It seems that the economy is finally making an upward turn and employers are hiring again. On June 10th 2010 I decided that it was time to update my resume and post it on Careerbuilder.com. I’m currently employed however it’s always good practice to keep an eye out for new opportunities. On June 11th I received a suspicious email from someone posing as an employer. Here is the email I received below (i’ve excluded my full name):

” Hi (Full Name),

For more than 10 years Condition Express Inc. makes its business by processing with non-standard banking services around the world. We are expanding our firm and grant a range of new services in the United States. Transfer of money for non U.S. citizens with the US check is one of our new
turns. For this reason our firm has some vacancies of “Check Processing Manager”.

Your responsibilities are:
To receive a check by USPS to cash this check
To transfer money to the client the way he/she chooses
To make a special formed records on the carried out
work for every check

Staff requirements:
To have real address in the US
From 1 to 2 hours daily
To have Positive credit history

Your advantages:
The payment of 100 $ – 500 $ daily Payment of at least 3 000 $
Couple of working hours
We take care of all the taxes on the converts you carry
out.
If this vacancy is interesting for you and you want to step please, create an account at our webpage and continue everything in line with the instructions.
With best wishes,
TOP MANAGER
EXIM Exchange Compan

EXIM Exchange Company  Limited is a fully owned subsidiary company of Export Import Bank of Bangladesh Ltd. Canada Bangladeshi Community involved with the development of the Bangladesh economy through the remittance of foreign exchange and trade finance.  In order to remit their foreign currency we provide excellent remittance service to the Canada Bangladeshi Community. “

I’ve spent many years in the financial services industry. The e-mail above is obviously a highly illegal scam to say the least. Minutes after I received the fraudulent email I emailed the Career Builder security team (TSST@CareerBuilder.com). I provided the entire email along with the long header data. Here is another example email I received on June 14th:

” Dear (Full Name),

We have found your resume in careerbuilder.com,CareerBuilder database reviewed it and sure that you to be a great applicant for this position which we offer.
Our Organization are currently looking for a few qualified persons for a vacant position “Account Coordinator”.

The main task of this position is to collect payments bank transfers and checks from our customers in US. If you don’t have checking account our manager will help you to open a new one.

Average salary is $600-$800 per week.

General Requirements:

- Age: 21+
- Ability to work at home
- Computer skills MS Word personal e-mail address
- Responsibility
- US Citizenship

ALL FEES PAID BY US

If you want to join our team please register here “

In short, some job seeker that is desperate for a job may fall of this scheme and eventually get arrested. Here is a snippet courtesy of the United States Treasury – OFAC:

” The Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States. OFAC acts under Presidential national emergency powers, as well as authority granted by specific legislation, to impose controls on transactions and freeze assets under US jurisdiction. “

I have not received a response from Career Builder regarding this issue, but I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Im assuming his PR reps may have pushed him to deliver a public apology, but I really dont think it was necessary. True, he messed up. Infidelity is NEVER a good thing….but the issues that arise from his “transgressions” should have been kept between him and his wife. What is he apologizing to us for??? I wish him the best and there is no doubt in my mind that Tiger will be just fine. And as we all know Tiger is NOT the first athlete/public figure to cheat. He did what he did…what’s done is done! There is no need for the media to still shine a bright ass light on him and his life. We dont need body language experts to analyze him, we dont need all that. Let the man move on!

One person that needs to move on is Veronica Siwik-Daniels, the porn star aka Joslyn James, that Tiger had an affair with. She CLAIMS she was preggers twice by Tiger..but boo boo how can we prove that now?? Anway, I was watching Tiger on FOX and right after he was done speaking, they switched to Veronica and her attorney, Gloria Allred, who reacted to Tiger’s apology. I couldnt help but laugh my ass off at this woman. Why? Well for one Veronica feels that she deserves a face to face apology from Tiger….not gonna happen. Two, she is broken-hearted because Tiger lied to her about being the only one (aside from his wife), she quit her job as a porn star (she claims Tiger didnt want her to have sex with other men, on film or otherwise), she went into hiding and had no income. She feels as though she doesnt deserve all this…all this meaning…the hurt and pain that Tiger caused. Ummm Im sorry but I dont feel sorry for her. For one….you’re a porn star….Im sure you wont have any problem receiving income quickly…you’re a PORN STAR…you can get more work. She made it seem like she quit a Fortune 500 company….*rolls eyes*….You were/are an adult entertainer! And why the hell does Tiger owe you an apology? These groupies kill me! You voluntarily became a sideline ho, you knew EXACTLY what you were getting into. That man does NOT owe you an apology. You WILLINGLY put yourself in the position that you’re in. Girl stop!

