Richmond Tire Fire
[Richmond Tire Fire]
From the long, sleepy corridor of Belvidere,
I look out and see a grey-black basilisk
roiling into the sky, traversing its sooty form
from west to east, an ever-rejuvenating bulk.
The light is shrouded around me.
Few eyes follow the adder’s path.
I pull over, throw on my bag
and grip a bottle of water.
Drivers on Leigh appear not to notice
anything more than their automated maps
broadcasting from phones clasped by claw-like fingers.
They pass in gleaming cars with expressions confused —
as curious about my attention as I am of their lack.
(Are they blind?)
More and more, people trod toward the Leviathan’s origin —
entranced — its mouth affixed to a turquoise building,
tongue flashing so fast it looks like one
continuous mess of flickering, airborne lava.
Men in caps run about its maw
seen only as silhouettes dragging
along a lengthy canvas worm
(their best defense).
We sit on a graffiti-adorned retaining wall.
Highway travelers slow but only one has stopped.
(Some must go. Some must watch.)
We make eye and verbal contact.
We capture the scene with mobile device and mind.
They snake deflates.
The crowd peaceful near the barking
backyard dog who scolds our stupidity.
We are the dumbest creatures on the planet.
We trickle and fade and forget
after a mere moment’s passing.
The hazard lights glow against adjacent buildings
in the distance, a veritable rainbow shown in the cast
of man-directed water to combat the mistakes
made by man-directed madness
of cinderblock and rubber turned to cinder and fume.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Dusk to dusk.
We pace about at breakneck speeds,
only to sputter, dim, and die again —
taking all the naysayers along with us.
Ad astra per alas porci.
The viper puffs into an hombre cloud.
A single beam of light takes shape in its fog,
roving in sanguine supervision but seeing nothing.
[02/18/2020]
Florida Findings
Florida Findings
I smell the sand.
I see the sand.
But I do not taste
its brine. It exists mixed
in with the ash and dirt,
leaves and twigs. On the forefront
of this surface is the pockmarks
of rain pellets that fell as we
chuckled and wept and slept.
The rustling I hear
undulates. Its crescendoes
punctuated by aviary chatter and evidenced
by the workings of swaying shadows.
In the shade we discover
the wetness and the cold. Beneath
the sunlight is revealed the crystalline
dimensions of it all. Sparkle and fade.
Even some of the disconnected leaves
are green
although trampled. Even the chill can exist
in the light.
I can furrow my face
at these perceived chaotic churnings
or I can delight. There’s always choice,
although I often refuse to give
myself the space to make the more useful one.
I wonder if these disinterred
roots still grow. Yellowish, mottled, and broken,
do they flail their fractal hairs
to amble toward somewhere more
secure in order to try again for fruit?
Above it all, when viewed without
distraction, is peacefulness,
is lush lingering
limbs that protect or provide
portent.
_____________________
February 7, 2020
Florida Earthskills Gathering
The Power of Poetry (workshop)
w/ Eric Lewis & Olivia Verhoye
Feel'd Notes: A Fitting Diagnosis
I’ve had a strained relationship with mental health for as far back as I can remember. It wasn’t until after my 30th birthday, however, that I encountered a fitting diagnosis — ADHD. Before my clinician laid it out for me at the time, my belief was that I had bipolar II. I’d previously met with a psychiatrist in 2010 at the encouragement of a friend who went to the same guy and received Adderall. I tried one of her pills and it made me feel productive and “normal,” so I went in seeing if I would get my own.
I later learned that mental health diagnosis is more effective when ones symptoms are being taken into account from a period not as heavily influenced by alcohol as mine had been. My propensity for late nights, barely sleeping, impulsivity, intermittent hyperfocus, distractibility, and mood swings were all attributed to the wiring of my brain, rather than the substance used to douse its natural faculties. The psychiatrist gave me a medication initially developed for epilepsy, one said to be effective for bipolar but required the user to wean on off the recommended dosage. Pretty sure death was one of the potential symptoms of taking (or discarding) a “effective” amount right away.
As you could imagine, I didn’t feel comfortable consuming that drug for a variety of reasons, and stopped dosing before I even hit the second tier up the potency scale. It was during this time that I began writing songs again after a near 4-year hiatus wherein I dealt with a guitar-related growth in my wrist. My drinking (and mood swings) continued for three more years, until I traded in my addiction to alcohol for filmmaking and yoga.
It wasn’t until another 2 and a half years that I found my way into another clinician’s office — the one who identified me as having the “classic,” indrawn sort of ADHD that is not as easy to spot as the outwardly hyperactive variety. While I had accepted the bipolar labeling with a grim badge of cool, learning about ADHD from my counselor (and an amazing book he recommended called Driven to Distraction) led to a flood of self-identification and … relief.
Reading strangers’ accounts that sounded like they were grafted from my own experience and into the book provided both pain and hope. Ahhhh, so THIS is that thing that I’ve always known but could not speak to, draw lines about, and know how to address. That invisible force, identical to my frame and mirroring my movements, finally had a shape, a name, and a host of effective remedies. I’d stumbled my way into typical self-medication techniques, but the confirmation of the more lasting treatments I’d already discovered on my own combined with a litany of other methods provided a greater plan toward self-mastery … or even just for surviving.
The funny thing about ADHD treatments, though, is they are often synonymous with activities one would do when living with greater diligence. Daily exercise. Keeping a schedule. Early nights and mornings. Meditation. Develop a skill. Sometimes my mind is so untethered that implementing the activities that harness it is a daunting prospect. I often fail. I beat myself up for it. I get worked up and stressed out until I reach a point where I have no other avenue but to write or sit in nature or stretch as many muscles in my body as I can find.
In the wake of such experiences, I feel rejuvenated and rested — even if I just broke a sweat. I reflect on those trails and wish I could have remembered that the stress never helps, and its never as bleak as my panic and depression lead me to believe by clouding my experience. I’m so grateful for those moments (or seasons), and am learning to be patient with myself when my mind grows dissonant. Because I know that I’ve not always felt this way and won’t always feel this way — that no matter how hard it gets, it always gets better.
Shoutout to my partner @veganastronaut, our counselor, and anyone else who rides these waves with me.
###
Feel'd Notes: Self-Doubt
Thank you so much for taking your time to send so many kind responses. The feedback shouldn’t be what galvanizes me entirely, but it certainly helps fuel my diligence in this endeavor of frequent expression. To add clarity to my recent barrage of transparency, I want to address some of the comments the previous posts have garnered.
A few people have asked me if I have a book coming out, or why I’ve not been published. Those same questions have plagued me for some 12 years now. Not trying to pull a Muhammad Ali here by declaring myself as “the greatest,” but if I’m being honest, I do have a sneaking suspicion that I do have within me (or at least through me) access to a certain level of creative ability that COULD amount to more than just admiration for my literary (and musical) heroes, but more so a strange kinship.
In other words, I’m scared shitless at the prospect that I MIGHT BE ONE OF THEM.
What if I fuck it up? What if I’m deluding myself? To borrow a phrase from Frank Herbert’s Dune chronicles, I do feel a sense of “terrible purpose” regarding my nature as an expressive human. Not so much that I feel like I have any sort heightened ability, but rather that I’ve grown to recognize that we ALL are uniquely gifted in tremendous ways that are acutely needed during the time of our individual lifespans. We need only to permit ourselves to submit to that purpose, effectively making ourselves a conduit for what transcends the individual self and benefits the ALL.
And so to circle back to the question: Why am I not published? Well, I am. A poem here. A personal essay there. A short story in a college literary magazine (ages ago). I’ve been paid as a freelance journalists for some local publications in the past. Sometimes I’m contracted to write web content for a variety of purposes. I’ve written and co-written screenplays. Not nearly as much as I’d like, mind you, but it’s happened.
I think the spirit of the inquiry, more specifically, is: Why am I not self-sustaining as a creative writer? Why have I not published any BOOKS? Well, honestly, it’s because I’m terrified that I’m not good enough. I’m terrified that what I have to say is banal or (worse yet) self-indulgent. I wonder if anyone will care or connect with what I have to say and share. Ultimately, I’m worried that everyone will reject ME.
Oh, the wily ways of self-doubt.
As much as I can project those fears on to you, dear reader, the truth is that I am rejecting myself. I’ve been running away from my true self for 12 years. I sometimes meter who I am because I think it won’t be accepted, perhaps because I tend to view myself as unacceptable. I could blame my conservative Baptist upbringing, but at some point this is all an effort in self-repression, a reticence to open my heart and lungs and mouth and just BREATHE.
I no longer wish to run and hide. I want to unfurl. Because if I go through much more of this existence without speaking the thoughts and experiences I’ve accumulated, then it feels like I will have lived a “near life experience” (as my friend @gull_face would call it), which would be a tragedy. Not just for me, but a tragedy should anyone not live and live fully, to not step into the space to be the unique embodiment of consciousness that we each are.
