Manifesto of Sorts

Personal Mission Statement: To be who I am.

Definition of Values: Compassion.

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The universe is conspiring to inspire me, to nudge me into taking stock of the things that move me and to actually move on those things.

It all started with a blog post about creating social change. Quickly summarized, it says:

Creating visionary community change is not just possible. It is practical and doable. And when we take off the blinders, it happens faster than you ever dreamed.

I posted the link to Facebook, my best friend Jason responded, and our stream of comments spurred some explosive contemplation in my head, mostly around this idea:

Once you establish what you want to do (mission) and the way you want to do it (values) all the details simply fall into an outline for creating those ideals.

While I made that comment in the context of organizational management (the activity, not necessarily the people in charge), I started to see how the idea is just as, if not more, applicable to individual lives. In fact, what is an organization but a commitment of individuals to one mission?

So I opened my journal with the intention of scribbling out the millions of thoughts I had in my head to get to the bottom of my personal life mission. But when I picked up the pen, all the noise seemed to quiet and and one theme emerged: just be you. So I wrote that at the top of the page.

But that’s too easy, right? I’m always me, aren’t I?

Not really. The more I pay attention, the more I realize I’m being who I think other people want me to be: my dad, my partner, my boss, my friends, whoever. Being who they want me to be is absolutely necessary to leading a “successful” life. If they like me and the things I do, I’ll be happy. Right?

the miracle at Cappella dei Pazzi

Florence, Firenze, on a Thursday. the day, like all the others before, had been maddeningly hot. wherever we went, thousands of tourists were crammed into whatever shade whatever giant cathedral or baptistery or museum provided, leaving half of a plaza desolate.

i was sweaty with the weight of a backpack filled with the unnecessary weight of the trusty old D200 Lauren was letting me use for the trip. i had stopped looking for good shots hours ago–too hot, too crowded, too rushed: the theme of a European tour via Mediterranean cruise. in my head, i was already crashed out on my cabin’s bed. no more weight on my feet, my sweaty tanktop on the floor, the balcony door sealed shut to trap in the cool, conditioned air. then back to reality. Ponte Vecchio and Piazza Signoria rolled past in a wave of fluttering heat like you see emanate off the hood of a hot car. we trudged on.

i hated that it was happening, but Florence was becoming just another old city with pretty old places. i’d have traded it in a second for a gallon of ice water and a massage.

we entered the Basilica di Santa Croce to see the tombs of Michelangelo and Macchiaveli (how’d the birther of lie-laced, ruthless ambition get buried in a church?). while Ignazio, our tour guide, was asking if any of us could sing, i could only think about how i had to cover my shoulders with a scarf, raising the temperature of my body another few unbearable degrees, so as to not offend God, or something.

get me out of this city.

our last stop of the day was at Cappella dei Pazzi, the chapel at Santa Croce–another cavernous space adorned with prophets and columns with a dome on top. Ignazio went on to explain the geometric perfection of the structure which made the chapel an acoustic wonder. to illustrate, he walked away from us to the other side of the huge space and whispered, “can you hear me?”  his voice rolled across the curve of the dome and floated into my ears like he was telling me a secret, but everyone was nodding their heads.

“where’s my singer?” Ignazio asked. a stout African American woman from Austin stepped out from the crowd, only a little shyly. her eyes scanned the space, maybe a little nervously, but mostly with a glint full of wonder.

“will you sing a line or two?” Ignazio asked.

“what should i sing?”

“anything you want.”

the woman nodded her head just slightly, looked around the chapel once more, then closed her eyes and took in a breath.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…

Florence went silent as her sad, deep gospel voice slowly filled the marble room. i swear i saw the walls shiver just slightly as they inhaled the sound, and then they exhaled together returning her voice to us in thick, rolling waves. i closed my eyes, and i felt the entire world tiptoe inside the chapel to hear what was happening. we all held our breath together.

the singer whispered, more shyly than when she started, “should i keep going?”

“please…” Ignazio whispered back.

That saved a wretch like me…

the sweat on my arms went cold as the waves of her song seeped into my skin. suddenly, we all weren’t just in Florence. Florence was there, but so was Austin and Mumbai and La Paz. the world turned inside out, without boundaries, a breeze across our faces.

I once was lost, but now I’m found…

the painted prophets were there, too, holding breath i didn’t know they had, straining their ancient ears as to not miss a note. then the moon and all the stars arrived. time crumbled and the heat together with any cold in the world vanished. we were suspended, all of us, hanging there together inside the cupped hands of some vast, unfathomable…

Was blind, but now I see.

