Years Eve traffic, and looking at everybody—men and women—struggling in the frigid winter night. My brother made a great point: “How the hell do women survive wearing a dress in this shit?” I didn’t know, but I certainly understood what he was getting at. We had layers upon layers and it felt like we were toppling over. They were wearing dresses AND heels! Anyway, we then were asked to wait in line outside for the next 15 minutes and it took a lot of energy not to cuss out the bouncer for holding us outside. He seemed nice enough, but man they really messed up for not having the ticketing inside where it was warm. We got the wristbands we needed for entry and our whole group—about 10 of us, took the elevator to the floor of the party. We were packed in that thing like sardines, but it felt like the perfect moment for a whole bunch of drunks excited to get even drunker. The elevator opened to a semi-crowded floor with nice loud music and a whole bunch of people in Great Gatsby era suits. There were women walking around serving hors d’oeuvres, an open bar with a growing line and a quickly growing group huddled in the corner to give up their top layers to coat check.

I was under the impression that, at a New Years Eve party, bartenders would be stingy when serving mixed drinks, but when I ordered my first tequila soda I watched this guy pour me so much damn Herradura that it felt like he had been stingy with the soda water. That drink was so damn nasty that I needed to go to another table to mix in some more elements. We paced back and forth, drinking more and more, stopping to take photos, flirting along the way, while the room filled up and the music (which was surprisingly good) got louder and louder, drowning our sobriety one by one. A tequila soda turned into a whiskey soda and then to another and another and finally I probably got too drunk. The New Year countdown came at me so quickly that I wondered if time had sped up to hyper speed like in a Star Wars movie. Those ten seconds might as well have been one and 2018 happened before I even had a chance to process it. And that must have been when the black out started. You ever look at your texts and calls from the night before to try and piece together what happened? Well, despite my best abilities I couldn’t put together much. A call or two was made and a few texts too, but nothing really informed what had happened. I needed to find out from one of my brothers that shortly after the countdown I stepped outside on the balcony in the freezing cold to go in the corner, as far away from any of the club employees, to empty out my stomach in totality. I don’t remember doing that…at all. And dammit, the more I hear shit like this happening, the more I realize that I have completely wasted so many great meals from being too drunk. It’s ridiculous. All that great sushi.

So, here is where it gets interesting because the memories turn very spotty indeed. Without telling the people I came with, I somehow made it to coat check in one piece to get my brother’s trench coat and then somehow didn’t fall on myself going to the elevator, down the elevator, outside, and on the way to the train station. I don’t remember doing any of the several menial tasks that were probably ten times more difficult when you’re shit faced drunk. Not losing anything on the way, taking out my metro card and swiping it, waiting for a train, and then getting on the right one. Now, either on the way to the train or as soon as I got on I began to unravel the extremely tight braids in my hair, untying each strand with delicate force. I couldn’t say when, but I do know that it happened. Next thing I know I’m staring down at my feet, my legs spread apart. There were people sitting across from me and sparsely disseminated throughout the train. Next thing I know my mouth slowly opened and apparently a reserve stash of food came out in waves. No preparation. No nausea. No warning. Just BLEH! And with every subsequent wave there was another couple people noticing and slowly walking away from me. I don’t know what I must have looked like with the beginning of my capital T face taking shape and my drunk self just barfing everywhere, but I’m sure it wasn’t a pretty sight. Somehow I had the presence of mind to realize that if anyone found out or reported to the conductor that I was sick and had an accident the train would be stopped. In that time I must have switched subway cars because I was on the train long enough to fall asleep and wake up a couple stops too far, but again, how I got to that point is anyone’s guess. It’s funny because vomiting really does open up the memory lanes. It became one of those checkpoint moments that helped me as opposed to blacking out for the remainder of the night. In retrospect, it’s embarrassing that I did that on the train, but I’m telling you I didn’t know it was going to happen at all. Even more incredible when my brother told me I had already done so at the venue. As much as I don’t like talking about regurgitating all night, I will say some last words. There is absolutely nothing better when you feel sick and nauseous and on the verge of dying (we all get dramatic) then barfing. It’s life changing. I would prefer to avoid those particular life changing experiences if I had my way, but this weekend I was drunk on more than one occasion and the only reason I’m alive to tell the tale is regurgitation.

It’s funny. I did these goals and resolutions for 2018 yesterday and two people in the past 24 hours have told me how ridiculous they think resolutions are. “Why do people do them?,” they’d say. “What is this deal with waiting until the end of the year to change something. Why not just do it whenever?” I could see where they were coming from, but didn’t completely agree. Besides, it’s easy to say something like that, but if you really take the time to ask those people when they decided on a new life change and if they really went through with it, they probably wouldn’t have much to say. The day doesn’t really matter, yes, but I think taking the time to sit down and reflect does. This weekend was a drunken mess. A fun mess, but a drunken one. Probably too much so. I had high hopes in 2017 of not drinking at all and did a relatively good job, so I’m a little disappointed that it had to end with a couple blackouts and sickly trips to the bathroom. This isn’t a moral post, but blacking out just isn’t my cup of tea. As fun as it can be to try and retrace your steps and figure out what transpired during times that you can’t remember, I’d rather just avoid that all together. Hopefully my resolution to not drink at all this next year can be fulfilled. A weekend full of aches and pains, parched throats, and lost weight can have its good moments, but a body is meant to be taken care of, not teased.

Here’s to closing the book on drunken power walks, capital T faces, hugged toilets, blackouts, lower back aches, raspy voices, sick train passengers, tequila, leaning on walls, half closed eyes, slurred words, a lowering of inhibitions (damn, that part was kind of cool), wasted dinners, and all the other craziness that comes with it.

Peace.

On “this is the end, my only friend, the end”:

Here it is, my last post for 2017 and in the form of Resolutions and Goals that I hope to accomplish and adhere to in the following year. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read my posts in 2017. I hope you enjoyed them and weren’t too bored.

Like I’ve said in the past, my hope In the following year is to build on what I did this year, ideally in the form of scripts for the stage and the screen.

Wishing everybody a great New Years and 2018!

…

2018 Resolutions

Live your life, don’t be afraid to go your own way

Be more involved with family

Keep discovering what you really love to do and don’t get frustrated if you can’t find it right away

Be a kinder person: to others and yourself

Do more, be more productive: take classes, meet people, read more, speak more Spanish, learn another language

Be more accepting and less judgmental—their life is not your life and your life is not theirs

Live in the present, the past is the past (leave it there!)

Let go

Control what you can control, don’t be discouraged, keep building

Help yourself by helping others

Express yourself

Regain the focus that you have inside of you

Don’t drink alcohol—don’t be pressured into doing something that you don’t want to do

Be smarter about social media and the time you put in and stay away from it

Be as private as you need to be and as open as you want to be

…

2018 Goals

Write one post a week on your website (how will you promote your website)

Write at least five pages for the screen/for the theatre 3-4 times a week—don’t let up, build on what you did this year and complete a few feature scripts and full length plays…don’t let your ideas gather dust

Brand yourself, rebrand, build, construct

Perform at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, do stand up, perform more, open mics, etc.

Get cast in something in New York

Travel to a Spanish speaking country, speak Spanish every day!

See more of NY! Escavate! Go to different neighborhoods. Explore.

Resurrect COTERIE (see “Brand yourself”)

Practice and learn more about the art of acting, become a student again

Keep going to class, take more classes (screenwriting? dancing? voice?)

Run a marathon and run more than Danny runs in his

Expand your artistic horizons / learn more about the stuff you love (music - international, film)

Be smarter about your diet and the food you put in your body / no more Pork / WAY WAY less sugar / Keep your body strong!

…

Note to self:

The resolutions and goals listed above are similar and some overlap. They can be added to at any point. Keep the plate full!

