Creative Writing – On Second Thought

Awake

I recently posted this on Facebook about the toxic word “Woke”: According to WordHippo.com, as an adjective (dialect, African American Vernacular or slang), the word means “conscious and not asleep. In the US, Canada, as slang, it means “alert and aware of what is going on, especially in social justice contexts.” What is the opposite of the word “woke?”: flaked out, dozed off, vegetated, lulled, zizzed, crashed, zoned out, and, my favorite, asleep at the wheel.

(By the way, during the past seven years attending college with 20-30-somethings, I have never heard the word “Woke” ever uttered by them or any professors. This is a total figment of the right wing’s imagination. Get help. See a therapist).

This is why I prefer the word “Awake” as an alternative to the one that the right wing in this country has weaponized as an insult without realizing they have no idea what they’re talking about. WordHippo.com asks, “What does awake mean?” Being “awake,” according to the website, is being in a state of “not asleep; conscious” and, by extension, “Alert, aware,” two states of being that give me power because it allows me to know what is happening around me.

WordHippo.com defines it further as “to excite or to stir up something latent” and “To rouse from a state of inaction or dormancy.” I interpret this as being able to stir up some action when necessary. If there is one bit of wisdom I’ve learned in all my years is that one must be prepared to stir the pot to boil when one witness some wrongs. You could ignore it, and you would probably be able to live the rest of your life contently. Except I was taught from a young age in Catholic School and even through American history studies that Americans fight for justice (it’s the American way). Of course, there has always been that disconnect between slogans and reality. However, I think I took much of that belief to heart.

For some time now, as part of my morning ritual, I’ve studied wise quotes from men and women throughout history. Insightful, jaw-dropping, mesmerizing statements that provide me with plenty of Aha moments. One source has been a Kindle book, “Positive Affirmations for Atheists, Agnostics, and Secular Humanists, edited by I.M. Probulos. The chapters are categorized with titles such as Reason, Success, Self Help, Happiness, and Journey. If I may borrow a quote by tennis great Artur Ashe, “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” Life is a journey full of successes and failures. What is most important is that you deal with each victory and each defeat at the moment and learn a lesson from each without caring about what you will make of it a year, five years, or ten years from that moment. Who gives a shit about the future when it is that moment that is most important. What bit of wisdom could you extract, or did you blow the opportunity and instead decide to worry about the long-term impact of your choices?

This is especially true when you witness any injustice, whether a bully in your class or a group of people who mock another group because of their religion, race, or gender. You can see what you see, shrug your shoulders, and walk away to be what you want. You didn’t learn anything at that moment in your life journey. Or you can say something, do something even better. Not alone. Stir others to join you. Find power in rousing “from a state of inaction or dormancy.”

I’ve been awake since my formative years in the seminary (1962-1964) when I became increasingly aware of a world beyond the classroom and study hall where evil men and women engaged in immoral acts against the less powerful. During those moments when one or two of my classmates felt it was OK to shout a racial slur at me, I realized that they were not isolated incidents or were alone in their behavior. They must have learned that behavior from someone. That someone was from somewhere in the real world called America.

That awareness carried with me when I returned to the Bronx in 1964, and I would watch for the next four years the continuing struggles for freedom and against injustice not only in the south of this country but also up north. Our failings as a nation were exposed, and many of us took up the burden to do what we could. We were awakened to the contradiction between what we were led to believe is the ideals of this nation and the reality of race and class.

I wasn’t always right. It was easy to fall into the trap of being sucked up by slogans and the illusion that we were winning the fight for justice. Through the seventies, I believed that journalism was the weapon to be used for fighting the good fight. Sometimes it worked, and other times I realized that the goal of a commercial television station was to sell commercials, not always the truth. Inevitably, you find yourself swimming in doubts about the fight, and you surrender to instincts about survival (paying the rent, food, clothing, and a car). Suddenly you’re not awake anymore but instead find yourself, according to WordHippo.com, asleep, dormant, dozing, unawakened, inattentive, crashed out dead to the world.

That is why I write every week. To ensure I don’t fall asleep, be inattentive, or ever crash out dead to the world again. It’s a small act, I concede. I may not reach large audiences, and my words may not sometimes make sense because I may not use the right words to inspire and break through the wall of ignorance that seems to envelop us all these days in our silos.

In the meantime, I’ll keep doing whatever I can to stay awake, whether it’s reading, writing, or throwing verbal hand grenades to bust down those walls to continue the fight against injustice and all the social and political afflictions that prevent us from being the best America we can ever be.

Broken

The following essay has been updated to reflect additional insight from myself and others.

South Bronx — Image by Republica from Pixabay

America is broken. There’s video evidence everywhere. Facebook. Twitter. Especially Twitter. Instagram. TikTok. I’ve even seen evidence on Truth Social, that Trumpian fountain of irreconcilable conflict between reality and fantasy. You know things are horrible when the liars are lying about lying.

The videos show that Americans hate each other so much that their faces contort from the short-circuiting anger gripping their hearts in headlocks. If someone could put their heart in a headlock, this is what it would be like. Mobs of black, white, and brown teenage girls, it don’t matter, kicking each other’s asses until someone can’t get up anymore. Americans whom we label Karen and Ken with their spittle running down their mouths onto their polyester rayon shirts and sweaters that they bought at their local Kroger or Marshall and swearing that they are the guides to the truth and that I am in the way. Or the traffic stop that turns deadly because one side is talking about power, and the other party is just trying to get home.

