Reading Between the Lives (The War on Like)

It's no longer enough to be compassionate, for love is now a zero sum game.

Or is it that our compassion has grown so limited... in these boxes we call home?

Black lives. Blue lives. Queer lives. All.

Choosing one is choosing against the others (or so the story goes).

Sitting at home the other night so paralyzed that I could no longer turn away, I sought refuge where I have so many times before... in books.

But standing once again before a bookshelf that has often been my altar, it struck me:

My compassion has been replaced by my passions.

What if the things I love have taken the place of my interest in what others hold dear?

So I've decided to read more of what others call their own. 

I (re)turned first to an autobiography which I've always found troubling.

Truth be told it troubles me still.

I don't LIKE it. But finally I see the value in that.

For it's things I've LIKED that have kept me warm in a world which is shrinking by the day.

I'm of an age where that phrase - the shrinking world - used to mean progress.

It no longer means any such thing. Not to me. 

My world has contracted because I failed to continue to expand it. 

In surrounding myself with only things I LIKED, I lost the ability to see how other things (and those who loved these things) were actually LIKE me.

I need to reconnect.

If it's for me to tell the story, then I can no longer ignore the greater narrative.

Black. Blue. Queer. All.

It's time to read more of what I haven't LIKED before.

For if I don't, I'll never learn just how LIKE me the many I'm yet to meet truly are.

The Siren's Song

And just like that I was back

Old friend, New song

And once again I'm pierced

Now I sit here (as many of us have)

Do I even have the time to do this correctly? (I ask feebly)

Does one ever?

The reason to begin again is never because it makes sense

Those of us who do this... whose blood have traced the tales of old...

We never sharpen our quills out of boredom or calculation

There is no calculus to the heart

It's never that we realize something new

We've always one more story in reserve

The fear (and it's real) is that this one might be the last

What if the Muse never returns?

This is the nature of our fear

It isn't that the tale won't be told

It's that there will never be another bursting for its release

So is it time?

What if I wait?

Wouldn't it be.....

There is no calculus to the heart

Who Cares?

We live in a world of lists. 

A random search, on a search engine to be named when they pay me, completes "Top Ten ________________" with the following: 1) (Top Ten) Top Ten Lists, 2) Songs, 3) Destinations, 4) Names for Girls, and 5) Prison Breaks.

There truly is a list for anything, so there has to be one for how we react to poetry. If the (unfortunately) most common reaction to a washer as an anniversary gift is 'Oh you shouldn't have' (with eye brows that imply the literal accuracy of this response) then near the top of any list regarding one's exposure to poetry must sadly be 'I don't get it.' 

If you're reading a poem to yourself, this is permissible. But if it's a poetry reading (for millennials: a poetry reading is like a live Facebook posting session... in a cafe... with speaking) and found yourself feeling like you didn't get it, I suggest that there may be cause for concern.

What are, to stay loyal to a theme, the top two things people don't get about poetry? 1) We don't get why he or she chose to read ABC, 2) We don't get why he or she was moved by another's reading of ABC. 

To this I would ask, Who cares? 

Does it matter if we don't get whatever someone offers of themself? Is it not simply marvelous that they offered anything in the first place?

Similarly, why does it matter whether we grasp why someone was moved by this word or that? Is it not more important that they were moved by words at all? 

I offer these questions not to say that I don't care why people are moved. Instead, I wonder how many people we let pass by because that thing that moves them is not to our particular liking. 

It's to this that I once again say, Who cares? 

How much less lonely a world might this be if we connected as much with another's capacity to love as we do with the random coincidence that they love precisely that which we already hold dear? 

By all means, love the objects -- Just be sure to love the subjects, and their verbs as well. 

The Hands that Build America

Oh my love, it’s a long way we’ve come

From the freckled hills to the steel and glass canyons

That’s actually what my ancestors looked like – well a good portion of them, at least.

My ancestors were mail carriers and fire fighters, and you know what that means?

They were lucky.

My ancestors never pounded the nails that built America.

We never picked its crops.

We never reclaimed land only others would be able to afford.

Many others hold ownership over this portion of the tale, and I’m grateful for each of them.

Sadly, the romantic idea that America was somehow built carries with it the toxic implication that this construction was somehow completed.