On a twiddling of the thumbs:

There was a book I used to read all the time in late elementary and then every once in a while in middle school called, “Holes” by Louis Sachar. It seemed like every one of his books was assigned reading at B.F. Day Elementary School, including “Sideways Stories from Wayside School,” which I revisited in the past couple of years and in the process was reminded of why I love those books and Sachar’s writing so much. I remember a lot about B.F. Day and our librarian, a Mariner fanatic, Mr. Gil, was the perfect librarian for us all. Not everyone liked him. He had a tendency to be very strict, but if you got along with him, which I did because of my own Mariner and sports fandom craze, he was always on your side. He was the first person to speak Spanish to me. During our class trips to the library, all of us doing our best to sit criss cross applesauce, he would walk us through the standard Spanish greetings. Buenos dias. Buenas tardes. Buenas noches. Como estás? Asi asi. Mr. Gil. A sort of pudgy latino man with glasses and stringy white-grey hair. B.F. Day. Anyway, back to “Holes.” Probably one of my favorite books growing up. An mistakable cover of the top half of the character Stanley’s head, in the midst of a desert, a great story, and many memorable characters. Why do I still remember people called “Mr. Sir” and “The Warden” and “Mom” and “X-Ray” and “Stanley Yelnats” being a palindrome, and “Zero” and peaches and the top of a place called God’s Thumb and surviving off of onions. A book would have to be more than just good to be remembered 15-20 years down the line. And it helped that the movie was pretty good. For some reason there are certain things about that book that still resonate beyond just the people I remember or the events that transpired. Stanley, who is convinced that his family is plagued by bad luck, is under the impression that the reason he gets sent off to camp to dig holes is because of his family’s curse. Why he got in trouble wasn’t in his hands. It was a manifestation of happenings out of his control. We find out later that his family is inextricably linked to the family of “Zero,” another camp member. What all of the other guys say who have been there for various amounts of time, and by then are camp veterans, is that the first hole you dig is always the hardest. Then the next day after blisters, dehydration, and a day full of intense labor, they say the second day is always the hardest and so on and so on.

At some point while writing this first paragraph and reminiscing about the book I was thinking of how that saying and feeling of hearing something like that applies, in some ways, to the pursuit of a dream. Some might disagree and say that it’s the opposite. Every day everything starts to get a little easier. Probably depends on how you look at it, really, either you see it half empty or half full. Now, if I was to look at it as every day gets a little harder, which sometimes is how it feels to be on your own path by yourself in a city on the pursuit of a dream, then yeah every day does get a little harder when the dream is still an indeterminable distance away. Yet, through the difficulty, no matter how hard it gets, you slowly but surely get acclimated to the task and I think it actually becomes easier to make it through. Yeah, you might get another couple of blisters, but those blisters become callouses. Yeah, you might be longing for a cup of water, but your body becomes equipped to deal with the environment and the circumstances. The hard can only remain hard for so long. There is facility in difficulty and a creation of the difficult in the ease. It would behoove me and behoove us all if we, during this process, think that why we are doing what we are doing and trying our best to accomplish the task is because of something out of our hands. Maybe A doesn’t quite equal A in this scenario. Maybe this equation isn’t so clear cut. What I learned from the book I recently read is that their are so many things that are outside of our control. What is in our control is how we respond to what happens. How do we move forward?

You know, after reading the above paragraph I realized that I kind of wrote myself into an indecipherable maze. A labyrinth of points, but no real kicker. Or a kicker that didn’t come from anywhere. That’s OK. If there is anything that I hope comes to you or comes to me after a year of writing, talking in circles, getting somewhere, getting nowhere, unblocking traffic jams in my head, is that I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going. Very much so. With my hope to do some resolutions tomorrow and really take some time to try and figure out what I want to change, reduce, increase in the following year I came to my couch, opened up TextEdit and thought, “Damn…what the hell am I gonna write about tonight?” That happened a lot this year and the mind, at least for the first little bit, can be extremely unforgiving. I mean, if you were to take fifteen minutes of staring at a screen, it would seem unexpected to have a train of thought that is largely positive. In my head, every passing minute leads to another question. What are you doing? What’s a matter with you? Five minutes and nothing? What’s going on, dude? Why are you wasting your time with this? And so on. And so on. I didn’t have a summary planned for tonight. I didn’t feel like talking about the day today because I don’t even remember the day happening. I’ve literally been spending the past several months not knowing what the hell was gonna come out of my brain. I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent just as much time staring off and thinking about what I was going to write about than time actually spent writing. You know the 10,000 hours theory popularized by Malcolm Gladwell? If you spend 10,000 hours working on your craft in a particular field that will translate into you being world-class at that particular field. I wonder how many hours were spent this year writing. Bullshitting? Thinking about what I was going to write about? I wonder if that all contributes.

I look back at this past year and wonder how I improved. I don’t really remember where I started, to be honest. I never was really in the habit of writing the past couple of years. I’d only put pen to paper or hand to keyboard when something absolutely needed to come out. This year, I wonder if I did too much. Did I force it? Was it worth it? That’s the biggest question I hoped to answer and I think I already have. The goal as the year went on became more crystallized because I began to see how the exercise of writing every day was going to lead into something more focused. Script writing. Writing screenplays. Writing for the theatre. Writing plays and movies. Writing plays and movies that I can be in. I think. Right? That’s what I want to do? Yo, who the fuck knows anymore. I don’t know if one day the light just shines out of nowhere, but I don’t think it has happened for me yet and I’ve read too many articles and listened too closely to people I admire to think that it’s intelligent to sit back and wait for that day to come. It’s uncomfortable. My mind really goes haywire these last couple days of the year. There’s a lot to reflect on. A lot to be proud of. A lot to overthink. A lot to be distracted by. But that’s life. That’s life in New York. That’s life as a 26 year old. I guess. This is supposed to be the prime! Mid twenties. On the way to late twenties. There shouldn’t be anything to be discouraged about.

I don’t want this post seem depressing. That wouldn’t be a good way to end the year. Don’t worry though. After these resolutions tomorrow I’m going to write the first five days of 2018 to fulfill my initial goal which was to write the entire year. I guess I didn’t write the first five days of 2017. Go figure. Now, if this kind of mood returns on the January 5th? Then you can be disappointed. Shit, I would be too. I’m hoping for a magically given better attitude in the following year. January 1st I expect to wake up a changed man. What? That’s a recipe for disaster? Hey. I can still hope can’t I? I still get delusional sometimes when I read those stories of some crazy accident happening and all of a sudden a man or woman can speak another language. Completely changed. I don’t want to run away from myself in 2018. If there is anything this year has taught me it’s that 24 hours isn’t shit. Mine as well be 45 minutes. Because at the end of the day, when we’re trying to remember everything that happened. All the good and all the bad. How much can we really remember? If that isn’t a sign that I need to be doing more with my life than I don’t know what is. What does Ben Affleck say in Good Will Hunting? “Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and I’ll be 50…and I’ll still be doing this shit. And you [Matt Damon], you’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket, but you’re too much of a pussy to cash it in.”

Will Hunting or Chucky? Is the next hole to be dug the easiest or the hardest? I don’t know.

On the switch:

I was coming back from Washington Heights after getting a haircut today and I was making my familiar walk from St. Nicholas to the A Train station on 184th. It didn’t feel like a blast from the past because I had taken that route so many times, but instead, it felt like complete synergy. In life, people always recommend taking the road less traveled, but completely out of context and in this particular situation, nothing felt better than taking the road well traveled. If the weather was a little bit different I would have made some stops to the barbecue grill to see my guy Paco and buy a couple skewers and because I’m the type of person who, when I get hungry, wants to eat every type of food that I enjoy that’s in the relative vicinity. Visions of heading down St. Nicholas and getting a cubano sandwich. Visions of walking to 175th and Broadway to stop at El Conde to get some habichuela roja, arroz, and a pollo entero. When the mind is big it salivates and it can feel insatiable, but when you try to actually satisfy the desire to eat anything and everything…it always bites you in your ass. Luckily for my stomach and sadly for my mind, I didn’t make one stop to any of those food locales. I think my mind was in a pretty funny space, though. More context. You see, when I was younger, my sister had braids. These weren’t corn rows or anything like that because my sister had a lot of hair and it was really long, but I can remember the pictures and the time like it was yesterday…she had these awesome long braids. Growing up, I didn’t think that was ever a possibility for me. She just had long hair, that’s how it was. She could do stuff like that. I would never grow my hair long enough for it to be like hers, but then again, I didn’t want those long braids anyway; I just wanted a couple. As I grew older, I thought it would be cool to join the club and get some braids of my own but I didn’t know how that was going to happen. I was in the habit of getting haircuts and, honestly, keeping it short was so comfortable. The longer your hair gets the more days you catch yourself being like, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this mop on my head?” or, at least, that’s what it had been like for me in the past. In college, there were a couple of times when, in hindsight, my hair was long enough to do something, but getting it cut was always the easiest option. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t inspired by Allen Iverson, too. He has always been my favorite basketball player, ever since I was a little kid. He brought street fashion to the forefront and I think he also brought the attention to how one could style your hair, as well.