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North Haven, Spain, Italy, France, Spain, North Haven

this is me tapping my fingers before heading to New Jersey to catch a plane. then Europe. i have my pre-judgments. but i’m trying to stay open-minded. i won’t worry about what i wear. i’ll smile at everyone i see.

i’m so lucky. blessed. happy.

see you when i get back. or maybe you’ll see me first.

Infinite Jest

i’ve been struggling with the idea of biography. are some ideas so brilliant that they transcend their author? or is the brilliance in how the idea reflects the person who reflects the world?

Thomas Jefferson was a slave-owning jackass whose own life didn’t live even an inch up to the ideas he set down in the Declaration of Independence. Keith Jarrett’s piano floats me into another stratosphere, even though i know cough drops are handed out at his concerts because he is known to walk out at the hint of even involuntary audience noise.

but then there are other artists whose work seems completely dependent on their biographies.

i was reading an article in The New Yorker on David Foster Wallace awhile back. he killed himself on September 12 of last year. his wife found him hanging above their patio.

my writing professor gave me one of Wallace’s books, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, after my junior year, and i’ve tried to read it a few times since, unsuccessfully. too many words and not enough periods. so many complex thoughts stuffed into each neverending paragraph. reading his stuff was like trying to solve the Times’s Sunday puzzle while hungover–absolutely exhausting.

but now that i’ve read about his life–his depression and his failure to maintain the balance between his own intense expectations and real happiness–the “stem-winding” sentences make perfect sense. i need to pick the book up again, just so i can spot the sadness between the lines and study the way he’s trying to navigate the dark maze that he is simultaneously building.

i did the same thing with Elliot Smith. not a day after he shoved a knife through his own chest, i was absorbing every song i could find, trying to find hints to why. it was like listening to the ghost of a child who couldn’t quite remember what it was like to be alive.

from the article about Wallace:

“A typed note that Wallace left in his papers laid out his final novel’s idea: ‘Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.’”

the man wrote and he wrote well, but i never gave him any patience until he died dramatically. what does that mean?

Wallace once wrote in a letter to a friend, “I will be a fiction writer again or die trying.”

hmmm.

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Happy Independence Day

Photo: Rick Alfaro

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Ten Things

i’m grateful for today, so far. (i desperately need to remind myself…)

1. six and a half hours of unbroken sleep.
2. fresh cherries and pineapple slices in the refrigerator for breakfast.
3. an hour of calm reading time with coffee before work.
4. Lauren’s voice didn’t sound like a grating box of Lucky Brands, and she was glowing from her seven and a half hours of unbroken, albeit CR, sleep.
5. the resuscitation of a long forgotten mix on the way to work, with songs from a nostalgic, bygone era.
6. traffic at the I-95 merge kept me held up for awhile,  giving me even more time to enjoy that mix.
7. morning Zen chat with Wendy.
8. Chik-Patty Sandwich from Edge of the Hood on a full hour lunchbreak.
   (bonus: free sample of Reed’s Ginger Beer)
9. the amazing opportunities for patience and compassion presented by a last-minute phone call from my boss, the sudden loss of much-needed fonts, and the five-minute lag-time between the moment i press “print” and when the document actually prints.
10. dark chocolate-covered almonds.

and it’s only 3:14 in the afternoon.

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just to say hi

it happens sometimes when i’m not paying attention. memories creep in from distant places. the smell of Chapel Street early this morning; steady rain on the windows after the sun goes down; Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea from the ipod on shuffle; tu me manques on the tv. bystander details from an innocent June day saturating all the photos i didn’t save or never took.

in my head i found you there and
running around and following me

it may not be much of an image, sometimes not even a face. sometimes it’s just a presence filling the space like in a dream where a stranger is pictured but you recognize them as someone you know in real life. sometimes it’s just a name written in someone’s particular script in the air in front of me.

but they’re there, and they don’t notice me. and of course that’s all i want. i want them to look up from their faraway lives and say hi.

that’s why i’m writing, of course.

i want them to remember me like i sometimes remember them. that ride home from the Valley, that photo taken on the Turnpike, that storm over Seaside Park.

but i suppose the best i can do is wave to them from here, whether anyone is looking or not.

i haven’t forgotten you, and i don’t think i ever will.

baker baker baking a cake
make me a day
make me whole again
and i wonder if he’s ok
if you see him say hi

