The first guy

I usually keep these things fictional but today is my Dad's Birthday. Below is my first attempt to write about the legend that is my father. 

I've been thinking a lot about my Dad. In my twenties I feel like I dated many versions of what I think my father was like in his early twenties. Tall nordic looking boys, who like to talk about Joseph Campbell, music, and drink whiskey. Boys that can talk for hours about art, and creating,  boys who can make you laugh, but hold a little darkness. Boys who do their own thing, despite yours. I imagine that's who my father was, the tall blonde, pensive, troublemaker at the end of the bar who could talk about anything. If I had met a guy like my father in my twenties, that guy would have surely destroyed me. Luckily I met the real deal later, or earlier, depending how you look at it. .

 It's a strange to realize that my father was younger than I am now, when I was born. Just six years older when after two kids he was thrown into a divorce. He was forced to grow up, and balance his emotions with that of two small people.  Sometimes he was better at balancing those emotions than others, but he tried. For a while I held up what he wasn't, what he couldn't understand about me, what I couldn't understand about him. In one of the only e-mails that my dad ever sent me he wrote: 'The key is getting to trust people as they are, and not as you want them to be' , I'm still trying to implement that one. 

So on this his birthday, I'd like to list some of the things I've learned from my father, the most beautifully strange man I know. Qualities I'd want from anyone:

Explore, don't be to precious with creativity. If you have an idea try it, make it. Making things is for the fun of it, for the process, not to please anyone else. This was done with everything from balsa wood planes, to ice cream in coffee cans, to tin foiling our entire house like a castle. (Yes, my dad tin foiled the exterior of our house like a castle.)

Find humor. Chances are you're probably taking yourself too seriously. This was true of me 87% of the time.

As a woman you should know how to cook, sew, use power tools, curse, and fix your own toilet.  Not knowing what to do with two kids on weekends, my dad decided to teach us everything. We found ourselves doing everything from going to zydeco halls to building birdhouses. The sight of old men gawking at two blonde children flinging themselves across the dance floor, is one I will never forget. Because of him I can put up my own shelves, fix my own toilet, fix my own clothes, host a hell of a dinner party, and yes my mouth does get me in trouble. 

Don't write a lot, but when you do write in CAPS.  I have only received only two e-mails from my Dad, both were gorgeous and written in all CAPITAL LETTERS. In art school when you drafted you wrote in all caps, so Dad still does. He doesn't get virtual yelling yet.

Find creativity in the little things; Whether my dad bakes a cake or fixes a garage, he does it differently. Cakes have blue icing,  garages diamond shaped windows, picture frames have poetry carved into them. He doesn't talk about these things, he does them.

Education through humiliation;This involved my father dancing at gas stations, singing the Rolling Stones really loudly anywhere, and asking me in a grocery store, and in front of my boyfriend at the time if I was a lesbian. His take on this; it was fun, and "Don't care what others think, that's their problem."

You can connect with anyone. The one time we went trick or treating with my father, we had to pull him down the street as he was talking to everyone. Candy was not plenty that year.

Never stop learning, but learn for you. Be curious.  My dad reads the dictionary, literally. His fascination with the iPad is amazing, he's pretty much going to culinary school through that thing. I think this is genetic as Google may have been the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Make space for yourself; this can be found early morning on the jersey shore, flying a kite, sitting on your porch, or watching the Eagles.

Never call when the Eagles are on. (See reasoning above.) 

Sing loudly, even if it's off key. However, your kids may eventually know the difference, and pick on your for it. 

"You were the best tree out there." My dad used to say this to me after shows whether I was in the chorus or the lead, reminding me that whatever I was doing it was important, but not too important. For the record I played an ant in college once, but never a tree. 

Listen to music. Do it, now. Stop reading this. 

Rest when you need to. Sundays on dad-weekends were notorious for fried apples, biscuits and NPR. I remember sleeping away entire weekends at my dads, because he let me. When asked why he didn't wake me 'Cause you needed it or you wouldn't have taken it".
'Ultimately marry someone who is nice to you. This seems intuitive, but a lot of people don't do it. Dad has now taken to closing phone conversations, not with "I love you" but "Okay, marry a nice guy." 

Whenever possible break patterns. 'Patterns of thought are things we hold onto to preserve our ideas and sense of self.' Whether it's the pattern of who you think you are or the route you take to get somewhere, switch it up and see how you feel.

Sometimes in art you have to go back from a place of 'not knowing shit' and 'stop trying, clear your mind of perceived thoughts, and just listen.' 

Get outside.  Whether it's to throw a foxtail, fish, fly a kite, write, or read a book; sometimes you just need air. 