There got to be a point where I think I had convinced myself that it wasn’t going to be a reality. Braids were a pipe dream and I was going to stay in my lane because that was a big part of it, too. I’d say one of the biggest factors that went into me not changing my style up and getting braids was that I thought I wasn’t allowed to. I’m no stranger to the talks. Shit, I had conversations with many people about it and I got a garden variety of different answers, but maybe the response I was listening to the most was the one in my own head. Some people said I should try it. Some people said I shouldn’t. Others that I should stay away because it wouldn’t look good and then would try to scare me away by talking about all the things I would have to do to maintain it. Others said I shouldn’t because I was stealing culture. It was cultural appropriation or in this case cultural misappropriation. I mean, how many white guys do you know with braids? Is it because they don’t have the right hair to do it or is it because they also felt like going through with it would be almost a trespassing across lines one shouldn’t cross. At the end of the day, I knew what my intentions were. Then there were other inspirations like this dude named Quincy who, honestly—I don’t even know what he does. He’s the son of Al B. Sure and is the adopted son of Puff Daddy. I think he makes music? Whatever. The point is, he took a style that was probably pretty popular around the way and made it even more so and one day I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and saw the style and told myself, “Maybe it’s time to start rethinking getting braids.” That first full year in the Heights it was like a constant reminder of the Instagram feed. Everybody had that style, which is, for people that don’t know what I’m talking about, essentially a one length cut to the rim of your head and then two braids that circle around and meet up in the back and are tied together by a rubber band. Then it became an issue of everybody having it and not wanting be too trendy. You can see that this is a rather stupid cycle of the mind. That surfaced a lot this year. My mind talking me out of things that I either wanted to do or was having trouble going through with. That brain of ours is a tricky one and doubt, fear, and anxiety are constantly evolving beasts that work together very well.

Like my roommate Nate says to me all the time like a rallying cry that needs to be said every day in order to be understood: LIVE YOUR LIFE! Usually this is in reference to a stupid question or a situation in which I’m looking for his opinion or thoughts. I can see where he’s coming from though. When it comes down to it, I need to be the one to make a decision. I need to be the one to step forward and carry on. I can’t keep wanting to move in the right direction and ask if it’s OK to do so. Live your life. Live your life. LIVE YOUR LIFE! So today, armed with a whole lot of nervousness and a lot of excitement, and a whole lot of thinking, “I’ve told damn near everybody that I’m going to do this…no time like the present,” I got on the A train and took it uptown. Downtown Brooklyn. Passed. Downtown Manhattan. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Midtown. Subway sounds. The A was moving along doing its dance and skip. The Heights. 145th. 168th. Finally, I got to the 181st St. stop that I had gotten off at so many times and went on my merry way. Merry way might be misleading, though. Yes, Christmas was a few days ago, but the moment I stepped out of the station I got a full blast of what my phone said was a “feels like 8 degrees” temperature. The type of biting, windy cold that doesn’t allow you to have your hands out of your pockets at all unless you wanna get a taste of what frostbite might be like. I couldn’t wear a hat either because if this braid thing was going to happen I wasn’t going to be able to wear it on the way back. “These things better be worth the chill,” I was thinking to myself. A couple of straights and one right later I saw the storefront that read simply, “BARBERSHOP” but my barber, who I was supposed to meet at 2 o clock—it was 1:58, wasn’t there. The shop was as lively as I expected it to be on the weekend before New Years Eve. The chairs were filled, the Spanish was spoken and the music was blaring. I texted my barber and told him I was there and he replied pretty quickly to tell me that he would be there in 15 minutes. Ten minutes went by. Twenty. Thirty. A check-in text was sent. No reply. At forty minutes I started to get nervous because he wasn’t there and I didn’t know how far away he was, how long his cut would take, and how I had an appointment with the woman for the braiding at 3:30. By 2:30-3 o’clock I was in full doubt mode, thinking it wasn’t going to work out, getting ready to tell the woman to cancel my appointment. I was panicking and pessimistic, but a little after three o’clock my guy Tom came in as casual as could be, without any ill feeling or remorse for being an hour late, shook my hand, smiled, exchanged a “how are you?” and we were good to go. Just like that. Being a prisoner of my mind almost got me caught up once again. After a brief exchange between him and Chass, the woman, Chass parted my hair to make it easier visually to see where he was going to cut and gel was applied in the middle to form a nice bun and keep it out of the way. After speaking about the NBA, why the Yankees wouldn’t win (despite now having Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton), acting and Tom’s family and after getting the beard groomed, the front shaped, and a face massage, the cut was over. All the curliness and waviness that I had been spoiled with over the last half a year or so was on the ground, disconnected.

I always wonder if my face reads like a book or if I just read into things, in general. Another client brought Tom some white wine and he offered me a trago, a shot, which ended up being two shots. Shortly after Chass must have seen I was finished and beckoned me over for the procedure. She and I couldn’t help but exchange laughs. I was laughing because I was awkward and nervous and had no idea what I was getting myself into and she must have been laughing because she could see all of the worry on my face. I think she was also laughing because she didn’t know how it was going to turn out or how I was going to look. Shit, she and I both. When I tell you that when she finished I needed to blink a couple of times, I’m not lying. I was telling her during the process that I had no idea what it was going to look like, just that I hoped it looked good. I didn’t doubt her talent or her ability. I just didn’t know if my hair was going to be a good match. She finished and I was as pleased as I could have been. I had the two braids. The fear now was only the internal battle I knew I would have to face when walking outside. I would need to continue to support myself and tell myself that it didn’t matter if other people liked it or didn’t, as long as I did. Chass was happy with it too and told me she’d give me some recommendations on other things I could do with my hair if I wanted to pull the braids out. I don’t think I would have been as comfortable with it all if she didn’t have the attitude she had. So supportive and positive. The walk back to the train was an easy one. I silently said my goodbyes to my old neighborhood and looked ahead with optimism, which was further strengthened after a woman who sat down next to me said that she liked my hairstyle. The best moment on the train occurred when I had moved to another subway car (I wanted to get close to the end because of the proximity to the Nostrand exit). There was an Italian couple who was on their way to the airport, but what they didn’t know was that they were on the wrong A train. This was a Lefferts bound one and what they needed was a Far Rockaway train. About three people tried to explain to them that they weren’t going to be able to connect and would need to get off at Rockaway Blvd. and wait for the other one. Someone told me that they had already tried explaining in Spanish thinking it could be easily translatable but it wasn’t. When I think about it, no matter how many gestures you give or broken down english directions that’s a hard thing to explain to someone if you don’t speak the same language. People started to see what we were trying to do and it got more funny and ridiculous because the more every new person tried to explain the more we all thought that that would confuse the couple even more. Finally, I got to a station that had internet service and I did what I thought other people would have done if they couldn’t speak Italian. I got on Google translate and explained the situation and showed it to them at the next stop. They looked at it, understood, looked at the map behind them that so many others had pointed to, looked back at me and nodded in approval. When I got off I told them, “Buona fortuna” and the man replied, “Grazie, ragazzo” and I shook hands with both of them. I can only hope, several hours later, that they made the correct switch and that they got on their plane on time and are having a safe flight to wherever they are going.

Se tutto va bene.

On the state: part 2

In a continuation of yesterday’s segment, I will push forward with my review of the current state of things in various areas of life.