“What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate. Some men you can’t reach,” said Strother Martin as Captain in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke. (I love that movie). It’s terrible out here. You better believe it.

I haven’t touched the subject of politics, and I’m already disheartened that America doesn’t seem to have learned anything from its history. The struggle over who this country belongs to is insane. How do we define a nation? Are you talking about land? Or institutions? Or history? It’s not like there’s a deed somewhere with my or your name. All I know is that inside that debate, something terrible is happening. The idea of a United States of America, a people unified behind a concept of liberty and justice for all, all those lost words that have become nothing for Americans or those who will die trying to become Americans.

There is a war going on. People are screaming at each other over stupid shit. Meanness has replaced kindness. Empathy has been replaced by antipathy. Threats against persons are commonplace. A gun, a knife, and fists are now the preferred communication tool. Both extreme ends of the political spectrum are gearing up for battle, and many of us are left wondering, “Should I buy a gun or move?” (Move where?) because we all suspect that the real civil war is coming, and it ain’t going to be pretty.

First, I can’t afford a gun except maybe a Nerf Gun, and I may want to kill some people sometimes, but I know I don’t have the cojones to pull a trigger (I’m a lover, not a fighter) or ready for the ugly truth that it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Somewhere in this country (Texas, Florida), the next generations of Americans are being taught a 1950 version of American History where everyone knew their place (Can we like forget those pesky reminders of class, race, and gender warfare and the laws that came out of those battles?). Yeah, some people would rather burn our memories so we don’t remember them and substitute a more tranquil picture of patriotic Americans with their red, white, and blue flags and AR-15s and a mask of revenge and a I don’t give a fuck snarl that is now a license to intimidate whether you like it or not.

2024 and the next presidential election is almost here, and I am terrified that it will turn ugly (Ya’ think?). On one side, we have an incumbent who refuses to see the reality of age before him and that his time has passed (Thank you for your service). We need fresh meat, a fresh perspective, and new ideas.

On the other side, oh my, what can I say? You didn’t think we would let you people take this country away from us? What do you mean, You people? I honestly don’t know who is scarier. The old(er) guy who can barely remember what time period he is in or the other ones who think America needs to go back to that time a hundred and three years ago to find the real America when men were men and women were…well, women who could not vote. Or maybe, at a time when only white men who owned land could only vote (Any time before 1954 would be fine).

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay copy

I’ve witnessed a lot of American history and hysteria in my nearly seventy-five years. It’s not like I’ve understood everything I’ve seen, but I suspected back then, even when I was a ten-year-old child in 1958 in the South Bronx, that something was very wrong with America. All that talk about the Pledge of Allegiance and the star-spangled banner and that all men are created equal didn’t mean it applied to everyone, only white people, preferably men. Then I was told that certain people had to earn their freedom, not yet but soon, and that those people wouldn’t know what to do with it if they had it. Freedom is earned, not given for free (What?).

I wondered who they were talking about. I was sure the ten-year-old with a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother believed all that talk about freedom applied to someone else. Not me. I was born American, and I was free. Then, three years later, I discovered in an all-white school that no, they were also talking about me as they shouted racial insults and thought it was cute to call me Pancho.

We are broken. And I don’t know how to fix ourselves. I don’t think you can pass a law to heal us or think you could start all over and try again or decide to ignore it and go about your business and hope that someone comes up with a fix. I worry about the America my sons and granddaughter will meet as they get older in ten, twenty, or even thirty years when we’re supposed to become a nation of majority people of color. All I could hope for is we’re lucky enough to get there alive and well. It’s just that right now; it doesn’t look good from here in 2023.

Work Lessons

When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.
Henry J. Kaiser

I’ve been working since I was fifteen years old. Evidence can be found in last week’s essay. I spoke about all the good work I’ve done. Satisfying accomplishments. Hard work (not like my father’s work as a truck mechanic or my mother’s as a mother and head of the house work). Our father lectured us often about not wanting us to end up under the truck with grease on our hands (I wonder what truck mechanics make these days?). Our father also taught us the value of hard work, perseverance, and not being a “lazy bum” to use his words. Of course, I’ve often been accused of taking the working hard part a little too seriously. Workaholic. Workhorse. Hustler. The hardest working man in _____(Fill in the blank).

Of course, there is a negative side to working all the time. It’s called no life. However, when I think about all the jobs I’ve held in my fifty-nine years of working, I can honestly say that my values, life philosophy, and my view of the world and people flow from the experiences of work. Whether being a motorcycle courier (short-cuts and strategy of driving on the L.A. Freeways) or being Executive Producer of Live Television (Where do I begin?), I learned valuable work lessons that became the life lessons I use daily.

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Albert Camus

Those who know me well would be shocked to hear that I once thought of myself as shy. When I was with the education advocacy organization United Bronx Parents in 1968, I would often be asked to call parents to invite them to a rally or a meeting. I would be given a phone list with some written speech I was supposed to read to them. I could not, for the life of me, call someone on the phone to ask them to do something or ask them a question. I swear I would freeze. I could barely dial (rotary phone) the letters and numbers.

A simple call would take minutes instead of a minute. My voice would crack from the nervousness. I don’t know why this happened. It just did. I was nineteen years old. Now, mind you, I didn’t seem to have a problem talking to people in person. I’ve spoken to students at an anti-war rally, so why would I crack under pressure from speaking anonymously to someone on the phone? Of course, with time, the phobia disappeared as I realized that those calls were more than calls. They were part of an essential organizing effort to invite Black and Latino parents to take control of their children’s education (It didn’t mean the same then as it does for some parents now). Lesson learned: confidence to solve a problem and inspire people.

