Looking back to check the diversity of my life to emphasize that I am who am I am; and here I am now, alive and well, and 21 years into a new millennium. I realize this is only a matter of time and nothing else. I am me, of course, and you are you and the world around us is vivid and colorful yet somehow, we are finding ourselves split and confused. I suppose they call this life; in which case, each day is a new day and here I am—wondering if I’ve said more than I needed to or did something that I shouldn’t have. Is it me? Is it the way I look? Or, maybe it’s the sound of my voice or the flow of my accent. Do I look a certain way. Or better yet, do I have to?
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A Little From the Abstract: My Place on the Mountain
I have this vision.
Wanna See?
I have this idea in mind of me at a place that I have always dreamed about. I am up on a hill, which is not unfamiliar to me. This hill comes with its own history. This is part dream and part recollection. This place comes from a time where I partly failed and partly succeeded. A piece of me died here and yet, a part of me was reborn here.
I will do my best to describe this place. In fairness, I will do what I can to offer as many details so that you can see what I see—but still, I understand the mind’s dilemma. I understand the bias of our perception. I understand that interpretation may vary, which is why I will do my best; however, if my trick works, I doubt that our pictures need to be similar at all. Instead, if this works, I think we can pull together with a new version of understanding and still—you will see what you see and I may see differently, but hopefully, by the end of this, you and I will see something together. And together, we can call this Peace.
Continue readingSo, You Had a Setback?
I read somewhere that Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything. I think about names like Gates and Disney, or writers like Stephen King or JK Rowling. I bring this up because if anyone were to search for the top most successful failures, these are some of the names that top the list. I say this here but yet, no one that recognizes these names would ever associate them with anything but success.
Continue readingLost in Thoughts
I am about to get in my car and head north, wide-eyed and thinking. I am wondering about this. I am wondering about life and the positions we have that interconnect to other people in all ways under the sun. I am unsure why people are the way they are; although, in fairness, I do understand that everyone has their own motivations. People are people, right? This means we all have our own interests. We all have our own needs for comfort and survival.
Continue readingA Note to the Searcher: (That’s Me)
Before you go on with this (and I hope that you do) I want to be clear that this note to self is a personal pep-talk on a day that has particular meaning to me; however, if we could all put our therapist hats away for a moment and skip the judgment and suggestion part, I think that my ideas below are relatable. So, without any further hesitation, here we go. . . .
Continue readingFood for Thought
I go back to a perfect day amidst the craziness. I was alone. I was fine for the moment but there was nothing on my walls and nothing in my drawers. I was alone for the first time in my life. There was no one to report to and no one to speak with. My answering machine was empty. I could tell by the red double-zeroes which reminded me that no one called and no one cared.
I suppose this is what it means to be on your own. The rest of the world was tending to their business and me, I was moving in a different direction. I was back in my old town in Long Island. I returned like a son who grew and returned home to their Mother—hoping for some warmth or if nothing else, at least a good bowl of soup or something comforting. But in my case, Mom was gone. My Mother had passed. My Father had passed. My family was scattered in different locations. Some of my family were caught in the snags of family brawls and arguments and me, I was far from neutral at the time.
Continue readingThis is My City
I was heading towards the City around sunset yesterday. My old hometown and past life was behind me. Ahead of me was the life I have now and the island of Manhattan. I have always had a connection with my City. And she has allowed this bond—the City, I mean.
The traffic was more than mild but not too bad. There she was, my City. I could see her from the distance. And there they were; the buildings and the tall spires that poke the clouds like needles in the sky. The backdrop behind my City was the colors of sunset, which to me; this is a representation of the autumn months that are about to come.
Continue readingJust a Little Music is All it Takes
If I want to go back to the good times from the past then I suppose all I’d have to do is go back to the music. I could do this because at one point, everything was about the music. Everything was about the times and the late nights or the long walks in the City, downtown. Or even uptown through Central Park. I have memories from everywhere and a soundtrack that fits this perfectly.
If I want to go back, all it would take is a random song to come on out of nowhere. Know what I mean? And almost instantly, I can remember the summer nights, down by the bars on water in Island Park. I can remember the outfits and the fashions, the feelings and the emotions.
All it takes is an old song from our youth and I can remember who I was. I can remember where I was and what I was thinking. I remember the different phases in my life, the different episodes of love (or the attempts at love) and the different stages of my growing youth — and even if the times were neither optimal nor perfect, somehow, the music made sense to me.
Outgrown
There was a theory I was told about animals whose quarters are too small for them. I was told that an animal cannot outgrow their surroundings. For example, a fish will not outgrow the size of its tank. But then I was told this is not true. I was told the size of our confinement does not change our DNA and that growth is inevitable.
I write this to you, not because I had a little fish that grew too big for my fish tank, which I did, by the way—the fish started off much smaller than the others. And the fish was bullied for a while. Until the fish grew larger. This is when the other fish took notice. The other fish tried to bully the smaller fish but its growth could not be stopped. Eventually, the other fish that were once aggressive had no choice but to submit. Even the smaller fish who never bullied at all—even they had to pay for this.
Just to Write: A Little More of the Abstract (To Keep Us Warm)
And sometimes, just like that, the page is over. The chapter ends and our pages turn from one to the next, leaving us reeling because that past is still so new and yet, tomorrow seems so far away. There are motions in the world, which are more like revolutions, or like the times we spin around the sun. There are seasons when the hemispheres lean towards the warmth of the sun and there are winters when we move further away.
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The Written Addiction 