Get It Right, One Time

A week flies by so quickly and I look around and think oh jeez where did that week go? It's warm out and the breeze is strong. Parts of the country are being whipped by brutal winds but in New Orleans it's just the wind off the river and the sun shining down. On Easter Sunday we sat on the river and watched small boats become big boats then become small boats again and squeeze underneath the giant Mississippi River Bridge in the distance.

In my childhood I'd visited with my parents and we sat on that same pier in that same spot and when my mom went to take a picture a gutter punk stood up and yelled, "DON'T TAKE A PICTURE OF ME!" and my mom said, "Okay but you're not in it anyway." I asked her why the kid didn't want his picture taken and she said he might have been a runaway. Now I'm the runaway. But you can take my picture if you want.

Seeing God in Signposts

I run a Twitter account for Patti Smith quotes, @ThePattiSmith. I started it back in August just after I left New York and moved to New Orleans because I searched for one and it didn't exist. Besides spreading Patti's wisdom to my now more than 1,500 followers, it also obligates me to be constantly reading Patti Smith interviews, old and new. I've seen her voice develop in interviews from the mid and late 70s, right after Horses was released and its influence began to spread, all the way up to 2011, when she's a National Book Award winner for her memoir Just Kids — a book that changed my life profoundly. Patti, her music, and her written work was one of those things that came along at just the right time and was just what I needed. I'm writing this from New Orleans today in large part because of her influence. I often refer to her as the Patron Saint of Young Artists, and she is.

While preparing today's Patti tweet, I read a quote from a recent interview that has stuck with me:

"Life is filled with those kinds of signposts. I believe in these things, you know, fate. Of course, fate is like a secret friend that helps push you on into life. I often think of those things. One can think of them for the good, and one can think of them for the mistakes we've made. I try to keep it balanced in my mind that you know that's how we get through life. We have our free will, but a lot of fate and a little bit of luck."

This is my exact outlook on life, fate, the Universe and its odd way of working. About a week from now I'll "celebrate" the one year anniversary of leaving my journalism career in New York. At that time my friends and I were all Patti obsessed, craving the life of art and work she lived in the Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe and what was left of the Andy Warhol gang. We idolized that life and time, even knowing that it will never be like that again, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But we can at least try to capture that spirit in the way we live our daily lives, and in our own budding work.

I recently finished filling a journal I started last April, about a month before I left my magazine job. Reading back, I was so unhappy at that time. I wished desperately for no responsibilities, for no worry of money, to just have time to think and meet people and listen and read and write and just... be. An opportunity presented itself and now, nine months into New Orleans, I've had exactly that. But it's coming to an end, and at an appropriate time. As of April 28, I'm on my own again. I've found a new job, a place to live that I'll have to pay for, and I have to be a real adult again. April 28 will be the one year anniversary of my last day at Fast Company.

The Universe is funny like that. I often put my thoughts and hopes out and see if anything happens. Sometimes it's almost instant, sometimes it takes a long while, but most of the time I do get some kind of response. I can now see why things that didn't work out didn't, and why things that did work out did. Not that I don't have questions — this last year of my life has been one massive question mark, and continues to be. But things seem to be shaping up and the future/present is looking good.

This whole month I've struggled with making a decision: to move back to New York or to stay here in New Orleans. After weeks of thinking, writing, talking to friends, I finally made my choice: stay here. It feels good to make that commitment to myself, to have something solid. I've been so confused, but for the sake of my own sanity I finally had to pick one, and staying seemed like the right thing to do. I just didn't feel I was finished with New Orleans yet.

But my life here will be somewhat less traditional that the life I pictured for myself three years ago when I graduated college. I was talking about corporate-type jobs with my mom a few days ago and she said something that I've known about myself but needed to be reminded of: "You've always been more of a free spirit than that." It's true. I value structure but can't foresee myself sitting at a desk day in and day out for the rest of my life. I did that for two years and look where it got me. As it always has been, my life will be a series of adventures and experience not defined by the cultural norms. I'm not failing because I didn't choose to climb the traditional corporate ladder, no matter what high school counselors and undergrad advisers have told me. People may not understand my choice to work at a locally owned vintage clothing shop and have an open availability for projects that come along, and sometimes I may feel somewhat embarrassed that I don't have a traditional job three years out of school. But what is traditional, and why do I feel I need it? Finding myself and my own core is so much more important to me. And, as my mom pointed out, it always has been.

