Month: July 2017

So you wanna be a winner? Stop being a loser!

It was that sort of early life advice that had me realizing that the answers to personal success were not going to be found anywhere near my zip code. I grew up in Harlem, NY where success was defined on two levels. To most, success was staying out of jail and off the smack. My success in that regard was preordained. I lived in an area where the village very much strove to raise the child. If I stepped out of line anywhere in a ten block radius my mother would not only know about it but would be told in a cheerful way by someone who wanted to quickly remind her that her shit did indeed stink.

I was that shit.

The other level of success in Harlem felt way out of reach to just about everyone. Those who made it still walked among us, but it was clear that you reached that level of success by having a unique talent or coming from old money. If that talent was not readily apparent then you were tracked into a mundane existence. My mother wanted me to be a garbage man. The kid who lived across the street and played his drumsticks nonstop on the top of a bucket, he was told to shut up and learn a skill. They told him that everyday. But Larry had a unique talent and it took him somewhere.

We had a place around the corner called Striver’s Row. It was all fancy looking brownstones down one narrow street. These houses–and they were houses–had small backyards and nice cars cluttering the narrow street. These were the doctors and lawyers and folks who were in many ways Harlem royalty. These were the ones who had something and took it to the top.

I grew up next to all of this, noticing what it was like to see success but not be it. It hurt me a little, I suppose, because when I finally tasted success I rested on that for a long time and lost all momentum. Now, I’m in a spot where success is almost invisible in the rear view. I’m living off the dying glow of work I did years ago and there is no new kindling of the imagination to strike a match to. Changing that will take time and effort.

Some Thoughts:

1. I think the primary problem between me and the rest of the world–especially the love of my life–is communication. Namely, I have trouble really hearing and understanding what people are saying. I often spend that time interpreting what I think is being said and not said. Unlearning is taking a while.
2. I miss Obama. I miss the cool collectedness of the one time leader of the free world. He didn’t create problems. He fixed them.
3. I missed the obvious 211 reference yesterday.

Lately I’ve been searching for topics to write about. One that continues to swirl in my head is the idea of modern friendships. Ever since that stretch of bachelor party movies that started, probably in the 80’s, there has been the question in my mind of wha a friendship is supposed to look like. When I read novels that deal with friendship the topic is often treated with a lack of intimacy when it comes to male relationships as though the gender stereotypes supersede the ability to create interesting relationships. The same is generally true in real life. I have few male friends. Furthermore I have next to zero single male friends. This means the friendship dynamic there often involves a female who reinforces, in their particular way, the male stereotypes that put such limitations on male friendships.

I’m not really the go out for a beer kind of guy. I mean I’ll do it, and I’ll have a good time, but I don’t need an activity to create the necessity to hang out with a guy. My best male friend is like a brother to me and we call each other and talk about our lives and what is going on in them. I’m good with that type of bond. Lately I’ve been trying to recognize whether or not that singular situation is enough for me, or if I need more to be truly happy as a social creature.

I suspect the real answer to that lies in the idea of what I want to do with my time on this planet. Travel, see cool stuff, play video games. Notice I didn’t put ‘write’ there again. I guess I am still burnt out in that respect.

Some Thoughts:

1. Loving someone often means putting yourself in a position to be hurt. When you love you open and you trust. Even the hurt then has value, because you learn what works and what doesn’t and you try.

Welcome back to Marvel Studios, Spiderman. Of course, the studio rolled out the red carpet and gave the webbed one a warm and raucous welcome. Spiderman: Homecoming is in every possible way a double meaning. The film exists on two levels: 1) to reintroduce Spiderman as the high school ‘avenger’ and 2) to reintroduce the MCU to all of their possible titles. In fact, the central conceit of the movie is that it exists as a ‘We’re moving’ movie whose plot swirls around the fact that Tony Stark sold the Avengers tower to an unnamed entity. I wonder what group has a symbol that looks strikingly like the A in Avengers tower and has been looking for a cinematic home to do them justice?

That being hinted at wasn’t the whole ballgame here. The Spiderman movie works on a level that feels slightly above the mayhem of the Hell’s Kitchen gang, but still exists on a power level far below the world-breaking madness the Avengers deal with every film. In other words, Marvel nailed it.

If you look closely you’ll see a film that is layered with easter eggs and in in every possible way a reboot that removes the iconic versions of characters such as Flash and MJ, replacing them with racially different versions. This is a thing now, but it didn’t feel like so much of a thing that it was distracting. Instead the film ignored iconic love interests and focused on a more fun and nuanced approach to the high school life and interests of the Superhero.

If that isn’t enough, the last line of the movie is perfectly set up throughout and delivered in amazing hilarity. I laughed and clapped and people looked at me like, ‘wow, he really liked that.’

Well, I did.

I hate comics.

I used to love them. I used to be terribly enthralled in all of the storylines that moved my beloved heroes through the world. I used to think Marvel comics could do no wrong. I wondered aloud at the Uncanny X-men and the love triangle between Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Wolverine. I saw the icons of the label as characters who were largely untouchable and beautiful and capable of amazing stories.

That fell apart around the teenage years.

It happened most vividly as the 2d world of comics made it’s fiercest entry in to the realm of movies. As the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Earth-199999) was in the nascent idea stages, the comic universe was straight up falling apart. I believe 2006’s Civil War represents the peak of the comic landscape for that particular brand. This is where comics and politics blatantly interacted in a way the marvel universe in particular had never chosen to do. Unfortunately, the storytelling went completely off the rails by the end. It led to some good (World War Hulk) and some bad (the eventual retcon of Steve Rogers as a hydra lackey and ‘pass the shield’ philosophy that followed his ‘death’). It also sparked the modern MCU.