When I was the host of two radio shows at WHUR-FM, Howard University, I spoke to hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, anonymously, and aside from some early technical f*ck-ups, I learned to take those lessons from United Bronx Parents and used that confidence to speak and connect with that audience. I wasn’t afraid to use the platform I had to not only play great Salsa (La Voz del Barrio) and Jazz (Espiritu Libre) but also speak about national and local political issues. It was the early seventies, Nixon was President, and Washington, D.C. was seen as a city without power for its mostly Black residents (The word plantation was often thrown around). But I learned important lessons about organization, communication techniques, and the ability and courage to tackle complex subjects without fear when needed.

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.
Pearl S. Buck

That confidence would strengthen me when I became a television reporter. I asked challenging questions of politicians, police, cat lovers (I covered more than one pet show), bureaucrats and accused people facing trial. There’s a benefit in learning how to not only speak with and to people but also an ability to read people, body language, the skill to see clearly between the lines, and the strength to call people out when you must.

The most critical skills that came out of the first twenty years of work life in New York and Washington, D.C., was the ability to see, hear, and speak of the world square on. Not to flinch when it seemed hopeless but to keep moving forward, through it, around it, under it, over it if necessary.

And all of this happened before I moved to Los Angeles, California, where I knew one person, and my first job was as a motorcycle courier. Up until that point in 1984, I had never ridden a motorcycle. So I went out and learned how to ride one, got a job, and learned how to get around Metro L.A. to the point that I probably knew more shortcuts than most native Angelenos. I learned not only those shortcuts but also so much more about L.A., the city, the culture, and the people. I began to soak myself in the inspiration of this city.

Bartending? Man, if you deal with a bunch of drunk men and women for two and a half years, you should get a medal and a big ass bonus. I learned about herding cats and manipulating (in a good way) people to trust you with their secrets and big tips.

So, I took all the experiences and skills learned in those first L.A. jobs and everything from my time on the east coast, and I knew I was ready for a television production job. Why? Well, producing is about organization, strategy, confidence, patience, people power, creativity, budgets, negotiation, bribery (okay, maybe not in the strict sense of the word), and calling forth all of that New York attitude (Some might call it cojones) that I could muster to rise from a segment producer to an Executive Producer of Live Events. I could synthesize all those skills into doing my job and still learn how to hone them into new skills about people and life and success and the occasional failure without losing my mind or soul.

The call of the artist is to follow the excitement. Where there’s excitement, there’s energy. And where there is energy, there is light.
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

There were plenty of other lessons learned at other jobs not mentioned, but in the end, all this has helped me with my college life (Learning a few things there too). I keep going because the greatest lesson I’ve learned is that for a long time, work was my life, and now my life is work for me. I’m taking all I have learned to learn more. Skills to living a fuller life, a life where just waking up every morning breathing, sober, and ready for the day, is the great lesson I’ve learned.

A Life Full of Good Work

The accompanying photographs are the result of my always-moving eye to document the beauty and complexity of life.

Photography — Reporter, WFSB-TV, Hartford, Connecticut

My life partner, Sumire, often teases me that I write too much about the dark side of my life. Even my biography on this website is chock full of negativity. She tells me, “You have a long list of accomplishments. You should write more about them.” Yeah, but what fun is that? No one cares about the happy stuff. In today’s world, it’s all about drama.

But maybe, she has a point. I recently had to submit a resume (I didn’t have a bio handy) for an article that someone was writing about me being an older college student. It was the first time in a long time that I had read it, and I was taken aback by all the career work I’ve done in my life. Good work that impacted me and, hopefully, people I’ve worked alongside. I’ve traveled this country from New York to Washington, D.C., Hartford, Connecticut, Los Angeles, California, and international cities like London, Tokyo, and Cannes, France, fulfilling my work-life dreams. So why not take a moment to be proud of all I’ve done?

For example, during my twenty-plus years at the Los Angeles-based cable network E! Entertainment, I managed, in partnership with others, the growth of E!’s Red Carpet Shows into a major brand and a pop culture icon. Those years at E! were some of the most exciting times in my life. I led a large team of producers, writers, and technical professionals to produce live Big Event television covering the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, Grammys, and Primetime Emmys, as well as movie premieres and the ultimate icon, Fashion Police. I was on the ground floor helping build the network’s live red carpet coverage from a one-camera, one-host, two-hour program into multiple cameras, multiple hosts, and ten-hour live shows. I was an Executive Producer on Fashion Police with the late Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa Rivers. In addition, I worked on international specials, including coverage of the Cannes Film Festival in France.

During my early days at E!, I supervised a team of segment producers creating short and long-form television series and specials on various entertainment subjects, including Daytime Emmys, Grammys, Country Music Awards, and Academy Awards.

Near the end of my tenure at E!, I created my own production company, Really Big Boom Productions, with E! Networks as the first client, providing Executive Producer services on the highly rated red carpet shows. Locally, we also created the Color Me Long Beach Cultural Festival.

My work life in media (radio and television) extends back to the east coast from 1972-1978, when I was a television news reporter at WFSB-TV Eyewitness News, Hartford, Connecticut, a radio and television news reporter trainee at WTOP-AM-TV, Washington, D.C., and on-air host and radio producer at WHUR-FM (Howard University’s 50-thousand watt commercial radio station) also in D.C.