Yeah yeah Tiger spoke out….and Veronica needs to have a seat!

But the real question: Where’s Tiger’s golf clubs? Get back in the game!

Written by George Eddie Burks Of St. Micheal’s Church Post 201, Chicago, Illinois.

A man fallen from the edge of humanity. A speck in the food chain that’s too small to feed the smallest of mice or the petites of birds. A man left in mere nothingness, but surrounded by everything.

The mail man smiles and gives him a nod as he stuffs his box with more unplayable bills. The interest rates seem to eat at any payment he tries to make and the late charges are the venom that kills hope, kills progress. Sometimes he wonders how he got in this financial debt. How he found himself in this lake of bills and low credit scores. He thinks back on the purchases. The swipe of the card and that mental plan he made to pay it off. The self accountant, rounding up his expected pay stubs in his head and determining the pay off date.

The plan seemed solid until another swipe and another swipe made the plan a little more complicated but still manageable. The whisper of no interest for eighteen months brought in another fiasco. His home became false stated with all these lavish gifts.

He thinks deeper and catches the repetition. He has seen this before, practically all his life he lived in false wealth. An illusion his mother started as far as he could remember. He watched her, infatuated with her material things. Always living lavish ignoring the telephone as it rang off the hook with the bill collectors calls.

A home full of items she truly did not need. Four TV’s, three lap tops, enough gym equipment to open a Bally’s, DVD players, CD players, mp3 players, video game systems. Things she never used but always claimed she needed. The telephone continued to ring. Not becoming silenced until the nine o’clock dead line. He use to look at her, pay check to pay check, that was a life he was going to avoid, a life he looked down on. But many years later, as he sits on the porch of a house in foreclosure, watching as the repo men remove that 52″ inch TV. He takes a deep breath, and suddenly the phone rings.

Pa came home after identifying his older brother and took off all his clothes. He arrived with no bag, I think he was on meth. He grabbed a plastic garbage bag and shoved all his clothes inside. “Where is your bag pa?” No answer. Just a slammed door in my face. Ma says, “he’s not doing well. Not sad, just says I smell bad.” We all went to bed and I dreamed Meghan put me on the phone with a retard, unable to understand that I had to wake up at two a.m. and didn’t want to swap suicide stories. God Ray, look what a mess you’ve made. I knew dad was alive because he kept rattling pill bottles from the medicine chest. Then later it was his snore that kept me believing he was alive. But what if he isn’t.

[ Story below by Alex ]

My wife and I were married for 20yrs before we divorced. During the last 5 of those 20yrs I had started a business and it boomed. Needless to say, to facilitate the tremendous growth I’d experience I had to work a lot and she felt neglected. At the end, I had to sell my business and gave half to my wife (after Obama took his share), or about $6M. In a year’s span, my children went off to college, lost my wfie, lost the business I’d worked so hard to build and am alone.

I just went to parent teacher conferences. No relation to the child discussed, just along for the ride due to a wide open schedule. And I heard a lot of things about a few kids. “Has done well, just needs to participate more,” “you have nothing to worry about, your child does everything perfectly,” and “he consistently arrives 3 minutes late.” Yes, she’s been counting. I couldn’t help but wonder what the point was. I never saw the point while in school, and now I especially don’t see it. When have I ever used anything that I learned in physics? Or geometry? Technical drawing? Really? I haven’t. Someone has, but I haven’t had the pleasure yet. I don’t knock any particular subject. I just dislike curriculum as a whole. Everything that I’ve needed, I mean really needed to know, I’ve learned on my own, or have been taught through the world.

I never learned about death. I never learned how to tell if someone was lying to you. I never learned that love is always conditional with most people you meet. I never learned that most of the love you show most people probably is too. And that people do die before their time, but they don’t really, because we don’t really know what time it is. Those lessons hit hard. Harder than a textbook.

But the third Matrix movie did help me understand that nothing can exist without its opposite. Clubs showed me that most people drink to escape, and made me look at what we we’re running from. 2 years of college showed me that it isn’t for everyone, but there’s a small amount of avenues for those who don’t fit the mold. Kids have shown me that everything is possible, until the world beats the imagination out of you. People who test my nerves have taught me a lot about my limitations, and more about myself. An illegal substance has taught me that we’re all just different cut-outs of the same fabric. Can you guess which one?

