I love it all
I love the ups and downs, Jazz at 7am, thinking if mookie made the right choice, wondering if my existence was destined or if that's just what helps me sleep at night, recess at age 9, Saturday morning cartoons when I thought the world was mine, dreaming of greatness, sunsets filled w/uncertainty and sunrises that take determination to new heights. I love faith in the unknown, doubt in the unknown, the search for excellence and deciding what exactly excellence means, that balance between doing me and being selfless, the struggle for meaning, the power of hope, the danger of hope, the power of love, the ignorance love can bring, the search for truth, the fear of truth, the single mom saying fuck you to adversity, the kid in Africa who won't let his dream be deferred, the drug dealer that cares more about the kids than the school board.
I love dreaming of the woman that will change it all, giving my mom the key to the crib that will bring tears to us all, seeing my siblings be greater than me, leaving this world better than what I now see, and above all searching for that separate peace.
Love, the most powerful of them all.
Dream Big
Monday, May 21, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
it's gonna take the man in me to conquer this insansity
For whatever reason, surely for none at all, I get to eat robustly flavorgul foods and drink fine imported beers. I get to listen to refined and moving symphonies that put me at peace with my eyes closed, and also the life beat that drums in my soul beating out passionate emotions while my eyes stay open, quietly cutting in every direction at the world around me. My intimate moments are accompanied by the romanticism of literature and films, letting me see the beauty of a relationship that gives two people shelter from the storm, an unspoken unity as they look up at the stars knowing they're looking together.
When I make the effort of deconstructing how everything around me came to be, and I begin to try and let the world's problems stare me in the face, I get pulled into the abstract. How could I not - I don't even see, let alone live the rawness; the landfill diving for food scraps, the brutal rapes, or the RUF rebels swinging machetes through the wrists of men with despair in their eyes. That's not real to me, and I'm fearing more and more that the rhetoric really is just rhetoric. I'll never be able to empathize. Tupac's right, "I was given this world - I didn't make it". But it’s not the ONE world me and Bono would love to believe. Pac says "the world looks dreary when you have your eyes seeing clearly." So I try to live a truthful life, and see this world clearly. But I still see the light before the dark, look to the stars before the ground - so I see the hope right? the positivity? the possibility? No. I just don’t have the urgency, the selflesness to force myself to sacrifice all of the good feelings offered to me and do the necessary work to make myself become a tool. Look at me now i can't even read a book before I write about my little internal conflict. Like it even deserves the words.
But are all the laughs and smiles really slaps in the face to those suffering right now? I got a theory of salvation that might be able to save me from the guilt and shame of falling short in dedication and empathy.
In order to conquer this insanity we have to know what we're striving for. If our pleasures are of the essence of life; enjoying the fruits of the world, human potential in not just surviving but finding beauty, and embracing relationships that give us company and purpose, then they are not evil to indulge in. If we want bread and roses for others, we must remember it's because we want bread and roses for ourselves too. We just have to value these things enough to know that they are not meant for just us.
We are entitled to some - not all. Cut the excess. If we want chocolate then we may have to be willing to pay five dollars for a chocolate bar so that Ghanians are paid a fair price for exporting their cocoa. but then the demand decreases, and their once chief export become nothing more then the cause for inflation, and the black market grows to undercut these high prices because maybe I really want chocolate but I don't make enough at my blue collar job and I don't have the perspective to realize and trust that my prioritizing is for the greater, while some don’t have to prioritize at all, FUCK that I’m gonna get mine
and the world keeps spinning, and I'll shift these thoughts off the computer and back into mind my mind, even though I should probably be reading a book
When I make the effort of deconstructing how everything around me came to be, and I begin to try and let the world's problems stare me in the face, I get pulled into the abstract. How could I not - I don't even see, let alone live the rawness; the landfill diving for food scraps, the brutal rapes, or the RUF rebels swinging machetes through the wrists of men with despair in their eyes. That's not real to me, and I'm fearing more and more that the rhetoric really is just rhetoric. I'll never be able to empathize. Tupac's right, "I was given this world - I didn't make it". But it’s not the ONE world me and Bono would love to believe. Pac says "the world looks dreary when you have your eyes seeing clearly." So I try to live a truthful life, and see this world clearly. But I still see the light before the dark, look to the stars before the ground - so I see the hope right? the positivity? the possibility? No. I just don’t have the urgency, the selflesness to force myself to sacrifice all of the good feelings offered to me and do the necessary work to make myself become a tool. Look at me now i can't even read a book before I write about my little internal conflict. Like it even deserves the words.