In February I published a confessional called “Sleeping at the Wheel of My Life’s Purpose.” In many ways, it has continued to be a daily battle to plant my hands at 10 and 2, instead of allowing myself to take a cruise-controlled careen into the abyss of unconscious patterns.
Some things inside me have shaken loose of late, and I really hope these habits persist. So, again, thank you for the encouragement and feedback. It means a lot. Like @devendrabanhart said in a live session called “live @ quiet please!” — some people are strong enough to make a go of this life’s journey on their own, but me, I need help.
Thanks for being there. Thanks for listening. And if there’s something you feel like you need to share or say or be that you’ve been avoiding, I encourage you to let it out. No amount of inner turmoil is worth constipating your soul.
###
Feel'd Notes: Opening Up
When I met this being, it was only a mere few weeks after I realized that continuing to hold space for my marriage to come back together (despite how many times my co-parent implored me to move on and realize that it’s over) was actually an effort of not listening. Ultimately, it was unkind to continue to hold that hope, if that makes sense.
When I finally began to rest into a place of acceptance, I was driving back from witnessing two of my friends get married in Richmond (I was living in Lynchburg at the time). @420chocolatejuice was part of the wedding band, and rode back with me in my 1993 Volvo wagon. He and I became close during some of the most trying points of the separation, and it was easy to open up to such a willing and compassionate ear. He asked how I was doing, and I said I was doing well, and simply acquiescing to the reality that as a non-Christian, non-drinker that lives in Lynchburg, the chances of me finding a partner on a similar wavelength were essentially nil.
Judah wasn’t so certain. He encouraged me to be open to possibilities in unconventional places. Then he gasped. “Oh my gosh. You HAVE to meet my friend @veganastronaut. I think she’s dating someone who lives states away, but if nothing else I think you’d make great friends.”
Friends I was good with. After being with someone for 12 years, someone I was (and in many ways am) still in love with, dating was by no means of any interest to me. Just a week before that conversation, on what would have been our 10-year wedding anniversary, I was at a @sufjan5000 concert. A friend of ours we met in Argentina gave me two free tickets for the show. Sufjan is one of the few artists my co-parent and I ever mutually enjoyed. After not finding someone to join me for the show, I went alone, and wound up finding someone at the gate who could use my extra ticket. I wore an outfit that was much more representational of how I was feeling as a person. I stood out, I know, but I felt like me.
Out of curiosity (and for the first time in my life), I downloaded Tinder and Bumble. I swiped through, made a couple matches, and immediately deleted my accounts.
Even though I didn’t so much as talk to anyone on those apps, it still felt good to accept the fact that July 22 is now just any other day and that I am an autonomous being with the ability to connect with others in whatever capacity I desired. At that point I really just wanted to connect with myself.
I went home after dropping Judah off and looked up the person he mentioned I’d get along with. The strange thing is that I knew this person, but didn’t know her. I’d seen her at a music festival my friends put on two years prior. She was climbing up a tree that I was sitting beneath with my co-parent and our three kids. I remember noticing this free-spirited person and admiring how much fun they were having.
While it was somewhat synchronistic that the person Judah recommended I meet was this same creature I saw that day two years ago, it was surreal to discover that she was the same person I had seen at the same festival the next year. And the same person I saw the year after that at the same concerts and gallery showings I attended. It was weird because in each of those instances, she looked like an entirely different person. I didn’t know her, but I knew her, somehow. Like she was this beacon of energy that called to me, yet I felt too timid to meet. To discover that these seemingly three different individuals that I had noticed over the course of two years were actually all one person, however undergoing progressive transformations, struck me in a bewildering way.
That next weekend, I went to see Judah play bass in one of my favorite musical projects to date, alongside bandmates @jlloydharmon and @silentbetti. I had just moved into a new place with my kids, and wanted to celebrate the milestone by experiencing some local culture. I went to the venue — a vape shop — fully intending to leave if people were blowing plumes of the grotesque nicotine substance into the air my children were breathing. Not only was that not the case, but instead the lady in question was there smudging sage and dancing around. Her bright, gregarious nature intimidated me. I knew I could not keep up that speed. I kept my distance but I noticed her smiling at my kids at one point, which made me happy. Again, I wasn’t in a dating mindset at the time (and really I never am … I make close friends and sometimes those close friends become lovers or partners), but figured if there were to be some interest, any person I might see romantically would have to accept the entirety of me — minions and all.
I left that night without speaking to her, but not being able to help but be aware of her every movement. My kids said they were having fun (my oldest was being far more outgoing than me and made friends with people who later became MY friends), but it was time to get them to sleep. I drove off blasting the music from a somewhat obscure music project that included Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood called Junun, wondering if she would hear it and turn her head.
Later that week, my friend Jeremiah (who fronted the aforementioned band) posted about discovering that very project. I commented on his post, saying I’d been listening to it since that February. Oddly enough, she posted on it to, and had been enjoying it for a year. I mentioned that there was a documentary out on it, and that I was dying to know what the songs meant in English. She said she had the CD insert and would loan it to me. We all made plans to get together a few days later to watch the documentary.
In the meantime, Judah invited both she and I to his place for a vegan lunch that took place hours before the documentary screening. I arrived a few minutes past the agreed time, knowing that there’s no way I’d be able to match her energy. I was just coming out of a place of crisis. Just then allowing myself to enjoy social settings again.
When she arrived, it was clear she had just been crying. Or WAS crying. I felt a sudden sense of relief and concern. She and her partner of several years were breaking up right then and there. She recited poetry to help calm her nerves, and read a Frida Kahlo letter about being single. I was enraptured by her eloquence and literary recall. She mentioned that she’d spent 15 percent of her life with this person, and was reeling. I replied, “Try nearly 50 percent.” She must have understood what I meant, and gave me a big hug. She was leaving for work. She pulled back from the hug, held me by my shoulders. Looked straight into my eyes and said, “I don’t know you, but I know you, and then left.
We reconnected later that night at the documentary viewing, where we didn’t speak much but I was still so aware of her motions and posture. I drank (and shared) yerba mate to ground myself. After the viewing, I invited her outside to loan her a collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson essays, encouraging her to read “Self Reliance,” as it helped me so much during my own period of grief. I also gave her a typewriter, and said the kinesthetic, noisy, imperfect nature of it was cathartic to say the least. We spoke outside under a street lamp for an hour. I felt seen in ways I had never felt seen before. She said she felt the same way. We left that night with no expectations, just relief at knowing that after so many years on this planet, that truly there was another soul like me out there.
We shared our first kiss the following night, after accidentally meeting as guests of guests to a bonfire at @foraged.obscurities’s house. We spoke until nearly 4 a.m. At 8 a.m., I was to begin my first day on the job as an English teacher at a new high school. The kiss came without notice, but felt like something from long ago. Like we’d known one another for eons but only just then reconnected. We were (I thought) simply hugging to say goodbye and part ways, but she held on tighter and longer, then whispered, “You are so charming” in my ear. We pulled back and looked at one another.
Our bodies separate, but I could feel her entirely as if we were one entity. She asked, “Who are you, perfect human?”
I replied, “I’m pretty sure I am you.”
Before kissing, I wanted to let her know some things about me. About how my last relationship ended similarly to hers. I had an affair in 2010. It only lasted a few weeks, but the effects of it continually reverberate in my life and the lives of those around me. (More on that later.) I had held in the secret for 5.5 years. The day I cam clean was the day my marriage was over. I tried to keep things together by holding in something so significant, but it only built a greater and more impenetrable wall between my co-parent and I. The guilt was part of why I used to drink so much. I figured I could bear it forever. That it would be too cruel to let her know this thing had happened that I would never do again. On top of how wrong and cruel it was, it also fucked ME up. And I needed to be honest with this new friend and not go too far down into the affectionate wormhole of a new connection without letting her know who I had been, and would understand if that would be a dealbreaker.
She said it was remarkable how far I had come from the person I described myself to once be, and that she was glad to meet me “now” instead of then. Even a day earlier, and who knows if we would have allowed ourselves to connect so profoundly. Before that first kiss, we discussed how we wanted a partnership to look like: true companionship, total transparency, and mutual augmentation or BUST. We made out for what felt like an eternity, and stated tentative plans to meet up when we could, in a day or two.
We’ve now been together for three years. I’ve never experienced a closer friend, a more synchronous lover, and a more viable intellectual contemporary. We discussed being in an open (ethically non-monogamous/ polyamorous/whatever-you-want-to-call-it) relationship within the first couple weeks. At the time I thought the right answer to that was “oh HELL no,” but later, after much reading, was surprised by how much I resonated with that relationship structure: one built on avid, clear communication and trust, a understanding that we will likely feel connections/attractions to others at times (especially given that we are both queer), and a deeply affectionate bond that felt like any intimacy shared in addition to what we experienced together was more of an overflow of what we had rather than a detraction from the partnership.