The choice to stay in New Orleans and pursue my own non-traditional "career path" has been so, so difficult, and I've labored hours, days, weeks over it. But I'm forging my own path now, looking for indicators of my own direction, and, as Patti so eloquently alluded, trying to see God in signposts.

Fate Ordains

Why you smilin at me like that? You better quit it. You're gonna make me go crazy, smiling that smile. I knew somebody with that same smile once but baby you wear it so much better. So you better quit before I steal it. Yeah that's what I said. You're offerin it up like it's yours to give away but keep that up and it'll be mine. Mine now. You heard me. Don't play coy, that doesn't—you better quit it! I swear to god you're makin my knees weak darlin. I'm gonna fall right over you, I'm gonna trip right over that smile and take a tumble on down and you're gonna be stuck, stuck with this piece. Now you gotta quit it with that smile again. Damn.

I Married An Addict Once

I married an addict once and we had a very happy marriage and never fought until that word came up. That was a sad day. I'll never forget it. I just asked him point blank hey are you addicted? And he just stared at me like I'd just killed his child. Our child. And I guess in a way I had because the only thing we'd created together was that marriage except for some stupid pottery or something. So we fought but without words, he just walked out on me and he had never done that before.

We lived on for a while after that and tried to make things like they were once. We faked it real hard but finally he said he thought it was over and all I could do was agree. We didn't fight then either, we never used words except good ones and when bad ones were supposed to come up neither of us could say them. I don't think I thought them and I don't know if he did either. We thought we had something pure but I guess we could only get to a certain level.

After that we just talked on the phone, we never actually broke it off just lived years until we faded from each other's lives. What is it about addictions that people can't take? Why does it change everything and why do we have the capacity to ignore it for so long. It's not even like I was ignoring it in the proper sense, I don't know if I even knew it was there until a few days before I brought it up, I noticed some suspicious behavior and even that wasn't bad.

I don't know if I never should have brought it up or if we would have lived on like that forever or if something else would have broken us, but I suppose if everything happens for a reason this was supposed to happen this way. Still I guess I have some regret about it, because his addiction was one I shared, and one we shared together.

His addiction was me, so I guess in the end I broke us and I guess I've always know that was true.

Capitol You

High flying

free falling

spiral

downward through dark

depths Emerging

fully formed and

beautiful with son shining

from the ground

up

Peace together the

fragments and a

life itself forms,

like slanted edges

forcing through the

unknown, something

new and different

and better for

all of us

DNA spiral baby calm

down and Out of

our control this ride

It spins round and round

on a broken black

surface

tainted but true blue

Throw it away if

you can

Exact Change

We spent an hour talking of the future of smartphones, the Internet, the cloud, digital media, and how advanced it would all be, so soon. And then I walked through the cold to the elevated train and heard but never saw it passing overhead. I ran just in case it stalled, but it didn't, and the cold air sank into my chest and made its home there for the next hour. I breathed hard, and saw every breath.

I walked from one end of the platform to the other, looking out at the view of the Manhattan skyline from Queens and thinking what a great view it is. Several bridges, all lit up, and a skyline from an angle I'd never seen it before. The Empire State Building was still lit red and green for Christmas, and I turned around and then turned back around and it was turned off. It was 2 a.m. I wished I seen it turn off, like flipping a switch when you leave a bathroom. Click. The world's most famous building goes dark, every night. Literal clockwork.

A ride and some walking and a transfer and two trains later I was back uptown, back in Harlem, but I didn't know my apartment number and it was past 3 a.m. We'd spent so much time talking about amazing technological advances that my near-dead phone died as I tried to make a call. Late at night (or early in the morning), cold but not too cold, I stood on the stoop looking at the door and wondering what to do. Three third floor apartments, none labeled with the proper name. I tried 32 and 33 briefly but skipped 31. I don't know why.

In my pocket was exactly one dollar in change: three quarters, a dime, two nickels, and five pennies. I walked back to the subway station to find a pay phone but there wasn't one. Across the street at a bodega there was, though, and I avoided three shady men stalking a corner to get to it. I dialed the number, the only friend's number I know by heart, a residual left over from the days when we didn't rely solely on digital address books, but she didn't answer. 'I'm here but don't know your apartment number,' I said to her voicemail. 'I'll be waiting on your stoop. Please come down and get me when you get this.'

I paced patiently, weighing options and willing her to wake up and see I wasn't back yet. Twenty easy minutes passed. I stared at the buzzer. I pressed 31. Thirty seconds later, the door buzzed. She lived in 32. Coincidence is funny like that.

