A Prayer (You Are Not Forgotten)

You,

monstrous Medusas,

shattered sons of Pilate,

loud, untethered, cruel;

lazy with thought and with tongue.

You,

fallacious followers 

of the fashions of the day.

who choose to mold spiteful lies

out of love,

who make a morbid mockery

out of meaning. 

This is to let you know

that I will not follow you to slaughter,

or worse,

to the insidiousness of indifference. 

I shall go to the river,

to sit among the mangrove trees

and listen to their song.

I will bend my ear

to the faint whisper of that

still, small voice,

the song of the lonely

and the orphaned,

the lost, widowed

and bewildered.

And if the waters rise,

and the rocks cry out,

if the ancient chorus were to

raze your gated castles to the ground,

do not fear:

We will rebuild,

without castes, without walls,

with new eyes to see.

We will find sanctuary,

offering balms of Gilead,

for battered hearts

and souls burning with question and doubt.

And the seraphic song will be sung:

"You are not forgotten, child."

Come home,

back to the river,

to the ancient mangroves with me;

the beloved longs to have you near.

Come,

sit,

let yourself be known.

Let us meet, today,

in love,

healing,

overwhelming,

all-consuming, 

ineffable love. 

And You,

you of whom I spoke,

listen close:

they're singing for you.

"You are not forgotten, child,

you can come home, too."

The Eggshell Suite (Something She Would Never Have)

She felt the eggshells crush underneath her feet as she walked. She tried so hard to dance around them, but the heels she was wearing made it almost impossible. She would feel the delicateness of each and every shell smash like fiberglass underneath the soles of her feet as she attempted, with all the strength she had, to walk near him.

It hurt to say out loud, even to admit it to herself, but she was pretty damn sure he had never heard her real voice. Its true tone. You know - her REAL voice. That thing that courageous breaks through and emerges when you can finally be yourself with someone. And I mean your actual fucking self and not some filtered, censored, watered down version of who the world seems to want you to be. Certainly not the version of herself that "they" knew. And not that thing where she put on that fake goddamn voice for people. You know the one, we all probably do it. More often than she would care to admit, she'd catch herself doing it and wouldn't recognize her own voice. No matter how ridiculous the dance was, she couldn't understand why she had to act like anybody but herself about them. 

It's not like she wasn't being herself around him or was disingenuous, it's just that she couldn't really breathe. Not completely, anyway. Every attempt at breathing was shallow, labored, alien. She couldn't speak, either. She simply couldn't inhale the amount of air one needs to breathe into their lungs in order to exhale one's true, authentic voice. 

It was always imprecise, almost, at times, fallacious. Masked an octave off. Or wavering cadence. Or misinterpreted verbiage. Or, better yet, silence. 

She didn't know which version of her he thought he knew. All she knew is that a few people knew the real parts of her, once. She had given away so many pieces of herself, but no one had ever known all of her. And fuck, that was all she wanted. And, as the shells crushed under foot, she knew, it was something she would never have. 

Punk Rock Empathy..

Pro-Tip: Apathy is the death of Empathy. Want me to say it again?

Yes, the world (both the world-at-large and Your world) can seem overwhelming. Our personal lives may be full of stress, chaos and even, at times, in complete tatters. It may feel downright hopeless and you may be utterly exhausted from trying to fight the darkness, but losing empathy is not the way out. 

Now, I'm not condoning some kind of toxic or faux positivity. I'm not advocating for a particular meditation regiment or a specific sacred chant you need to do every morning to cleanse your energy, but I do think holding onto glimmers of hope are important to keep us from tipping over the edge into full blown apathy (or even worse).

There are no easy answers and I won't pretend I have them. I struggle mightily with depression and ideation, especially around the holidays. In fact, if I bottle up and don't share what I'm feeling when I'm struggling, those thoughts and ideations very quickly start turning into plans. And believe me, the bully in my head absolutely loves it when I make plans to end my life. That same bully loves apathy as a gateway to eroding the things that make us feel loved, grateful, connected. 

Your mental health is a very serious thing and I won't pretend to be a therapist, just so we're clear. Getting professional help when you are struggling, if you are so inclined, is almost always a good move. That being said, for me personally, getting smaller seems to help when I find myself in the grips of heavy despair. When things start to pile on and I feel out of control and hopeless, it helps me to focus on the small things, to minimize, to control the controllables, to take smaller bites. Once I get my balance a little, I tend to go for a walk to see snippets of natural beauty, to write a poem, make a delicious snack or reach out to a loved one to remember that I am seen, known and loved (hopefully, it reminds them too!).