Now, that was through a pipe. I don’t know how you put those lessons into a classroom, or how you teach guidelines for truly unique experiences, but there’s no room for wonder. Everybody knows that not everyone is the same. So why do we have the same criteria for the masses? Who are you to judge me, mold me, place me in a box? There isn’t room for spontaneity or for life to occur in those boxes. As a person who never really fit, I don’t think there’s room for all personalities to excel. Not everybody sits comfortably at desks.

“Why does he need to participate?” I wonder that as I overhear a teacher telling a kid what he’s missing to be her ideal student. “What if he doesn’t care?” Because… I don’t blame him. I never got an A for helping to diffuse a situation, or an F for letting her off the hook when she used fake tears to disarm me when I was mad. Those things – reading people and situations, harnessing courage through your fears, standing up against authority when it needs to be done – aren’t graded. Aren’t given praise. But they are so advanced, that those lessons are passed grad school. They lie somewhere in a moment that won’t be looked at on standardized testing. Where is that kid’s gold star for not caring, and for not wasting time on things that aren’t important to him? That’s a lesson that I still haven’t been able to grasp fully. Ahead of the curve, he is.

I don’t like school. I don’t like what it promotes: A whole lot of sameness. I hate that it leaves out the differences. And parent teacher conferences are like the nail in the coffin. R.I.P. to personalities. And I don’t know how to fix that; just consider me a complainer.

From my days as an after school teacher, I know there’s not much I personally can teach. But I can offer this: Kids, duck and dodge the laws of the curriculum. And most importantly, no matter how many other people are facing the other way, don’t ever think twice about running towards what you want. Real life comes out of every one of those steps.

Some people are scared of ages. The ones you pick up are more of a burden, it would seem. Like it didn’t mean anything. I don’t doubt that. Especially when you’re reading symbols. The story is yours to create – No, not always. To tell – Maybe, if you wish. To remember. To personify – Yes. But experienced knees are such a hassle.

Some people look at ages as building blocks. Concrete, not the philosopher’s stone. Like that point will be the point. There, all things stop, settle. Come together. Perfectly. Not journeying there, but getting there. The point.

Life: Means to that End

But some people look at ages as ages. Who were you, really? It matters, in an encapsulated way. Someone said that our selves regenerate every 7 years. It feels faster now… So since birth, we’ve lived many lives, many lies and many truths. And there is much to take from all of them. Not definitions of self. Experiences of. Through a whole bunch of eyes.

But the key is, to only be there. Not seeing age as a burden, or a block. Not anything to run to or from. See it as a stage. Try to be aware of every word and most movements and it becomes something instead of. Something instead of another nothing. We get too concerned with how far away from it we are. This is it. And why would you want it any other way?

Carpe Diem

“I’ll steal you.” that’s what I told her. Her eyes looked at me with sort of a intrigue. Her lips smiled and I knew she was flattered. “ You’ll steal me?” she repeated, dimples penetrating her cheeks harder now as her eyes sunk into more of a seductive tone.
“Sure… you don’t have any security tags on you, right.” her voice exploded in laughter, breaking the silence of the bookstore. “ No I don’t.” she said under chuckles. “But I do have a husband that may put up a fight.” her laughter continued as I joined in with a grin.

This woman who only stood five feet off the ground, made me sore stories above that. In fact I haven’t touched the ground since I met her, and every time we were together the earth seem to move a little further from my feet. A beautiful woman of Asian descent, her shanghai accent still attached to each word she spoke, enhancing her wonder and inflaming my interest.

The laughter continued, as she slid her pale fingers along her forehead, removing the long black hair from her face. “ Do you like cookbook?” she asked. Pointing down to the one in her hand. “Like you, I like anything that has to do with food.” she smiled at me again and I smiled back.

Time had not seem to touch this woman in twenty years, although she was older than me, it could not be seen in her features. She would joke at times about how old she was, and how beautiful she use to be, but to me she was perfection, with a smile that out weighed gold. “ Big cook book, many foods for you.” the words left my mouth with a horrible Chinese accent. She looked at me and laughed, returning her eyes back to the book her face took a more serious tone. “This book no good… you get to fat.” the look on her face was priceless as usual and I blurt out laughing. This woman could change on the drop of a dime. From serious to funny to intrigued, her mind set truly marveled me. She would be talking about a topic, stop and then jump into another. Things she liked, things she disliked, things she loved, but in the time I knew her she never lacked a smile nor a laugh. My eyes scanned along the wooden shelves following the titles until stopping atop a diet cook book. I reached out and grabbed it.