Filling in some gaps in my work timeline during the late seventies and early eighties, I was a Public Information Specialist in the Office of Mayor Marion Barry (another story) in Washington, D.C. I followed that up as the Executive Director for the D.C. Cable Television Design Commission, responsible for bringing Cable Television to Washington, D.C.

In recent years, I was the Publisher and Executive Editor of Palacio Magazine, a digital multimedia platform featuring stories about Latinos and other people of color. As if I wasn’t busy enough, I was the Community Engagement Coordinator for VoiceWaves, a journalism and multimedia training program in Long Beach for youth 16-24 years old to produce media content to foster a healthier community. Between gigs, I was a Small Business Advisor at El Camino College Small Business Development Center in Hawthorne, advising emerging and established small businesses regarding website content and multimedia strategies.

When I stop and consider that I’ve been working since I was fifteen years old (selling magazine subscriptions, dry cleaners, motorcycle messenger, bartender, airport shuttle driver, Wall Street clerk) and that I am now seventy-four (and still kicking it), there is much to be proud of, including my time on the board of Directors for Leadership Long Beach and the Arts Council for Long Beach. My life partner and I co-founded the arts advocacy group, The Creativity Network, where we helped rewrite the city’s Cultural Master Plan with the Arts Council. The list of good work includes all the volunteer work on the east coast, for example publishing a book of poems by Connecticut-based Puerto Rican poets called Revista and being a part of the first incarnation of the National Latino Media Coalition (Thankfully, it went on to survive in more capable hands. Oops, there’s that negativity again) in Washington, D.C.

Trust me, the list of good work is even longer: doing community work in 1968 in the South Bronx with one of my first mentors, Evelina Antonetty, at United Bronx Parents during the New York Teacher’s strike (hey, got me arrested and I wear it like a badge of honor), guerrilla community television in Washington, D.C. in the days when people didn’t know anything about portable video, the late great National Puerto Rican advocacy organization La Causa Comun, the Booker T. Washington Foundation with a man who taught me so much, the late Charles Tate.

I’m writing about this not to inflate my ego but to recognize that despite all the misadventures in my life, I’ve done more good than bad. Life is full of ups and downs, but we can survive the heartaches if we just put our heads down and move forward with good people around us.

As I prepare to head into the last year of my eight-year college journey to a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Long Beach, I take pride that at my age, I’m still kicking and wanting more from an already full life of good work. I will be seventy-five years old when I graduate, and I intend to go for a post-graduate degree because I haven’t been able to come up with a good reason why not. I plan to keep pushing because it’s who I am. As I often say, “Eat Life like you’re starving. You may feel full at the end of the day, but damn, it tasted good.”

Inspiration Redux

It’s Finals Week, and all my inspiration is tuned into making it over the hill. So, I grabbed this from the vault. The following was inspired by “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion for my English 404 Creative Nonfiction class.

Language — Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I’ve been told that the inspiration for writing is everywhere. Just open your eyes, I’ve been directed. The person or object in front of you, even when it’s a computer screen or the view of the backyard through your office window. Look up in the sky like when you were a kid, and you stared out your bedroom window and conjured up images from the cumulous clouds above the Patterson Projects in the South Bronx. It doesn’t matter where it comes from as long as you write something. Oh, they’re very insistent. The inspiration is there and everywhere. I must open my eyes, ears, and mind to the possibilities.

For a long time, I couldn’t write a thing. Well, that’s not accurate. I could write a love letter, a script for a radio show, a television news report, a technical or policy paper, or maybe sneak in a poem or two. Still, these were either the duties of a job or some frivolous moment to fill while I waited for something more serious to come along. Filling time. That’s how I sometimes thought of creative writing. You know, the writing where you open your heart and soul and scream words onto a page until they click into moving pictures. Or, to put it another way, they can walk into living worlds and settle down to rest as long as they want.

Education — Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

A million other writers and I have said it before, writing, authentic writing that spills out honestly when you grab the courage to free yourself, and your soul will follow, is difficult. Almost impossible if you’re not honest with yourself. Writing on demand can seem easy when you’re just pecking away at the keys in the hopes that something comes out and all that seems to appear on the screen in front of you is gibberish that even your eyes can’t translate. But you did exercise your fingers and proved that you could type. Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.

When I was a television reporter, and I had to crank out two-three scripts in the span of a couple of hours (without the aid of a computer or Grammarly), you had notes, and maybe you had a chance to watch the news film (probably not) or the video (doubtful). You had to tap your memory banks, write a story based on fact, make sure it made sense, and ensure that it weaved with the visual element into a minute-and-a-half report that was succinct and clear enough that someone at home would take that time to watch it. Not sure I would call it “creative writing,” but you did hope it moved someone’s feelings or mind an inch. This is before the internet when people did sit in front of a television at an appointed hour or at least had it playing in the background over dinner and watched and heard crime stories or scandals or some stimulating “if it bleeds, it leads” news report that had spun out of your electric typewriter only an hour before. My goal was, to tell the truth in the best way I knew how and my inspiration was the reality I had witnessed or at least gotten other witnesses to share their stories.

The Creative Writing I do in college is different and more challenging. Some people can do any number of processes, exercises, and techniques to get their creative juices started. I start writing simply enough. A title. A thought. An incident from my past. A word. A single word. What’s important is that I start typing. Type. Type. Type. Take a breath and then start typing again and be confident enough to ensure that a stream of sentences flows across the screen and that it makes some sense. Okay, maybe not at first. It’s my first write. Perhaps it will be gibberish at first. It’s a beginning.

