God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.

 "I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me." - Mark Twain

I adore animals.  I like them more than humans, despite being an anthropologist...I think it better equips me to see the horrors of humanity without taking away the joy.  I adopted a stray cat, in that, I feed it twice a day and let it enjoy it's freedom with his/her lover (a fat, orange cat).  It may be feral but it is appreciative...unlike my doggies Harlem and Selah who feel entitled to my food at any given moment.  But yes, that is my fault and no, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Animals aren't as simple as we imagine them to be - they have complex social systems with varying degrees of violence and love.  Humans are, afterall, animals in every physiological sense - we're just at an environmental pinnacle in adaptation.  Nonetheless, we are still primitive in our relationship with nature.  We attempt to conquer it in every way but it always eludes us one step before we get there.  We still don't know how meiosis takes place, just that it does.  You can even hear some pretty logical conjecture from PhDs and still they will fail to elucidate the meaning of life.  And here in lies the puzzle - will conquering nature give us meaning or take it away?  Will we become the Gods we pray to and will magic give way to science?  Our bodies, our world, our existence is all chemistry.  An array of chemical combinations and disassociations that account for that new wrinkle or strange mole.  Our chemistry is our biology and our biology is our foundation.  So what makes us so different from a bird or an earthworm?  Well, nothing.  Every life form has it's role to play as every person has their Shakespearean act.  Every living thing on this planet is crucial to our symbiosis...even this stray cat (have you ever seen a NYC rat? Rats were the cause of the bubonic plague).  I love this cat as much as I love any one human being - does that make me strange? No, just enlightened.

The Weight of Goodbye.

I can remember him and it’s always ephemeral. Two generations holding tight by one pinky and one tiny hand of hope. The racist bigotry bequeathed by a small town and pale faces has never been so irrelevant as it is in this moment. I have to go to a wake. It is not anyone I know, it is a friend’s boyfriend’s father. A sick, twisted conundrum of negative space which I’m intended to fill. It reminds me of my Grandfather. How his last breath was nothing I’ve heard or will ever hear. I don’t even remember our last hug, our last goodbye just my Grandmother’s enraged tone as I missed the opportunity. And I opened my eyes and I was there…he was there. Lying perfectly in his favorite collared shirt with the American flag draped across the cherry wood of his new dwelling and he looked noble. As if at any moment he’d be stomping off to war yet again to save the country he poured his life into. But he just lays there, sullen with powder etched onto his once rouged flesh. It is all false now. It is an insult to the Earth from which we’ve been born. As if painting life onto the lifeless dignifies its accomplishments. It doesn’t. It’s for the live ones that this is done for. So we may feel a slight chance that he may resurrect like Jesus and walk again. The truth is that he will never walk again, I will never walk the same way again. The guilt burdening down on me like two anvils of shoulds and didn’ts. All those secret resentments I buried in my skin are seeping out and drowning me. Is it possible to miss someone who killed you everyday?

On The Topic Of Popular Media & It’s Demise Of Humanity

American society is in crisis. Correction, American society’s generation X/ME is in crisis. Amidst the contortions of body image, self-worth, purpose and existence, we are readily heading toward a generation filled with ignorance, lack of knowledge and of purposeless existence. We have become numb to the idea of war, protest and justice. Our vocabulary has been replaced with Britney Spears, divorce, MTV and that’s hot. Our children wear low cut jeans with their pre-teen undergarments peeking through as this, THIS, is the latest fashion statement. See me, I own a macbook and never once has my underwear made an inappropriate appearance. I’m serious, I’m useful and I will make a difference. But as I was saying – it has become more apparent in our over-sexualized, individualized even, lifestyles that any type of worth placed on thought has been switched with the latest Louis Vuitton (of which I own three) and the notion of celebrity. It has taken root in the very recesses of post modernism where collectiveness has sizzled out into survival of the one.

But of course that is art and life is not art, or perhaps it is…that is too open-ended for my declaration so please omit this sentence.

The situation is this – how do we awaken a generation encapsulated by an armory of commerce and e-mail? How do we bring back true vision and revamp a staggering desire to be diluted into an insatiable want of knowledge? Revolutions have given way to numbness. We live amongst the de-sensitized foes of our own making…some of which are us.

I can’t escape the propaganda. The most elusive feeling in life is compassion. I haven’t quite figured out if it comes with age or if it’s a genetic disposition. I’m inclined to say that both have their roles, but COMPASSION! HUMANITY! Where is it all going? How do I speak calmly about something infuriating? I have a theory about the human psyche. I believe that people have the ability to bring themselves out of whatever tragic, mind-altering, devastating scenario they may find themselves in. That’s the beauty of the human mind actually, is that we have the option of escape. But sometimes this “escape” mechanism transforms into something truly moving. It becomes self-determination, ambition and fortitude. If not, it becomes a vastness of space. -A lucid experience of floating and drifting aloof in a world of impending decay. It then leaves the choice of “reality” and an alternate interpretation of what is actually surmising.