“ Would you like this more?” her face held suspicion as I handed her the book. Eye’s pointed, she read along the title. “ Oh, this one is better.” her face held the same expression as she flipped along the pages, until finally stopping at something of interest.
“ Oh look.” her eyes expanded as she gasped out in joy. “ Shanghai veggie roll, sound good, right?” she flipped the book around and showed me the page, pointing to the enlarged picture of the dish. Her closed ended questions where a everyday occurrence, and I loved the way she got when I disagreed. “ What do you mean you don’t like?” she would become so animated, disapproving your disapproval. “ What’s in it?” I asked has I moved closer to her, the creak in the wooden floor boards applauding my advancement. “Spinach, cheese, onion, pepper..” she continued to read on but her words where lost to me. She smelled good and I became lost in the scent. A fruit concoction that tinkled the senses, just like a commercial would promise. “ Did you wash your hair?” I asked her, my words cutting off her aloud reading. “ Smell’s good right?” fluffing her hair with her hand, she looked at me and smiled.

In times like these I felt astray. My mind was conscious of our friend relationship but my heart beat for more, it raced with hopes of a conclusion. Either this woman could see my desires and maybe meet them with her own, or my heart would stop this foolery and reside to its normal state of nothingness. A simple thing, being no more than the tool it was designed to be, pumping blood along the body and supplying life to its inhabitants. A familiar existence for this four-chambered device.

Love had found it’s way to me twice before. Once during my high school years and returning again after college, but only for a brief stay. It was no stranger, but it was a companion who pursued different forms every time it entered your life. From the constant thought of the person, to the shear over enjoyment you had around them, to the way your heart yearned for them, love was a sickness with extreme symptoms.

Mental and physical affects reside from its infection, each person experiencing different exposure, but the final over bearing of the heart was inevitable.

I stood there, lost in here beauty once again. I relieved a sigh, unenthusiastic of the events next to come. My knees went limp as she touched me, and I prayed for this to be a crush and nothing more… Time will only tell if those prayers will be answered.

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course.
Lao Tzu

This is what we are referring to when talking about a breath-centered yoga practice. Often a yoga instructor’s cadence becomes, “inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale…” until it becomes ambient sound and our ears habituate as we no longer pay attention. And at any given point you will hear the instruction: “coordinate the movement with the breath.”
Yadi yadi. Yada yada.
It’s plenty easy for your mind to convince you and your body to do a lot of things. The converse is true too– you may convince yourself that you have no control and you are possessed by your body by addiction or greed or whatever other deadly sin you might think up. These two things are true (and not just because I’m trying to promote the concept of non-duality either).

Try this: cat/cow vinyasa
inhale, cow
exhale, cat

Fair enough. Now breathe normally. Let the cow happen as the breath comes. As though the transition is in fact a function of the breathing mechanism. It is.

We are being breathed. The atmospheric pressure outside of the lungs and the pressure within the lungs is what causes the diaphragm to move up and down. Respiration is an autonomic function. You do it while you sleep.

And cat comes because you exhale. Bring your mind into your breath. The song is the breath and your movement is the dance. Freedom within choreography. Moving and breathing in a yoga practice is a celebration of being alive and capable–
bringing your mind into your experience
and being there
with yourself
the whole time
to witness,
to act,
and give thanks
just for that.

Now, try this:cat/cow vinyasa
(do this simultaneously)
inhale=cow
exhale = cat
(let the postures and transitions become synonymous with the word “breathe”)

The movement is fluid and the breath is like a river…always flowing…. Sometimes it settles
as in a lake
and the breath suspends
and the mind stops.

If we try to force our bodies to do things without first giving ourselves space to breathe, we will never be able to live in a place of ease and stability. If we fight against the currents around us, we end up defeating ourselves. If we try to hold on to all of our possessions, they will possess us. If we strain, we restrain. If we take shortcuts, we don’t understand where we are.

Practicing restraint in yoga is not about denial, it is about transformation. There is no need to bottle up. To be frozen in our emotion. Become a Master by moving with the energies that nourish you. Support yourself without gripping. Trust yourself. Use self-authority by receiving guidance from all that you are and can be. Pain and pleasure follow the same rules of nature–they each will come and go. Inhale. Exhale. Birth. Death. And the spaces in between. Before and after. Let’s take more time and find more space and live a little now and then.

