Would Love

I would love the time to sit down and learn coding skills sufficient to write an algorithm to cross check the current internet with the backed up internet at google and optimize cpu usage to scan and update only those bits of information that have changed.

I wouldn't mind a few days to solemnly pontificate in the moss surrounded by the run-off myst of a chilled lake. That process is slow and potentially indulgent so you've got to really give it the time. I would love that time.

I would love the time to build my own brick garage, and then the time to learn how to build a brick garage. Flashbacks to the years spent within its walls, tinkering. Time to Tinker.

I would love to log the years finally traveling that immense distance, the great divide of a passport page. Hours lost to hands being  clasped with love and staring fearlessly into each other's futures before a peak's plummet. Time to learn the differences in smells between Scotland's summer grasses.

Time to recognize a defeat on the backdrop of fate in full color. Time to finally come-to out of the mysterious stupor that my brain hasn't stopped living in since toddlerhood. Time to learn how to always make it vivid.

Time to read up on all the dinosaurs and learn astrophysics too. Skydive beside anocean cliff and scuba dive into a lava tube. Reading every book I've hollowly enslaved on my shelves over the semesters, that time, I could not help but love.

It seems to be the slow things, that call out to be wished at and not charged at, and thus they get moved to the back, behind all the urgencies of the now. Time will have to be made, I would love that time. And when I get it, I do. I also don't mind how much I love my time with you.

My Mother's Son

"I can't... It's too much." -Linda Corwin (Mattier/ Minto), My Mother

Today marks the 4th anniversary of my mother's death. With the weight put on today, by those she touched, I feel obligated to say something. But more importantly, I want to say something.

Every year, perhaps every week, since her passing I've rehashed what it means to me and tried diligently to glean some golden nugget of philosophy from the emotional catastrophe of losing my mom. I've found plenty. But still, every time I revisit the impact of her leaving, I find something new.

I am, and always have been, very much 'my mother's son'.  Everything from my obsession with the arts (especially Music & Theater), my constant pretense of organization, owning way too many clothes and junk, and yes even my dark complexion, I get primarily from my mother.

(To be fair, my pops has a lot of junk lying around too, the lineage of traits gets a little hairy there...

oh yeah and the hair, that's from both of them.)

Like my mom, I've also chosen a life of arduous pursuit of a career in performing. Thankfully, unlike my mother, I don't have kids and a wedding ring to compete for time. 

I'd always hear her talking about her dreams of performing in huge opera houses and new york stages. Over time those dreams transposed themselves into vicarious pushing of her students. Her dreams became theirs, and theirs became hers. This fed her with enormous drive and fulfillment. When they grew, so did her smile. When they succeeded she was ecstatic. Her indelible spirit forced its way into them and by proxy into me.

All throughout my youth and adolescence, she pushed and hoped for me in the same way as she did for her students. Only, I was her son. Probably in no small part because of my absconding tendencies, she was more 'hands-off' and more 'heart-on'. 

She believed in me so much so that it was difficult to reconcile with reality. All of my parents shared with her this incredible support to varying degrees, but she had the edge since she was a performer and trainer thereof.

With her behind me I grew into a confident ambitious performer. Then, after several turns of fate and learning, I decided to go to school for biology. She died shortly after my matriculation to UCSD. 

Reeling from the complications of her death, moving, athletics, and academics my eyesight grew blurry. Somewhere in the haze of weakness and realism I began to lose sight, not of my dreams and ambitions, but of my ability to reach them.

At the cusp of graduation I was faced with several "real-world" options none of which seemed "up my alley", at least not the one I'd been treading on my whole life. I enrolled in Graduate School, reasoning that "If and when I pursued acting, I'd have a solid fallback." 

Soon after, I began to feel this groaning, like a submarine sinking too deep. I was gaining momentum away from where I needed to be heading, where I knew I should be heading my whole life. I mulled it over real hard and didn't take too long to see that I was making a fear based decision because I didn't believe in myself enough. 

Still fresh enough was the wound that I could look deep into the cut and see the shape of the blade that made it. My mom had championed me, believed in me, supported me so much for so long that when she left, I felt a paucity of self-worth and potential I had never known.

Then I thought back to all of the sacrifices she'd made in her own life. Her Dreams. The forgotten plans, the altered directions, and compromises any mother makes for her children. But there was more, she postponed pursuing her career in her prime just to bring my older sisters and I into this world. And all the while, she poured herself into us. Driving, listening, paying, watching, teaching, and when necessary withdrawing. 

It was easy to remember all of the sacrifices she made for me as they were punctuated with sayings like "Do I have slave written on my forehead?" and "Here, here's my veins, go ahead and bleed me too." But nonetheless, I was blessed to know what it feels like to be believed in to the point where someone would give almost anything to help you accomplish something. 

This outward and outsize generosity is something that all of my parents did help to instill, but when I lost the person who believed in me the most, it became surprisingly hard to believe in myself. Then after much digging I realized that I was squandering her sacrifices. I was failing to carry through on what she gave so much of herself to begin. 

And after seeing this, I started trying something that I had maybe forgotten how to do, or maybe it was just easier with her around. I started to try to love myself. I tried to see what it was in me that she loved and surrendered so much for. Then I began to see a struggle within her that I was partially blind to before. 