Then, I go over it, the writing. Sometimes, I’ll study it on the screen, making immediate changes as I go along. Or maybe after the fourth or fifth versions (I’ve done upwards of twenty versions during the course of writing a piece), I’ll print it out and read it aloud, listening to the cadence of the words, the connection of those words, the specific words themselves, hoping that I’m not repeating the exact words, nouns, prepositions, adverbs, complex sentences that run into each other because I sometimes forget that there are such things as periods or commas or semi-colons. Grammar not being my strong suit sometimes. Always thinking what’s a better way to say something (Word Hippo is my thesaurus friend). To visualize it first and then splash it across the page so that whoever reads it stops for a moment to absorb it, to bring it into themselves and allow it to fill their head and soul with the music of the words and beauty of the picture that is flashing before their imaginations. That’s when you know. Yeah, it’s all good.

Lifelong Learning — Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I don’t want to stop there. I want to be continuously inspired to make the words sing louder, and the picture is brighter, the colors forcing you to look at them while at the same time they burn into your very essence and your heart dances gleefully and more heartedly than the first time you read or heard my words.

There’s so much more to learn. To exercise my fingers across this page, to tap that thing inside all of us so that those unique words just come forward and wrap me and you in ecstasy.

Yeah, that would be good.

Sand Water Sky

The sand fills my shoes (I hate when that happens)
The water soaks my socks (The squish squish squish unnerves me)
The sky fills my field of vision (Overwhelming me always)
sun rays bouncing off the atmosphere
onto the water sparkling little stars jumping with each wake
the sun rays pouring over me reminding me that there
are some things in life you cannot control.

Warming my face
sitting at the edge of the sand my feet propped up
on the low wall as I try my darndest to stay dry
and free of the sand wanting it all at the same time.
Sand  Water  Sky.

I don’t swim (you’ll never catch me surfing)
maybe you’ll find me on a small boat (I remember that time
I ended up in the Potomac trying to learn how to sail)
or a cruise ship (like the time through the Caribbean in ‘83
eating my way through the islands while savoring a dying 
relationship).

People the brave ones who don’t mind a little sand in their shoes
a wet sock a cold dash of water rubbing against their skin as they 
ride the waves playing with dolphins and sharks and jellyfish.
I like being the bystander cheering them on
enthralled by the California myth where everyone lives 
dreaming of a house on the beach and
the water and sky paint your dream with peace and 
love.

I don’t swim or ride the waves on a surfboard
I don’t lay out a blanket on the sand 
avoiding sand in my shoes 
or the ocean filling my socks with excuses
of why it wants me to trust it 
that it’s been there for millions of years since the beginning of time along 
with the sand and its other friend the sky.

I sit at the edge of America scanning the horizon for
what’s on the other side of this vision 
a thought a dream
a moment in time spent wondering how I got so lucky
to be here 
to join the armies of beach huggers who 
arrive every day to dig in the sand 
poke their toes into the water and let the sun warm them over with peace and love.

I love sitting on the edge of America knowing that this is where
I will be forever because I was born to be here in peace and love.
This is where I need to be to live the La La myth 
the lifestyle of Hawaiian shirts shorts and sandals and 
beach bum hats
and free spirits relaxing taking it all in 
and turning my face to the sky my arms and hands extended welcoming the 
life force that confirms that I am alive at peace and in love
with Sand Water Sky.

Stuff

Do you ever have so much stuff rolling around inside your head that it (your head) begins to pulsate with throbbing rhythms? Here I am, five weeks or so out from the end of the semester and all I’m thinking about are finals and essays and memorization (I hate trying to memorize stuff at my age). At the same time, I have a head full of writing topics that I want to get down on the screen in front of me. Still, I can’t organize it well enough to spit it out. Not quite writer’s block but more like roadblock.

Aging, mass shootings, weight gain and loss, MAGA mania, 2024 election, COVID-19 (yes, that’s still a thing), graduation next year with only 15 units to go, applying for graduate school in the fall, kitchen remodel, fantasies of summer vacation, my outdoor cat is dying, the crazy weather, I don’t want to call myself Latinx, the world seems to be going to shit, violent videos on Facebook, the lack of empathy, everyone is fighting, rudeness, my granddaughter’s smile, the peacefulness of an empty beach, creeping fascism, it’s always about power, don’t shoot, do I need to buy a gun, are we really better than this………………………………………………

This and a million other stuff rattle around in my head all day and a lot at night. I wake myself up in the middle of a bad dream having a conversation with someone while in that middle state between consciousness and sleep. I can hear myself talking but can’t quite understand the words so I can remember what happened when I wake up at 5 o’clock for the day in front of me. Weird.

There are so many stories to tell, but I don’t quite see the words yet. Only symbols, scribblings across my brain, smoke signals in my eyes, sounds like gibberish, hazy visions, distant memories trying their best to dig themselves out of that bottomless pit somewhere at the bottom of my brain.

