coming into the city

The quicker the pace of my heart, the more blood that rushes to every inch of my body, the more I begin to feel that surge which forces me to think about every waking second that passes through time, to think about their intricacies and their value in my mind and life. It’s a dance that happens between my heart and mind, a tango fueled by the beat of emotions that resound effortlessly from nothingness. There is nothing until we feel we are close to another human being. I’ve come to the point now where I don’t even have to be physically close to anybody to realize my humanity and consequently my connection to 7 billion other living breathing souls, electrically charged entities feeling and thinking much the same as I do.

This is where the necessity to move is created. Our minds evolved so that we could move more fluidly through the perils of this world, so that struggling to survive would later simply be a fact of life from times passed. Now our common survival depends on how well we can work as one intellectual entity. The need to move closer towards our center, to create a glowing, massive core where we can fuse together all the possibilities of the human machine, is etched inside our intuition whether we like it or not.

It was no surprise to me when I learned that our brain’s produce more energy when we are interacting closely with other human beings. Our mind’s areas of language and emotion flare while, rather conspicuously, our part of the brain which is the placement for our own image which we project into the physical world dims itself down.

I’m now closing in on the top of the bridge and my heart reaches a climax, it’s that first morning rush of energy and its crescendo is welcomed everyday by a skyline that seemingly massages the blue sky behind it. The buildings begin to expand before me and all of the sudden I’m in the middle of that surging tangle of life created from our necessity to be as close as possible to each other. Perhaps this is why I’m still in love with this job, it allows me the freedom to navigate quickly through it all. I ingest more of the human visage in twenty minutes of riding than most people do in an entire day.

An old woman crosses a busy street alone, barely making it from curb to curb, confidently inches along the painted asphalt. A man in rags is slumped against a building, unmoving, unconscious, a sign next to him pleads for help while a veritable river of people pass rapidly by him pretending he doesn’t exist. Two women dressed in the height of fashion roar back laughing and gabbing away as if the world could feel no pain all the while crossing through the stopped sea completely oblivious to the other traffic that continues even when the two ton beasts are still. Jazz tickles the air of the corner of 6^th avenue and 14^th street, the man with the horn has his eyes closed but can feel every person walking by, the others around him either stop to take it in, pass on by with a quick nod and drop of change or continue on unphased. Some youngster with a flashy fixie and no bag on speeds next to me, looks at me, then begins to accelerate. Five men in well cut suits all stand four feet from the curb while waiting for a light, all five have black glowing boxes pressed to their ears. A Spanish woman in the upper east side pushes a stroller with a small, palm sized dog wearing a knit sweater strapped to its cushioned seat. A collection of people living in tents in a downtown protest wake up to a mild November morning waiting for the community coffee to be served. Thirty cops congregate near Wall Street.

There is a story being written every second of every day in every place that we inhabit. It is our story. It reads whichever way you want it too. It can seem complicated and in need of your full attention and flashes of unnerving dedication. It can be a playful set up of words that make your eyes want to dance gracefully across its lines. Sometimes the conflict is so unbearably apparent you feel you cannot lift your gaze for fear of losing something invaluable to you. There is also the ugliness that you wish to never appear again, but it always does and forever will. Then, every so often, the story consumes you and you have to make a choice, do you begin to write it for yourself or do you continue to only live your life according to the words of others’.

This story, all stories, continue on to the end regardless of the beginnings. This is a constant I have learned to count on and it has brought me a lot of comfort because in between the covers of this collection of stories is an infinite amount of blank pages. I've always wondered since I first started putting ink to page just how many marks I could make in a lifetime. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

one note is all you need

Its the middle of the day and the work has finally slowed to a point where I can sit and regain my marbles. In this line of work, it's so easy to get lost inside of the very restrictive lives and lines of motion that we all lead. So many times I forget to look and take in the real reason I have forced myself onto these streets for. It is the experience that we yearn for but often pass. So now on this downtime I sit and watch the world.

An old man in a new fuzzy peacoat and a ratty, ancient beanie wears an A-sign outside of a shop simply named “Sample Sale”. Posters of discounts slathered with designer names litter the stores front window. Wonder how long that sample sale has lasted?