I learned from my mother, and her passing, just how difficult believing in yourself can be. Not just believing you can do something. But believing you’re worth something. Believing that dream outside your window at night hiding beyond the horizon can be yours.

She believed this for me, my sisters, her students, and for herself. And when she went, I had to learn how to instill that feeling all over again. I have been emblazoned with a new fire over the last four years. A fire that keeps me going when things look abysmal. A fire that reminds me why people dare to dream in the first place, against extreme odds. A fire that my mother carried with her and touched to everything in her path. And now, because of her, I know, more than ever, how paramount this trite little phrase is “believe in yourself.”

 Thank you mom, I love you.

Apoca-lets do this.

Hi Welcome to another first ever pseudo-intellectual B.S.ing!

I was having a chat with my brother tonight and a critical question popped up. How do you feel about the fact that the world is over in, what is now... 5 days away?

I found myself immediately split, both analytically and impulsively. I wasn't sure how I felt. Excited? Sad? Serene? Well sure, "all of them," you might say. And to those of you who would have said that, I'd say some of the following. People have a dangerous excitatory addiction to the idea of apocalypse. It offers some a deadline for redemption or a point of closure on existence. Some even would think of it as a super bitchin' opportunity to see some rad shit.

Lets face it, if we are gonna form conjectures for an end-times scaled apocalypse, we want to maintain certain standards in our imaginings. It wouldn't be cool if after all this build up and momentum of millennia after millennia of human change something deku-nuts us out of existence. For example, if a solar flare strikes that is so intense and so sustained that everything on the surface of the earth was scorched instantaneously, it wouldn't be fun at all. Like maybe for a satellite to record, but for us? I think people want their apocalypse to be rife with human intensity and strife. When most imagine a zombie apocalypse they can't help but say, "Show me to the nearest nail-gun and lets do this." There's a certain desirable flare in a violent survival-fest where there is no identity or person-hood to the victim.

I get it, "It would suck. We'd all die." There are several holes in that argument that I won't even address but, if we are gonna die, and its gonna suck... why not imagine it happening in a badass way. Picture a mutated beetle infestation that eats everyone faster than we can burn the buildings it infests. Pretty cool right? Now imagine every super-volcano ashing out the earth, kinda cool but less cool. WHY? The only correct answer worth discussing is that with the beetles we can fight back, we have a chance. Lava and pyroclastic flows of brimstone melting us over the course of 10 hours? Not as cool.

We want whatever brings about our destruction to be outside of our control, yet forgiving enough to allow us salvation, or offer us some semblance of closure before dissipation. We imagine nuclear holocausts, meteors, and earthquakes but even when we conjure thoughts of human weapons wiping us out we blame it on some mad men whose minds are bent on destruction. By marginalizing the responsibility of the destructive act we alleviate our obligation to feel guilty at all.

This is so much easier than imagining the possibility that our apocalypse may be more drawn out, more innocuous, and directly our fault. It’s easier for us to imagine a flash of nuclear warheads detonating at once than it is to entertain a century of uncompromising poverty, starvation, intra-national violence, plummeting appreciation for sciences and art, and sporadic elementary school shootings. Why? Because if we allow those things to be our apocalypse then we would have to face the indelible fact that that time is upon us now. For those (few) who choose to endorse the ending of time as we know it, it doesn’t need to be a horrifying cacophony of screams.

We have a choice, as always.

We can freak out and buy canned food and move to Minnesota or we can choose to see the beautiful opportunity to allow such tragic times to underscore our enduring magnanimity. If the world was actually opening its chasms to slurp us up, or flaring its nostrils to scorch our skin, would you really want to spend the last of your days holed up maintaining your interpersonal status quo? If you sincerely had 3 days of life left, how would you act? What about 3 weeks left? 3 decades? Of course it matters which one, but not completely.

I suppose it’s as though when we experience an earthquake we go throughout the home and batten down all the bookshelves that we should have secured in the first place. But, some outside force presents the fragility of our situation on a silver platter before us and, bam! we change. Perhaps the mere discussion of whether or not we’ll all be eaten by alien crocodiles in 3 days is good for us. It forces us to review our moral status and take our life’s temperature.

Are we not being honest with someone close to us? Are we afraid to try something we’ve always dreamed of? Are we putting off helping somebody near us until “the right time”? Or are we just waiting out our own pain until we get swept off our feet to some emotional clearing beyond the woods of life’s confusion?

Maybe instead of arguing over whether or not we are granting this “apocalypse” the gravity and worth it deserves, we should ask ourselves if we are giving each other the gravity and truthful recognition we all deserve. Perhaps if we all took some time to write down those thoughts we’ve been waiting to get out, tell that person we love them, or apologize to our once trusted friend then we would find out that with or without the apocalypse, we’re better off realizing that every instant could be our last. This moment could also be just a drop in the bucket, or a drop in a new bucket, and if so, what do we want to fill that new bucket with?

To quote the man we all hate to love,

“Say what you need to say. Say what you need to say. Say what you need to saaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaa-aaaay.”  -John Mayer

Go forth… and continue going… and never stop.