We’ve had various trials and errors along the way, and often one or neither of us feels all that mentally well. Not because of our relationship or whatever shape it takes in a given period, but because we BOTH experience depression and anxiety in our own ways. We BOTH experience existential dread. We BOTH feel that this mess of a society is so backwards and doesn’t really have a place for compassionate people who would rather live in harmony with the environment than exploit it for momentary personal gain and pleasure. It’s a tough fight at times, but we are here for it, and eager to accept and overcome whatever new challenge with compassion (and grace for those moments of intense fear).
Ultimately, however, I know that this smiling face in the picture here is my partner, my lover, my friend, my companion, my contemporary. Regardless of how hard shit gets or how dissonant we can sometimes feel, we know that just beneath the membrane of illusory separation, that one thing is irrefutable: “I am you.”
###
Strange Visions: Speaking from the Center
I woke up this morning with this anxious feeling trickling through me, its source not exactly known. One of my kids and one of my cats rolled on top of me on the bed, both requesting food of one sort or another. My partner got up first. I took another moment to close my eyes and process the dreams I had been having.
So strange. I don’t recall much from the visions, other than the two people many decades my senior who stopped in the middle of a dancing crowd to jump and land both feet on top of one of my typewriters, a burgundy Remington Noiseless from 1938. When the first person did it, a woman, I was perplexed and asked why. She walked off confused, and resumed her rhythmic undulations. Later, when it happened again, it was an older man, and this time he totally busted the carriage and also the iPad screen that was underneath my typewriter, which I had not noticed until after the damage was done.
Now, I have no idea what the hell this dream means, or even if it’s worth looking into. I have, though, and I wondered if this is something I should take to heart. Either way, I imagine no small part of the jittery sensations in my body have carried over from that dreamscape. I think it might also have to do with the inherent nervousness about my modes of expression, particularly the frequency and heft I tend to infuse into every phrase. Even with packing as much as I can into every word, I still tend to go lengthy and florid.
I’ve been communicating with a new friend I and told them that I’ve been a little bit hesitant in speaking as much as I would like, given that I do not wish to overwhelm. They encouraged me not to reign it in. I said that they had no idea what they were asking. (Haha.) They encouraged me to find an outlet for my expression.
Which is exactly what I’ve been doing this week.
I often feel like I am “too much.” And this is something that goes beyond verbal communication. I tend to have a high tolerance for substances. I have a lot of books at my house. A LOT. If you’ve ever seen me perform under my musical project @naturalastronaut, you know that I push my voice to its edge, both as an effort to feel it and to cut through the cacophonous sounds sod made by a variety of guitar effects and loops. My hair is a lot. Some might consider my manner of dress fairly ostentatious as well. There’s a lyric in one of my songs where I refer to myself as “flowering at the seams.”
OK — { *DEEP* breath } — I admit that I also have a fairly high desire for human affection as well. Not exclusively sensual affection, but just moments apart from this accompanying snap, we made love in a small bamboo forest not 50 meters away. There’s something about sex outdoors, in nature, that feels particularly connective. We’ve experienced long stretches in our relationship where we have been ravenous for one another. Other times, we have lengths of time where financial stress or other factors take up more of a share of our energies. I don’t always fare well during those times, prone lose my mind in self-spun narratives that depict me as undesirable or somehow loathsome. With enough internal convincing (I can make a strong case), I become loathsome. I stress us both out with worry, perpetuating marathon conversations that either find some place of sensible resolve or we are just so drained that there is nothing left to do but to sleep for what few hours remain before the next day’s duties come calling.
I don’t really have any distinct plan in place when I begin writing these micro essays other than to speak directly from my center whatever it is that is lurking beneath the surface. But I guess what I’m getting at here is that human intimacy gets weird, whether it’s a getting-to-know-you conversation with a new friend, an enduring erotic connection, passing a sea of strange faces down the street, or even intimacy unto oneself. Friends can act like strangers. Lovers can act like enemies. An individual can feel so estranged by their own personal self.
What matters most is that we extend grace in moments of perceived disconnection, to see ourselves and others as humans who experience fear, frustration, sadness, joy, and all combinations in between. We are all almost always going through our own shit. It never ends, we just learn more and grow in the process. And if the stakes keep raising, its because we’ve leveled up to the next challenge. Just make sure you find rest and sunlight along the way.
###
Capable of Confidence
I asked the people of Facebook yesterday what they did to build their confidence. Sometimes my posts there are polarizing. People misunderstand what I’m saying or take it as a personal attack and the vitriol of the public stage comes to my desktop. My friends call my other friends names. People wrote dozens of messages trying to persuade me or others why their interpretation of my words can only mean the one specific interpretation they gleaned. Sometimes the comments amass to several hundred heated or otherwise pretentious sentiments. This time was different.
This time, people I’ve known for days or decades chimed in with genuine feedback. I learned a lot about each person who responded, and gained many insights and tools for what I can do when I lack the confidence to move and breathe fully as I am and what I’m growing to be. I’m surprised that others are surprised when they learn that this is much of the time for me.
Many people said to be still. Others said to take action of your own volition. Both are entirely true and essential, as were almost all of the other responses (go to my FB wall to read, if you’re curious).
When I’m not wading through the anxiety and depression I’ve had since before I was old enough to go to school, my ADD works as a superpower. I can connect with most anyone, as I am tapped into the oversoul that comprises us all. I know I am capable of anything. I know WE are capable of anything — the potential for manifestations of infinite love or infinite fear. Which should we choose? Are we even awake enough TO choose? Too often, I am not. But I have been and I can be. You can too.
###
Spontaneous Prose
SPONTANEOUS PROSE
Blue-lit morning. Golden eyes sparkle — never fading — even in the brightness of dawn. Silken and dewey, you writhe.
We knock heads. Face of my face. Understandings between embraces — the entire contiguous organism open, receptive, transmitting electromagnetic connectivity and transmuting pain into presence and joy. Undertow of emotions, sweeping the anxiety out and out until it washes into a billion diamond smiles.
Breaker of breakers. United and untied. Fancifully verbose yet precise — not a word wasted in this stillsuit of eternity.
Breath of my breath. I inhale your exhales — perfect in time, imperfect situation made pure. Whole. Unanimous pleasure. Guidance of intertwined fingers. Goddess of all that I am and will grow to be.
Regal.
With the morning’s digital clangor, I arise — rinse the night’s perspiration from my skin only to to fall back again. 400 threads. 4 million years. My soul, you are divine, infinite, correspondant even in formology. Your brilliance beyond measure, beyond expectation.
In you I find ever-present rest and equanimity.
Te adoro.
August 8, 2016
Creative Confessional: Sleeping at the Wheel of My Life's Purpose
7/18/18
I want to start this off by telling you that I am sorry.
Sorry might not even cut it, though, but I don’t know what else to say about it other than to plainly say: I am sorry. Like really fucking sorry.
I am sorry because I have not been holding up my part of the bargain, not really been sharing the load as diligently as I can. I’ve been sleeping on the job of my life’s purpose, but no one can fire me, so I’m left with two choices:
Wallow in the missed opportunities and squandered moments wherein I could have been practicing. There are tangible consequences to my truancy. Those fallouts are ever-present in my waking reality.
Recognize the path I’m on isn’t going to lead me where I must go, and change courses entirely.
There are certain patterns of living that I have found my way out of (let’s not just yet get into other patterns I’ve slipped into, though) that through expressing my experience even on a small scale has had a broad impact on a few people in my general community in ways that have surprised me.
For some, this had led to distinct changes, others just an ongoing awareness that they bring up to me whenever we happen to be in physical proximity. Then there are those in between. People have reached out to me digitally or in person to let me know that a piece of writing or a show I played had some sort of impact on them. Some people have even thanked me. Some people have been low-key pissed that I’ve not been sharing all along. It’s not a common occurrence (mainly because of how infrequently I’ve shared my writing or music of late), but it hits me deeply and truly when it does.
Far more common in my life has been praise for photographs I have taken. That feels good too, but it’s not the same, and (sorry to those I collaborate with on camera projects) I have a lingering suspicion that while I have learned a great deal about myself and have had some irreplaceable experiences through its practice, that it’s really serving me as a placeholder creative outlet, one with more immediate gratification, and ultimately a deviation from the practices that matter more to me.
From another vantage point, though, I believe that my photography and video work will be much more lighthearted and creative again once I am not neglecting my more pressing creative practice of writing — fiction, essays, poetry, journalism, scripts, and music.
It’s a perverted form of selfishness, really. Much like the selfishness of smoking the better part of a quarter of weed by myself in less than a couple days (edit: I’m mainly abstaining these days). I have an abundance of strange magic in me that has been kept under a seal of repression for as long as I can recall. I cannot truly blame that repression on anyone else but me, in the end, but the years of religious and socially conservative indoctrination, peer ridicule, and being a queer who’s not-exactly-white/not-exactly-POC did not help.
But fuck blame, the nature of it and its affects are far more relevant to this diatribe. Repression, in my experience, is not living the life you are here to live, your life’s purpose.