The running joke in my family is something my brother Joey said once, and I’m paraphrasing here: “I have an opinion, and I’m going to express it.” It was a statement made in reaction to someone trying to tell him to keep his opinion to himself, or at least that’s how I remember it. I feel like that often. I have an opinion about everything, but in my case, no one is trying to shut me down. My problem is always about finding the time. And there’s probably a little hesitation about whether anyone cares what I have to say. Not that it would stop me. I pretty much don’t give a shit what people think about what I think these days. Not sure at what age I developed that thinking, but I do know it is increasingly becoming my anthem.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I want to be sensitive and not insult or offend people. I’m not going to shout the N-word in the middle of Times Square or call someone a name to their face about their appearance or intellectual capacity or any of a long list of possible insults. I might say it under my breath or behind their backs if I’m angry enough at them, but I’m more about picking winnable battles these days and measuring and storing my energy for more critical wars ahead.

And speaking of wars, do you sometimes feel we’re headed toward a civil war in this country? Or is it just good television that makes me think that? Seriously? Like Housewives of Beverly Hills or Basketball Wives or every Karen and Ken video that I see these days where someone can’t seem to control themselves or mind their own business and decides that lashing out at anyone in their field of vision is the appropriate response to their relationship with their neighbor or friend or any stranger they come upon.

We, humanity, seem to be getting on each other’s nerves these days. I can’t help but think we all are having a nervous breakdown. A breakdown of standards of politeness, empathy, sympathy, civility, decorum, tolerance, and live and let live. Why is everyone so intent on being the judge, jury, and executioner? Who died and made them the arbiter of truth and justice? Seriously?

Back to those semi-conscious conversations that I’ve been having at night. I vaguely remember that I’m usually in the middle of an argument with someone in a dream/nightmare, and I’m trying to make a point, and they’re not listening. The only way I can get my point across is to shout louder than they’re speaking, and then they raise their voice higher, and then I raise my voice so loud that I kick myself out of that dream into this twilight state, not quite asleep nor quite awake. The point is that’s how I’m beginning to feel about walking around and having arguments, usually with myself, about what is happening worldwide. This nervous breakdown I mentioned. It’s just not a good way to look at the world.

I tell my friend Thomas he’s the optimist, and I’m the pessimist. That happens when you study the history of humans on this earth (or maybe I’m projecting from my own life). Whatever. The truth is that life is what it is, and you must find your safe passage through it and your safe peace in it if you want to live a longer life, not locked away in a padded room or a coffin.

Yeah, that’s not what I want to do. I have plans for life 75+, so I’ll keep thinking and pondering and analyzing the world outside and inside of me and write about it and how I feel about it and know that this is the best therapy for me, even as I wish the entire world would get some therapy.

It’s all cool. In the meantime, I have some school homework to do.

Living to 75

“Every day you’re alive is a special occasion…The challenge is to remember, day in, day out, the specialness found in the ordinariness of our lives.”
pp. 247, Everyday Serenity, David Kundtz

I recently discovered that a former colleague, friend, and my oldest son’s godfather died. We had worked together in the seventies at a television station and had once in a blue moon kept up with each other after I left. I last spoke to him ten or eleven years ago when I was on the east coast. We were supposed to connect in person then, but time and our lives disconnected us. I’ve tried to connect with him over the years, but it was as if he had disappeared off the face of the earth. If he had lived, we would have been about the same age, seventy-four, 74.

Not to be a downer, but I’ve noticed the ages of people in the news and friends who have died recently. When their ages are 74 or less, I get nervous. I get twitchy, conscious of all the health issues I’ve had and have, and wonder which one will do me in. I mean, forty-five years of drug and alcohol abuse and the ups and downs of obesity and threats of diabetes, breathing lousy air from the San Diego Freeway nearby, convinced the Hepatitis C that was “cured” will suddenly come back to bite me in the ass or scared stiff that what killed my parents (father-cancer, mother-Parkinson) is sneaking their way through my DNA soon to dive into my veins to wreak destruction on my body.

Or I may be overreacting to the news of my friend’s death (Ya think?).

But seriously, as I roll forward (because life doesn’t let you roll backward) toward the momentous age of seventy-five, 75 years old, later this year, you get to think about the inevitabilities in life, whether you want to or not, about its fragility, about aging (I’m taking Gerontology 401 at the university so that doesn’t help) and what happens to your body as you pile on those years, about your past lifestyle and the one you find yourself in now where you act like you’re 50 and even sometimes, in a moment of fantasy, you delude yourself into thinking you are 25 again. But you’re not, and this is where you are.

I can’t help but think about the long ass journey to 75 and how easy it is to overthink all the mistakes I’ve made and wallow in self-pity about them while wishing I could apologize to everyone who has ever been at the end of one of my mistakes. I think about the millions of apologies I’ve made to myself trying to live my life as a better human than I was yesterday or fifty years ago. Then, I wake up from self-pity and think, enough of the apologies. Just don’t do it again.

Live in the present and prepare for the future. Your past is yours; you’ve learned many lessons for the future. By the way, there are more good things than bad things that should make yourself proud and should be the lights ahead for the paths you will walk toward 75.

My life partner, Sumire, recently reminded me that many of my life stories seem to be about all the harmful acts in my life as if that is all that defines me. My entire life seemed limited by how many drugs I took and how much alcohol I drowned my liver with. Yes, there was a lot, but damn it, Sumire reminds me that I should not go out believing that’s my only story. I am a three-dimensional human being who has lived (and is still living) a life full of lucky breaks, determined paths, and accomplished goals.

If you exclude the crazy in my life, I’ve done well. Whether being the only person of color in a seminary (talk about what I learned), graduating from high school with honors, or being accepted at two of New York’s best universities on full scholarships, all before my eighteenth birthday, that ain’t bad. From there, I’ve had nothing but a run of accomplishments that took me from the South Bronx to Washington, D.C. radio and television and the halls of Congress and the White House to New England local news to being on the ground floor to bring cable television to Washington, D.C. all by the time I was thirty-five.