The state of music: Technology has certainly changed the landscape of everything it has touched. Music is no different. Nowadays, it seems like everyone is making music and with the success of streaming subscription services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal there is more access than ever before. Access has transcended more than just the ability to listen to music, but the ability to make music too. I don’t know if the term was coined in 2017, but titles such as “soundcloud rappers” started to get pushed to the forefront. A “soundcloud rapper” is obviously more than just a name. To me, it refers to the facility at which anyone can record music, upload it, and get millions of plays almost overnight. Some would say this is great. The more the merrier. Competition is good. I guess I have an old soul perspective on the matter. Something out anyone and everyone putting out music doesn’t go over well with me. It removes some of the sanctity that I associate with a real artist, who has to go through a struggle to put out a record. This could be just my problem—a bitter one at that, but I don’t think I’m alone. In addition, it seems like people’s real voices have gone to the dumpsters—and again, I’m speaking mainly of the rap, rap/singer genre. Autotune and voice alteration is at a all time high. I’m a purist when it comes to listening to a singer’s voice, however raw, unpracticed, or divine it might be. I think the flaws of the newer generation (even as narrowed down to people in the past couple years) are very much exposed when they try to do live performances. Their voices don’t hold up. Now, all the hate, bitterness, and negative feeling aside from seeing everybody on stage and everyone on the internet getting millions of views…the presence of Spotify, Apple Music, and yes, Soundcloud, has provided access to a sickening amount of really really tremendous artists, too. I suppose you would expect that, the good and the bad. In literally every genre there are thousands upon thousands of new artists and a lot of them are really good. And more exposure to international artists! (Yes, on the whole, some are bad but lets focus on the good). Lets say, for example, that you wanted to listen to people like Erykah Badu or some other neo soul artist. A platform like Spotify will give you countless other artists that sound like her. Now, again, that does lead to some issues. While there might be a bunch of artists similar to her, that becomes the problem; an overabundance and over saturation of similar sounding artists, which, in turn, can take away from the original artist and the original sound. I liken the new emergence of artists to the numbers game. The “10s” are few and far between. Currently, we are getting flooded with “6s” and “7s.” The record stores of the world are all but extinct, which is truly a drag. Strands bookstore’s equivalent from a record store standpoint is something like Amoeba. I think this year or in the upcoming year the Amoeba in Los Angeles will be gone. Seems sacrilegious that such a place can be gone, although I do think that a few remain in the Bay Area. Music, music, music.

I think a lot of people would say music is thriving. The attitude in New York would definitely make me think so. We are seeing more and more cities follow New York’s lead, especially with respect to the younger generations, because now up and coming artists are playing to sold out shows all over the country, and the really big ones are doing international tours. Could the new access be the one to thank? Festivals are experiencing the same popularity. Does anyone know how “Desert Trip” (dubbed the Coachella for the older generation) did? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was met with tremendous success. When I was growing up people paid more attention to release dates for albums because you would go to the store to get them? Now we can afford to be more lazy. We can download it legally or illegally. In all seriousness, I think 2017 was more of the same on the music front. Some good. Some bad. Award shows still suck. What could possibly be different in 2018? To be honest, I really don’t know. I have zero expectations for music anymore. I don’t anticipate it or get excited in the way I used to. That kind of makes me sound like an old head wishing we were all still back in the good old days, but fuck it. Personally, I’ll try to go to more concerts in 2018. Broaden my horizons. I started a music of the world document that I want to build on because that might be the best thing about all the new access and exposure of these streaming services. It’s affected the artists, too! Take someone like Drake who, on each of his last few albums, has had a different international inspiration of sound. That could be directly attributed to knowing about more music and I think several artists did the same. Let’s see what you got for us 2018.

The state of books, articles, and literature: Sadly, I would know more about this subject if I was reading more. This year there were various stages of reading a lot and many months where I read nothing at all. Articles are leaps and bounds the easiest thing to get your hands on in this day and age. When I wake up in the morning, if my phone is right next to me, I’m going on the internet first thing (this is actually a habit I’m working to change). I’m reading the newest, latest on what happened in the sporting world. There are several journalists I follow or, at the very least, enjoy reading. When I lived in Washington Heights I was reading a free subscription of the New Yorker. In my eyes, that’s still high quality work. Book wise, I might be naive in wanting there to be another Harry Potter on the horizon. Luckily, we all still have Harry Potter. Blogs are still thriving. I don’t follow that many others, but there are blogs about literally everything. I finished a book today “the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” and that basically spawned from the popularity the author received from doing a blog. Kindles and iPads are still doing their part to eliminate physical books from being in our hands, but its easy to forget that that’s going on when you live in New York and you see the city known as Strands. I’m coming from Seattle where my memory of pubic transportation is a Kindle in the hands of every other person, but in New York…you got books in hand. Biographies. Novels. Non-fiction. Anthologies. Plays. Those forms of literature are still alive and well. Yet, 2017 was also a piggy back year with regards to books on tape. Very trendy. Podcasts (not exactly related to the topic), but also very popular. In the way that kindles and iPads took away from books in Seattle, the forms of media available in earplug mode continued to surge. Facebook also continues to be a contributing factor in sharing articles. People live two places in this day and age. They live at home and they live on Facebook, but if there is one thing that keeps Facebook solid it’s that you’re bound to see articles, op-eds, editorials, and publications that match your circle of friends. The access is real. Personally, I know I didn’t read enough in 2017. Like just now, I had a sentence that I was going to write that centered around a concept, but in the seconds of thinking how I was going to frame the sentence on paper, I forgot the central word. I’m telling you that that only happens when you go from reading to not reading or not reading enough, plain and simple.

Reading remains one of the only activities that I believe slows down time, and for the better. I have anxiety about reading because there will be times when I think, “what is happening right now in the world!?” I’ve needed to confront this idea head on because I worry about time and especially time running out. Reading, in damn near every situation, is peace. Granted, sometimes what you’re reading isn’t very peaceful, but the action itself is. I can’t tell you how many people I know that don’t read at all. Some that don’t touch a book or some like me that take the step of getting the book or checking it out from the library and then let it gather dust. The book takes on the role of a show piece. I digress, but maybe not so much. Bookstores are in the same boat as record stores. Who buys CDs? The same people that probably buy books. And nowadays there are too many streaming services and devices that make it “easier” to do both of those things. One day, in the era of Trump, maybe all of the servers will crash and burn and the Internet will be gone and so will all the information we thought we could get at the drop of a hat. And maybe, just maybe, there will be this crazy exodus of people going to record stores and bookstores all across the world, trying to get their hands on the things they once valued so much before everything was so easy. I digress again. Is it just as easy for one to make music and have thousands of people listen as it is for someone to write a book or a novel or start a blog? A soundcloud rapper and a blogger are damn near the same thing, but that brings back the question of purity and whether or not a “real artist” can be either of those two things (in the same way that someone who is YouTube famous or Instagram famous might not be considered in the same light as a movie star. Just like the preceding years before, the definition of an author is being stretched and RE-defined. I wouldn’t be surprised and, to be honest, I’d probably expect that line of what an author is to be stretched even further. Maybe it’s because I didn’t read as much this year, but the pool of legitimate authors didn’t seem as big. I still found there to be a lot of quality pieces being written. Maybe next year, when I expose myself to as much literature as I do to music, I’ll find the same results as I did this year with artists. Who knows. With respect to the two above mediums it’s easy to get lost in space.

I’m tired. Three more days. And resolutions to come.

On the state:

Who knows if I’ll ever have the proper time to reflect about this year and do the type of year in review that I would like to. Sometimes you just gotta put your mind to it and write what you can come up with, so, that being said, I’m gonna do a sort of spur-of-the-moment year in review if that’s ok. It’s not gonna be anything too crazy. It’ll be opinionated. Hopefully not too much for your taste buds. Instead of just going ahead and reviewing it straight up, my plan is to talk about the current state of things with respect to the area I’m highlighting and also predicting what I think will happen in the upcoming year. How things might change? Anyway, enough of telling you what I’m going to do. I’ll just go on right ahead and do it. Without further ado, I present 2017: the state of things, edition one.