I’ve repressed myself in so many ways over the years — my spirituality, my sexuality, my gender identity, my cultural heritage, more fully engaging with my romantic partner. I have also repressed myself by not engaging with the things that matter to me most, the things that are true about me regardless of other people or my stage in life. Reading. Writing. Being in my body and not just my mind. Plying guitar. Singing. Being in the water (Cancer sun/Pisces moon, here). Spending time alone. Engaging with people. Letting people know how amazing I think they are (and the freedom NOT to engage with them sexually). Sitting in stillness. Being out in nature. Camping. Exploring the infinite, basically.
Much of the last few years has been hijinks and navel gazing. Not that there is anything wrong with doing those things, just as long as they are illuminating in some way. But even then, illumination when kept to yourself is somehow darker than blindness.
A good friend of mine once told me that a writer who does not write flirts with insanity. That may be true — although I am no flirt. I usually prefer others to make the first move. But in this scenario I’ve been throwing some major shapes, and so me and my own personal brand of insanity have been seeing one another for a good while now. I presume that we always will (even if from a faraway vantage point), but goddamnit if I could just get some balance going I suspect I could do things. New things. Meaningful things. And perhaps (PERHAPS!) it will run concurrently with me not feeling so financially jeopardized that the vegan ice cream goes on the credit card.
At the yoga studio where I practice, a group of regular attendees and some of the teachers went down to Tulum, Mexico, for a retreat. I heard them talking about it after class for weeks and weeks before it happened. The usual response of those hearing about the trip for the first time (and it’s >$3,000 + travel price tag) was more casual than me deciding if I can afford to grab a meal at a restaurant after class.
The unfazed nature with which they regarded such an expenditure of time and funds alarmed me, not in any negative way, more so just realizing how wide a gap there is between my economic reality and theirs (I can’t really afford the monthly membership to the studio, but can far less afford further mental unravelling), putting me in a state of nonplussed bewilderment about how I could be so far behind those who are essentially my peers.
Instantly, I remembered what one of the teachers there said during a late night open studio session, that his view of finances changed when he recognized money as simply a tangible placeholder for an authentic energy exchange. You put your energy out there and those that receive it will reciprocate appropriately.
It struck me that the reason why my finances are so screwy and my clientele has been so inconsistent isn’t really something I can entirely blame on an advertising industry that seems to mainly have budgets for projects that promote businesses or products that harm people and/or the planet. Really, it comes down to my own miserly output. I’m not doing my fucking thing, and I suspect that I will never be in a place of pecuniary stasis until I am (#everydamnday). And I’ll not be able to do that until I make the decision to not repress myself, to not deny who I am by not loving and practicing who I am without compromise.
Aside from self-doubt, then, what’s my excuse? I only recently realized that my means of motivation has been out of focus. What I’m told is that I should seek to write for money and personal glory. Neither of those things are all that appealing unto themselves. Much more recently, I’ve found that what motivates me most about writing is healing, love, discovery, truth, and beauty. To me, those are far more galvanizing (and reciprocating) than invented coin and the pursuit of public praise.
So, again, I am really sorry for not doing my part. We are all crucial, inextricable elements of this Greater Thing together, and like Ralph Waldo Emerson opined in “Self Reliance,” if I’m not actively doing the “work” of what it is to be me, then no one else is either. And to repress who and what I am is to depress who and what I am.
In order for this grand puzzle to work, we must all do our unique part, like the salmon that sims upstream, like the bear that eats part of the salmon and tosses it into the brush. Like the fungi that bore through the salmon and absorb its nutrients. Like the tree whose roots exchange sugar with the fungi for the nutrients from the salmon, grow tall as a result, and breathe oxygen into our lungs so that we may live out our life’s purpose.
We are the one’s driving out own flesh vehicles, and if we are stuck daydreaming and distracted to no avail, we are sleeping at the wheel. There is no autopilot. There is no cruise control — only active exploration or careening into a co-created void.
###
I AM YOU.
I AM (the human that will find) YOU.
I am carving the words you spoke
On the carcass of my mind.
They’re the seeds from which
Will spring forth a new one
A new divine. In between
Those words and moments past
Have crept in the soliloquies
Of my disengagement, my sorrow,
My self-made sadness
Stitched around me like
A cacophonous sarcophagus
Carved by my own fears.
In this I see the pain is the way.
The path through which I will encompass
All Understanding. No longer resisting
Or pretending otherwise. Not through masks
Or basks in my own lakes of misery.
I grow this new one because the old
Is discarded. It was never me anyway,
Just a tool by which I perceive
From time to time — to calculate and groove.
I am its author, not I it.
The junctions are branded at the joints
Of my body: my spirit — my eyes, my mouth, my throat.
Sometimes I crack misshapen
I regrow. Golden ore adhering the pieces
Stronger, brighter, sparkling.
And in all of this, the lesson is to TRUST.
To trust love, the knowing, the all-knower:
The conscious all-watching mind that is not a mind
But encompasses all minds.
Not “God," but I and You and Her and THEY.
Frequent flowerings such as these
Will be my new garden upon which I’ll nourish
And feed not just my own life and form, but those
Ones around me. How sorrowful it is to forget
The truth, to live in opposition
To slake your thirst in misunderstanding
And inner hatred.
But how sweet the nectar that pours
Forth and is there always.
When the resistance is mended, and the path
Which has always seemed uncertain
Is clear and cleaned
And full of unspeakable joy on either side
Of those crystalline daggers,
Aimed straight for the heart.
Tarot, tarot on the table
I think I’m weak but I am able.
The signs conform and confirm the wonder
I knew is beneath these bones, and groans.
They’re not on loan, but always
Right around the road.
I comfort myself with a trek down the tightrope,
Having grown too old for blanket and bottle,
Not in cancerous morsels that taste of deaths
And bleating screams.
I am Tathagata, the ruler of my own
World, inceptor of inceptors.
Guardian without guard.
My chariot awaits my hands to the reins.
It is poised and ready.
The horses fed and watered.
Bristling with jittering excitement,
Muscles twitching, not tense.
I once feared their billowing nostrils,
The hot breath on the back of my neck
As anxiety, but that was a misunderstanding.
In sum,
I am you.
Trump is Not the Problem (You Are)
The reality is that nothing is ever going to change until our perspective changes on a grand scale.
No amount of recycling will do it. No amount of praying to your deity of choice will do it. No amount of voting for one compromiser over another will do it. The same sort of thinking that brought about an issue cannot be used to fix it.
Everything must shift, and not from one extreme of a continuum to another, but within — to another vantage point entirely. Your wishes for sustainability and accountability won't amount to a single lasting thing without a change at the source. Our system will only continue to manufacture garbage because it is built on false premises regarding what really matters.
I see so many excited about the Flynn developments, as if this certainly points to Trump's downfall. But what is Trump but a fruit of the true roots of our issues? Even if we pull him off his paper-or-plastic throne, someone similar is waiting to slither into the seat. Tell me how HRC doesn't believe the same fundamental myths about what it means to be a human person? Tell me what politician out there doesn't turn a blind eye to EVERY organization that profits at the expense of others and the environment? Show me to the poet-king/queen who understands that radical shift in consciousness away from the wallet and to the heart is necessary — no matter how bad it is for business.
Show me the religious person who is more committed to the action of loving their neighbor than they are interested in recruiting people to the same club. Show me parents who are willing to leave well-paying jobs with health insurance because the ethical compromises are not worth the Netflix subscriptions.
(... I'll wait ...)
I often feel simultaneously trapped and alienated in this society that I don't ever remember signing up for, one where cognitive dissonance is the rule and holism the exception. I hear people talk about how they want to be healthy but say "judge not" about their self-proclaimed bacon addiction. How they want peace but talk shit when things don't go their way. We cry for sustainability but still want discount, mass-produced retail items.
I aim to use all the intellectual, financial, and physical resources at my disposal to encourage this existential revolution, but I'm aware of how I still take part in the charade. I'm typing these pontifications from an Apple computer. I have an old station wagon sitting out front of my house that uses petroleum. I shop at the grocery store (and don't always bring my own bag). I’m wearing a clearance sweater from H&M. I left the water running.
I wonder about finding my way by living off the land for the rest of my years, until I am old and can give myself back to the Earth as its nourishment. But what good is the life of a hermit, enjoying timelessness in the wilderness when most every other human on the planet is either playing into the system that destroys our world or is being crushed beneath its machinations?
How then, do we move forward? Do we simply eat and drink and be merry, accepting tomorrow's inevitable death? Or can we change course entirely, seeking true sustenance, and allow life to go on without putting the breaks on divine evolution?
The mind of man is not holy. The mind of man is metal, a construct, useful as a supporting tool but disastrous when allowed to govern. It’s time we understand that our purpose on this earth as conscious beings isn’t to control life but to assist in nurturing it, to allow it to thrive. To understand and embrace nature's need for diversity (of all kinds), and to help it come along … sometimes by making space for that to happen by getting the hell out of the way.
The earth doesn’t belong to humans, we humans belong to it. Imagine the potential for how much greater this reality would be if we took our rightful place in that role — one far more rewarding than this incessant squeezing of water from the stone.