Maybe it's just that the small things remind us that we can maintain a little hope for the bigger things; that even amidst the chaos there is still goodness and beauty to behold in the world, and that there is more to this mysterious thing called Life than we can possibly imagine. 

My solutions might not be your solutions, and I'm not here to demand that you hydrate, exercise and meditate. I don't know what medications you should take, which spiritual doctrine you should follow and I certainly can't pretend to know your trauma. What I do know is, complete detachment and isolation is the path of apathy and that path would surely have a person wired like myself sinking straight to the bottom in no time at all. The bully in my head that tells me I am unloved when the ideations get loud and rough and that's exactly the place where apathy resides and festers. As it grows, it dismisses meaning, frays connections and makes a mockery of suffering. It tells me that my pain and hurt are not only unimportant, but that my attempts to heal from them are futile. And, perhaps even worse, it starts to tell me the same about the pain and hurt of others as well. 

Empathy, on the other hand, is powerful. Many have rightfully clocked it as a superpower and I'd be hard pressed to find any disagreement. I believe it's the greatest rebellion against depression and the most magnificent tool in your arsenal against the cruelty of the world. Empathy is born out of the heart's wondrous realization that another person is every bit as real and beloved as you are, and that neither one of you are alone in your darkness. I truly believe that we should consider radical empathy to be the highest mark of emotional intelligence and human evolution. 

I've rambled long enough. I can't stop you from not caring, but I do want to remind you of one more thing, no matter how sentimental and goo-prone it might sound. We are all in this together. That's the only way it works. We circle the wagons and take turns protecting each other when it is needed. We widen our hearts and our tables. We hold space far beyond what our comfort zone would like us to impose. We listen to each other and laugh with each other. We stop reflexive naysaying as a defense mechanism. We stop denigrating effort and hope at every turn. We stop stigmatizing those already struggling or reaching for help. We stop responding to every drop of sincerity and authenticity with a cynical retort or an apathetic shrug. We recommit to each other, especially when it gets hard. 

Our time here on Earth is never a matter of indifference. Either we enrich the lives of those around us or we impoverish them. We humans are capable of making such a mess, but we are also capable of incredible clarity, compassion, connection and empathy, as long as we are willing to allow it. If we can summon our ability to care and show it, I truly believe the world becomes more beautiful, safer, more endurable and, essentially, a better and healthier place for everyone. The darkness is no place to call home and human beings are not made to shrug at the suffering of one another. We are made to care.

So that's it. We're in this together, fam. I know it isn't easy, but I'm on your team. So let's stop pretending like it's cool to not give a damn about anything or anyone. Let's get back to showing up for each other. Let's ditch apathy and rediscover the reservoir of empathy within. Because staying alive, caring about one another and looking after each other? Well, that's punk as fuck. 

Does Your Unconditional Love Extend To Yourself?

I'm just now, in my mid 40's, beginning to fully understand how my own self-doubt has hurt people around me in the past.

I'm just now fully absorbing the idea that anything less than unconditional love for myself does not serve anyone.

If you want to grow, to love, to learn to better listen and serve one another and the world.. Love Youself.

I'm serious. It's the most radical step you can take. 

Love Yourself.

Fully. Without caveat. Without restraint. Without condition. 

Love Yourself.

Then, and only then, can we become a vessel that Love can truly flow through. And that is the most precious gift we can give to others; our full and present Self, flowing with Love. 

It's Not Perfect, But It's More Than Enough..

Love, or at least love as I have come to understand it, has nothing to do with perfection. The world is bandaged together, a fractured thing at best. If you're lucky and you're attuned to it; if you're acclimated to life's rhythms and changes and seasons, you can see and find the light that leaks out of the cracks.

I believe in kindness and in a hard day's work (especially for the people I love), but I've never really understood the idea of destiny. Despite its majestic beauty, which can admittedly reduce me to awe and tears, life still seems mostly random from a ground-level view; even mercurial, asymmetrical, entropic. It rarely adds up. And this, this utterly familiar feeling of bewilderment, is exactly where I find my place as a writer. 

Over and over again, I find myself drawn to clumsy narratives, bumbling human effort, awkward sincerity. I love the deeply flawed. I see myself that way, too. I don't grapple with some kind of monumental personal destiny that lies within a looming, grandiose, symmetrical construction. I am a fractured thing, warts and all. And I'd be willing to bet that you are, too. So is almost everything and everyone else I love. 