The state of politics: Trash. Garbage. Bullshit. Completely fucked. Depressing. I’m not sure some of the aforementioned terms would be found in a thesaurus, but I think you get what I mean. I know to me it is remarkable that Donald Trump survived his first year (not complete yet, I’ll remind you) without killing us all and honestly, without getting himself killed. I didn’t think it was going to happen or maybe, I hoped that he wasn’t going to still be in office. While the White House is indeed still standing it certainly isn’t standing tall. I’ll bet if you were standing at the gate by the front lawn and stared long enough you’d see it slowly but surely starting to erode and crumple to the ground. One thing is for sure, the White House has never been whiter. There is a blinding glare emitting from the wet paint that is threatening to take away everyone’s vision for a brighter future. The president, his wife, his daughter, and son are all doing their wonderful individual duties (but mainly the president) to literally bring us to a point of no return. It’s as if they each have their personal agendas to not only erase the work of the president before them, but to create scars that cut so deep that they’ll never fully heal. The sad thing is, I couldn’t even tell you half of the shit that “The Donald” has done. There was a tax bill that passed recently that wasn’t so hot. From what I read it’s giving tax breaks to the richest people in America. Hmm. Homeless people remain homeless. Homeless people remain ignored. And the middle class, which always seems to be the Democratic party’s favorite topic during a campaign hasn’t been mentioned at all. So, the tax bill. And, apologies if I get some of this information wrong, but there was an effort to get Obamacare removed. That didn’t work. While there clearly has been a changing of the guard since Trump took office, the most stark difference to me is a complete change in values. Lives other than their own and the people in their circle have become meaningless. I don’t even need to talk about a Democrat or a Republican or an ordinary American citizen. I’m talking about a huge number of people who voted for Trump. Meaningless. The life of a woman…meaningless. The life of an immigrant…meaningless. The lives of minorities…meaningless. The lives of others…meaningless. I realize I am being divisive in saying a lot of things, but the country is a divided one and it has never been more obvious. The House is full of a bunch of snakes with the grass cut. They smile for the cameras. They smile in spite of their worst decisions and their damaging actions. Unaffected. Police brutality. Racial injustice. Environmental changes. Income inequality. Gun laws. A divide between the city and the state. The urban and the rural. The vocal and the voiceless. This is the current state of politics. A far cry from 2016, but maybe not so much in the way we think. A common opinion of the modern man and woman is that they are more comfortable nowadays (take this with a grain of salt ladies and gentleman) because everything is so overt. At least now they know how and what people think. In the days of Obama, there was a little more care taken to shield your point of view. Not anymore. Like any decent human being, I would hope that this year is not the standard for the Trump years ahead. I would hope that things can get better, despite feeling in my body, in my gut, and in my mind, body, and soul that the opposite will transpire. But what will it cost me to keep that hope? What will it cost all of us to be optimistic for the future? Energy? Time? Pain? Suffering? I think we can handle it. 2017 and politics. You were a motherfucker. A disgusting, icky, piece of shit, that I hope we never have to deal with again. 2018, I hope you’re better.

The state of film…including the state of Hollywood: Predictable. Uninspiring. Lackluster. Boring. Occasionally pretty good. Most of the time pretty not. If you were to tell me how a year in movies was gonna go, you could do so with ease. It can be broken down just like any other thing. “Summer Blockbusters.” “Award Season.” Those are the only two I really know of. The popcorn crap comes out in the summer and the films that are vying for February and the Academy Awards come out November-January. I’m probably wrong, but it is along those lines. Last year was a solid year for movies. “Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Lion, La La Land, Hidden Figures, Hell or High Water, Hacksaw Ridge, Fences, and Arrival” were the best picture nominees. Not too shabby. This year—and again, this is just a matter of opinion—there is, collectively, not as a good a group. If I had to guess which movies will be nominated for Best Picture this year they would be, “The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, Dunkirk, Three Billboards, The Post (?), Lady Bird, The Disaster Artist (?).” “Get Out” won’t win, but that was the most effective movie of the past year in my opinion. It was timely. It was provocative. It was extremely well made. It won’t win, in all likelihood. And it’s a really good movie. Is it a best picture winner? I don’t know. Maybe. I guess so. As much as I loved it I don’t think it’s a best picture winner, but compared to the rest maybe it will be. Did anyone see the other movies I named. Most of them were good right? Were they revolutionary? No. Not at all. In my opinion. Maybe that was part of the problem. My expectation for film and cinema this year was to see a lot of really daring movies that seriously challenged the status quo, literally the state of things right now. In all fairness, movies aren’t made and released within a year (I don’t think they are, at least). So, that being said, maybe next year the unexpected films that we need to see, the political satires, the strong takes on life as it is, or as it was in relation to now, will see the silver screen. Maybe all of the good movies were made this year and will be released in the next. Something like “The Florida Project,” a phenomenal movie about a marginalized people and part of the country that go unnoticed and undiscovered and might get some air time in a political campaign for a second or two. Now, with all that in mind, Hollywood fell down HARD this year, as will happen when one of the biggest and arguably the most powerful production company, “The Weinstein Company” does the falling. By now we know the scandal that took place and had been taking place for years and years with respect to Harvey Weinstein. A sick fuck to the maximum. A power hungry, abusive, motherfucker, who exploited the lives of countless women and countless actors. Some knew, some didn’t, but a lot did and once one domino fell (the words of one woman reached the masses), the rest started falling with it. The depths of Weinstein’s evil have yet to be fully escalated, but what has been pulled out has been murky beyond our wildest belief (in one sense). On the other hand, this was a long time coming. The actions of producers, executives, agents, managers, and other people in positions of power was damn common knowledge in those circles. That was the hierarchy and it stood like so for decades. We’ve all heard of the terms “casting couch” before. That’s not a new term, so maybe this is the year where that mythology was broken down as fact. Weinstein was the beginning and the well known face and once he fell, so did the others. The Kevin Spaceys. The Louis CKs. Brett Ratners. Jeremy Pivens. Jeffrey Tambors. Dustin Hoffmans. And so on and so on…for a long, long time. It didn’t just extend to Hollywood—and maybe this is a minor digression, but to other media platforms. The Charlie Roses. The Matt Lauers. I guess it’s all under the Hollywood umbrella, in some ways. All of the people I mentioned will suffer severe consequences for their actions. Kevin Spacey was stripped of “House of Cards” and other projects. Louis CK lost his show, his directorial debut, and so on and so forth. What remains to be seen is if this issue will be a 21st century issue, an instant gratification headline that dies down like the rest of them or will the ripples keep vibrating for the near and distant future. How will Hollywood change and what direction and means of action will they take? In many ways, the change in the political climate and the feeling of the supporters and their political groups can be translated over to the state of film and the state of Hollywood. Covert to overt. Now we know. A lot is still covered and kept under wraps, but if this year is any indicator, there will me much more unwrapping to come. 2018, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

Well, I guess that’s part 1. More to come.

On voicemails:

Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. 1-2-2-6-2-0-1-7-0-0 is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you’ve finished recording you may hang up, or press one for more options.

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in called you, texted you, thought of you remembered you, needed you, wanted you— but your contact is still in my phone for these very moments when my feet get a little cold and my mind feels a little warm and the oven stars humming and the heater blares and the layers that I’m sporting start feeling a little warmer, beckon for a seasons change summertime in the winter’s name, flying high like a parachute blanket, mattress love to get reacquainted just a lousy sheet and a comforter, but don’t worry it’ll be enough

It was good to see your face again, the other day at the coffee shop—I almost didn’t recognize you but the way you move, there’s no mistaking it your order’s the same, you wear the same shit idiosyncratic and that ain’t even the half of it; I could pick your voice out in its falsetto like a spring flower from a mossy meadow while it still flutters like a hummingbird before lapping nectar to get its nutrients the way you walk, talk, act, and swagger still like your wings: 100 miles a minute

Hey, I don’t know if you remember me the guy way back when who did such and such for who and who and I think your mom was there your dad too, and something or other came out of nowhere, right? leading to your escape, right to my counter you—out of breath, me—an oxygen tank of wide eyed wonder at your exiled mystery you said you were drunk, so I offered you water you cursed me out loud, so I offered you soap you then took a swing, lucky I ducked but then you collapsed and on the ground slumped you stared at me with glassy eyes and I went off to get your mother

Hello, it’s me, I got your message that all sounds great, and when are you coming? my place is small, but we have a couch a great neighborhood, public transportation if I heard you right, you’ll be coming with him you can take my room, if that’s fine with him my friends live close by, I can stay with them it would probably be easier, would that be OK? push a little stronger, sure I’ll fall a little harder a pushover’s pusher, so I can fall a little longer there’s some food in the fridge, make yourselves at home my home, was my home, mostly your home now

You know sometimes when the wind blows outside and the window opens and a note flies in but when you grab it to read it there’s invisible ink and like that the paper fades like memories made or you know when you see someone but you can’t see them at all just the person that they remind you of their silhouette a spitting image of a real life duplicate yet deep down you know there can only be one what about the clock, do you whisper in its ear seductively suggesting the future is near do you reach inside, play god for a minute rotate the short hand and screw with the long or do you stare at it till the day resets leaving voicemail messages from dusk until dawn

On a most wonderful time of the year:

With Seattle continuing to pour down and do its best impression of a wet Christmas, New York City, which has got to be one of the cities most associated with a classic wet christmas (east coast bias) was as dry as could be. Between being Jewish and not stepping out of my room to holiday lights and a tree and then simultaneously getting some snow photos from my mother of a winter wonderland 3,000 miles away, I seemed to be reminded time and time again today that I was far away from home…and Christianity. Today, as I mentioned previously, I had no real plans but to think about family, see a movie and go get some Chinese food. I wasn’t terribly optimistic about either of the latter two plans being a cake walk because those plans on a day like today are damn near universal. The last time I tried to get Chinese food on Christmas was back in 2013 (ok, so maybe that’s the last time I can remember) and I tried getting some food to go at Honey Court in the international district to then be brought back to my other roommate Alex’s house before a group of us went to the old Metro Cinemas in the University District to see “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The Metro never had a reputation for being automatically sold out on extremely busy holidays. I mean, I think I saw almost every Harry Potter movie there on opening night and while “Wolf” was crowded, we were all able to get in (we must have purchased our tickets ahead of time that day). The place we got Chinese was called “Honey Court,” and when I went there it was bananas. The wait time was absolutely insane. You could barely step inside the lobby area and there was a line outside of people waiting to get in. It all ended up working out, but the stress levels were peaking.