If you see something, say something. If you know something, do something. Otherwise, your "woke" is simply a sleepwalking awareness.
Practice is Perfect
I write (or must, rather) because of the way it quiets the sylvan nature of my mental landscape.
Thoughts crop up in lattice-like structures, crossing over my awareness to construct a mending wall between I and my experience. I was trying to read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael in the moments before writing this but couldn’t (because of that aforementioned clutter), and so I decided to submit and transmute that noise into a voice.
* * *
The utility of my writing practice is precisely why the practice is so difficult for me to enact. As humans, our collective disease is one that seeks to undermine our root experience — or perhaps disguise the roots by weaving in layers upon layers of false ones to explore, but they lead nowhere and grow nothing. We deny the still, small voice in our heads and instead abdicate to the louder self-judgements and desire for social acceptance.
Writing (or any spiritual self-awareness practice such as yoga, meditation, gratitude, wonder, conscious breathing, intentional eating) brings me to a point of centering. But writing of just any kind is no longer enough to keep me in a lasting state of presence. This is why I don't write clickbait or sales letters. I have learned that I require engagement in all parts of my being to keep the entirety of my self awake and joyful — constantly pressing against the edges of my abilities to continually align myself with a key certainty of reality: the fact that it is infinite.
I have sometimes said that “practice is perfect,” and in case the meaning of the phrase is not self-evident, I’ll elucidate. It often alludes even me, the one speaking it, as is evidenced by my lack of practice over the past 8 years.
We grew up hearing the unintentionally false mantra that "practice makes perfect," but in an infinite reality, true perfect doesn’t exist outside of the constrained definitions of geometry. We are not geometric shapes. We are humans with rich inner and outer lives. We can celebrate a work of art as being “perfect” in the sense that we perceive no flaws or nothing lacking that would otherwise make it complete. We can make a perfect score on an exam. But the honest artist or student only acknowledges the compliment with grim acceptance, knowing that within the completed form lies many, many hidden errors along the way, or deeper questions, expressions, and abilities that remain beyond such an individual — even if only for the time being.
There is no point in thought or yoga or knowledge where one reaches an ultimate, perfect form in which practice becomes redundant and unnecessary. That sense of absolute perfection does not exist for conscious forms. It is counter to the fundamental truths of the greater universe. Faith in such a ridiculous definition of what it means to be perfect keeps us from trying at all — either because we believe we are inherently flawed and constitutionally incapable of such a feat or because we think it is so impossibly hard. In both cases, the resulting thought is the same: Why bother trying?
So we roll cigarettes between our fingers and inhale the acrid fumes, though we know the precise manner in which doing so will poison our bodies. We fail to move our muscles and joints, opting for (and tweeting about) our sedentary lifestyles as if they are an inevitable part of Western life. We neglect our nutrition in favor of the immediate gratification of processed flavors. We lash out in anger or stew in the miasma of self-judgments. We harbor resentments, though they serve no purpose. We flood our precious cellular structures with all manners of toxic materials, believing that the state of inebriation is preferable to the states of boredom or feeling our true feelings … scared of what will happen when we allow ourselves to acknowledge exactly where (and who) we are.
When we understand, however, that practice only makes perfect in the sense that the practice itself is perfect, we awaken a timeless freedom: accepting who and what and when and where and why and how we are here and now. We learn that perfection does exist: Not in the sense of a neurotic chase after the impossible or a particular shape or embodied totality, but in embracing the precise awareness of what we are currently capable of, that we are unlimited in our capacity to grow, and that to seek that growth puts us at the very cusp of our experience — ever looking outward in joyful awe because we have inched forward into the infinitely wondrous abyss we call reality.
With this in mind, my challenge to my personal self as this ever-changing, watery form known as Marcelo Asher Quarantotto — a shape that is inseparable from the air molecules between my skin and yours and thereby an inextricable part of all that was and is and will be in this world and beyond — is to permit myself the kindness of accepting this truth. To not impress the burden of the impossible onto my conscious thinking, thereby crushing my spirit under its weight and preventing me from trying at all, not accepting and practicing at the point in which I am so I can sharpen myself into something greater.
Let's embrace what we do know to be true and not get lost in the insanity of dark thoughts about what is not.
To be more specific, these words are a selfsame expression of what they point to: practice is perfect. I will never become anything outside of that which I practice. No need to worry and judge that my writing or my yoga or my music or my image-making or my interactions with the ones I love (which includes you, dear reader) are not unto themselves the fullest expression of what is humanly possible, but instead to be joyful in a sense of being here and now and doing.
###
On Being Your Authentic Self (guest post and film for The Listening)
Read my words on The Listening's blog
Short promo film I created to showcase the general experience of The Listening.
As my life has been in a fairly consistent state of flux since ... forever, the concept of "being authentic" (and no, in case you are worried, I never use the #liveauthentic hashtag).
For me, being authentic has less to do with searching and finding but more so with simply being still and realizing what and where you actually are.
Nick George, founder of The Listening, asked me to create a guest blog post in honor of tomorrow's session. If you attend, you'll likely see me doing a bit of photojournalism for Riverviews Artspace.
You may also see me perform a song and poem. No promises. But it's likely.
In the meantime, you can read my guest post on The Listening's website.
From negligent alcoholic to dedicated parent and doing yoga
You can change too.
Header image from a recent shoot with James River Yoga.
—————
I just realized that as I type these words, I am somewhere past the two year mark of practicing yoga, two years of engaging in a lifestyle and pattern far different than I would have ever conceived for myself — even up until the exact point where my switch finally flipped from progressively unhealthy to getting well.
I have been many things in my so-far short life. Thirty years is not a long life, but it sure feels like it sometimes, like my experience is a living cassette tape played (and worn) at 2x speed to fit in an extra 30.
I have been a college newspaper editor and columnist. An intern at a mom-and-pop newspaper. A high school literature teacher. An intern at a culture and arts magazine that highlighted the avant-garde leanings of Buenos Aires, Argentina. And let's not forget the years of my life spent in restaurants, serving soft drinks to kids, decaf to seniors and microbrews to coeds.
I have been a copywriter and a “reporter” for the propaganda wing of a well-known (for good or ill) institute of higher education. A newspaper designer and copy desk jockey. I left to try making more money as a car insurance salesman. It did not go so well.
I worked at a retail store for 18 months for less than the local poverty rate, while expected to operate as $50K/year marketing professional. Then I worked as a content manager for a counseling brand which, ironically, led me to depression, anxiety and extreme distractibility.
Throughout most of these experiences, I was married (we split at the end of 2015, but remain friends). I tied the knot two weeks and one day past my 21st birthday, with a year of undergraduate Christian college yet to go. Having grown up in the restrictive environment of WWJD bracelets, “go-against-the-flow” T-shirts, dogma-driven re-creations of pop culture references, and Vacation Bible School — where everything “outside" was considered unquestionably bad and everyone inside unquestionable — one is led to dip a toe into the pool of non-restricted life.
You quickly find the water is welcoming, warm ... and suddenly overhead.
I became an alcoholic, arguably in the few weeks preceding my marriage, which leads my therapist to suggest that I have a genetic makeup prone to addiction. It took me eight years and three children to emerge from no less than a slight buzz (if not a full-on blackout) on a nightly basis. That emergence came in August 2013, not long before I started yoga and right in the midst of when I stopped writing almost entirely, and instead spent my time taking pictures and shooting films at most every opportunity. I even squeezed small music video shoots in during my unpaid lunch breaks from my marketing gig at the retail store.
It took me going deep into the alcoholic pool, so to speak, to finally find my way out by means of the drain. I had lost all semblance of my childhood faith in 2010, a tumultuous summer that was less of a turning point in life and more of a completely destructive period of painful upheaval (the effects of which have yet to fully play out). The de-conversion pulled me even farther into alcoholism (age 25), into a three-year chain of late nights that I wasted on getting wasted. Those nights turned into mornings that sat heavy on my chest, like the 1,000 elephants in the bedroom that kept me from engaging with what was most important to me, what meant the most and for that which I labored so much to secure: a love for (and of) a beautiful spouse, otherworldly amazing daughters, a home I own(ed), a passion for lyricism and a desire to take up my post in the infinite tunnel of lamps and mirrors that stretches throughout time and place.
Simply stated: I was too depressed and full of toxins to roll off the couch to play in the sandbox or to crack an egg.
I was sick. Overweight physically and emotionally. Distant. Neglectful of myself, of those around me and allowed my so-called talents to dull. I subjected myself to the horror of clearly seeing the life I wanted to live while wondering why, over and over again, WHY I continued to act against it. An invisible figure, perfectly matched to my form, stood in my way down every pathway that could have proved infinitely more beneficial, lovely, profitable and enjoyable. I continued to wonder why I did and spoke such a way at such times.
I resisted the truth of it — too awful to comprehend in full and so instead of changing things, I persisted in foolishness.
That is, as I said, until August 2013 ... when a fully-grown doe jumped out onto a dark Virginian roadway to commit suicide beneath the front wheel of my vintage motorcycle.