Meanwhile DC was on the rise. Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985) proved they had the infrastructure to reboot comics wholesale and in an effective way. Nevermind the Goku level superheroes and limited plot devices, these guys had writers and a collaborative nature that was bar none. Infinite Crisis and Flashpoint were incredibly directed stories that crossed through so many comics that I went legit broke. I discovered a fascination for many more heroes than I’d followed even in Marvel. I fell in love with the Bat family–namely Oracle and Tim Drake (Red Robin, World’s actual greatest detective) and then that all went to hell.

The wonder of Flashpoint led to the horror of New 52 where they changed everything… in the sing song way that Marvel changed everything to make more user-friendly characters. It is all bad now in both worlds. Red Robin is basically a cast off–one of a half dozen Robins walking the earth. The cool asian Batgirl is, well, not Batgirl as they retconned Oracle to be not crippled, ruining an incredible storyline. Marvel…. well, at this point there are more ‘spider people’ than I can count. You can catch at least six of them on the latest Disney Spiderman show…

Maybe that is it right there. I won’t blame Disney entirely, because Batman vs. Superman shows that everyone can get a hero story very wrong. Still, the storytelling I grew up loving has all but faded from this world. Logan payed homage to a lot of that. It serves as a reminder that there was a golden age of superheroes, but now the media and merchandising rule the day.

Yesterday’s local holiday celebration tapped me in to a reality that has been staring me in the face for a long time, but for the grace of love I have been able to actively ignore. You see, I do not belong in my town.

When I walk through the town I don’t exist as an individual but as a role or as the personification of a role. I am the coach. They call me that in stores and restaurants and when they see me on the street. Most of them don’t even remember my name. The other day I was in another city entirely on a staycation and someone from my small town was there and recognized me… as coach. What happened in that brief moment is what happened over and over again last night. See, when there is no present need for that role, there is little people can do but to comment on that role, have those kinds of brief discussions with me, and finally politely stare and smile expecting me to move along.

I felt completely an utterly alone in the world.

I didn’t entirely recognize this in the past because when I am out in the public space it is either in my role, during a time when my role is relevant, or when I am with my partner. I don’t have a partner in this space anymore. So, I am solo in a city dedicated to and populated by dyads. It is extremely difficult to be the single person in a city where every adult is either married with a huge family or a college-aged kid who exists in an entirely separate reality than I do.

I was lonely and I was angry and I felt the way I often assume a muslim woman in full burka would feel moving through an American suburb. Everyone looks at you, labels you, and has no real use for you or connection to outside of that.

What this means moving forward is that the world I am continuing to slowly create for myself needs to be one built from love and friendships and situations where the people around me appreciate who I am as a person. It means that I can no longer live in a scene where partnership is the price of social entry.

When the President tweeted a picture from his days with the WWE of him beating someone up and superimposed the words CNN on the face of his victim, I shrugged. I don’t think I entirely cared or was surprised. He’s that guy. However, that guy is going to have a lasting impact on what we call decorum in our world. He has billed himself as a ‘Modern President’ and exposed a culture that still, at the root, is about allegiances and a story it wants to tell. I feel like the entire world in in that place right now. It was evident in the Arab Spring and the Brexit and Trumpxit’s that are very much connected. It exists in the way that Manny Pacqiuao lost a boxing match when he landed twice as many punches as his opponent and connected at a much higher percentage than his opponent but was fighting in his opponents home nation.

We have separated from reality and begun to spin ourselves around dispersed non-realities which match the ideas that we want to believe in. Author Lisa Cron wrote, ‘We see the world not as it is, but as we believe it to be.” There was a moment late in the Bush II presidency where I thought that the world was on the verge of both recognizing and counteracting that philosophy. We were going to see the world as it is, if only briefly. Instead we closed our eyes even tighter against the reality and allowed those doing the talking to spin a narrative that gave us cause, blame, and even a way out. Cron also writes, ‘From birth, our brain’s primary goal is to make causal connections–if this, then that’. This is the basis of modern advertising, which is the basis of modern politics and decision making. We convince ourselves of cause and effect and create from that causality a world view that is not entirely real. The result is a world that is on the verge of moving on from common sense, and moving towards open ignorance of anything that is possibly wrong with it.

Once we move on, then what?  

Back home from a quick ‘staycation’ (because that cannot be a real word), I find myself on my old couch, staring out at a yard cluttered with old dog poo, dead grass, forgotten patio furniture, and a poor effort at yard design. There’s the bones of a treehouse out there laying at the base of a tree, never to be raised into the sky. There is clutter, waste, and neglect. My yard is a dying metaphor of my relationship with this home and this town overall. Further, it is a metaphor of my relationship with desire and passion. In other words, both have been left largely untended.

When the balance of doing things because I had to outweighed the things I did out of love, I didn’t see the long term problems. After a while, dealing with stuff became the way of life for me. I stopped writing out of passion and instead wrote out of practicality and a need to maintain publishing credits. I stopped trying to create a home and a life that worked for me only to cling to what I felt I could reasonably handle. I stopped stretching the boundaries of my love, falling back into what I believe was a safe holding pattern. In essence, I stopped moving forward.

If it sounds like this is going to be one of those motivational blogs from this point, it isn’t. I’m merely acknowledging where I am at. I don’t know what I need to do now in order to ‘get better’. I do recognize that I’m not capable of having that life I want in that space I want until I figure out a way to put that passion first. In a sense I am doing that right here and now, getting into my morning roll, writing with her in my heart, and starting the day productively.