The media has once again cast its dark shadow over another news story. A story repeatedly played on by every news channel and has now stepped up to get it’s own special. A story that sooner or later will have protesters, politicians, and maybe even Jesus speak out against what the media promotes to be the problem. But in all truth it’s not the problem, it’s only the fall man.

Law enforcement has been looking into Craigslist for a while now due to their alleged posting of prostitution ads. Robberies, sex solicitation, and now murder!!. Craigslist must seem like the worst website on the planet?. You go on to a community board in search of a car, a roommate, a job or maybe even a girlfriend and you could now wind up with a axe totting medical student at your door. The media points the blame at the site, portraying it to look like the worst thing since the Holocaust. I hear these news reports and sigh, the same cycle always happens. When shit hit’s the fan someone always has to take the blame. Whether it be McDonalds for forcing people to be overweight, or Craig list, an enforcer for the obliteration of man. Society always has to find a villain to make the accused look like a victim.

Ronald McDonald did not run into your house with a military assault rifle and force you to gobble down three big Macs, two large fries and a diet coke. So where is this law suite coming from? Why is the media reporting the highest percentage of obesity in American history and showing a picture of McDonalds? Because I make mediocre hamburgers that you decided to make your soul source of nourishment is not cause for attack.

Craigslist did not have a tab on its site for murder or mayhem. Did not have a section for robberies and sodomy. It does have a section for adult and erotic postings. But it is not the one doing the postings. It’s a board, a community board that allows anyone to go on and post or search for a desired product. So before the media begins to poke its mighty spears into another innocent. Just remember that something created for one purpose and is unconsciously used for another, is not the cause of the tool, it’s the cause of its operator.

Two lonely lovers on opposite sides of the Atlantic fall into the arms of another. Each wake up the next morning with fear of what the other will think and if they should tell them.

Six months go past and the lovers are finally reunited. They both have completely forgotten about the episodes during there lonely period. They hug and kiss at the train station with such passion and desire that it turns heads. The returned soldier grabs his bags and his wife leads him towards the parking lot. As they exit the station a familiar face catches his eye. Short blonde hair, deep blue eyes and thin red lips. A face also comes familiar to his wife. Brown eyes and dark curly hair. A face directly in front of her.

An awkwardness falls over his wife has she introduces her one time lover. The woman turns to her husband and says. “ This is Jackie, she helped me a lot while you where away.” The husband looks in suspension at the nervousness in his wife’s voice. “ What are you doing here?” the woman asked, now becoming a little twitchy. “ I came to pick up my husband, David.” she said pointing to another soldier approaching them. Short blonde hair and deep blue eyes. The husband gulped and the awkwardness continued.

I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that I am not moving to any place horrible or in the middle of nowhere. Arlington, if any of you know the area, is across the river from Washington, DC and is the home of the Pentagon, the Corazon of the Military-Industrial complex. That’s right, we were attacked on 9/11 for real. So, I have not come back to a hamlet, or a town with no Vietnamese, Indian, Thai, or Italian restaurants, or a place where there are no bookstores, libraries, bars, or stoplights.

Yet it always feels odd to call Arlington “urban.” At one point we were part of DC, but were given back to Virginia. They did not want us. We sort of went through the opposite process as Brooklyn. I suppose as a consequence we never had the need to develop any sense of pride to prevent from being devoured whole. I have never heard anyone utter “Arlington in the house!” at an event.

So maybe I am still an urban poet, a troubadour without music but with city streets. And perhaps if one begins with poems about subways and grime, one never loses their edge even if they are surrounded by lawns and streets empty as a ghost town in the middle of the day. Then again, can one who never lives in a city ever develop an edge on their own? Without ever feeling that strange combination of joy and fear when walking home drunk at 4 in the morning, unsure of what saints or sinners one will meet or if you are heading the right way down the street? Maybe. If so there is hope for me.

Manhattan made me into a poet, she was the ultimate unrequited love of my life. And we all know that it is at the touch of such feeling one becomes a poet. An urban poet can be surrounded by such reminders of failed romance, and so they can really develop a voice, since they have to stand out against a crowd of potentially millions of admirers. If I had stayed in Arlington I would have been pastoral if I wrote verse at all. I do not think being a writer of prose is so dependent on location, except as source material. But I do not think a city tempts and then rejects a novelist like it does to a poet. A poet can be crushed to death by a city. That is why I am somewhat happy to leave.