Yet another venture that my then-wife suggested against with her sage-like clairvoyance. I slid 30 feet down the street, shredding my backpack. Remarkably, I hobbled away with minor scrapes and bruises. Two days later, I found myself on a plane to Los Angeles after accepting two invitations: to assist on a commercial shoot and to maybe give up drinking while I was out there in an effort to gain some physical and mental stamina.
(For the record, I was not intoxicated while riding the bike, but had been within the previous 24 hours and also immediately afterward).
Within 48 hours of no alcohol consumption and cleaner eating, I felt different. Sharper. More energetic. Present. I wound up in the apartment of famed rock-and-roll guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, whose many successes (world-renowned skill, multiple projects still ongoing, restaurants and a level of physique one cannot help but gawk at) he attributed to something he learned from his idol and former bandmate, Frank Zappa: He didn’t drink.
Aside from a sip at my friend's wedding a month later (wine made on location) I have not consumed a single drop of alcohol since, and doubt I will ever again. Everyone’s cognitive disposition and biology is different, but for me, I look back at that time (and the Instagram post) and give thanks to that doe who sacrificed her life — however unintentionally — so that I might regain my own.
It was in the following months that I began practicing yoga, and soon found myself at peace with myself and my surroundings while also growing more and more aware of how much of my life and love had been misspent. How much I had thrown away potential for just another night of IPAs and indie bands while my co-parent sat home wondering less and less:
When will he grow up? Where is he? When will he come home?
By the time I came out of this eight year hangover, many mistakes had already been made. No amount of yoga, meditation and gluten-free eating would unmake them. No deviation from my irrationally angry past would erase the trails that were left, would silence the vile, untruthful words I used to spill upon a person I love and respect above most others and, for reasons of puerile selfishness and addiction, I had forgotten how to cherish. The me that knew how had been drowned out and silenced (it’s all so painfully clear now) — but they're back.
All of this and more has pushed me from job to job, craft to craft, always seeking the peace and purpose that has been right in front of me all along. The peace I would never find in cigarette ashes, broken bottles and pot resin. The peace that is only found in loving well, loving often and loving incessantly.
Although, as said earlier, I feel decades older than 30, I also feel like a new human each and every day. On some mornings, I sense limitless possibilities for learning and capability, and on others I feel terror and vulnerability — like I am and adult who still doesn’t know quite how to stand better than a newborn giraffe sent out into the world with a disproportionate stature-to-experience stability ratio.
It’s hella frightening at times, but I’m beginning to wonder if that's the point.
I wonder if all of this living and learning, all of these life inversions that seem as inevitable as they are scary are pushing us onward into something real and beautiful and new. Perhaps instead of shying away from these heuristic flips, what I really need to do is dedicate myself to practicing them fully — like my crow poses, headstands, and shoulderstands.
The word yoga, in Sanskrit, means union. It is a union wrought from uncomfortable moments, often difficult to engage with and sometimes the last thing I want to do on any given afternoon. It’ll hurt. I’ll sweat. It will take and hour or so away from seeking another freelance client or from writing clickbait at a reckless speed to make the few dollars worth the time — all for the sake of creating noise, distraction and self-serving SEO rankings (which seems to be the one of the only marketable self-employed uses of a journalism degree, these days). But it always silences the internal voice, the voice that once called me away from my typewriter, down the street and into the bar. The voice that tells me nothing in this life makes sense.
It feels like our entire system is inverted right now. Few things feel substantive outside of spending time with the people I care about and practicing that which generates not money but inner and outer peace. We are faced with the reality of one bozo presidential option over another, while the only candidates who do seem to be authentically humanitarian are considered to not have an Icarus-the-pig in a hell-bound blizzard’s chance of getting elected (or much less, making a difference). We are faced with the quandary of doing what enriches our plotlines vs. what lines our pockets. We opt for the latter, and then wonder why the world is in bass-ackwards turmoil.
We seem to be choosing the same foolishness again and again, if for no other reason than we are used to it. History repeating itself. Dog to its vomit. Fool to folly. The Ego making sure we continue to confuse our limited thought patterns for our identity.
I predict either doom or transcendence. What other options are there? Because if there’s anything I’ve learned in the largely silly and ill-managed years I’ve spent on this planet, it’s that the status quo leads to nowhere but a cruse controlled careen on a windy mountain roadway. Things get better or they get worse. Stagnancy is a myth. As much of a myth that we need only bide our time and wait for some other person or entity to step in and save us from our own inactivity.
That's never going to happen. Change can be sparked by events outside of ourselves, but it can only be sustained through internal dedication. Through coming to terms with our very own foolish hearts and minds and deciding to walk another path.
For me to come so far in alcohol abuse as to now be counting the years of sobriety, for me to go so far away from angry as to now be idyllic in my pursues of unity and peace, for me to have once ignored the very things that are now the only pursuits I give any real lasting shits about, I know that you, dear reader — soul of my soul, consciousness buried in negative self-talk, fear, and disillusionment — are capable of doing the exact same: inverting your life.
There are two ways you can go about it:
Practice, so the labor and pain becomes your joy.
— or —Play roulette: Dive even further into the chaos of needless suffering — and, through the sheer agony of it, come out either reborn or dead.
The choice is yours.
(If you want to see the physical proof of what I am talking about, here's the before-and-after:)
That's me on the far left, Fallen Leaf Lake, California (September 2013).
Me in April 2018: 70 lbs., several addictions, and many emotions lighter.
How would you like your life to be different? What's standing in your way? What can you do about it today? Let's chat in the comments section.
Mystic Numbers, Mythic Voice: A photosession with Lloyd Harmon
“THEREFORE, WITHOUT BEING ATTACHED TO THE FRUITS OF ACTIVITIES, ONE SHOULD ACT AS A MATTER OF DUTY, FOR BY WORKING WITHOUT ATTACHMENT ONE ATTAINS THE SUPREME.”
— THE BHAGAVAD GITA
Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon contacted me in the fall of 2015 to obtain headshots for an upcoming voice recital.
The request came at a time when anxieties about some personal issues were mounting. Taking photos started to become a challenge. The excitement I once felt when preparing for a shoot was nowhere to be found. I would get worried about the end result being "cool" enough.
I used to get a similar sinking feeling when I worked various day jobs, but instead of being worried about the hip-factor, the sensation had more to do with work that required me to compromise my ethics in some way. Having since shed all such employment, the reappearance of those feelings was troubling.
It was a time when I learned to lean into a quote from The Bhagavad Gita, which Steven Pressfield paraphrases in The War of Art:
"We have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor."
The shoot took place on a foggy afternoon in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia. With rainwater dripping all around us in a leaky parking garage, we started off with some traditional headshots. After about an hour of snapping photos on my 5D Mark II and a Pentax MX 35mm, I started to feel a bit more comfortable (submitting to the process).
I clipped my UE Boom Mini bluetooth speaker to a belt loop on my jeans and let tUnE-YaRdS set the new rhythm.
Jeremiah transitioned from formalwear into street clothes, and then into something more representative of his true self: a Lebanese thwab, chalked-up Nikes he wore during high school basketball days, a baseball cap and a hooded green bubble parka. He could have just as easily looked like a cross-dressing hobo, but instead the ensemble felt cohesive and natural. He pulled some recent artwork out of his car, a Sharpie from his pocket and inscribed the number “3” on each palm.
The singer held the backs of his hands up to his eyes, recreating the scenes with El Hombre Pálido in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.
I meant to ask him then the significance of the 3s, but I often get into a moment-to-moment flow while my shutter fires. The thoughts slide away. I’m simply breathing: present and responsive to the human on the other side of the lens.
NUMEROLOGY
When I sent him some digital samples later on that evening, I shot him a message on Facebook.
“Oh yeah. What’s behind the 3s?”
“33 is one of my favorite numbers,” he corrected. “It’s related to numerology.”
My only experience with something even related to numerology, the belief that numbers have a mystical connection to real life events, is the esoteric Jewish practice of assigning numeric value to Hebrew words from the Torah I read about in Chaim Potok novels.
I’ve never given it a second thought, but I’m a lot more spiritually open/curious these days. I looked into it, and immediately connected with a couple lines:
“A 33 used to its full potential means that there is no personal agenda, only focus on humanitarian issues. Someone with 33 strongly featured in their chart has the ability to throw themselves into a project that goes far beyond mere practicality.”
While I have yet to begin any investigation into my “chart,” this sentiment struck me because of the way I approach my life and work as a single practice.
After years of being employed at various functions — copywriting for evangelical higher education, editing advertising-heavy newspapers filled with syndicated content, receiving payment from companies that mistreat their staff and getting glimpses in the national advertising world that hocks harmful products for the sake of profit for a select few — I came to the conclusion that I cannot ethically accept a check in exchange for my complicity with what I believe is damaging to our lives and environment.
No, I don’t wish to help you sell your tobacco product. I will respectfully decline to create video content for a low-prices retailer with an inhumane work culture and bottom-dollar wages. Making any amount of money is not worth the weight of my soul, knowing that I am perpetuating “the problem.”