"I'm not an artist I'm a guy who makes things, I can be an artist when I'm dead." Value your work, but don't take it so seriously that you become pretentious. People will stop telling and showing you things, then  you'll never make art.

Don't post everything on the internet. Keep your own artistic endeavor for yourself. (Trying at that one, Daddy, trying...)

Dear New York,

Dear New York,
I want to tell you that I wish I was there. I do.
 I'd probably be one more brooklynite soaking wet, and offering her shower, but I wish I was there with you. I'd be one more Astorian playing 'apples to apples' drinking whiskey in the dark.  One more east villager, taking shelter in other boroughs, but still I wish I was with you.  Just one more person laying claim to you. Perhaps I'd feel as helpless as I do here, watching anchors wading in water, and calling those with working phones, who seem to say "we're okay, we're here", who the day before said "we're okay, we're just waiting".   Maybe it's selfish, but I wish I was with you, for the waiting then and now.
I wish I could be in the Rockaways, or Staten Island, Dumbo, or Brooklyn Bridge Park, doing something, giving something,  instead of sitting here as people complain that it's a bit too cold.  I bite my tongue as they say "It's only like 40 blocks right? Can't they walk?" or "They get storms all the time you'd think the hospitals would be prepared".  I leave the room knowing this is said by people who can barely drive in three inches of rain.  I say nothing, because I guess I know, I no longer have claim to you. After leaving you over a year ago, I imagine I have as much claim to you as I do to my childhood weekends at the Jersey Shore.

I've wasted a lot of love letters. Retroactive love letters, sent after break ups and almost relationships. I've wasted a lot of words on things and people that didn't deserve them, and yet I don't know what to say to you. But  I'll try:

 You are the most resilient bitingly beautiful place I know, and you harbor the most amazing people in the world. People that have come from all over the world to quench their curiosity in your harbor, to get lost or be something bigger. People who are filled with humor and love and passion, people who create from days stuck inside, and days walking your streets, people who need to feel the ground under their feet, people that chose you.  You are the most beautiful place in the world. Not because of palm trees, or sea views, or cliffs, or things that mother nature should claim, not because of ancient architecture or aesthetics, not because of old world european charm, or consistency, or history but because of your pulse; your people. Your people;  they come to you with their beautiful restlessness, their need for consistent re-creation, for simultaneous anonymity and community, for simplicity,  and resilience.  Your people who move through your grooves and you in turn shape us. You give us the hope that you can literally turn a corner and everything shifts, that you can stake a claim in a city of 8 million, that you can be saved from loneliness with a smile across a subway platform, that you can recreate. A little water never hurt you, you've been through worse, and will weather worse. Perhaps if you could speak you'd tell us we we're overreacting,  that you're cool, you'll deal with it.  The lights will all come on, and you'll brush yourself off. You always do.

Miles away I wonder if the basement of 40 Jewel is flooded, if the roof at Garden Place is holding, if the vegan baker on St, Marks is  going to be able to afford repairs after his lease went up.   Is McGuinness is at a stand still as people wait for gas?  I wonder if Cup on Norman is serving coffee to those on their way to walk the bridge, and they probably are. And it's strange because miles and miles away, this is the most I've felt like and least I've felt like a New Yorker in my life.

-MO

Choose.

LINDA (43)
The thing is Martin, there a  million different lives you could be living right now. You could entertain the idea of that girl in LA you dated in college, or the one you never did, or the job you were offered in Portland. There are a million different choices that you could have made that would have led you somewhere else. You could be vacationing in North Korea like you wanted, or working for Legal Aid in some far away country, or having whatever amazing adventures in your head that you thought you'd have.  Who knows maybe in some alternate universe you're happy with that girl, and you have that job, or your single and your kayaking in Iceland, or your still in your hometown married to Maya, or whoever.  There are a million people out there that you could be with, that you could be content with, if you just chose them. You could be with anyone if you actually chose, if you weren't constantly looking for something.  But you didn't, you didn't do any of that. You used to say you wanted your work to succeed so it would be like you lived everywhere in the world at once. You can't have everything at once.  You have this. So choose it. Choose us. Cause we're what you have. We want you to choose us. To be here.
 This isn't something I, or life did to you.  You get a vote here, and every day with your complacency, you choose this whether you admit that or not.  I  actively choose this. I choose you, every day I wake up and I re-decide. I recommit by being here, with you.  And  yeah, it's not going to be as exciting as the what ifs and the could be's, and photos and e-mails of other possibilities, but that life that probably would have gotten mundane too. But it's here. And it's yours. And you can commit to that, you can accept that, and be here, or you can just go and always wish you were somewhere else.