A question that needs to be asked is if being urban is good? Certainly in the city it is a defense mechanism. It is also sensible, one writes about what they know. There are few cities where poems about hunting on rolling hills full of deer might connect with an audience. Yet is there something about being an urban poet with an urban vision that makes one important to poetry wherever one might go? I think so. Oddly enough, it is a “tradition” that the poets of the cities are the ones who reinvent the language through experimentation and taking the chances that being in a large mass of people allows to occur safely. A poet who faces the city is looking towards keeping poetry and by extension, literature, fresh, and also keeping poetry a community, not just a series of cells of lonely men and women writing verses for themselves and no one else.

So how does one keep an edge? How does a poet keep their urban flavor? I could travel into DC by subway and roam the streets at night. I could walk the bridges over the river during winter and send clouds of breath over the Potomac like little rafts of myself. A few drinks and rolling in a few gutters could do the trick to. Yet maybe that would just be posturing. Can I bring the urban into Arlington? Can I make my county truly wake up and realize that it is a city in its own right and should begin to love living life on the edge, however dull it might be and low off the ground?

Manic depression, world wide panic, the world has fallen off its rocker. People always say how the worlds gone mad, but truthfully it’s the people that’s gone Looney. This morning I heard a news broadcast about a couple in Florida who paid one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to have a dog cloned, a dog cloned for one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars! The old saying goes “ If you got it, Flaunt it.” but to me that’s more of a waste. I’m not a person who really watches the news. The only events I’m exposed to, is what I see during the ten minutes before weather on the ones and with in that time frame a lot of bullsh*t is dished out.

Sensitivity has become a plague amongst the people. Everyone must watch his or her tongue in order not to offend, but everything offends. If you say you love the Jews than people say you must hate the blacks. If you support gay marriage than you don’t love god. If you buy Pepsi than your discriminating against Sprite. Own a cat and your racist against dogs. People waste a majority of their life’s wrapped up in this sh*t. Whether as the accuser or the accused, but at the end of the day who really gives a f*ck. Is a person’s preference really going to make an impact on my life. So what if you like cats or Jews or homosexuals or Pepsi. The truth is I couldn’t care less.

The moving images of the governments’ aspiration being depicted from coast to coast. Justified are the premises, no matter what side the station picks. We never stop to think why their isn’t a third opinion on nightly sets that say that there is another way. Flames are just a prop in the pictures, illuminating results of the fireworks of overzealous engines atop the pyramids. Not seen as human anymore; and shouldn’t be if you alter the reasoning. The people lost are marginalized because their lives needed to be forgotten to bring peace… only to the power’s state of mind. The Gaza Strip is just another in the long line of “it’s sad it has to be this way, but it is.”

The media’s role in the apathy of the nation can’t be measured, but it can be felt. If a war is ongoing, it starts off as the breaking story. But as days pass, it is pushed to the back burner of these too-influential nightly melting pots. So as the frequency of the story lessens, the importance of it does too. On one hand, it is depressing. Who wants to see stories of death and destruction everyday, all the time? On the back of that same hand, the news always seems to be depressing. The top story on the 10 o’clock news is always a shooting, a local scandal, or something shady going on in a hood near you. These nightly programs probably give viewers the feeling that the world is a dangerous place because of evil people roaming every corner; not because of establishments voted into their positions. But the way that wars just fade into the background make it seem like there is nothing we can do about them. Persistent, but not something you need to know about. They will always be there. They are the backdrop to an ever changing danger, always lurking, that isn’t really changing at all. It is all fear. The thought that the big picture is explosions in hotel lobbies and nuclear threats, and the possibilities closer to you that are just as bleak create this sense of hopelessness. They say that they are here to inform. That is their function. But not to a point where we are moved to take action, but one to where we are too resigned to the fact that our obstacles are immovable objects. And we are not an irresistible force. Just bystanders. The news is depressing.