Then, I changed the coasts, east to west. I taught myself to ride a motorcycle (courier) when I had no idea, how to bartend (you do what you do to pay the rent) and was accepted as part of a national competition into an American Film Institute television drama workshop by writing a script when I didn’t know how to write one. Then, I met a guy who gave me a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be on the ground floor of a new cable network which then grew up to become a cultural icon about celebrities walking down a red carpet into a building and stopping to tell the world what they were wearing. Hell, proud of it. I was there as an Executive Producer, and as much derision is thrown at that ritual, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t have a big hand in it.

The last fifteen years have been a roller coaster of mentoring young and older, publishing a glossy magazine and its online version, and organizing a diversity festival, Color Me Long Beach. My best accomplishment to date is graduating from Community College in my seventies with an associate degree in English, and now, only fifteen units away from graduating from a University with a bachelor’s degree in English, Creative Writing while working toward attending post-graduate school to pursue a Master’s degree in the same. Okay, a little tired (a fast lane life can do that to you), but able to hold my own against people half my age, and did I tell you my overall GPA is 3.94?

Yeah, I feel good as I live toward December 8 and mark the close of seventy-five, 75 years, ready to push to the next phase of my life. Not bad for a kid from the projects in the South Bronx. I got this, and I’m damn proud of myself.

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”
Colette (quoted in pp. 278, Everyday Serenity, David Kundtz)

Spring Break

Partying in Palm Springs. Galivanting through Cabo. Rolling the waves off Waikiki. Yep, that’s me on Spring Break…yeah, that’s not happening. I’ve always been intrigued by the college ritual of Spring Break. Any excuse for falling down drunk, orgies, drug-tainted nights where you surrender yourself to whatever whim and desire you wish with the promise you will not remember a bit of it the following day or the next week, so there will be no guilt that you acted wildly out of character and hopefully anonymously. The fear of exposure makes you pucker up your brain and shrink away into a corner to hide.

I remember days like that so long ago, and I wasn’t attending college. It was more than a lifestyle. It was a mission to see how many party days I could fit into one day, to hell, one weekend. I proved that one could fit more hours into twenty-four hours, squeezing minutes into seconds, hours into minutes, and days into hours. Time was stretched and compressed so much that you lost the rhythm of the space-time continuum. Back then, there was no point in a watch. What would be the point? The watch could not measure the stream of lies you told yourself that this would be the last time you got this high and this drunk, the last party you would attend and then forget about it as soon as you left (Who are all these people? How did I get here?).

In 1980, driving a friend’s Volvo (What a great car) back from Miami to Washington, D.C., we stopped in Daytona Beach to catch our breath. Who remembered that it was Easter weekend and Spring Break? Well, we sure didn’t as we traveled up and down A1A looking for an empty room and finding laughter from the motel clerks instead. What do they say about perseverance and patience? Hey, it was a bed in a room with a shower and the sounds of drunkenness and sex and a party next door until they broke night, and you realize that there’s not going to be any sleep in this room.

Everyone outside has to be at least twenty-one or two or eighteen or even seventeen, not that it mattered as you walked the beach sands. You could swear there was a rule somewhere that driving your car in wet sand was not a good idea or even legal. Still, there they were, racing north and south through a gauntlet of screaming, hysterical, barely standing, barfing college students (I just assumed they were all college students, but something told me that this was also Spring Break for high school students too). We stood at the water’s edge and wondered why we felt so old in our early thirties, and partying like this was a strange occurrence. The only difference between them and us was that we were drunk in a two-story row house or the Hawk N Dove and not on an Atlantic Ocean beach. We also didn’t drive a convertible up and down Rhode Island Avenue half-naked, drunk, stoned screaming. No, we were a little more circumspect and cautious that we didn’t perform gratuitously in front of the police (Funny, I don’t remember ever seeing any Daytona Beach police). There was no sleep to be gotten that night. Not with hard-core partying on either side of our room (what was that rhythmic stomping coming from both rooms?). That was one of those nights that you knew you would write about one day.

This week, I’m content with hanging at Seal Beach and Sunset Beach and taking photos of the sky, ocean, and beach. Sitting at the sand’s end and closing my eyes and listening, a quiet close listening, for the sounds of the enormous container ships as they ride the still waters to their final destination. The screeching seagulls ride the waves of air, showing off their wide wingspans, teasing us to look up so they could aim for your head. Yuck. The sand was wet from last night’s storm. But there are the brave folks who, on an early weekday morning, are either walking across the sand or are firmly ensconced in a beach chair smoking a joint with only Catalina Island in front of them the twenty-eight miles from shore, the wealthy million-dollar homes lining the beach behind them. I’m cool with the peacefulness as I pump my meditation music into my earphones, allowing it to flow into my head and my body down to my toes. Spring Break. It’s just another excuse to search for and find those rare quiet moments when you can flush the bullshit out of your life, breathe easily, lazily, comforted by the inner voices that speak to you in many tongues, and you hear them say, it’s all cool. Daytona Beach is a million miles away and a thousand years ago, and that Spring Break is not this Spring Break.

With four or five weeks left in the semester, I am trying to get ahead in my studying, so I will use some of my driving and beach time to catch up on some reading and writing. It doesn’t mean I can’t mix chilling into the life I always dream about. The one where I’m done with twenty-four-hour parties and being reckless in Sodom and Gomorrah and trying to prove some dumb point which I forgot what it was a long time ago. No, I’m good with this life—this Spring Break.