America is still being built today.

That Ellis Island has been replaced by airport Immigration only examples the transitional nature of this wonderful nation.

The hands are, let’s get it out there, less Caucasian than we feel they once were.

Does this mean we should celebrate them any less?

Should we suspect our more-recent arrivals because they look less American than… Who? My ancestors when they arrived?

(I get it, each of us has ancestors who were suspected and mistreated upon arrival, but)

Would any of our ancestors ask that we remember them by treating those coming to build tomorrow’s America with fear and disdain?

Do we now have so much that we cannot fathom another wanting to get their share?

Mao’s tactics were vile, but perhaps a few of us could use a re-education as well.

America takes hard work. It always has.

I, for one, am cognizant (and grateful) that me sitting in an air-conditioned room as I type on a laptop is not all it will take to carry America to the tomorrow I fully intend on enjoying.

The hands that built America had the names of saints, kings and prophets; they even had names that we who arrived before them assigned our 'property' against their will.

The hands that are building America have their own names.

These names sound 100% as foreign to yesterday's immigrants as the names which my ancestors called themselves did once upon a time.

They sound just as foreign, but not one ounce more so.

American is being built as I type this today.

It will not be completed by the time you read this tomorrow.

May we celebrate and welcome those taking on the jobs we should be grateful no longer fall to our delicate hands.

Of all of the promises

Is this one we can keep?
Of all of the dreams
Is this one still out of reach?

From 10,000 Feet (Writer's Block II)

10,000 some odd feet is apparently this writer’s sweet spot.

There’s something spectacular about being above it all, and yet very much able to make out what’s below.

Flying home from a short business trip Sunday morning, I was mesmerized by the normalness of it all.

Traffic marching like ants around pretzel hoops of highway brought me to a startling realization.

All these people I’ll never meet, and yet whom I was close enough to count if I had so desired, each of them had a story to tell.

What’s more, of course, is that we are not any of us (lest the Write-a-Novel-in-Just-Ten-Weeks crowd has its way) in possession of just that one novel tale.

I personally am keeper of not only any number of my own tales, but also of the tales of those who most affected my journey.

My life-defining tale of the Middle School Vice Principal who took a liking to my misguided angst is really a sequel to whatever left Mr. so-and-so with his savior complex in the first place.

The point is that there should never be a lack of stories, though of course we all feel that the world is at times dry.

This is for a few reasons:

First, we don’t actually speak to strangers anymore. (And we even less often truly listen to them.)

One of the reasons that we feel like we have heard every story before is that we are only listening to people whose very outlook on the world was formed by their interactions with us.

Second, we have, collectively mind you, a fear of commitment.

Starting a story is easy, it’s finishing them that is a bitch.

Love those stories about the author who scribbles a story on a napkin in the middle of the night (or, who, in my case, pretends to make phone calls so he can dictate scenes into his phone on Metros)? Sure you do. But what any writer really loves is the story of the girl who just finished her fifth and final draft.

What I call writer’s block is really an admission that I don’t have it in me to abandon another tale.

Better not to talk to the girl across the bar if I already know that my next night off is in 2019, right?

Wrong.

To finish a story, you have to start it. Borderline Yoda, perhaps. Yet makes untrue this, it does not.

From experience, I can tell you that abandoned one-time heroes become deeply fleshed-out characters in future tales. Weep not for the hero who never was – He ends up guiding the tale in next year’s thriller.

So what does all of this mean?

Pick up your pen religiously, but even more stridently never stop looking around. Write stories in your head even if there is no way you’ll reach paper before forgetting half the details.

The most verbose of us spent years talking to ourselves to hone our craft.

Let your writing be the same. What may seem glib is occasionally Zen. May this be one of those times:

Writer’s write.

The characters are out there, even if it takes reaching cruising altitude to identify them.

More Than Just a Vowel

Today was but the first time of many.

‘Prince is…’ I began, before stopping to correct myself. ‘Prince was…’
The transition from ‘is’ to ‘was’ is a confounding one.
On the surface, it’s the changing of a vowel (i to a) and the addition of a consonant (w).
Looking closer, though, one can’t miss the symbolism of removing the ‘i’ – how this one fewer “I” in the world perfectly mirrors the passing of one we held dear.
Even the addition of the ‘w’ – a consonant that feels somehow forced from within the depths of us (for who would choose to designate another as past tense?) – represents an unmistakable crossing of that barrier to a place from which none returns.