We are stuck at a crossroads that we come to every time our soldiers go off to battle. You always hear phrases like “Americans wouldn’t stand for this” or “We are a nation made up of the best people.” Not saying that that isn’t true, but I have to ask why do we stand for it? GITMO is still open and I don’t think many would be yelling out if our President elect didn’t make closing it one of his top priorities (fortunately he has.) We have more important things to think about. You can probably count on one hand the amount of full weeks we haven’t been involved in a military conflict in the past 50 years. There is a faction of this country that is wildly nationalistic; who believe that what we do is right because we are doing it. But there are a lot more of us that can think past the 50 stars and look at a situation objectively. I don’t think most people want war, but I think that 95% of us are ok with it. It’s the way it is, the way it was, and (no one
ever talks about this, but I think in the back of our minds we believe it’s) the way it always will be.

We’re stuck. But only if we choose to be. People get all choked up and annoyed about fiction, imagine if someone showed us images of what was going on in Gaza right now. And not the bombs going off from miles away, but the photos of children sitting next to their dead parents. Or a family lying in the rubble of their formerly standing home. We would be outraged. Incensed. Calling our congress men and woman, telling them to stop letting these wars be funded with our tax dollars. Crying because we see the similarities and could imagine that being us. If they are going to be biased, they should bombard us with this truth until we have no alternative to turn to. Force us to make it stop, as if those families were our own.

Or we would be a little frightened. Mostly indifferent. Use to it. Would change the channel to something entertaining. Not seeing ourselves in their shoes and basically strengthening our “Sucks for them” attitude. When did we become indifferent about lives? I’m thinking when we became indifferent about life. We don’t have control, we have powerlessness. We don’t have any way to stop wars but we have full power over the remote. We don’t make our paths, we accept our fate. That way, hopefully, if we stay out of destiny’s way it will bless us in the end. They bombard us with the trivial and shield us from the finality of our silence. Are they protecting us? Is this the way? Is that their purpose?

I watch the moving lips, of supposed analysts going back and forth all night about two sides of the same coin. Like there is only a right and a wrong to every situation and the television personalities, that happen to give you the events of the day, present to you very neatly. Conservative versus liberal. Right, left. The grand old or the fresh new. All the moving images. They’re hypnotizing. Almost make you forget how human you are; and how that separates none of us. And how that doesn’t include your party, country or anything that is reason enough to justify the deaths. There’s another way, even if they don’t speak its name. Guns must be drawn. But they won’t change if we don’t want them to. And we don’t need them to if we just started remembering what our priorities would be if they weren’t told to us.

All the moving images. They stand as a microcosm for life; saying so little about who we are but so much about who we have been. Their opinions aren’t what’s bothersome, the problem is the amount that they offer. And how those two viewpoints support one idea about the only thing that matters when going to war: Can any gain really make this worth it? Connect to the cable box and you’ll see that it’s ok because… it’s just the norm. It makes me wonder: what is it’s function? And what are they working towards? I think we’d be better off imitating art.

Three nights ago the heavens rained upon us in New York city, taking breaks but not fully shutting off their showers until Saturday morning. In the mist of one of these storms while making my way home from work. I fell upon this young woman who unfortunately lacked an umbrella during the down fall. She walked past me, her jacket trenched and hood so out weighed with water it concealed her face. I called to her and offered to share my umbrella. She accepted but seemed shock at the offer. We continued to walk up the block together, chatting along the way until finally stopping in front of her building, she thanked me and said “ I thought chivalry was dead in the world” I replied to her with a smile “ No, it’s only on life support.” we both laughed and went our separate ways but my mind began to turn from the comment, seeing how it was not the first time that I have heard it.

The gears in my brain began to twist and the obvious came to me, chivalry really is dead or at least dieing in the world. To hold a door is to be courteous, to offer your jacket is to be chivalrous, to carry a bag, to offer a light, to assist a damsel in distress, well maybe distress is an intense word, but to offer your services as a gentlemen, acts like these have become too few in the world.

Thanks to individuals with video cameras, like this tourist in Times Square last summer, we can bear witness to the world.

You don’t even have to be on a bike in NYC to see this kind of unrighteousness. I was shocked when I first moved here, but now I know that you ALWAYS have to advocate for yourself. One cop stopped me on Houston for no reason. He just saw me on a bike and wanted to ask me where I was going. I felt like he was going to ask me out on a date. Another common thing I’ve witnessed constantly: cops spittin’ game to flirty girls.

