back alley

Four days till my 30th birthday. As such- some meandering thoughts, thirty in number, one for every fall that has raised my age by one:

1. I thought that by now I would have more things figured out. I thought that I would have a better idea of my own strengths and weaknesses, and would do a better job of managing the bad and highlighting the good in my interactions with other people. I thought that I would spend less time being misunderstood for the things that I said and intended to mean something completely different. I thought that I would have more tolerance for the ways in which different people do different things even when I find them completely ridiculous, outrageous or damn right wrong in every cognitive and realistic perspective.

2. I would have liked to have done something absolutely unique and extra- ordinary by now. Like climb a large percentage of peaks in a particular geographic region or hold a world record in at least a moderately mundane area of expertise. I would have liked to have written a great novel that defines or at the very least somewhat shapes the voice of a generation; any generation.

3. I thought that by now I would muster up the courage to get laser surgery to correct my eye sight.

4. I would have liked to have come up with some simple yet ingenious solution to an issue that troubles people on an everyday basis. The kind of solution that once public makes people look at themselves and say: “I could have come up with that. Shame I didn’t…” It doesn’t even have to be that good. It just has to be the right thing at the right time. The kind of thing that goes almost un-noticed in the flow of everyday life and is yet so apparent in its absence that one often wonders if ever there was an existence before it came along. Like mobile phones. Or remote controls. Or paper. Or plastic lids for coffee cups. Or salt shakers. Wouldn’t it be great to be the guy who invented salt shakers?

5. I would like to have developed the courage to start a completely illogical, unlikely path based only on the remote chance that it might lead to some place amazing; to have started the next big corporation from the torn cushions of a dusty attic sofa. To boldly march into a major corporate office wearing jeans and a t shirt and leave to the sound of resounding astonishment. To have the balls to say to someone: “fuck you for doubting! I will see you when you come crawling back, wishing you stuck with me. Wishing you had more faith.”

6. I thought I would have kids by now, but I am not sure about how I feel about not having any yet.

7. I wish I had a clearer direction. I hoped that by now I would have realized my one true passion and be well set on path towards realizing my destiny. I hoped that by now I would have understood whether things are dependent on the concept of destiny or whether they are purely made up of hard work and sheer luck. I thought that by now I would have a clear path of translating all that is locked up into tangible, substantial evidence. Paint the perfect painting. Cut the perfect deal. Write the perfect book. Make the prefect cup of coffee. Fully understand what everyone sees in Kandinsky or Daniel Day Louis.

8. I hoped to have spent more time with my parents as an adult and be a better older brother.

9. I wish I could have planted deeper roots somewhere. I guess that is the sacrifice in traveling and experiencing so much of what the world has to offer. I wish I had a close knit group of childhood friends who know each other so well words are completely unnecessary. I wish I had a local bar where the bartenders knew my name. I wish there was a street somewhere where I knew every cobble and every inch of pavement. I wish there was a tree where I carved my name every year on the same day for all of my life.

10. I wish I would have understood by now how to trade hard work for talent and luck.

11. I wish I had any tangible proof to the notion that good things happen to good people. To the notion that I am above average. To the notion that true love conquers all. To ideals overcoming obstacles and ideology being cemented in everyday life in the same way that the pursuit of materialism is. Even my own.

12. I hoped to have a better vertical jump, and no matter what I do, it’s just not happening. I am athletic, I practice, I run, I work on my lateral movement and everything else I can think of. But I am white. And white men can’t jump. And I am thus left with the despairing inability to experience the joy of dunking a basketball.

13. I would have hoped to stop categorizing my life and diluting everything into lists. I know life does not work in terms of lists. That things are never black and white, and that over thinking these things leaves a slippery slope towards pure whining and useless excuses. I wish would have better understood by now the importance of shades and the dangers of extremes.

14. I hoped that by now I would be completely void of any prejudice towards any one on the basis of sex, race, age, shape or dental status. Though I think that the realization that I am far from where I wanted to be in that respect is a step that most people are very far from taking in the first place.

15. I wish I could explain to the woman I love just how much I love her and do it in a different way every day. Like a poem by Neruda. I wish I could be less easily distracted by other pretty girls and always remember that pretty girls are a dime a dozen, which they are, and which I sometimes forget.