I'm not sure I could sit with this feeling if I thought it all centered around some kind of righteous plan of perfection. Whatever joy I can lay claim to is found in the smallness, in the moments, in the clunky minutiae. That's where I find meaning, day after day, and it seems a lot more feasible than any kind of destiny. Moments where the dream of something beautiful, albeit abstract, persists, despite the world trying to impose itself like some kind of wet blanket. There are countless things in this world that call upon you to be cynical, but the unraveling wonder of the dream persists. There is goodness in this mess and it's not a design feature, it's you. 

Or maybe I'm wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. Hell, most of us are. Maybe everything is unraveling in a way that will prove the cynics right, or cement the notion that the hand of fate is somehow at the helm of this herky-jerky ride and there's little we can do to change it. Maybe it's all going to hell - families, hopes, economies - and I'm in some kind of blissful denial about the gravity of the moment, foolishly refusing to see the bigger picture.

But even if that were the case, I would still tend to find so deep meaning in the little moments in this ragged world. It doesn't feel like it's collapsing, even though I can't make sense of it most of the time. And sure, it could be that I'm naive or that I'm thinking small, but I chalk it up to something else entirely: I chalk it up to Love. Not the kind you see in those phony rom-coms or hallmark hogwash, but the real, messy bunglesome stuff you see and feel in the everyday moments that find their way into your heart. It's not about perfection. It never was. It's not even about making sense of any of it. It's about finding the light in the cracks.

I'm not dismissing the sadness that comes with this world, or even the notion that this whole unfolding spectacle could be guided by something I can't even begin to understand. I'm simply here to tell you that even in the midst of the lows and sadness, in a world rife with covid tests, economic insecurities and looming unknowns, I see clear evidence that beauty resides in so many small things, moment to moment. It's not perfect and it's not destiny, but it's Love. Fractured, beautiful Love. 

And that's more than enough for me. 

---

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I Keep A Close Watch On This Heart Of Mine..

You come out of the womb and into this world with a face, but an identity doesn't really form until you grasp that first letter, the beginning of a lifelong climb, letter by letter, then word by word, into the eddying spirals of meaning and obfuscation. Slowly, bit by bit, you start to get a grip on things like joy and fear, love and death.

It was death that got my little boy that day. He woke up one afternoon, a rare Sunday when he had taken a late nap, shaking and crying after a bad dream he had about his great grandfather, who had only recently passed away. The particulars of his dream are hard to remember all these years later, although I do remember we discussed it in great detail in the moment. I believe the nightmare essentially centered around his realization that he would never see one of his favorite people in this world ever again. I do recall that it was not an easy conversation.

I wiped my son's tears with the sleeve of my sweatshirt and read him some of his Scooby Doo books, until he decided he wanted to "play chess," which, at that point, meant that we would pull all the pieces out of this magnetic travel set we had and then try to put them back in their places. Each piece fit snugly into a felt indentation.   

"Do you see the one with the horse shape that could go there, bud?" I asked. 

He tried to put the knight in its place, but had it facing the wrong way.

"How about this way?" I said, gently turning the piece around and handing it back to him. He got it in and smiled.

"You make this game fun, Dad!" he said. 

He fell back asleep a little while later, with me rocking him against my chest and singing Johnny Cash's "I Walk The Line" really softly. I kissed him on his curly blonde head and carried him to bed. 

Even in the harder moments, explaining death and nightmares, I couldn't understand what I'd ever done to deserve such a beautiful day, a beautiful child, a beautiful life.

I'm not sure I have any better answers to those questions all these years alter, but that feeling remains.

We began perfect. Look closely, that has never been lost. 

----

If you feel my musings add anything of value to your life and you're so inclined, please feel free to Buy Me A Coffee at:

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A Love Supreme

When I listen to John Coltrane, I can hear my Grandmother washing dishes while talking to the next door neighbor through the kitchen window. I hear rain pop-lockin' on a yellow 3rd grade raincoat on the corner of Broadway and Lindero. I hear my father, a few drinks in, dirty work boots still on, rustling through his change pocket to bestow upon me a handful of quarters for the pinball machine down at the laundromat. And I hear my cousin snappin' her fingers to George Benson.

Coltrane's music sounds like a picnic accompanied by a ride cymbal. It hits me in the dreamlike spaces where haunted pools of memory accumulate. It's the soundtrack to the picture books of my childhood that I keep in my head. The things I still want to remember. 