I also have a summons now for riding about 10 ft on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. I live on a busy one way, but the cops still suggested that instead of riding on the sidewalk, I should ride against traffic. Yeah. What’s more baffling is that there were about four of them posted right there in front of the bodega, “on patrol,” and I’m thinking, “YO, you’re across the street from Marcy Projects and you don’t have anything better to do than to give me a petty summons for cruisin on an empty sidewalk? I guarantee someone’s there’s a carjack happening right now.” Sure enough, one week later my neighbor is jumped and beat down near Myrtle-Willoughby by 6 guys, knocked out for nearly half an hour, bleeding internally, while they walk right in to my building and steal all their valuables right across the hall. Where were you then Mr. Officer? I know–mere chance, indeed. But when the kid finally came to take the report, my confidence in his competence rapidly deflated.

Most of the cops that I’ve seen (like those directing traffic) hate their job so much that you can clearly see an emotional recklessness unleashed in their gestures and yelling throughout the day. Many of them are just kids, yet they don’t have to be in order to show their insecurities. They are no different from your average worn unstable and aggravated New Yorker, they just tend to have a more destructive outlet of power when they put on their cowboy costumes.

The point is not to arbitrarily hate on cops or just anyone of authority. Rather, it is to require accountability of injustice. I believe there are people in power with integrity, self-control, and a decent set of ethics. Even though we can answer “Obama” to every drama as much as we like, we know that it is our responsibility to advocate for ourselves and each other. We are all we’ve got. And you don’t need to pick up a gun to start a revolution. The only piece you need is your voice. You’ve heard before that “your word is your weapon.” But your every action is your affirmation. Let it be known.

So, I’m trying this thing where I turn one thing into another, right before my eyes. Or squinting, wide shut, blinded, whatever it takes. Because I was on my way to work the other day and I was thinking: (sorry if this is an over simplification of something truly complex, but I’ve never been too good at science, so I have to brake things all the way down for it to make sense to me) if we and everything around us are made up of atoms and atoms alone (at our core) then everything is just the same. It’s the same atoms in different forms. So what makes the same atoms into different things? Why are my atoms me and those atoms over there making up a billboard? The only answer that I reckon makes sense is that it is all in our perceptions. We perceive what is and what isn’t and our perceptions are the only things that make anything different from something else. Because if you go blind, an object is different to you than if you can see it. The only way that isn’t true is if you trust someone with sight to tell you differently. And that’s the same with all your senses. It’s created in your head by the resources you have at that moment. We happen to trust our eyes the most, but if there was no such thing as sight, we wouldn’t be iffy about what objects were; we would use our other senses and be definite about it. So is anything really what we make it out to be, or is everything just silly putty (aka empty atoms) that we make into something? I haven’t seen it in a few years, but I think that’s kinda what The Matrix was getting at (the world is a hologram).

So I say all this to ask, why can’t we make whatever we want into… whatever we want? Our brain must be doing a whole lot of work to create all that is, so why not work it a little harder so it can paint the picture we’ve always wanted it to be? Well, I answer, because you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. We’ve seen it this way forever; all of us have been programmed to see things the way they are currently and that’s a nearly impossible thing to change by now. But my rebuttal is that it isn’t too late if you think it all matters. If I think it is important enough, and all true, then I shouldn’t be afraid to try to break it all down to build it back up again. What have I got to lose except time that I’d probably be wasting anyway? But if you don’t truly believe it, then it can’t happen because your mind isn’t allowing the unimaginable. I guess this is what The Secret was getting at, but brought about all the skepticism for its vagueness. I might bring about a different kind of skepticism because this doesn’t make any kind of sense. Like I’m shroom trippin’ for the first time and I actually believe that the shit I saw was real. But once again, I have nothing to lose. I’m talking about reversing the laws of gravity; not having a need for excuses like the one of human nature; waking up a dream so it can take its rightful place as king; having my cake and eating it too. Even when I’m the one saying, I’m having a hard time believing it myself. The notion that we can melt the walls and replace them with every possibility is killing me. If I’m wrong, I’ll just chalk it up as another delirious daydream. But I hope I’m talking about reality, and my conception of it not just being a fallacy. Because I’m figuring that it’s all just matter. Why not take control of it?
I hope a physicist doesn’t come and poo all over this sporadic parade. More importantly, I hope I’m on the right track, because that would mean there is a place for dreamers on this earth and all the hope wasn’t kept in vain. And if I’m at all on to something, this raises more questions like: Do humans need a better depiction of themselves, or even a blank slate? Are we less predictable than inexplicable, more everything than entity? If we can create whatever we want with the right amount of skill and an abundance of imagination, does that mean that, in our own right, we’re all gods? I don’t know. But I think… I’ll save that for a next blog.