Not for our eyes. (Based on words from a friend)

There are things that are not for our eyes.
If my mother could have googled my father she would have run, or maybe he would have, regardless I wouldn't exist.
There are things we shouldn't know, of others others, unless we are told that there are others. There should not be photographic 'proof' to mill on.  There should not be images or videos of who people are perceived to be, or want to be perceived to be, not who they are when they pause on the phone line, not the sentences they form that are intended for us, looks intended for us, words intended for us. It just gives our narrative pictures, springboards for the mind, and instead of creating things we create stories. There are things that are not for our eyes.  Things that came before and things that came after. Things that never come so we build them.

For a while, I looked for signs of who she was. Of photos or posts, or words or clues, or something that could indicate that she existed. That she tried to piss on your wall. Essentially that's what we do right, we piss on people's walls. Boys walls, girls walls, like dogs. Mark our territory through likes and comments and  here here here here I am. And I haven't marked you in a while, I haven't read you in a while I haven't spoken to you in a while. I haven't seen your face, or heard your voice, I don't know if I want to, if there would be a point, but yet it's okay that we're intertwined. It's an agreement we made before all of this, that, and the offense of pulling out at this moment would make something out of nothing, or maybe it wouldn't. And I hid you on some-things, others I can't.  So I'm thrown some of you, and you me, and our feeds cross and our friends cross. It seems quite stupid feeds crossing, when two actual voices can't even speak.


You built me, and I built you. You'll build someone else, and I will too. It's what you do with the person who is there in the morning that matters, and maybe our stories didn't hold up, maybe hers will, maybe his will.

And the thing is we all build people. Create a narrative to suit ours, regardless of word bites, and photofeeds, tweets, and updates, and likes and dislikes. Since humans met they've been building narratives. 'I like the line of his cave drawing of an antelope he must be sensitive. " " His shoulders are broad he'll be a good provider and husband". "Her hip to waist ratio means she must be fertile" is replaced by a million meanings for an arm touch.  "He listens to NPR, so someday we'll listen to Ira Glass on Sunday mornings while making pancakes with our two point five children". We fill in blanks after a beer, a glass of wine, some coffee, a night. Eventually though those memories fade until the next contact or were eventually replaced by actual reality.  We built a frame and replaced it with solids when we knew the foundation was there, in relationships, in friendships in everything. We earned actual facts and in the meantime our imagination held places for some, not all but some.

There are things that are not for our eyes. Before this there were people we never knew existed that we never knew to build. People I will never meet, that might live miles away. People with bright eyes, or too much eyeliner, who like the same music, or have bad taste in music. There are people who travel,  and seem sweet, or sexy, or trashy, or simple or  just different, or some other adjective I choose to put on them based on mere pages. People whose very existence make me seem like a stalker. People who probably don't know I EXIST.  People who I wouldn't recognize in the grocery store.  I'm sure some have built the narrative around mine, around digital me, one that is far more exciting than the reality. And I'm sure there's a girl somewhere thinking I'm another's other, pissing on someones wall. And the truth is if she or I just built stories around ourselves, and lived those stories, we'd both have more to show for it.

SHAKE

KYLE, 33
'Shake it off'.  My dad used to say that.  I hated it, it was so condescending. I was in little league, a catcher and I sucked. I did. I sucked. And these guys would just ram into me. Into home. Full force and I would just get the wind knocked out of me. And he'd call from the stand. 'Shake if off'.  'Shake it off Kyle'. 'Let it go'. I mean that's what people say, and you don't really think about it, it's just what people say. Well not everyone, like when you get into a car accident you're supposed to stay put. Survivors have been known to have huge adrenaline rushes, and just run for miles in a minute, just run into a field or something, and just shake. Right after an accident. Because that shock, that feeling needs to go somewhere. Physiologically animals do it, they're scared they shake, they show it.  They release it. But not us ' we stand up straight, we breathe, we toughen up'.  But instead modern medicine, they tell us to stay still, don't move.  Sit tight. So it just sits there in us. The trauma or feeling or whatever you want to call it.