A Statement On The True State Of Things.

Nothing lasts forever. It is an inevitable, daunting, depressing and overly analyzed fact latent with pseudo opposition and a conceptual escape route saturated in idealistic optimism. And rarely is anything in life succinct. We streamline our days with routine, schedules, tasks to keep us busy all in pursuit of a true sense of worth...of purpose, even. But when these lines are blurred and purpose becomes habit, worth becomes know-how and all of what we've been working towards is nothing but a mirage, then what? The true state of things is simply that. STICK IT TO THE MAN!!!

Recession and The Scapegoat

I received a cordial letter from the U.S Treasury/Internal Revenue that I would be part of an economic stimulus allotting me $300 on top of my tax return. 300 dollars. Let's see...I could probably buy groceries and maintain my cigarette addiction for a little while but not much more than that. I will never understand how George W. Bush parlayed his incompetence into office. It's a daily trip to the surreal and how he and his whole administration really sat there and thought that $300 was going to stimulate the economy is beyond me. Sure, you get an increased amount for each child you have and there is a cap for those who make over 100 grand. I'm at a loss. Befuddled, unamused and concerned would sum up my reaction. But hey, I need that $300 - it'll take care of some things but in no way is it going to shuck the ungodly amount of foreclosures due to those subprime mortgages. The government is actively bailing out big corporations with these deferred prosecution contracts where a fine is much better than jail - yet another reinforcement that there are no consequences for actions. Multibillion dollar corporations using their deep pockets to have authorities relax on environmental regulations. Their punishment? A million dollars. Way to go Mr. President. Brilliant idea and cheers to that extra dinero.

Let's look at this objectively. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a recession. Your milk and eggs aren't special because they're two dollars more than they were a year ago - it's called inflation. We are throwing away billions of dollars a day on this war in Iraq, the government is handing out freebies to big corporations who took huge risks with other people's money and slapping companies on the hand when they should be shackled and hauled off to jail. This is un-fucking-real. Open any newspaper, you'll see the kaleidoscope of deals with the devil. The government is claiming this is for the worker, the mother - fill in the blank - to avoid catastrophes like Enron where employees lost pensions, wages, livelihood. But perhaps it wasn't so much of the insider trading or dirty deeds of the CEO...perhaps it's something called unregulated policies and procedures. Franchises can rely on the government looking the other way, patting them on the back and saying 'just pay a little and we'll forget the whole thing'. It's absurd. Whoever supports the Republican Party should be shot in the foot (just kidding. no i'm not).

I live on a street parallel to The Marcy Projects - people refer to it as "Murder-Myrtle" since three to four cops are posted on each corner of a 3 block radius - and there is always shit going down. Shot, stabbed, robbed and an array of misdemeanor meet felony acts are nicely bundled into the brown brick tenements of jungle. Luckily, I haven't seen/heard/done anything that would put me at risk and despite the negative hype surrounding my quaint little street...I LOVE IT. Moving to NYC was as easy as I planned it but sustaining is a job in itself. There is a rawness about New York that no other city has. I find it refreshing and demoralizing all at the same time. During the Summer you see four year olds on their tricycles at 11:30pm. Block parties are exclusive and neighbors are stripped of competitive suburban pretense. Being assertive isn't a choice - it's a survival mechanism. I hated it here for a good while but I have to say, it's growing on me.
I have the bird lady from Mary Poppins on my block but she is in the form of a he who wears a badgered Mets jacket and faded blue cap. He hobbles down Marcy Ave. with a grocery bag filled with rice and spangles the sidewalk with it. I'm secretly in love with him because I long to be an ornithologist deep down...I just don't have the patience. I think he's awesome and Darwin would also.

A Word.

A word changed everything. A word changed nothing.
These words threaded along the pretense of meaning are often followed by the misconceptions of belief and we breathe that word of hate enclosed in the trappings of love and dutiful obligation. We speak simple crescendos and saturate alphabets in beats of emotion banging on our cheeks to spill out our slow deaths upon a deaf ear or an open hand. Our flesh recollects those cruel words we digest and they float on the sheaths of our bones directed by the flow of the soul. The plural. The singular. The quoted misgivings that our tongues betray us with somehow slipped out and manifested in the grout. If benevolent be the adjective, let peace be my noun. We are words laced in the flora of our histories, our actions merely ghosts of a thought.