But are all the laughs and smiles really slaps in the face to those suffering right now? I got a theory of salvation that might be able to save me from the guilt and shame of falling short in dedication and empathy.
In order to conquer this insanity we have to know what we're striving for. If our pleasures are of the essence of life; enjoying the fruits of the world, human potential in not just surviving but finding beauty, and embracing relationships that give us company and purpose, then they are not evil to indulge in. If we want bread and roses for others, we must remember it's because we want bread and roses for ourselves too. We just have to value these things enough to know that they are not meant for just us.
We are entitled to some - not all. Cut the excess. If we want chocolate then we may have to be willing to pay five dollars for a chocolate bar so that Ghanians are paid a fair price for exporting their cocoa. but then the demand decreases, and their once chief export become nothing more then the cause for inflation, and the black market grows to undercut these high prices because maybe I really want chocolate but I don't make enough at my blue collar job and I don't have the perspective to realize and trust that my prioritizing is for the greater, while some don’t have to prioritize at all, FUCK that I’m gonna get mine
and the world keeps spinning, and I'll shift these thoughts off the computer and back into mind my mind, even though I should probably be reading a book
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Deadliest Sin: Complacency
He got the itis. Comfortable, content, complacent. The hunger that got him where he was disappeared like Mickelson at Winged Foot. He lost his swing, got civilized, threw on some blazers, fancy shoes, and button up and thought he made it. He thought his life was set, Daddy Warbucks had cash waiting for him in a Swiss bank account once he graduated. The prestige, the name, the atmosphere... it all got to his head. He forgot the years of hard work, the blood, sweat, and tears that made him who he was. He lost that look, that swagger, that commitment to greatness. Like Dorian Gray he looked himself in the mirror ashamed of what he saw.
He thought: Greatness is hard, greatness is lonely. His mantra that helped define him... his motivation, his purpose, his dream. He's trying so hard to get it back. It's a tough road back to the top. This time the competition is better, they're gunning for him. His natural skill isn't his saving grace this time. He's gotta develop that fadeaway like Jordan in 96. This climb might have Frodo shakin. But alas he looks at this picture and hears a voice in the background shouting : MMMMMMMalcolmmmm, MMMMMMArtin and remembers his place is no coincidence. He looks to his heroes; Ali in 68, Malcolm in Mecca, Mandela in Prison, Christ after Judas's kiss. It's all so clear now...Focus
He thought: Greatness is hard, greatness is lonely. His mantra that helped define him... his motivation, his purpose, his dream. He's trying so hard to get it back. It's a tough road back to the top. This time the competition is better, they're gunning for him. His natural skill isn't his saving grace this time. He's gotta develop that fadeaway like Jordan in 96. This climb might have Frodo shakin. But alas he looks at this picture and hears a voice in the background shouting : MMMMMMMalcolmmmm, MMMMMMArtin and remembers his place is no coincidence. He looks to his heroes; Ali in 68, Malcolm in Mecca, Mandela in Prison, Christ after Judas's kiss. It's all so clear now...Focus
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The music around you is making a statement -
It was before my time, surely before most of our times, but we've all seen the famous pictures and television clips of the Berlin Wall being torn down. Set up to devide West Germany and communist East Germany, it remains one of the outstanding symbols of the Cold War. The main thing I remember sbout the Wall in particular is that it was covered in graffiti. I'm not talking about some all city train bombing, end to end burner graffiti either. I imagine that the subcultures that existed on either side chose to express themselves through a medium that they thought would endure for a worldwide audience to see. They had to live with the physical body that represented a much more abstract notion to the rest of the world. The Iron Curtain was made of brick and mortar for those Germans. Whether their graff came in protest, was nationalist, or subversive, it was up there for a global audience to take in.
In Jonathan Kozol's book Amazing Grace he talks of the separation between the affluent and the impoverished in NYC. Page after page he writes of cabs that stop short of the expendablem neighborhoods we've created and forgotten about. He writes of people who ride mass transit unaware that the train even runs to the ghettos of Mott Haven, they've certainly never stayed on it long enough to find out. There are many examples of the extreme class division, but the point is made that a wall exists. The affluent never leave their comfort, and the poor are unable to leave their slums. One of the images that has stayed with me long after finishing the book is the story of the unoccupied apartment buildings that are visible from the highways entering NYC. The buildings are physically located in the ghettos, the location of so much heartbreaking poverty and disease. On the sides of the buildings that face the roads, all the curtains are drawn. On the backs of the curtains are paintings of flowers, drapes, lamps, basically all the trappings of the homes of the middle to upper class. These vacant buildings are on the wrong side of the wall and have been turned into billboards. The dregs of society are swept further under the rug through a different form of paint on a wall.