Today, the stress initially was very very low. My plan was to see “Phantom Thread,” the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie and last Daniel Day Lewis film at Union Square. That was the plan. My friend and I even went early to try and get a ticket, suspecting that it would be very crowded and we thought we would be able to get in with our MoviePass. We thought. We arrived at Union square about an hour and a half before the showtime, opened up the MoviePass application, selected the theatre, the movie, the showtime, then checked in, and we saw a “SUCCESS” screen pop up, letting us know we were in there! We were both super excited and my anxiety levels vanished instantly. When we got to the theatre though, we were met with some unfortunate disappointment. After seeing on the showtimes screen that both the 3:20 and 3:50 shows were sold out we shrugged it off and tried to still “purchase” our tickets at the kiosks, however, after selecting “Phantom Thread” we saw that both of the reasonable shows had lines crossed out and to our great sadness, merely checking in with movie pass does not guarantee a spot in the theatre. We were crushed. Then it seemed as if every other show on the screen was also sold out. “The Post” with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, directed by Steven Spielberg, was sold out for all of its shows by 3 PM. “Star Wars” was sold out. “Disaster Artist” was sold out. Christmas at the movies was most definitely in full effect. For the most part, neither of us could agree on a movie to see, so we decided on “Loving Vincent,” an interesting looking animated film about the death of Vincent Van Gogh, which was playing at the nearby Quad Cinemas. What can I say? It was a cool looking theater. Was playing some good movies. Had a little Daniel Day-Lewis month going on to honor his incredible movie catalogue. Those were all plusses. MoviePass worked. That was another. But did I want to spend my Jewish Christmas watching “Loving Vincent”? Probably not. I went in and out of sleep through the ninety minute movie. The parts I was awake for looked beautiful—100 artists collaborated for years to make that movie happen. It certainly was animation unlike any I had ever seen before so that was definitely cool to see, but did I love the movie? Not really. My good friend might be more of a movie lover/Daniel Day-Lewis admirer than me though because immediately after the movie was over she bought a ticket to a later showing of “Phantom Thread.” (She told me later on that it was excellent, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing it at a later date when I can).

Step one of the Christmas mission was complete, but it was only a quarter to six and the next part of the plan was to have Chinese food in Chinatown around 7:30. I ended up killing time at “The Bean,” which luckily was open across the closed “Strand” bookstore. I was hoping it would be open so I could get a couple more chapters of the book read that I was essentially checking out during my visits there, but not this time around. “The Bean” was as lively as ever as most places would be when everywhere else around it was closed. Small groups, big groups, chatting, smiling, enjoying each other’s company. I passed the time surfing the internet and screwing around with social media and, as expected, it got close to seven o’clock before I knew it. A hop and a skip later, a 6 train transfer to the D train at Bleeker/Broadway Lafayette St. and I was in Chinatown along with the rest of the “stayed home for Christmas” New Yorkers. You couldn’t necessarily tell that it was crowded because only a few places had really really crazy lines. The first that my friends and I tried was “Joe’s Shanghai,” which after turning the corner on Pell and Bowery, you could see the line hundreds of feet away. At first I didn’t even know if that was where the line was coming from, but the closer I got I knew we had no chance. It was freezing cold outside, too! If that wasn’t an indicator of the desperation and craziness of everyone trying to get Chinese on this specific day than I don’t know what it is. I asked one couple who was warmly dressed for the Ice Age what the wait time looked like and they jokingly replied, “Forever…” The next spot we went to was a sneakier spot that my friend knew about through some other friends of his, but when we went there and he looked at the crowd he said, “Nope.” So, we ended up settling on the place I thought we could try first. It was the same restaurant I went to last year and I knew the menu, more or less.

The meal was pretty awesome and even now my stomach seems content with the food baby it will certainly be trying to get rid of for the foreseeable future. It was a cool type of scene because it was pretty crowded in the front and we were sat at the last table in the back like some goodfellas. We had two types of dumplings, rice noodle and pan fried, got some orange chicken, sliced beef, and shrimp fried rice. It took us a little over an hour before we had to tap out and call it a night, but not without some awesome, memorable conversation along the way. The main topic at the dinner table was the Washington Huskies basketball team. It started with retired numbers, transitioned to Coach Romar’s run as the head coach, went from our current tournament drought to past glory days, and ended with some of the most memorable and some of the painful games we ever endured as fans. It was clear that despite pretty separate experiences we were all die hard Husky basketball fans. One of the hot topics was which play was bigger between Nate Robinson’s dunk against Arizona or Isaiah’s cold-blooded shot that was also against Arizona. Which was the best all around team? Which tournament loss was the most devastating, which of course blossomed into a play by play analysis of where everything went wrong. The end of the UConn game in 2006. Plays in regulation. Plays in overtime. The West Virginia game in 2010. The North Carolina game in 2011. And from those deviations, we covered the crazy and hectic regular season games during those years. The dialogue became heated, sedated, argumentative, and then passive, when we looked back at how invested we were and still are today. At one point it became cynical—we wondered if we would ever see them getting to the Final Four or even win a championship. We had high hopes. The “what-ifs” ran rampant throughout. Luckily for me we didn’t talk about the Mariners or the night would surely have been soured. At the end of the day, none of us knew if the current direction would be the right one. It made this year easier to think about now that Michael Porter, Jr. was out for the season. This current team is so young, we all agreed. In some ways, it was hard to get used to the idea that we were really starting all the way over…from scratch.

The plates on the table were empty, for the most part. Our teas had been refilled. The waters untouched to avoid getting filled up and spoiling our appetite. A Christmas complete. Not exactly wanting to rush outside into the windy, chilly cold we stalled, until finally we realized we should just get on with the night. They headed east to the Grand St. D train and I picked up the pace to a light jog on my way to the Canal St. J. The transfer to the Queens bound A train came along dreamily and I arrived at Nostrand with an hour to spare of my 2017 Christmas. My roommate had plans of his own, so I found a good spot on the couch to write my summary post and think back on what is, what was, and what will be. After all, while Christmas is a beautiful day, it is also a day of reckoning. Of sobriety. One more week left of the year and many thoughts how it will end and what measures will be taken in the year to come. Future focused, if only for this week. The blueberry pancakes that I made for myself this morning were having a tug of war with my stomach for who could occupy more space. The unfilled and unfulfilled water bottle on the coffee table seemed to be staring at me longingly in the hope of resuming our reciprocal relationship. I told him to chill and that I’d be there in a minute. Today, I realized that I could air-type a keyboard. I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad, but if it’s because I tried and succeeded with my goal of writing every day for an entire year (predominantly on the computer?), I’ll take it.

Six more days.