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in defense of blogging

a few days ago i gave a friend the link to my blog, and she said, “i’ll check it out, but i tend to think of blogging as pretentious.” i responded, “i’ll admit it–it is pretentious and attention seeking, but i can only write when i know i have an audience.”

the whole exchange stuck with me for awhile. how is blogging any more pretentious than playing guitar and singing at the local open mic? than displaying photos at the local coffee shop? than submitting a manuscript for publishing?

presumptuous, maybe.

the artist who displays or performs presumes that someone out there wants to experience their art. they hope to be seen and to convey some sort of message. some might be more pretentious than others in their artistic intentions, but i don’t know if the mere act of displaying their art is in itself pretentious.

i don’t blog to feel important or to magnify my self-worth. but the fact that i know that (at least three) people will read what i write brings mission to my writing. knowing that someone out there is waiting to read what i write gives me a reason to start and finish. it gives me a reason to edit and polish.

when i know someone else will be looking, i have to be totally accountable for my words.

i don’t think art created with the audience in mind is any less pure than that which is created never to be seen or experienced. i think it’s just different. once an artist decides to create for an audience, the audience immediately becomes part of that art, long before anyone actually experiences the piece.

i would never claim to be an artist, or even a writer. but i see a lot of things that i want to share, and i have a lot of questions to ask and a lot of muddled thoughts to sort out.

i put it all out there, here, in hopes that someone might want to walk beside me for a paragraph or two, silently or not. you bring me comfort and inspiration, even if you’re not really there.

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early morning: rain everywhere

the morning fog is pulling everything together. the storm, my dreams, the ride to work. a long-gone song in the distance and its teary laughter. the grinding ache in the back of my skull. milk instead of half and half.

i woke up to the rumble of far-away thunder last night and went downstairs. the flashes were bright, lighting up white squares on the walls in the living room through the skylights above. i counted to 11 before the boom came.

i couldn’t sleep. i listened as the tap on the windows above became a steady knocking and then an insistent pounding. i thought about the tin roof from my house in Eugene, and the pure sound of water on metal. only rain makes me miss Oregon (which is funny–i left the northwest because i missed the sun). it was always green there, even in the winter, but the sky was always gray. always.

i couldn’t sleep. a pain gray as the Eugene sky was spreading millimeter by millimeter into the back parts of my head. maybe it was the heffie at Prime 16 earlier that night. maybe it was the Sam at the Q Club before that. or maybe it was just a headache. i dropped an Advil with some cold water and set my head down again. i can’t be sure, but i think it was awhile before i finally drifted off. the rain was still coming down.

the dreams came soft but fast, like the mist rolling off the Northwest coast in the morning. there was water everywhere. streets were replaced with rivers, and we swam everywhere as if to stroll. the air was hot and sticky, and the city was a giant, intimate party–a maze of houses of rooms like peep shows on an assortment of activities–people on couches sipping beers, sweaty folks banging on hand-drums, and other sweaty folks whose doings were not so innocent. i watched, floating from scene to scene, my eyes like a camera slightly out of focus. pictures of so many colorful, chill indiscretions–mine and yours and everyone’s.

homelessness: my reply

This is my reply to the following comment posted in an article in the New Haven Independent about federal stimulus money going to help the homeless in New Haven.

Posted by: lance | April 30, 2009 4:27 PM

most people that are homeless brought it upon themselves, I wouldn’t give ‘em anything, let alone 1.5 million dollrs worth of food. And how much of the 1.5 is going to be embezzled in one way or another?

Lance, how do you know that most homeless people brought it upon themselves? Have you been out there on the streets and asked them how they ended up there?

Or did you just see someone in the street, someone probably stuck in one of the worst periods in their life, and write them off as irresponsible and unfit for your compassion, let alone your tax dollars.

I wonder who showed you compassion in your lowest moment and what would have happened if they hadn’t.

And from a purely practical point of view: you and your tax dollars are going to deal with the homeless in one way or another, whether through paying police to handle their petty crimes in your neighborhood, through reimbursing hospitals for their unnecessary stays in the emergency room, or through paying for their jail time.

$13,500 = The average annual cost to provide shelter, meals, and case management for one person in New Haven (per Columbus House in New Haven).

$44,000 = The average annual cost to incarcerate one inmate in Connecticut. (http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0099.htm).

Why not provide the resources to get the homeless stable, housed and independent when it’s so much more cost effective (not to mention compassionate) than the alternatives?

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(The Independent’s site would not, for technical reasons, let me post my reply there.)