It has very much been at the forefront of the news recently that walls are being erected around Iraq. Much like Berlin decades ago, these physical boundaries are being built in an attempt to keep parts of Baghdad "safe" from the rampant conflict years after the war was declared a success with the US as the victor. If large, nondescript, gray walls were being built around your city to complement the rubble it would be safe to say that the aesthetics of your home would be going down the drain. That is why I was so impressed and amazed at an article recently appearing in USA Today. It was about the recent projects undertaken by Baquir al-Sheik. He is a painter who has linked up with other artists in Iraq to work to cover the walls with murals. "We can't remove these walls anytime soon. We may as well try to beautify them," al-Sheik said. He is painting landscapes and scenes from ancient Sumeria to add some beauty to his beloved city that is being torn apart and beginning to look like "the inside of a military base, not the capital of a country." While not social protest or visual misrepresentation for tourism's sake, al-Sheik is fighting his own personal war with brushes and paint. War metaphors may be as cliche as they come, but I still tip my cap to the man that sees possibility where others just see an opportunity to complain.
As a global society we have become quite adept at constructing walls, be it a border that contains ethnic groups that cannot co-exist, a wall to separate people within their own country, a fence to keep people out of a country, or a boundary known only as a street name that you don't travel past. JD said in a past entry that what borders contain you do not define you. You can take out your violin and play a sad song, but I'm still going to remid you that there are tens of thousands in New Orleans who would love some walls and a roof. My fellow man spending the night in the ironically named Mansion Square Park would take some walls. Every day a majority of the people in this country takes their walls for granted. So tear a few down, because hiding behind them does a lot more harn than good.
In the movie Coffee and Cigarettes several characters repeat that "Nikola Tesla perceived the world as a conductor of acoustical resonance." How are you going to play it?
In Jonathan Kozol's book Amazing Grace he talks of the separation between the affluent and the impoverished in NYC. Page after page he writes of cabs that stop short of the expendablem neighborhoods we've created and forgotten about. He writes of people who ride mass transit unaware that the train even runs to the ghettos of Mott Haven, they've certainly never stayed on it long enough to find out. There are many examples of the extreme class division, but the point is made that a wall exists. The affluent never leave their comfort, and the poor are unable to leave their slums. One of the images that has stayed with me long after finishing the book is the story of the unoccupied apartment buildings that are visible from the highways entering NYC. The buildings are physically located in the ghettos, the location of so much heartbreaking poverty and disease. On the sides of the buildings that face the roads, all the curtains are drawn. On the backs of the curtains are paintings of flowers, drapes, lamps, basically all the trappings of the homes of the middle to upper class. These vacant buildings are on the wrong side of the wall and have been turned into billboards. The dregs of society are swept further under the rug through a different form of paint on a wall.
It has very much been at the forefront of the news recently that walls are being erected around Iraq. Much like Berlin decades ago, these physical boundaries are being built in an attempt to keep parts of Baghdad "safe" from the rampant conflict years after the war was declared a success with the US as the victor. If large, nondescript, gray walls were being built around your city to complement the rubble it would be safe to say that the aesthetics of your home would be going down the drain. That is why I was so impressed and amazed at an article recently appearing in USA Today. It was about the recent projects undertaken by Baquir al-Sheik. He is a painter who has linked up with other artists in Iraq to work to cover the walls with murals. "We can't remove these walls anytime soon. We may as well try to beautify them," al-Sheik said. He is painting landscapes and scenes from ancient Sumeria to add some beauty to his beloved city that is being torn apart and beginning to look like "the inside of a military base, not the capital of a country." While not social protest or visual misrepresentation for tourism's sake, al-Sheik is fighting his own personal war with brushes and paint. War metaphors may be as cliche as they come, but I still tip my cap to the man that sees possibility where others just see an opportunity to complain.
As a global society we have become quite adept at constructing walls, be it a border that contains ethnic groups that cannot co-exist, a wall to separate people within their own country, a fence to keep people out of a country, or a boundary known only as a street name that you don't travel past. JD said in a past entry that what borders contain you do not define you. You can take out your violin and play a sad song, but I'm still going to remid you that there are tens of thousands in New Orleans who would love some walls and a roof. My fellow man spending the night in the ironically named Mansion Square Park would take some walls. Every day a majority of the people in this country takes their walls for granted. So tear a few down, because hiding behind them does a lot more harn than good.
In the movie Coffee and Cigarettes several characters repeat that "Nikola Tesla perceived the world as a conductor of acoustical resonance." How are you going to play it?
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