The haggard looking man in the beautiful coat is pacing back and forth on a ten foot section of sidewalk holding out flyers peddling his employer’s goods. I’m on the library steps watching the world and it’s beautiful, maddening ironies and it’s oh so delectable pace. 

In front of me I watch a man with what seems as some sort of mental disability begins strumming a guitar just a few feet away, brushing his fingers against the strings producing only one off-key note over and over again while singing completely in monotone as if he’s been deaf since birth. His New York Mets trucker cap is as faded as his jeans which mirror the rest of the spectacle that he gifts to me and this island on such a beautiful Manhattan Monday as this.

He pauses for a second to take off his Mets windbreaker, as he comes closer we make eye contact and share a friendly hello. I can’t help but beam a full faced smile at this man which he returns with a semi toothless one. He turns away and my smile, contrary to the limits of my facial features, gets even bigger. There has to be some way to share this with the world without having to resort to having some sort of super-phone to film it with.

The glasses wrapping his face are kept together at the bridge of his nose with some scotch tape and they are connected around the back of his head by a shoestring. It feels like the whole ensemble together with the hobo A-sign guy in the peacoat is a part in some play or comedy movie. I smile and look around to see if anyone else is catching any of this but everyone around me is so involved with their own little microcosm of a world that they are blind to the one we are sharing in real time. All the while, the one note continues.

A tourist couple starts taking pictures against the limestone to my right, the man’s droning strums providing the vacation soundtrack. They try to look like nothing odd is going on and pretend that he and his monotone racket simply doesn’t exist. But I’m staring dead at this man and I know he exists in this world probably much more so than either of them. He is no tourist to this reality, he spends everyday inside of it. I can feel how much this means to him from my perch 15 feet away. His face crunched together in dedication and struggle, his body begins rocking to and fro to a rhythm completely his own. He’s probably wanted to share something like this with the world his whole life. You can see it in his closed eyes that this is all of him he is giving to the world right now. Yet most around me won’t even cast a glance his way.

The volume picks up, “buh ah biwambun anna huuu honkomeee… CHEESEBUHGER IN PAWADISE!” The off key strumming reaches a furious paces, his right hand is only a blur against the backdrop of the weathered guitar he has dangling from his neck with a few shoelaces tied together. Then, I notice the headphones plugged into his ears. This was the only way he could do this, he had to have his heroes with him singing along.

The park sitters finally begin to take notice, there’s not a face turned towards him missing some semblance of a smile. While this spectacle is taken in by those with enough time to partake, the avenue 20 feet away continues without so much as a blink of interruption. It’s aimed straight at the bottom of this island of ours, ready to unload back into the world all those who travel it, back into some other reality not as intense and honest as the one unfolding before my eyes.

A run comes over my phone, I’m forced to rip myself away and back into that same avenue that I condemn for it’s speed. I know I can be faster than it but am much more appreciative of the fact that I can stop, exit and sit surrounded by all the 7 billion wonders of the world.

I nod at our pleasant minstrel and all of the sudden he stops playing and waves a hearty goodbye. I laugh and jump on my bike.

on order and chaos

Living is never easy, not if it’s done right. I keep telling myself this, it keeps repeating in my head over and over during the nights not spent asleep. The only thing to be done is to follow what you feel is the right path, not what you think but what you feel is the way you want your life led. This path will be sure to keep you challenged and on your fucking toes, gotta adapt!

I’m 28 now while writing this. At this point there is no going back, I’ve been living this way for far too long to even regret all the early decisions that were made in my life. They are simply events that I must learn from now, some very memorable, others quite easily filed away. It’s the ones that stick to the roof of your brain that I’m obsessed with. So many happen every second that for one to really absorb efficiently what is floating around in the empty space of time one has to immerse one’s self into the very chaotic patterns that make time what it is as we know it.

Time is a linear pathway for the destruction of order. The universe must decay for life to shine through the already bright technicolor spread given to us by that deep dark unknown that we all came from. It is our troublesome gift, our experience to share and simultaneously be selfish with. In the span of time, we are barely an atom but we all know the possibilities hiding in that structured building block of matter, of the potential that lurks within the order of each molecule that when disrupted, when forcefully collided with, explodes in a terrifying yet morbidly beautiful flash of destruction and grandeur.