I guess I should’ve known
By the way you parked your car sideways
That it wouldn't last
- Little Red Corvette (1983)

We knew it wouldn’t last forever.
Why then do all of our actions argue against this fact?
Few got the meaning of Prince before it was time to say goodbye. Few noted the songs, versatility, lasting impact and pure Statement of Prince Rogers Nelson before we found ourselves standing here – wondering how best to tie things off.
Miles Davis waged protest through his horn, but Prince wore defiance in his facial hair.
However, if Prince was a call to action, many of us seem to have hit Snooze.
We’re awake now. But to what end?

Closin' time, ugly lights, everybody's inspected
- U Got the Look (1987)

So where do we go from here? Once again, we have collectively missed out on the essence of another.
Will we react to this loss by elevating one who fittingly (oh so fittingly) refused to join Apple Music by buying 1993’s The Hits back into the Top 10 for a week? (We will.)
Will we pay more attention to yet another funeral than we did to yet another life? (We may – you have to wait for funerals… Autopsies? We and cable news LIVE for those, however.)
Will we change our ways before missing out on celebrating yet another of our beautiful brothers and sisters while still they walk among us? (TBD.)

Dedicated to my good friend Shawn – one of the rare souls who got Prince long before the eulogies told him how to

My Spiritual Main Street

I thank the teller, push open the door, and note the familiar jingle of the bells. A moment later, I’m there again – or at least I will be (occasionally it all begins a block or so away).

No matter the moment, no matter how long it has been, whenever I close the eyes of my consciousness, it’s always that same street where I find myself strolling.

I think it may be the same for many of us. Not the same street, of course (and thank God for that, for if the populace of Now were present in my forever-perfect Then, where then would I go to hide?) but on one personal to each individual.

This isn’t quite the same as that Magic Snapshot we each carry of that moment each of us elevates to ideal. It isn’t even that graveyard of childhood hopefulness that we each staked off long ago for guided tour whenever we decide to allow others access into that moment when we too were failed. This place is different. Fluid, if not still same. A setting more than a plot.

This place, for me at least, is a street, or rather a single square block from a faraway place from my not too recent past.

This street, the real one is still in use to this day, is not of any particular significance… at least if you ask the City Planner’s office. It isn’t, ironically, the location for any of my own major moments. Most of my most significant scenes occurred offstage with regards to this particular location.

Still, this street is like no other, for it is the place to where I’ve always returned in moments of refection. Perhaps I always will.

So what makes up this Spiritual Main Street?

There are certainly parts that change, but so much more of it stays always the same.

There’s always a bookstore, there’s often a bar. I don’t believe there to be an electronics store, and the restaurants seem to come and go.

The seasons change, but it is rarely summer. I love shorts and flip flops, but this place seems always to have a chill… at least on the nights when I’m there.

On that note, it isn’t always night. Though perhaps there is always a certain level of dusk within me whenever I feel in need of an all-renewing stroll.

I tend to be alone when I walk down that street, even (or especially) when there are many other people present.

My age in these moments is interesting. It isn’t always me as I presently am, though it quite often is. What doesn’t age is this place. The stores change, but stay – if named at all – relative to a certain year when (apparently) I first set down this marker for later reference.

The soundtrack, as one might imagine has a certain familiarity (if not to the song, then certainly the pace and tone).

For everything that doesn’t change, what takes me back there changes even less. Everything has the power to carry me back to that street, though I sometimes wish this plethora of triggers was more readily available.

As for the other details, these other questions are perhaps more yours than mine. That’s OK, for this is my place. There are no tickets to my Main Street. Not for you and not even, in case you figured otherwise, for me.  

Indeed, there are moments I would give anything to walk once more upon my Main Street when nothing seems able to guide me on my way. Similarly, there are times I truly wish to avoid a return trip, or at least to stay wherever it is that I am in that moment, that I feel myself being pulled along by the tide all the more.

Maybe what makes up my Main Street matters only in that it examples somewhere we each have also been.

But that’s just mine. How about yours? Perhaps I’ll see you there sometime. Perhaps I already have.