Instead, I’d like to take the route numerology ascribes to the Master number 33: Focus on humanitarian issues, no matter how “far beyond mere practicality” doing so might seem.
I would much rather film a low-budget sizzler for a local yoga studio than create another wine commercial. Or, like in this instance with Jeremiah, help a fellow artist bring more beauty into the world.
TURNING PRO
Up until the day of this shoot, I had only known him as the fiery-haired singer-songwriter who kept popping into my periphery through the landscape of the local music scene.
About a year before, my brother sent me mobile footage from a coffee shop performance where Jeremiah played an original tune, “January Eyes,” on a harmonium, and also a cover of Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy” — both of which challenged the capacity of my iPhone speakers despite the simple live setup of one voice and one instrument per song. I was shocked by his level of vocal ability, a cross between Jónsi, Jeff Buckley and a soulfulness uncommon to his complexion.
I texted back to my brother: “Holy shit.”
He’s an anomaly: a ginger who sings in a gospel choir, performing solos simultaneously transcendent and reserved that break through already-powerful backing harmonies. And his personal work draws heavily from electronic experimentation, otherworldly folk music, jazz, eastern philosophy and esoteric knowledge.
For a transient town such as ours where bigger talents pass through from time to time — but only to get a degree and shove on to bigger cities to find room for self-actualization —discovering an artist’s artist such as Jeremiah is a rarity. He isn’t waiting for greener pastures to flex the fullness of his creative muscle. Instead, he’s actively engaged with the process of fertilizing his work in the “here and now” of a strange (yet lovely) Bible belt city.
Pressfield, in Turning Pro (his follow-up to The War of Art), lists this attribute in his twenty Qualities of the Professional:
“10. The professional plays it as it lays.”
Even pro golfers foul up a stroke from time to time and send the ball into the cut. There’s no option but to submit to the reality of a bad shot (“play it as it lays”) and get back into the game. The lesson is that any amateur wanting to turn pro must learn to not approach these moments with discouragement, but to perceive shortcomings as opportunities to embrace her or his current skill level and to attempt a course-correct.
Accept and work with reality. There’s no other way to progress.
No, Lynchburg isn’t the most opportunity-laden town for artists of any medium (at the moment), but a true artist like Jeremiah practices regardless of externalities. I pass by his room now late at night (I now rent a makeshift “studio” — a spare room in the midtown duplex where he lives with two other singer-songwriters) and hear him live broadcasting his painting and songwriting process on Periscope. Or I come by in the middle of the day and hear him experimenting with outlandishly beautiful sound samplings and beat makings on an Akai keyboard. I hear him pumping away on his harmonium while he allows his voice to effortlessly float with the powerful, always-on-pitch control that a show tune singer would envy.
And while the experience of his art (like I said earlier) is one of transcendence, a near mythical vocal quality infused with the musings of a mystic, there’s also an undeniable practicality to its practice — an application of ass-to-chair (to paraphrase Norman Mailer), an application of Self to simply do the work we feel compelled to do while letting the unknown results of that labor come about of their own accord.
Perhaps this “mere practicality,” attributed to the number 33, the number Jeremiah wrote on his outstretched palms doesn’t mean impracticality, but rather a far greater practicality. Perhaps if instead of doing things merely for an anticipated and assured outcome or gain we did them simply for the sake of doing — for self and for humanity — we would find a far greater reward than we could have ever conceived.
Unstuck in space and time
It has become obvious that I'm unstuck. I'm in a perpetual state of leaving and going to all at the same time. Even while I'm sitting here writing this, I'm thinking about where these words could possibly go, and how I have to leave this job and go to another within a matter of hours.
I'm always going and leaving, which leads me to wonder which places am I leaving from and which am I coming back to. In short, there is no place that I go to where I finally "am" and that when I leave it I will eventually come back to it. I'm going off to somewhere else where I will eventually leave and then return to. All of it.
I'm realizing that the idea of coming and going is nearly irrelevant. I simply "am" wherever I am -- in one constant and permanent stream of nowness, and it's infinite, because when I inevitably die and decompose, the matter that formerly made up my skin, teeth, blood, flesh and these days mostly hair, will dissipate through the earth and the atmosphere, only to be recollected somewhere and become something else.
The point becomes to make sure that wherever I am in this moment, that I am making the best of it and not giving too much thought to what I have done or could be doing in the future. It's irrelevant, because neither of those timescapes exists. It's only what I'm doing in the moment that has any actual meaning, what I'm doing to build upon and enrich my forever current state of being.
It's always now. It always has been and it always will be.
It's infinite. Like an abyss staring into another abyss trying to make sense of it. Or, better yet, mirrors standing face to face. We're all doing this at all times, simply reflecting other people and everything, which is also reflecting itself. Infinity.
This is significant for creativity. At least it is to me in this moment. Knowing that whatever I do is a reflection of my environment and how I interact with it, and how that "image" is reflected again and again without end. The simple way to say it is that "everything is connected," which I believe to be true, but I believe that phrase is a misdirected oversimplification.
I believe that in the same way holy texts use the phrase "I am," that "We are." And it doesn't matter what happens tomorrow or in the future or after we die. Because it all will just be whatever it is, so it's ridiculous for anyone to do anything other than to just "be" and "do," since that's all there really is. Outside of that, it's all just distractions keeping us from being fully present and actually living.
My mind is so caught up in it's own constructs and endless loops that I fail to "do" more than I actually do. Even 90/10 would be an overly-generous ratio.
But enough of that. I'm approaching the precipice where my continuing to write this could begin to infringe upon "doing" and become more of a now waste. The only way, then, to be there, it to just jump into stream. And instead of letting it carry me along for a ride or, worse yet, sinking or trying to swim the other way, I'm charged with more than simply swimming with the tide: My task (or my life's purpose) is to create currents of my own.
Now and forever.
New articles, new insights, but more to come {in brief}
For my second piece in Lynchburg Business magazine, I was assigned to speak with local building juggernaut, English Construction (PDF). It's becoming a trend, it seems, that I'm on the construction beat. My third (PDF) was about an mammoth renovation going on in what was formerly the most advanced textile research facility in the country.
I'm a couple months in on my adventure of non-traditional employment. I do supplement my workload with shifts at my favorite bar/pizzeria and by doing some page design for newspapers in the region, but I have yet to regret my decision to leave my full-time job this past July.
There is definite struggle, though — it's what I signed up for. As compared to months (years, even) past, living feels much more full over these past few months. I'm doing more of what I enjoy. I'm more active (read: losing cubicle fat) and spend more time with my kids. And opportunities are opening up like never before.
So I might be tightening my belt from the combined effect of being more active and not being able to afford as much food, but I'm living for myself and my loved ones, and not under the thumb of any employer that maintains that they have any right to dictate the way I look, speak, dress and think.
—@MARCELOASHERQ
Prose & Pizza, Volume I: A recap
To help recuperate money spent on throwing a two-day music festival in September 2011, my friends and I organized a literary reading at our local pizzeria and watering hole, Rivermont Pizza.
------------------------------------
I’ve been known to do foolhardy things -- to get an idea in my head and pursue it to its furthest extreme. An example? Right now comes to mind. Many of my efforts outside of my employment hinge upon Lynchburg's art scene, and what I’d like to see it become.
Specifically, my friends and I put on the Hill City Roots (a.k.a. Seven Hills Folk Festival) music festival in September, when everyone and everything told us it would not happen. Everything was working against us, even our own haphazard schemes toward organizing it.
It did happen. Albeit, the turnout was not what we’d hoped, but it wasn’t anything surprising. Same weekend as one of the biggest parties downtown Lynchburg throws every year. Same weekend as Randolph College’s alumnae weekend. Same weekend as Land Jam. But it happened. And we learned a lot.
So, it’s nice when things fit together without much in the way of glitches. The Nov. 10 Prose & Pizza, Volume I, reading at Rivermont Pizza has given us a much-needed embrace of afirmation. Kick-ass posters and handbills were designed by Gabriella Muglia and printed by Bright Images. And our readers (Adam Davies, Chris Gaumer and Vic Sizemore) were amazing, which came as no surprise.
The turnout, however, pushed the limits of our expectations.
I arrived on location at 7:20 p.m. that night, coming straight from working on the second installment of the Rivermont Pizza Christmas album. We set up, had a couple of drinks and waited for the crowd to trickle in.
Except “trickle” isn’t quite accurate. The small, graffitied room swelled with 70 people before we had a chance to check our watches.
Vic, one of my closest friends, kicked everything off. It could have been the beer, my over-analytical nature or a combination of several factors, but I perceived a disengaged stillness in the room. I wondered if people were paying attention at first, and remembered that I botched the introduction.
“Who is this white guy with an afro?” they must wonder. “And this reader wearing a Big Lebowski T-shirt -- why should I listen?”
Whether my thinking was based on reality or just nerves soon became irrelevant. Lights sparked, pair-by-pair, in the eyes that exchanged glances with familiar eyes.