I am obsessed with chaos, with that second rule that promises us death and decay no matter how hard we struggle to distance ourselves with it.

This obsession has led me through my own path with speeds I still can barely keep up with. It accelerates my thoughts to the point of delirium and forces decisions that make no logical sense yet are fulfilling in the broader aspect of analyses. Despite the consequences of my life, I feel as if I have achieved something bigger than the success that has been force fed to me since my upbringing in this country, something that lasts longer than the numbers in my bank account and takes me farther than any car could dream to drive.

How often do I watch as the entire world chases a structure that continues to collapse. The faith of modern man has relied on logic and reasoning for far too long. It has failed us continually throughout the expanse of history as we are forced over and over again to watch societies golden towers fall in on themselves in a cloud of disbelief and immediate blame. Those in power blame the protagonists of chaos, lying to the world that if only the whole of humanity would bow to the power of order things like this would never happen.

Everything is created to be destroyed and nothing mortal can ever change that.

We live in a world that is hellbent on being eternal. Our society is based around the thought that order can elongate our experience in this world, that it can bring us everlasting happiness and contentment, comfort, fulfillment, joy..... love. Ultimately, this idea crumbles under itself yet order continues to convince humanity over and over again that this destruction was not it’s fault and that the only thing we can do is blindly follow yet again the rules and structures it has constructed in a reality that is forever changing around it.

The human experience should not be ordered, it should be challenging and ever changing with the world and universe that encompasses it. We as a living organism, as a citizen of space and time, should not hold up the ideals that will fail in the decay of time but rather we should seamlessly follow it’s progressive reordering and evolution into that final resting place of all molecular existence, the end of time, the quieting of all that exists as energy and light.

Our experience is but a blip in time but it can be expanded. Much like any star that ever followed it’s path into non-existence, our lives must also simply devour any energy that we are lucky enough to come into contact with. Some may shine in a dull haze while others will burn with the intensity to be seen across the expanse of time, replaying over and over again what it was to be burning with all the might that was allowed to us.

This to me is our key to eternity, the only way to indelibly stamp our existence onto the fabric of time itself.

into the future...

how do you introduce the workings of your mind to a world?

everyone is born expressing themselves to the first available humans around them. head first, still wrapped in the juices of labor, we come out screaming, wanting to relate those first experiences of life. the light that is too bright for our new born eyes blazes across our temporal lobes as fires often do across a dry landscape, the colors still foreign to us rage as if a consequence of being human. the comfort we knew as fetuses is cut immediately and we are thrown into that which we know nothing about and will never truly comprehend, but none of that matters, we cry out because of that we do not know trying desperately to know that comfort can be had again.

and then... the moment we think the pain and discomfort of this new knowledge is too much, we are cradled into the arms of another who has been through this. they lift us gently into their arms and reassure us that we are not alone in this world of confusion and grief, of overwhelming emotions and undying curiosities.

at some point in our lives we forget that this is natural. we forget that to share with another the doubts and anxieties, the raptures and bliss, generated from life is our initial purpose. we as a species are pack animals, we group together in clumps for survival. when survival was a fight of the past, we collided into cities and towns to bounce our ideas and emotions off of each other faster, more direct and personal.

fast forward through some tens of thousands of years and you have us where we are now, able to communicate any passing thought on a whim to the entire world within the matter of moments. we have reached a new pinnacle in human interactive evolution. the world is finding new strengths through the grouping of like minds and ideas. the internet has given us a more level playing field because those usually influencing the entire world through media cannot control the public cries anymore, they cannot filter them, censor them in anyway nor can they ever hope to.

we are regaining the personal one irrelevant post at a time. every word spread among the trillions already out there simply adds to the body of human experience. we are getting fat with culture and the inner pictures of the public. we see more clearly through the eyes of others so as to make our contrast that much sharper.

i guess this is why i started this thing, to share the musings of a mind uncontrolled. my entire life has been revolved around the chasing of charges given to me through this life that i refuse to take the reins on. this does not make me special, only stubborn. i simply won't allow myself the finite found in logic and reason but rather ingest the possibilities of that blank slate we normally only see upon birth.

i don't know where this will lead, nor do i really know why i feel compelled to share these thoughts with you, all i know is that it feels right and that is good enough for me.