On injera and carts of math books:

It’s snowing in Seattle. I can see it all over social media my mom even face timed me to show the beginning of the fall. It’s cold here and drizzling. Throughout the entirety of the day I was thinking of how nice it would be to resort back to old traditions back home with my family. Sit on the couch and watch a movie or two. Eat some sweets like some chocolate chip cookies, a Christmas cake (but a jewish rendition), or some chocolate chip banana bread. The quote of the week seemed to be that Christmas didn’t really feel like a holiday anymore or maybe I just heard a lot of people speaking the same bogus. Kyrie Irving, the point guard for the Boston Celtics, who is infamously known for pushing the “world is flat” theory said that he doesn’t consider Christmas a holiday, anymore. To him, and his case is specific, it’s just another day to spend time with your family. As a professional basketball player I can see how that might be the case, but I think that applies to everybody. Yes, it’s still the most hectic holiday—with respect to adoration and preparation—but when it comes down to it, everybody loves Christmas Eve and Christmas because it might be the only day where everyone’s family gets together. And even though I don’t celebrate it, this is the first time I’ve ever spent these days away from my family. It kind of sucked. It did suck. Now, that being said my roommate and I still did what we could to make the most of it. I bought groceries at a pretty tame Trader Joes. (According to the cashier it wasn’t very crowded because a lot of people living in New York aren’t from New York, so everyone was back home). I did some laundry. I woke up late to another grey sky and cool day, so even though I wasn’t physically back home the elements were trying their hardest to provide an embrace. Upon the suggestion of my roommate, we tried to have a Christmas eve meal somewhere, but to our dismay most of the places were closed. We ended up meeting with a friend of mine and going to a vegan Ethiopian place that she and I had gone to a couple of days before. It was one of the only places around that was open late. A couple of us literally got what the menu called a “Feast,” which was a huge plate of injera with seven items from the menu. Lentils, greens, beets, you name it. It was filling and delicious all at the same time. For some odd reason I was inclined to drink some wine with the other two. We emptied a bottle of red pretty quickly, and not being used to getting tipsy from drinking wine, I became drowsy by the end of the meal. In the first ten months of this year I could count the amount of times I had something to drink on two hands, but for some reason I’ve been drinking more lately. I’m a bit disappointed in myself because it was one of my resolutions to greatly reduce and try to not drink at all, but it almost feels like these last couple months have been a relapse of sorts. I’m not an alcoholic, but alcohol—especially in social settings—is such a crutch. Disciplining myself not to drink when there are drinks around might be something that I have to practice over time.

There were many opportunities today to get on the right track in several different areas of study, cleaning, and mindset, but my overriding excuse to everything was that it was Christmas and I would take care of it when the holidays were over. I almost got trapped into saying I’ll just take care of it next year considering that 2018 is in a week now, but luckily I didn’t go that far. I’m not getting down on myself for being lazy today or for not accomplishing the tasks I wanted to accomplish, but I’m very cognizant lately of troubling trends and bad habits. Like always, I know that recognition is not enough—I must go through the trouble of changing. Sometimes when I’m walking around the city I ask myself if other people have done what they need to do to change, not knowing who they are or what their current situation may be. On the way home from the restaurant there was a guy on the subway with a heavily tattooed face asking for money and wearing what looked to be a brand new leather backpack. Or when we were waiting for the train, there was this guy who was speed walking, dropped the sweater he was holding and then tried to sell it to us for three dollars. I always wonder what it would be like to be homeless. What would the struggles be. I looked on a social media post that showed a homeless man acting out on the street. Two of the visible comments were by ex-NFL players who agreed that homeless people were the freest people on the earth. I didn’t know exactly what they were talking about, but after a while I could kind of see where they were coming from. Then again, walking from stop to stop today when the winds were doing their chilly best to give my body frostbite, I agreed that being homeless wasn’t on the top of my list. In one of my earlier posts I talked about some moments of anxiety in which I realize I’ve been holding my breath and it makes me take a huge gasp, almost like I’ve woken up from a nightmare. I feel for the homeless population, especially during times like these. I wish they could be with their families. I wish they weren’t spending their time trying to stay warm in the cold. Good thing there is a new tax bill that’s looking out for them…

This week I made two separate visits to Strand’s bookstore, near Union Square. I didn’t really have a point to going there, but there was a book I was interested in reading and at the time there was 175 plus holds on all of the copies at the library. So, when I got there and saw that the hardcover was $24 and that it was a New York Times bestseller and that plenty of copies had already been sold, I told myself that I would treat my visit to Strand’s as if it was the library and I would try to just read the book there. The book, which I have almost finished now, is called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***.” It had been recommended to me by many of my friends and I was interested in taking a look to see what all the hype was about. The first two chapters (my first visit) made me very defensive. A lot of the author’s mentality is backwards and attempts to challenge out hardwired ways of thinking. A lot of it was obvious on the surface (we stress out too much) to the types of advice that makes someone like me a little less comfortable (we need to stop caring as much and we need to accept that not everyone is extraordinary, potentially even us). I realized that during my second visit (the next two chapters) that I would need to try to find the information I agreed with and take the rest with a grain of salt. I was naturally skeptical and questioned how genuine this author really was. I wondered if he stood by what he was saying or he was just trying to make money. I also wondered if it was my own insecurities that were questioning the advice of a successful man. I don’t know for sure, yet. I’m hoping to go back soon and finish after a couple more visits. My thoughts on self-help books haven’t changed much, though. I don’t know why, but I’ve stayed away from them. On the surface it makes me look pathetic because it looks like I’m not trying to help myself, but call me crazy, I just feel like a lot of those books are a bunch of bullshit. I’m sure they work for some people. I just don’t know if they work for me. It’ll be good for me to finish this one.

Strand’s was a wonderful sight though. It was earlier in the week, so I think it was a wonderful mix of the everyday vibrancy of the bookstore and all of these men, women, and children who were there in the hope of trying to find a decent gift for Christmas. I reveled in the business of it all. A city within a bookstore. Creatures scurrying around. It was fantastic. The first day I sat on a bench on the second floor and people came and went to sit beside me. Finally one older guy sat down next to me with a bunch of math books and started to take out his notebook and begin copying random equations down. The second day, I went to go to the same bench and there was no room to sit and sure enough, the mathematician was in the same exact spot with his notebook, math books, and cart right in front of him. I went to the other one in the back and after about fifteen minutes this older guy sat down next to me and was struggling with a slow I-Phone. I suggested that maybe he get out of all of his open applications and he looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. It took a while, but when he let me show him how to do it his phone started speeding up again. He said, “How much would you like?” and with a confused face, I shrugged it off and told him that I hope his phone starts working better now. He ended up striking a conversation and we talked for a little while. He couldn’t hear very well, so I had to repeat a lot. He continued on about how he loves music and preferred to listen to the opera in Europe because the acoustics were way better over there than the “crap” in America. When I told him I was an actor, there was good conversation to be had, but then he started to take some ill advised left turns. He talked about Kevin Spacey, Hollywood, Weinstein and other relatable topics. His stance would have been torn apart by women and his final conclusion seemed to be that he was an amoral person and that we were ridiculous to be in a position to judge morality or to judge someone else’s morals. I realized that I had shut him off when I could tell his opinions were getting on my nerves and looking back on it, I wish I hadn’t. I had made a mistake and an error in judgement and instead of trying to hear him out and tell him why I disagreed I turn the sound all the way off. Like Matt Damon and other men recently who insist on giving their opinion on the topic, a spectrum of bad behavior should have been considered. To me it sounded like men that were comfortable with an old way of life trying to justify a machismo society, but maybe that’s what my tone deaf ears were telling me. The amoral comment, which really struck a funky chord, is one that I’m still trying to unwrap, but maybe, all things considered, he was making a good point. We are all creatures. Creatures that have done and done wrong, so really, who are we to judge, at all?

On casual footwear:

I spent the majority of the day walking through midtown with my roommate Nathan Sackeyfio, while New York went full Seattle and draped the sky in grey while later on raining cats and dogs. I was a man on a mission today. Oddly enough, I have many a memory going shopping—or trying to go shopping with Nate, and if you ask him, it always starts promising and ends up disappointing. I’m an indecisive shopper. Maybe it reflects a bigger problem, but I’m as picky as they get, to be honest. It’s most definitely a rare occasion to go inside of a store, go through the process of purchasing the item, purchase it, leave the store, and feel good about myself or my purchase. Lately, this has been the case with shoes and dress clothes. As far as other articles are concerned, I haven’t really dabbled in them. Today, I told myself I was going to simply add to my casual sneaker collection. I had a list of a few shoes and I thought best case scenario I get at least one of them and worst case scenario I would either get one and return it or not get any at all. The best case scenario was fulfilled, but as it so often happens I decided not to build on my consumer momentum because I worried about my funds, whether or not I was making a sound decision, and in the way way back of my mind, my mom’s voice was asking me to walk down the hall to see if the shoes were good for my feet.