It was clear: My boy’s got skills.
Vic finished his reading. It was a story that developed and revealed itself in the way that only good stories do; a story that the audience becomes engrossed in and really experiences. John Gardner calls it the “fictive dream.” You forget you’re reading a story or listening to someone read to you, and simply exist in the dialogue and subtle details.
Flannery O’Connor said that a great piece of fiction can’t be described to people who ask you what it’s about. You just have to read it. In the same way, I doubt anyone walking away after Vic finished could have explained to anyone what his story was about. The listener did, however, know what it was about because he or she experienced it -- in 1080p HD.
The crowd’s enthusiasm did not wane as the evening progressed. Chris Gaumer (another good friend of mine of more than eight years) adjusted the microphone, took a breath and took off.
I’m sure I had a stupid-ass grin on my face the whole time, but I wasn’t alone. My friend Leah could sit up straight for only so long before her torso lurched forward in laughter.
Was it that good. Yes, it was that good. And it was in Lynchburg.
Eat it, naysayers.
And it’s no easy thing what Chris accomplished -- standing in front of friends, students, colleagues and strangers, to lay dozens of hours worth of hard work out in the open. Especially when some of it dealt with the nature of his being beleaguered by ubiquitous bed wetting and therefore unable (mostly) to attend childhood sleepovers.
Novelist and Lynchburg College writer-in-residence Adam Davies did not fail to live up to expectations. He read a few scenes from the highly-praised “Mine All Mine,” with details that would have made everyone uncomfortable if they had not been so amusing.
And, Adam, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for the glass of Jameson -- warmed my soul, it did.
And thank you, attendees, for being there. Despite being packed in like bondiola rellena, you all sat through like champs, and we all had a great time.
Humbled and excited for our future events. Stay tuned as This Is Lynchburg takes our readings on the road -- we’ll be gracing various restaurants around the city for later readings, and will definitely host more at Rivermont Pizza.
Once upon a time, I interviewed (The) Facebook cofounder Chris Hugues
When I started pursuing writing back in 2005, I knew almost nothing about journalism, and what was then called The Facebook was brand new (and available exclusively) to college students. We had no idea how the social media platform would come to define our generation.
I thought it was pretty cool and I wanted to write about it for my practicum writing for Liberty University's student newspaper, the Liberty Champion, so I sent an email to The Facebook, which eventuated in some back-and-forth with cofounder Chris Hughes. I'm still trying to locate the PDF of that issue of the paper (it seems I've found every single one I either appeared in or designed except this one), but want to share with you what I wrote then, despite how it reveals how much of a novice I was.
Below is the unedited draft of what was published in the 2005 spring semester.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Get Poked
by,
Marcelo A. Quarantotto Jr.
LIFE! Reporter
Liberty Champion
As of April 2005, LibertyUniversity has been overtaken by one word: Facebook. The Facebook is an internet-based networking phenomenon that has become somewhat of a craze among Liberty’s student body, as well as being utilized by various faculty members.
Back in winter of 2004, the gears in the head of Harvard Student Mark Zuckerberg began to turn as ideas formulated to what The Facebook is today. Zuckerberg, the founder, eventually joined forces with Dustin Moskovitz, officially known as “Destroyer;” Andrew McCollum, called “Lockbox;” and “Pressguy,” Chris Hughes.
Hughes states in an email that the original vision “was a pretty simple concept: to create a universal online database for college students with social-networking functionality.” He explains how Zuckerberg wanted to create an alternative to the standard college yearbook that often leaves students disappointed and/or embarrassed, and instead give students something that they can customize to their own personal predilection.
During The Facebook’s initial release on Wednesday, February 4th, 2004, “it was a project by and for Harvard students,” claims Chris Hughes, “but because over 6,000 Harvard kids signed up within the first three weeks, it seemed ridiculous not to open it up to a few other schools.”
As it stands today, The Facebook has about 832 colleges and universities registered, which includes about 3.6 million students, teachers, alumni and the like. On the website’s “About” page, it describes it as “an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges.”
What is the future for The Facebook? Chris Hughes claims within the next few months there will be right of use for every college and university in the nation, and that the staff of The Facebook will continue to add “new functionalities and features…improving our users’ overall experience on the site.
The Facebook gives its users the capability to search people in their schools by name, gender, graduating year, interests and many other classifications. There is a multitude of other functions offered such as looking into how certain people are connected to each other and seeing who is enrolled in the same classes.
Junior Christopher Bowman, a Broadcast Video major, expresses his satisfaction with The Facebook. Although he doesn’t spend as much time on the site as he did when he first registered, he still says, “The Facebook is great for keeping in touch with friends over the summer break.”
Another Liberty student, Pastoral Ministries major Jason Drinnen, uses his account for more than just keeping touch with friends. “The Facebook is a bridge for ministry,” he states, “It is good in evangelism for reaching our peers for Christ.”
One comical and good-natured activity found on The Facebook is poking. Poking is a feature added to the website that has no real purpose other than sheer amusement. One student can “poke” another by pressing the link that says “Poke Him!” or, “Poke Her!” under another student’s profile picture. The other user will receive a message later with a picture of a finger that says “You have been Poked,” and will be given the option to “poke back.”
“It’s kinda cool when you get poked and you see the picture of the finger,” says Senior Tim Hawks who is double-majoring in Business and Psychology. “It’s a fun way of interacting with your friends when you don’t see them much….especially when you get in a poking war.”
The Facebook will also give users reminders of when another person’s birthday is. Isabel SoriaGalvarro, a Sophomore Family and Child Development major, told The Champion that mass amounts of people were giving here birthday congratulations, even people that she didn’t know!
The capability to find people with common interests is a very prominent theme of The Facebook. For each college, there is the ability to create groups of any kind, and students can join most groups of their choosing. Communications Faculty member Mr. James Pickering is one of LibertyUniversity’s teachers that frequently uses The Facebook. Mr. Pickering confirms the usefulness of it when he says that it “allows students to communicate who have like interests.”
While Mr. Pickering, and other faculty members, enjoys The Facebook as a worthwhile tool for communication, he shares some concerns for misuse. “Let’s not promote or be proud of the negative parts of our university.” Apparently, there are some groups of questionable ethical content.
So, as a message to the incoming freshman, log-on to www.TheFacebook.com, get connected, start poking and mind your manners.
—
Photo source (altered for visibility).
Article: Function is Beauty — Falling Acorn Timber Framing Company
I first met Kyle Murphy not long before I moved to Buenos Aires. He was a recent transplant to Lynchburg, Va., from Raleigh, N.C. Another editor at my college paper had grown up with his wife, Carolyn, in Maine. I guess Carolyn came to Lynchburg on occasion, but they essentially moved to Lynchburg without knowing a soul.
When I finally moved back to Lynchburg, nearly three years later, I'd run into Kyle and Carolyn on occasion. We'd share anecdotes about our kids or news about our mutual friend.
Last month, I had the opportunity to sit down with Kyle for a freelance article I was to writing for Lynchburg Business Magazine. My preparation for such encounters includes as little preparation as possible. I may have a list of questions to ask, but it isn't often that I find it appropriate to ask all if even half of them. My preference is conversation to interview; the responses I get from the few questions I do ask end up being much more meaningful in these situations.
I approached our encounter not without a hint of butterflies. Kyle and I have known each other for nearly five years, but this was the first actual conversation we would have. The interview opened with my telling him that I would be asking a bunch of questions that might seem redundant or obvious, but for the sake of the interview I was going to pretend that I knew nothing about him. I didn't really have to pretend though. At most social gathering's, we'd tip-toe around one another without a damn thing to say. A lot of whatsups and nodding.
Our interview stretched on for three hours, challenging the batteries in my digital voice recorder. Friends dropped in throughout the conversation, and my playing back the recording revealed more than a few instances where I asked myself: "Why the hell did you say that."
That's to be expected.
Kyle went into great detail about his passion for timber framing, a minimalistic style of carpentry where the builder uses large beams and few tools (almost no power tools). And with everything that was said, there was one mantra that rang out: Do things well so others will do things well too. It sounds almost sacred, and it speaks volumes of what should be at the forefront of the mind during the artistic process. The ultimate goal of the artist, then, should not be one of glory or riches -- the goal of the artist should simply be to create the best art he or she can possibly can, that way others are prompted to do the same. Spending time in Brooklyn last week made me think of this concept again. I was surrounded by millions of people, and for any one of them there is probably another 10,000 trying to achieve the exact same thing. The perpetual result is a massive ball of flesh, stone, glass and steel that's in a constant wrestling match to produce better and better things.
But I digress.
The folks at Prototype Advertising were kind enough to publish the resulting article in the July issue of Lynchburg Business Magazine, and even gave me another assignment for another construction company. Is there such a thing as a "construction beat" in journalism?
The article in its entirety can be read here.
View Kyle's work at www.fallingacorn.com (slated for a rebuild in the near future).
Header imagery from www.fallingacorn.com.