The Ocean
	i look at it
	never setting my feet
	in it…not even the sand
	touches me.
	on the edge
	scanning the horizon
	searching for what’s 
	out there
	the surfers in their black suits
	sailboats dodging 
        the container ships	
	that dwarf them
	your cars, furniture, 
        spring clothes
	deep in their bays
	passing me and don’t have a
	care in the world
	because it’s the ocean i wish upon
	the majesty of its vastness
	the deepness of its body
	the hope of its promise
	waiting for me
	to stand at its edge 
	and pray (not in that way)
	pray that it will always 
        welcome me.

Snitch (Part 2)

The following narrative was written as my final submission for English 404, Creative NonFiction, during the Fall 2022 semester. Read Part 1 HERE.

“It’s always the ones with the dirty hands pointing the fingers.”
Sonya Teclai, musical artist.

Snitch — Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

“Think of it as we’re building a pyramid; you would never start at the top,” the AUSA (Assistant U.S. Attorney) explained. “You begin with the foundation, then build upwards from there,” he droned on. The analogy didn’t make me feel any better. I pictured myself and my friends as bricks getting piled on each other, layer by layer, wondering how much pressure I could stand as they kept building their damn pyramid.

Washington, D.C. might be an International City and the capital of the free world, but trust me, it is, at heart, a small town. There are few secrets when it comes to elected officials and bureaucrats. I knew it was only a matter of time before the whole world got wind of my snitching.

My ex-girlfriend was someone I suspected would be another brick in the pyramid. Forget that we had been separated for nearly a year, my lawyer explained, “The feds would try to squeeze her for leverage over you. You must reach out to her.”

This was not going to be an easy conversation.

We met in one of those dive bars in a part of town that we would never have been caught dead in when we were dating. I guess it didn’t matter much now. Anonymity was the goal. I gave her the bad news, and she didn’t take it well. “What the hell does this have to do with me?” she exclaimed as her voice rose a few octaves to no effect on the few customers in the fine dive establishment. Then, any hope that I could trust her to keep the matter confidential evaporated quickly. “Are you wearing a wire? Are you trying to entrap me?” She leaned forward, speaking into my chest, “I knew nothing about your craziness back then. Do you hear me, whoever is listening to us?”

There was no wire, no one was listening to us, and I was not trying to entrap her. I thought it was fair to warn her that I was a bigger jerk than she knew me to be when we were a couple. But all I could tell her as I got up to leave was to Get a lawyer and that I was sorry.

The marble bench was still uncomfortable. The subpoena stated that I was to appear outside the Grand Jury room at an appointed hour, and someone would come to give me further instructions. Considerable time had passed, no one had come looking for me, and my lawyer hadn’t arrived. I considered looking for a pay phone to call his office, but I was afraid to move. All I could think about with every ticking second was how I would explain what I was doing outside a federal grand jury room if someone I knew stopped and asked me questions.

I suddenly recognized a woman walking down the corridor with a group of people heading toward another jury room. Our gazes locked for a second, and I turned, looked down at my cards, and pretended that I was intensely reading them. My stomach had passed into my throat and then collapsed like a rock back into place. When the group had passed, I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the back of her head. She never looked back.

The relief was short-lived. I thought about my parents and family in New York and how I would explain everything. My lawyer and the feds told me there was no guarantee my name wouldn’t be made public once the grand jury had completed its work and someone had been indicted. In fact, due to the high-profile nature of this investigation, it was a good chance that my name would be splattered across the front page of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and every local radio and television outlet in Washington. “You’ll be famous.” I don’t want to be famous.

Priests — Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I was preparing to sign the immunity agreement when I suddenly realized I had a question or two. I hesitated for what must have been a second too long when someone, the AUSA or the DEA agent, slammed their hand down on the table. Hard. Addressing my lawyer, “Sir, you better speak to your client. He is either prepared to answer all questions before the grand jury, or this agreement will be torn up.” Both men suddenly got up and left the room, leaving my lawyer and me.

Shaking from the confrontation, I got up from my seat and walked to the sole tall narrow window overlooking the plaza in front of the courthouse. I pondered my fate as I watched the people below briskly moving about their business, oblivious to my panic and the world falling around me. How the hell did I get to this moment?

I knew the answer, of course. Greed. Recklessness. Now I was in a room in a courthouse, getting ready to sign an agreement that would make me a snitch. I didn’t want to go to prison. It was either them or me. I once spent four hours in a police station lock-up in 1968 and was close to losing it.  A federal penitentiary, I’m sure, would be worse. Sign the damn agreement.

My lawyer finally arrived, insisting on last-minute instructions. “Tell the truth, but be very specific in your responses, and don’t go off on tangents.” I heard him, but my mind was somewhere else. At that moment, I steeled myself.

My vision narrowed, staring down a tunnel with no light at the other end—only darkness. Afraid I was being sucked into a vortex, there was nothing to hold onto as I free-fall, twisting and turning, rolling and spinning, my eyes wide open because I couldn’t close them. No, I think I will be forced to witness my fate, feel it, like a million shards of glass cutting into me. And I wonder if this is what hell would be like if it existed.

All I could think about was asking for forgiveness, a new beginning, and wishing I could quietly slink away in anonymity.

The mahogany-colored door to the jury room opened beside me, and a woman stepped out. “Mister Ruiz, we’re ready for you.”

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