As a physical therapist she always wanted to make sure my ankles weren’t rolling in and that the shoes I purchased had enough support. If I gave her the opportunity or if I told her I liked something and she beat me to the shoe, she would take her hands and first put it around the heel of the shoe and squeeze it to see if it had a sturdy base. She would know almost instantly because shoes that sucked were so elastic that the material would collapse. Next, she would put one hand on each end of the shoe and twist it to see if the sole was strong enough. Shoes like chucks, vans, and other extremely light shoes would always fail this test. Then, lastly, and sometimes this would make me cringe when she would do it in front of an employee, she would take both hands again and put them on each end and then proceed to try and fold one side of the shoe to the other. Shoes that had no support would fold all the way without any resistance. Stronger shoes, like Air Maxes and boots, would stay put. For her, she was doing her motherly duties. I think part of it was she couldn’t stand when the employee at the shoe store would try to just sell it and not go through the trouble to make sure the shoe was even a good fit. My mom took so much pride in the shoes my sister and I would wear. If you ever had a parent that would suggest that after putting the shoe on you’d go for a walk and you should run and jump in them to see how they feel, well, that was my Mom. When I was younger, I would abide without thinking twice and haul my ass through the nooks and crannies of every shoe store. As I got older I grew more reluctant. And now, the only time I even entertain the suggestion is when I go to get running shoes from a legit running store. Somewhere along the way I decided that only then and there should my mom’s criteria be met, but she’s done her job. Why? Because I know that over time if I wear those chucks and those vans I just bought today too much, I’ll have some long term foot problems because they don’t support my feet at all. I try to create a balance when I can. I know when I have kids I’m going to subject them to the same techniques at a shoe store that my mom did with me and my sister. The hand to shoe test. The walking test. The run and jump test. And the return policy test. A good shoe store has a good return policy. My mom was always a little skeptical of the ones that said you couldn’t just take them back if they started to hurt your feet. Like Nike, who usually won’t let you return shoes that have been worn outside. My mom never had any of that. Whether I had forgotten to only wear them inside or had worn them outside knowingly and found out in either case that they weren’t good running shoes or basketball shoes or casual shoes, my mom could care less what the return policy was. They would take them back, or else.

I don’t have an answer for why I’m so indecisive, but man was it a luxury growing up to have my mom right behind me to put her foot down. I think now it’s more of a style issue than anything. I know right away whether or not the shoes feel good, but that’s why I’m so dependent on other people when they shop with me because I’m my own worst critic. Sometimes I get lucky, make an impulse decision and am happy with the results, but a lot of the time, it doesn’t matter how many mirrors there are or how many angles I see myself in the stuff I’m trying on, a followed through decision doesn’t happen very often. Like today, I had my eyes on these high top vans that I had seen a lot of people wearing, so I thought I might like them. I went to the Vans store to try them on and I don’t know if it was the socks I was wearing, the pants I was wearing, the fact that I might have tried on too big of a size (they were size 10 and you know me and going below double digits), or the fact that I didn’t like how they looked looking down on them (they made my feet look like hobbit feet or again, maybe they were just too big). The point was I felt very disappointed and I didn’t even give myself the opportunity to buy them and return them later. Then I thought to myself, “You know what, your backup was those low top flame ones, you should get those.” So I said, “Ms., can I please try on a size 10 of those low top flames?” She looked in the back…and they didn’t have my size. I figured this shopping experience was going to play out like 95 percent of the other ones, but I told myself, “You know what, you might think those flame ones are cool now, but in a couple of years they’ll be out of style. Just get the regular, classic low top pair, and they’ll last you forever.” So, I went into foot locker, did my thing, tried a pair on, and came out victorious. Or so I thought… It must have been about ten seconds for all of that supportive talk to feel like it had been chucked out of the proverbial window. The two pairs that I didn’t get were the most “in” and “trendy” to my knowledge, but after leaving the store I kid you not, every third person was wearing a pair of the shoes I just bought. I’m not exaggerating. I spent the next however many minutes looking at the ground and watching the holiday shopping stampede of New Yorkers wearing the same shoes and nowhere in sight was someone wearing the shoes that I decided not to get. It was like everyone and their mother decided to be of the same frame of mind, abandon the trends, and do what I had done. I felt the same way after my beginning with the brand “Coterie.” I remember when I found the word in the dictionary that I had thought I discovered something nobody knew about. Next thing I know I see the name in articles, I see other brands using the same name, I see lounges being named after it. What was once original was no more. Now, I’m writing and pretending that I was the only person on the face of the earth to buy the vans I bought today, but like most people, I thought that they were going to stand out a little bit more. I was mistaken. But fuck it, just like the chucks, they should stand the test of every new trend.

Nate and I persisted on Consumer Drive for the rest of the day, walking along 34th and then up 5th avenue just long enough to see the huge crowds gathered in front of Roc Center for what we thought was the umpteenth big christmas tree gathering, but when we looked a little closer we could see that they were all staring at the Sak’s 5th Avenue building, which on the lower level was displaying their famous Christmas windows that featured a Disney theme of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Lately, I’ve been really keen to that movie, almost to the point where I want to watch it again. Same goes for all of the old Disney classics. Each of the store front windows had a different scene from the movie. The arrival of Snow White. (We saw it backwards mind you because the beginning was on the north side of the street). The surprise of the dwarfs. The wicked witch. The apple. So on and so forth. It wasn’t until about halfway through the block that the length of the building, which was covered in Christmas lights, began to brighten up into the shape of the Disney World castle, with music playing in the background. It quite a scene. Everybody on our side was craning their heads looking up and everyone across the street was lost in the majesty of it all, all those who weren’t seeing everything unfold through their camera screens. By that point it began to rain pretty hard, so the weather literally dampened the holiday mood just a little bit. The mission was to get to Niketown, which we finally made it to, but not before passing Trump “Fuckboy” tower on our way. Niketown provided temporary warmth and Barney’s New York, our next stop, provided skyscraper prices. The R train provided passageway to Shake Shack and Chick-FIl-A and the D and A trains provided transportation for our trip home. Shopping is tiring and sometimes so is the weather. Nate, who had high hopes for potentially going out on this Saturday night, fell asleep pretty quickly after making it home and I tried my best to review it all. Two guys in New York just passing the time away from our hometown in our new home towns.

December 23, 2017. It was nice to spend some time with you.

On an ode to a traveller:

Clear the cotton balls out of your ears to find that your hearing is much better than the deaf you’re comfortable being where drums resound much beyond the sculpture that’s been blocking out the bullshit not confronting the culprit (sideways mugshot) the ability to listen and reason, long passed over an unavoidable odor issuing from the lack of waves—ignorant no longer

Unpack the union that was cemented in stone incapable of cutting, an abyss full of tears that you never got to, let harden and solidify the sword that was stuck now a halloween costume freak show in your mirror but invisible to others flame throwing tools, your 10,000 hours to reverse the damage that procrastination left you a growing problem—just a problem—nothing more--your problem the only solution currently—drill a hold in the core

Take two steps back and learn to restrain examine your hands and the shape they’ve created find that your breath had hiccuped its breathing ceased to keep learning, resorted to fighting a fist, two fists, aiming for tension reads to fly and beyond apprehension balled up and loaded, a weapon physique with bullets as knuckles, a fingerless freak look at the ten you forgot that you had

Wonder why you’re walking so so far ahead and acknowledge your body floating across the track meet surface foreign to touch on the road to recovery with no lower body the metaphor is: you’ve even going to fast walked without feet, legs, thighs and calves ran 100 meters, forgot to run laps vanishing finish lines with no metrics attached your feet in the distance—take better care

Visit the doctor, sit down and listen; stay still through the cat scan, it’ll be over soon recover the vitals, resolve all the wounds the fractures and breaks and the ruptures and tears will heal over time; they look so soft, bones split like splinters inflated lungs show grey underneath you no pills or prescriptions to remedy an x-ray relief of the mind, salvation of the soul

Give yourself up and let the light shine through relinquish the darkness and the past drama whirlpools syringe the IV and get better with fluids lay down with your eyes closed, lie flat on your back allowing your body to rise through the pull of change a full body epiphany an update in motion, alteration of pace one life to live, only one life to chase your dreams

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