And I was just sitting there at my desk, at work. About 4:30 at work, and finally I was still, really still, feet  flat on the ground.  And my hands and my feet just went numb, and my arms twitched, vibrated. Because they wanted to move, needed to move.  And at first I wanted it to stop. I tried so hard to make it stop. The feeling. So much so that I couldn't breathe. 25 minutes. And it wouldn't, they just kept moving. Cause God, it's been months. I've been trying to shake this thing, ignore this thing for months. deal with it, And at first I resisted, the pulsing, the bubbling, because I've talked about it, you know. Talked about him you know? Thought I made whatever peace I needed to make, for now at least, whatever peace I could. Because how do you, I mean that takes time.  But there I was just moving. Twitching under my desk, as people walked down the hall. Shaking under my desk.  And I just decided to sit in it, sit in the shakiness, sit in the discomfort, and let it pass through me. Be free in it. Almost enjoy it.  Let bits of it go. And I don't know what it was. I don't know if it's stress or tension, or thoughts, or regrets, or not forgiving stuff, or him or I don't know.  I just know that when it was done, I slept in for the first time in months I was so exhausted I slept right through my alarm. Annie had to wake me up. And I could hear him. "Shake it off Kyle. Take your time, and shake it off, It's your game". I should have been a better catcher.

PARTIES

For guys, at parties in LA, whose potential I see while staring at their shoes and eyes.

'That's interesting... Really. The things is'... The thing is I don't care. I don't care about your band, or your comedy show, or your unironic/ironic cover of 90's, or that you play 6 instruments including the key tar. Or that your gig last week was great, that you say it was great. I'm sure it was great. Or that Portland sucks, or that San Fran was cool, and that you're just happy to be back. 'So you can focus, you know? on other things? Other projects'. Or that you're instagraming this as we speak. The thing is; I would care, I could care, if you cared to ask anything about me. I look at you and know that I could care.  That I could severely utterly care about these stupid, benal, idiotic things that you share while holding a beer, if you cared about my stupid idiotic benal things.  Asked about them; my stupid idiotic benal things. Because we all have stupid things. And that's just what you talk about, you ask about, until you break through. Until you choose to care. And that's why I ask questions,  every question I ask you, I hope that the response is that thing, is that one thing that will break you through out of the stupid and idiotic and into the real. And I  don't want to know this shit; I want to know who you think you are, and you who you think I am, and who you want to be when you wake up in the morning, and who you end up being by the days end. I want to know what you're afraid in others, in yourself. I want to know if you sleep with the light on, and why. I want to know what your real laugh sounds like. Not the polite one you do in groups out of courtesy, the real one.  I want to know what flits past your eyes when you close them, what you see ahead when they open. I want to know that song you love, that movie you love, that line that makes you think, that word, that phrase, that cadence, that makes you laugh, makes you you. I want to converse in a way that makes the youness of you and the me-ness of me just float, be, meet, dance. . But instead I  just say 'that's... that's really interesting' and quietly sip my wine and wait for you to care, as you look around the room.

paralysis

I missed the turn because of the tears, and thought there was a turn where there wasn't, so I waited at the intersection at the light in the turn lane with nowhere to turn, and cried. I cried because I felt my leg. I felt my leg on the break, and I realized 3000 miles away, she couldn't. 3000 miles away my mother's leg was numb, and it burned, the plaque intercepting her nerves from the feeling. I realized the plaque could grow until there was no feeling left and that she, just not it would be paralyzed.  I thought how many times we've used that word, misused that word, 'paralyzed'. "Unable to act, the absence of motion, of feeling".  Perhaps for a moment i have been unable to act just for a moment, a second, by fear, or guilt, or life, or just that feeling of not quite being in your skin. But i have never really been nothing, felt nothing. I feel too much, there has always been a something to feel; whether it be pain or fear or joy or even apathy.  I have never felt nothing. "Nothing, no motion. Frozen. No life, no heat. Dead. Numb."  There's nothing after that, no kick, no step, no freedom. Stuck.I thought of this as I waited I thought of her feeling nothing.

It was a quick call, hours earlier. It was an after the fact conversation about emergency rooms and plaque, and a casual reference of not being able to move much less walk. A simple 'So this thing happened' like she was telling me about a minor bump in a parking lot. My mother mentions her illness with the casualty of  sharing going to a new restaurant. "So by the way I'm on IV's now".  There's a certain flair for the dramatic and self indulgence she's never had, so I inherited most of it for her. Since seven I've been feeling for her, but I couldn't feel this.

 Here I was, on the opposite coast, my foot on the break, my foot on the gas, in motion, mobile, a task I do mindlessly. Music purring through the speakers mindlessly. When I walk, steps I take mindlessly,  thoughts forming words mindlessly, these fingers I type mindlessly, ungratefully.  I can't be grateful after every step, every task ,because that gratefulness is too scary, the fragility is to scary.  The trust is too scary. The brain tells me to move and i move, I scratch my head, I squish my toes, I think to speak and before i can think it, it is done. But tonight maybe she can't, in weeks she might never,  so  I feel my foot on the gas, and turn. Not quite sure where I'm going, but I turn because I can.