We'd talked for an hour of technology and the future, and then I was stranded by it and used a payphone for the first time in my life. Welcome to 2011.

An Echo Stain

Men in the form of dogs chase him into the treehouse and he runs so hard it hurts to breathe. Cornered, five of them on one of him, his only defense a stone-white sheet. They vary in size. He picks up the sheet and slings it around the smaller dog, wrapping him up in it and slamming him against the wall. The dog makes no sound. The largest of the five stands over the smallest, protecting it. There are no teeth, no snarls, just a tackling of sorts. He goes for the second smallest, a Chihuahua, and tries to shove him out the window. The dog yelps and screams and pushes back, trying to hold on. The whines echo.

He wakes up and knows it's over, finally. The sun is shining and it is warm out. Through his blinds he sees a blue sky and scattered checkerboard clouds. They welcome him back. He is so sad, and breathes. It was only self defense, and they were men. He feels like he could cry but he doesn't. He never cries from dreams.

He knows it's gone, the weight has been lifted, for now. He is himself again and is ready to be. That sun, that warmth, is for him, and he will use it. Today he will think and be and live. Today he will be happy.

Hoover, Damn

In retrospect everything is brighter but what kind of retrospect can you have at 24. We think we're so big but we aren't. And we think we're so smart but we aren't. There's that certain feeling of unhappiness that sits on my shoulders at almost all times in my life and I've always thought I could push it off but I'm beginning to think that maybe I can't. Maybe happiness is just a high and the rest of it is just life. And things aren't romantic and the streets don't sparkle and everyone you meet isn't your soulmate.

I don't want to be that person just making it through the day, just taking it one day at a time, because that's so fucking depressing. One day at a time? One day shouldn't be enough. Things should be so great that you never want this day to end. Yet I find myself wishing I could close my eyes and wake up in month and have this all over and done with and settled. But that's settling, my enemy.

I believe in living in the moment but what if the moment sucks? And what if the moment isn't as good as you planned it? What if what you're supposed to do is get a shitty job and have a shitty marriage and raise a couple of shitty kids? When do the good moments happen? Happily ever after doesn't exist, it's just one more stack of problems. That's why sequels always suck. You left the story with a happy ending and some asshole executive forced some asshole writer to make up a problem. And yeah it's realistic but realism is depressing.

These aren't real questions they're just my mind playing devil's advocate with itself. I'm beginning to see why people cheat, or lie, or why people do drugs. These things aren't in me because I so value truth but I can see why.

This is a deep pit and I do not like it. I wish I had a past a present and a future but sometimes it seems like all I have is a vacuum.

Relativity and Drawing Hands

I'm lopsided right now. Unbalanced. It's cold and windy and wet outside and I long for the late nights when I rode my bike through the French Quarter, the warm humid breeze swooshing around me and a beer rattling in my cup holder. The sky glowed orange then and I was so certain in my directionlessness, and confident that everything was working itself out for the better.

Now the sky stays grey all day and all night and a frigid wind whips around every corner. And it's wet and chilling and depressing. I don't want to go out, I want to stay in, and now I'm so lacking in that confidence. I feel like I've had so many false starts that starting over would almost be easier. And while believing in an overall sense that everything happens for a reason, I wonder what that reason is and wish it would reveal itself to me.

This year has been my favorite year of any I've ever lived and so much has happened to me, both inside and out. But it's left me with a strange wonkiness that I'm not sure I've felt before, and choices I made I have to wonder about. But not really. It's just the greyness talking, suffering from orange withdrawal. I'm sensitive to it right now and I want it to be over, but I know that when I look back even this will just be a snap of a memory.

We push through the difficult times knowing good ones are both behind and in front of us. But it's cold and windy and wet outside and I long for the late nights, riding my bike inhaling the Mississippi. What's the good without the bad and how would you recognize one without the other?

There's a flicker of hope burning behind a paper thin wall but it's delicate and must be tended to. I know this is short term but when you can't get your footing everything gets turned upside down. No one wants to live in an Escher forever.

Downs Man

December heat goes
up up down up;
a stiff breeze blows
through
Fortune teller waves her
hands filling my
head with spam; it aint
true, maybe
Broken out, about to
break out;
breakaway, no fast
break breakfast
Rock around the
clock tiks toks all
night; missing hours
of sleep then
A dream of life; it
isn't mine but
it might be;
Yours.