It amazes me to see who I am as opposed to who I used to be.
Then again, I am amazed at how different life can be from what it was, this time last year.
But this is life.
Always changing and always throwing a curve
(or two)
This is us too, moving and going through different phases

I am amazed . . .
I’m amazed at the times which I have lived through
And yes, it amazes me to realize how much time has passed since the last time I stood on a rooftop and felt rebellious. 

I know that maybe I say this too much. Or maybe I say too much period, and this is what causes distance between me and those who I wished were closer.
I know that I often talk about going back to the beginning.
But this is where I am . . .
I talk about the beginning so that I can turn back and start.
Or maybe this is the only way I can clear my history and hit the reset button.

Perhaps this is why I was told memories are not always my friend.
or memory is a liar.
I was told that too.

Blades from the ceiling fan spun beneath lights and flickered in shadows against the white cinder-block walls.
I’ve had this dream before…
I know exactly where I am.
But I don’t know why and I’m not sure how I got there.

The sound dulled into low volumes of electricity.
All l heard was a buzzing sound..
I heard the sound of a soft metallic hum given off by the overhead fluorescent lighting.
And if you don’t know, then I guess you wouldn’t know what the sound of fluorescent lighting sounds like.
But I know.

I saw the lightning bugs for the first time this season.
I saw them the other night and then last night too.
I love this,

I view the lighting bugs as a sign that summer is about to begin. I also view them as a kind memory from my youth, which meant the school year was coming to an end.
This meant the days would be longer and greater and like the old saying went, this meant, “no more teachers, no more books.”
And ah, relief.

In retrospect, I find myself in the contrast of my past and wondering what happened.
What went wrong, and how the hell did I end up where I am?
Is this an accident or just a moment of clarity.
Perhaps, this means I can wake up now . . .
and start over
I say this not to say that where I am is so terrible or dark because of course, we have all been in much darker places and lived through darker times.

I cannot say exactly what I said or what I wrote but I do recall my first “goodbye” letter.
I say this without the intention of this sounding desperate, like a final measure or an ultimate farewell.
This was not a case of me saying goodbye to the world.
No, In fact, this letter was quite the opposite.

I can recall the time when I realized one of my most valuable facts.
No, really. This is true.
Perhaps this was caused by a moment or calm in the storm.

Or maybe this was a realization that there is no lifeboat on its way. And, so, if I am to win or at minimum, if I am to survive then the way I survive is up to me.
Whether I pull myself from the swamps or how I gather myself and escape the emotional quicksand is up to me.

I remember when I heard Saul Williams record in one of his spoken word moments:
“If it is up to me, then it is up to me.”
And, so, I agree,
It is up to me.
Thank you, sir.

And here we are again. 
I guess. I find myself in full-circle and back to where I was.
I see this time of year and find myself needing to vent and needing to qualify and speak out to those who are about to embark on this journey we call life.

The summer is about to unfold too and my mind will automatically be elsewhere.
I suppose this is because I never had much of a youth or a youth that was worth speaking about.
I never had the summer vacations or the so-called times of my life after graduation. 
I never had this in my youth and now that I am grown, I realize that I delayed too often and temporary remedies became some kind of permanent solution.

There has to be something said about the need and the ability to go absolutely crazy.
Love this idea.
There has to be something said about the freedom to lose oneself and to lose your mind and go safely insane.
If there is such a thing.
Even if this is not safe, then . . .
Oh well. So be it.
There has to be a way.
is there?
I don’t know

I only know that there is a purpose.
I know that no matter how old we are, there has to be a part of us that yearns for more and to be younger and stronger than the heart of a lion

America, 
I need to address you like this again, hopeful and hopeless and frustrated with those who wave their fist and scream for justice and anarchy or for whatever else comes in-between.
I see them often too, those who call themselves the political justice warriors, and I see how they scream for our government to do their job.
I think about this.
I think about this the same way I thought about how the dog peed on the floor and rather than clean it, I pretended not to see it so Mom would notice and clean it up herself.
I see much of the world does the same thing, even if they don’t have a dog!

I wanted to put yesterday into perspective. Or better yet, I wanted to add color so that I could find contrast in the shadows of this thing I called my youth.
And, so, I had to count backwards to make this possible. Of course, counting the years that went back was enough to make me shake my head. This is crazy for me to realize that, including yesterday,  38 Father’s Days have passed since The Old Man, my Father, was around.

37 years have gone by. This means I have made 37 trips around the sun since the month of December in the year 1989. 

I heard someone say, “I think I want a new life.”
I’ve heard other people tell me that they want a new story.
I get it.
There was a song back in the 80’s called, “I want a new drug.”
I get that too,
Perhaps I date my childhood by saying this, but Huey Lewis and The News was on to something with that song.

I want a new story. Of course, I do.
I want a new chapter and a new beginning, but then again, this is common when things turn out unexpectedly.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, they say.
I heard a fellow alcoholic say get some vodka and make a drink.
But that’s not my style anymore, and nor has it been since April 1, 1991
But who’s counting?. 

