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The Nights When We Still Howled

Do you remember your early 20’s? Or, maybe you’re in them now. Or, maybe not. Maybe your 20’s were not your glory years or maybe you’ve moved so far away that you forgot what this was like.
Do you remember the nights you went out with your friends? What about the wild nights?
Did you have them?
I did.
I had plenty of them. 

I go back to them and sift through old memories of nostalgia, especially now when the summer is nearly over. I go back to these times when the summer is near the end and soon enough, September rolls around and the summer is gone.
(Just like that!)
I think about the nights on the water and the places we gathered. I think about the songs which seemed to intentionally play at the same time every night. This meant things were about to get going. This meant the night was about to get hot and pick up speed, which it did.

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Just to write:The Beach at Point Lookout

I love this place.
I love the beach in wintertime, empty and quiet, and yet remnants of all the memories with indentations of summertime footsteps which never fade. Like our memories for example.
Like the times when the sun was hot and the waves were cool and the beach was lined with countless bodies, laying beneath the sun, tanning, and feeling the warmth of summer.
Perhaps this is why I love the beach during the winter months when nobody comes. Maybe this is why the sands exist, to absorb our footsteps and when the beach is empty, the sands absorb our footsteps when we walk to the water’s edge; to tell our secrets to the tide, to feel, to rid ourselves of our sorry confessions, or to release us from our moments of doubt.

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The City –

Ah, New York, New York. It’s true. It’s a hell of a town.
This place has seen me through it all. And I’ve seen her as well. I’ve seen everything here from live shows to small events and from little venues at small clubs to rooftop heights; and of course, I have seen the romance of the Hudson River at night.
I’ve been Downtown where the scene is different and the vibe is real. I have walked alongside the river during late nights, alone but I was not lonely. Or at least I can say that I was not lonesome at all; but more so, I was reflecting, thinking about my life as it is or was or as it should be.

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With No Agenda: Let’s set the stage

There was an evening in the autumn months which I remember specifically and for no other reason than the color of the sky, which was beautiful and I, well . . .
I was listening to a song called Us and Them by a band called The Pink Floyd.

I remember this more as a moment of reprieve. To be honest, this was a moment of truce or a temporary stay of execution.
There was nothing about being right or wrong. There was no thinking about the crowds or my status with anyone or anything.

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Letters From the Eastside – Epilogue

Epilogue –

There was someone who read my first book and reached out to tell me to say the book wasn’t for them. They said the book was depressing to which I replied, “The name of the book is “Operation Depression.”
What did they expect, pretty clouds and rainbows?
At first, I admitted to being insulted. Then I realized that this person was right. The book was not for them. and maybe this book isn’t either.

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Letters From the Eastside – The Last Letter

Dear Mother Directional,

When there’s nowhere left to fall, then I suppose there are no more reasons to be afraid of falling. Anywhere you go, there’s no more need to worry about what comes next. What’s going to happen? What should I do?
When there’s no more room between us and the truth, then there’s no more space for excuses. There’s no more time for the internal lies or the casual denial that we shrug off and dismiss.
There’s nowhere left to turn and no place left to hide.  This is it – and here we are in the wake of our aftermath and, finally, rather than saving face or trying to save our own ass, we find ourselves with no more excuses. (At last)

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Letters From the Eastside – Letter Nineteen

Dear Mother Directional,

I wanted to come clean with you. Here and now. I want to share more about where I am and why. Not to mention the reasons behind where I am; but more, I wanted to send you this to explain what it was like from day one, up until now, and into the foreseeable future, I want to tell you more about what I see when I hopefully go forward.
They say that we have nothing but time here. Yet again, time is only slipping away. There is us, the people inside of these walls, and then there’s the rest of the world or the so-called “normal” people – then there’s life, which seems to go on.
But for us, the patients or inmates or whatever you want to call us, there is only time or the waste thereof. There’s only the slow-moving time that we spend within this small place.

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Letters From the Eastside – Letter Eighteen

Dear Mother Directional,

When there’s science, then there’s a reason to understand why things happen – or why they don’t. When there’s science, there is an understanding of how things work.
For example, we know about the trees. We know about the land and the sea. We know about the winds and the rain. And we know about things like, say, the greenhouse effect, which is something I learned about in ninth grade Earth Science.
When there’s science, we can understand more about the brain. We can understand more about our pathology and understand why we react – or should I say, maybe this explains why we overreact? Maybe this explains why we jump to conclusions.

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Letters From the Eastside – Letter Seventeen

Dear Mother Directional,

When there’s no more reasons to argue or defend yourself, then there’s no more reasons to fight or find out what’s wrong with the world.
Or, when the time comes and the need to justify yourself or explain who you are comes to an end, now we can talk about being free. 
This is when there are no more numbers between us – there’s no more ties to our status and it’s safe to just “be” without having to grab on to a label or find a definition of who we are. 

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Letters From the Eastside – Letter Sixteen

Dear Mother Directional,

I am sending this along to you to be kept with my notes and to be filed with my other letters.
My idea is to find my vision as well as my voice. I say this because I believe I need to put this out there. I have to give myself something to see. Otherwise, what’s the point? 

I am of the belief that if you want something, you have to see it. You have to build an idea in the mind. You have to give yourself a vision and then decorate it. Otherwise, if you can’t see it, then how can you have it? How do you find what you’re looking for if you don’t know what it looks like?

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