Sometimes, life is a long beautiful melodic line and sometimes you drop a fork in a quiet restaurant and everyone stares.. But it's all there: the magic of the Universe, the ghosts that dance in the alleyways of fuzzy childhood memory, the hope I keep like a secret love note gathering dust in my pocket, and the conversations I still have with my Grandmother, long gone, but somehow echoing through every note.

I hear it all in those records. Very few things come close. 

---

If you feel my musings add anything of value to your life and you're so inclined, please feel free to Buy Me A Coffee at:

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Here, Take This Before Bed.. Part Thirteen.

Goodnight, my friends.

Here's some good stuff for you to think about in these times of tumult and uncertainty:

The sound of a street musician playing a saxophone with a warm tone. Looking at neighborhood Christmas lights with a cup of hot cocoa in your hand. A cat pretending a mistake was entirely intentional. A room full of happy green plants. Letting your muscles rest at the end of a long and productive day. 

Lost In America..

It’s such a wild indictment of these times we are living in that we can see where our elected officials spend money (both theirs and ours) and we could not care less. The mechanisms of accountability for our leaders are already weak and feeble, but they are rendered essentially nonexistent if we refuse to hold anyone's feet to the fire simply because they are part of the ruling class.

There’s a profile on Twitter (and some other sites scattered on the interwebs) that track the investments of senators and congressional representatives. Dan Crenshaw, for example, recently went big on investing in tech companies. Nancy Pelosi, if you're keeping score, owns a sizeable stake in companies that manufacture weapons. Meanwhile, millions are food insecure and are barely hanging on in dilapidated housing. Nothing for the unwashed rabble.

What a stupid neoliberal dystopia we inhabit. No wonder fascism and other forms of political and cultural idiocy are showing their dip shit faces yet again. And even against the backdrop of all this utter insanity, this untethered and unfathomable greed unfolding right before our eyes, still, no one wants to talk about any kind of communal equity or wealth redistribution or even access to mental health care. Hardly a peep from the peanut gallery about rampant economic abuses and systemic injustice. Barely even a shrug. Instead, we will get an earful about how a drag queen ruined your meek sense of masculinity or how immigrants are suddenly making your neighbor unsafe because, you know, they're not American.

We have lost our way.

Here, Take This Before Bed.. Part Twelve.

Goodnight, my friends.

Here's some good stuff for you to think about before bed in these times of tumult and uncertainty:

The first brush stroke on a fresh canvas. Leaving snacks for the crows in the park. Letting your hand drift on the wind out of a car window. Crisp green grapes. The smell of an old book that has been sitting on your shelf for too long. A friend or a loved one texting you that they made it home safely. 

Dispatches From The Storm..

We are in the middle of the storm. We still don't know what all this means yet. 

Perhaps, a century from now, historians will consider these decades, this era we are living in and through, to be host to the last pathetic death knell floppings of fascism. Maybe we will look back on the champions of this cruel and barbaric movement, people like Nick Fuentes and Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, as the last gasp of Nativist Neanderthals haphazardly careening toward their failed fascist utopia. Then again, maybe this movement is simply the birth pangs of something far worse, of even more horror and bloodshed, of wars and rumors of wars; a time that historians will write about and wonder why and how in the hell we didn't all see this coming. 

But we are in the middle of the storm. We still don't know what all this means yet.

It's up to you. There's hope in that, even if it doesn't seem like it. We decide. If this is, indeed, fascism raising its ugly head, we must be the ones to stomp it back down again. If this is the crawling, half-dead specter of 20th century authoritarianism desperately trying to hang on in the new millennium, we can and must bury it in the same grave as eugenics and slavery. 

The good news is: We've done it before. At Gettysburg, at Normandy, at the ballot box on November 3rd, 2020. We can do it again. We *will* do it again.

"Though all we know depart. 

That old commandment stand:

In courage, keep your heart, 

In faith, lift up your hand."

Here, Take This Before Bed.. Part Eleven.

Goodnight, my friends.

Here's some good stuff for you to think about in these times of tumult and uncertainty:

Little birds in a tree singing sweet epiphanies in the early morning breeze. Warm red beans and rice in your stomach. Long slow deep restorative breaths in and out. Sending a poem to a friend struggling with grief. The crunch of leaves and pine needles under your hiking boots. Knowing you're safe and loved no matter what.