Back when I was a salesman and young and with no real direction or idea as to what I wanted for myself, the bad days were hard and the hard days were unbearable to say the least.
An older friend of mine used to tell me, “just keep plugging, kid!”
In fairness, hated my job. I hated my life.
I hated that I had no direction and I hated that everything seemed like a dead-end or something was always pending.
Life has changed since then.
At the same time, life has not changed all that much.

I often think about a line, which came from the timeless brilliance of my favorite cartoon character Bugs Bunny.
“Is this trip really necessary?”
And I wonder.

Today is not about being honest with fiction.
No, I would rather rant and rave than be indirect.
And so, I will go forward and start with this –
To hell with what I see.
To hell with today’s modern technology.
To hell with people texting and not watching what’s ahead of them.

To hell with them after walking in to me.
And to hell with they way this happened to me this morning and to hell with the way the young man looked at me after nearly crashing against me, face first.

And here I am now, alive and well, and equally searching the same as I have always been.
I am alive and well because at minimum; I have my ten toes and ten fingers. I have two eyes which I admit do not see as clearly as they used to.
My heart beats. My ears are still on the sides of my head but like my vision, my ability to hear is not the same as when my body was in its younger form.
I am seeking something above the average.
I suppose we are all seeking something.

I want more than the soft or the quiet solitude which is a common thing for me at sunset. And yes, I find sunsets top be a peaceful moment and sure, I feel the beautiful reverence of a sight for sore eyes.

What do you believe?
This is an important question for me to ask.
What do you really believe?
And when it comes to beliefs, then I have to ask what are we afraid of?
And if we answer this honestly, then I have to ask if our beliefs impact our fears?

I ask this because I have always struggled with my so-called belief system.
What do I believe?
Do I believe in anything so fully and so wholeheartedly?
Or have I let my doubts hijack my belief system, just like the way a bully in the sixth grade hijacked my belief in the Tooth Fairy when my tooth fell out while I was in the second grade.

I believe that certain things are lifesaving.
I believe that there is no touch as soft as the touch from your Grandmother’s hand and how her skin was the warmest, most comforting thing.

There it was, a night in perfect shape, a long line that enters a club and a great list of chaos and waiting insanity.
This was life. Ad this was my life too, wild as ever, like it is when people are young.
Nothing else mattered at the time. Not my bills.
Not my rent, which was due, of course.
I never thought about investments or retirement funds.
Nothing else was important, except of course, the fact that my life depended upon the beating heart which needed to beat hard and fast.
Like lightning.

I look at life this way now. Perhaps this is because my choices are less attractive, and, so, I have to change my perception to improve my connection.
If you want to grow, then you have to grow.
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
Am I right?
At the same time, I look at our basic hang-ups and I regard our personal delusions and the thinking errors that keep us in a repetitive loop.

I think about the way we are as grownups and as people and yet, at the same time, a part of us is spoiled like brats who never got their way.

I started reading Fulghum when my Father, The Old Man, was dying in the hospital back in December of 1989. This began when I noticed the book at my The Old Man’s bedside. The book was entitled, All I Need to Know I Already Learned in Kindergarten.
I can say this book was life saving.
I can say this was life changing as well, and while I sat and waited for The Old Man to say goodbye, I began to read the innocent details of a good man’s life.

I do not know the author, Robert Fulghum. I know nothing about his real life or what he eats for breakfast or how he enjoys spending afternoons in the springtime.
But I know enough to realize that at best, we are all human, after all.

A.J. and I decided to play a game which was not unlike most of the reckless games that teenagers play. This was a game that the crazy kids play when they’re drinking shots that will inevitably make them sick.
And yes. We did get sick.
I suppose the game of quarters was the initial idea, but no one had any quarters.
So, instead, A.J. and I sat at our friend Pete’s kitchen table while his parents were out of town. We played a guessing game that went something like, “I’m thinking of a number between one and ten, guess!”

A.J. picked seven
I laughed out loud, “WRONG!” and A.J. had to drink.
This was the game and the game was unwinnable.
Neither if us could win because no matter what the number was, the response was the same.
“Wrong!” and “Now drink!”

There is a little known truth or fact about me and my life, which of course is true because why else would I tell you?
There is something about me which is as true as anything else in this life. I am more than one person and more than three and more than my own private or personal trinity.
Or to be clear, this is not to compare myself or act is if I am anything close to the divinity of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.
I am nothing like this and nor is this a comparison to the personal trinity of mind, body and soul.

I am simply a compilation of dreams, events, mysteries and at times, “I am fortune’s fool,” the same as Romeo was fortune’s fool when he sealed his own fate.
His heart was in the right place.
But Romeo’s fate was elsewhere.

I wonder what kind of feelings it would bring to have any gift of your choice.
Any gift you can think of
I don’t mean just a regular gift or something that can be found in a catalog, on a shelf, or on a rack in a store.
No.
A gift that goes beyond measure or even a gift that goes beyond our perception of reality . . .
Like, say, an hour or two with someone you never met but they influenced you and your life.
I wonder what it would be like to sit at a table with Jim Carroll or Frank O’Hara and maybe Kerouac and of course, William Burroughs.

It is early on a Sunday morning. The sunrise is new to the sky and the world is quiet like a church before members of the clergy arrive to prepare for the congregation.
The sun is up and so am I.
I am driving west to say the least and making my way into “The City that Never Sleeps” to pull a wage and pay down the bills which continue to pile up every month.
The quiet is loud for some reason, as if to mean the soft eeriness of the moment is fitting and matching of news, which came to me last night.

1)

I suppose this is nothing more than another “note to self,”
because of course . . .
who else am I writing to, other than you?

There is no way but up from here.
Or so I’d like to believe.
And so
I don’t know much
but I know the summer is about to show its face.
Thankfully.

I want to see myself somewhere far from here, lost and found, and sitting in a little place with coffee and a small breakfast.
I want to sit down facing the scene of a small town where people smile and say simple things like “hello,” or “good morning,” for no other reason than to be kind.
I want to be at a place where common decency is still common.

I want to be elsewhere, of course, and find myself like a familiar stranger. And this could be anywhere.
But no.
I would rather go back to my dreams of good old New Mexico . . .
You . . .

I am somewhere now, too far gone from a loaded package, which is where I used to be. I am far from this and further from yesterday, but I do recall.
I remember.
I used to know all too well about tiny envelopes that were packaged with printed names and filled with a beautiful high. I remember how life seemed to fade like the old graffitied trains that disappeared down the subway tunnels in the mid to late memories from my youth in the 80’s.

The City was my playground but the monkey bars and the jungle gyms were not the same.
Neither were the slides and the see-saws or the rides we took.
42nd Street was way different from how it is now
But –

I used to think the trick behind staying out of trouble was not to get caught. Or is this the case of me stating the obvious.
Don’t get caught are often someone’s famous last words.
Either that, or maybe the other trick to this would be to have a great attorney because, of course, that always helps.

I used to find myself in positions where I had to say things like, I can neither confirm nor deny any of the said allegations against me. Therefore, any questions going forward must be directed towards my attorney and answered by him.
And yes. I admit it.

I know who you are and I know where you used to hide.
But even more, I know the reasons why you hid yourself, even from me.
I know why you used to hate the saying, “No matter where you go, there you are!” because no matter how you ran or how you hid, you could never get away from yourself.
I get it.

You grabbed on to a few things that helped you move from one extreme to the next.
I can see it now.
I can see the old hallways that used to give you nightmares. I remember the teachers who used to put you down and drive you crazy.
It’s okay though.
They’re all gone now.

They say that one should dip their toes and test the waters before plunging in.
I do not have that kind of mindset. At least, not when it comes to certain curiosities and compulsions. They say that one should crawl before they learn how to walk but in all fairness, my mind moves too fast for me to keep up with plans like these. 

It all started out as a simple thing. Or at best, I suppose everything starts out simple. And then one day, the demons broke free like prisoners who were free at the gates.
The temptation was overwhelming enough to make me forget about the threads of common decency, and, so, I became someone else. I altered and changed in the sense that I left behind my childish things. I shed my childish ways, even though I was still just a child 

There has always been something different about the sunrise to me.
Always . . .
This is certainly true after the long nights that went behind me. This is also true after the bad nights that went either sideways or backwards, to which I say that I am sure we have all had our share of bad nights that went wrong
Not all of these memories were as bad as they sound. Not all were good.
Even the bad times had their moments of greatness because even the villains get away every once in a while.
I know because despite my times; I managed to escape the traps which were set to get me.
I know. . . .

I heard a word which made me think that maybe I’m not so crazy. Or maybe I am crazy and this is just me.
Crazy as always and guilty as charged.
Maybe I am crazy in the best ways possible and likely so, perhaps I am only crazy enough to believe in things like daydreams and fantasies.
Or maybe the word crazy is something I associate with my curiosity, which is enough to make me want to go down the road less traveled.

Or as it was explained by the great poet, Robert Frost, “Two roads diverged in a wood,” and just like Frost, I am equally sorry that I could not take both.
I am sorry that I could not have lived more than my share of this lifetime.
But this is life and so, this is my only chance to live with what I have –
I think I hear the bell now, which means that it’s time to go.
Or am I hearing things again and the audio hallucinations mean something else to me?

Save the notes, kid.
It’s time for you and I to begin.
It is time to start over again.
They say it is always best to go to someplace familiar, or as it is with me in this case, I have to go back to where I started.
The beginning.
Or maybe I should just retrace my steps. You know?
Maybe I should do like they tell us to do when we lose something.

In the beginning, I had no idea what to expect. But then again, who does?
I did not know how to play the game. I did not know the rules.
I had no talents and nor did I have any experience to base my understanding of how to play the game.