16. I wish that by now I would have had a chance to save the life of at least one person who totally and absolutely deserved a second chance. I wish I had a better understanding of who is worthy of redemption and who is not, and how to manage the contradiction of not playing god while acting on the moral side of things.

17. I wish I had a better understanding of my relationship with God and my heritage and a clearer idea of why I intrinsically feel like the two are connected.

18. I hoped that by now I would have gathered up the courage to take on a full room during a karaoke night. I would not be looking for a recording contract or even the perfect version of “Crazy Love”. Just the satisfaction of not getting tarred and feathered by the second verse would have sufficed.

19. I wish I could trade some riotousness and conviction with self assurance and decisiveness.

20. I hoped that by now I would have developed better circulation in my feet and not need to wear two pairs of socks in the winter, though I am not sure how getting older is related to this at all.

21. I wish I had more of a spine to call more people out on their bullshit, including my own.

22. I hoped that by now I would understand my attraction to brilliantly disturbed, chronically self destructive individuals. It does not have to be a sexual attraction at all. Most times, in fact, it isn’t. But something about flashes of brilliance within piles of shit, even self manufactured shit, have always totally done it for me. In that sense, I also wish I would have outgrown my attraction for melodramatic affirmation of tragic figures. Maybe of overwhelming drama in general.

23. I wish I had a better idea of whether medians eventually lead to mediocrity. Whether there is any merit in the fearlessness of polarity or whether it is pure immaturity and a refusal to understand moderation and how the world truly works. And whether it is better to come to terms with your faults and bare the consequences or to try and improve yourself for the sake of living more comfortable with one’s self and environment.

24. I was hoping to be a better photographer by now.

25. I never won anything in a raffle or a draw. I wish I did, though rarely having entered into one, I cannot really complain about the results of my poor chances to begin with.

26. I wish I better understood the juxtaposition of privilege versus hard work. To have realized which I would have preferred- to have been born to rich parents and have a clear, easy, paved path set for me or to have earned, accomplished and achieved through hard work and brilliance.

27. I wish I was cooler by now, and in light of the fact that people’s level of coolness is inversely proportional to their age, I wonder if I will ever be cool. I wish I knew what the latest fashions are and where are the right places to see and be seen. I wish I had the energy to read the coolest blogs and keep up to date with all that is creative and inspirational. I wish I knew whether skinny jeans are here to stay or whether they are just a Brooklyn based hipster plot to uncomfortably get back at the world.

28. I wish I had the ability to remember lessons without holding a grudge. To never again let anyone put me down without wishing I could run into that 4th grade bully in the street just so I could beat the shit out of him now. I wish I would have had a better ability to let go.

29. I wish I had an idea of which is better- to think you have more things figured out and be completely off base, or to know that you know very little and keep meandering through the journey of exploration, oftentimes barking up the wrong tree and chasing fool’s gold.

30. I hope that by 40 most of these issues will have resolved themselves or at the very least be made clearer in my head. I know that people say that life only gets more complicated as we go along, but how does that fit into the notion of experience and age bringing about wisdom and understanding? I wonder if there is one simple answer or solution to it all, a moment of eureka, or whether there is process to go through. And regardless of which it is, I wonder if I am on the right path, and if there is one.

1. put peanut butter in impossible places like the inside of a plastic coke bottle and give it to him / her

2. take his favorite toy and give it to the next door neighbor’s dog

3. turn on Animal Channel and bark every time you see a squirrel

4. tie a feather to his tail

5. pretend to pet his mirror reflection

6. lie in his bed and make cat noises

7. when people come over to pet him, say he has a slight case of rabies, but he is now almost totally over it

8. throw an ice cube on the floor

…for Fiona Apple.

She is not the prettiest. Not the sexiest. She does not have the sexy voice of, say, Diana Krall and god knows her political expression is more of a threat to Mrs Teen USA from South Carolina than it is to Hillary Clinton.

Nevertheless, when she smiles, amongst the chaos and destruction…when she stares, between the smashing and the crashing, she has me…

Oh, and that song ain’t that bad either. I think it was written by a few Brits back in the 60’s.

Across the street, somewhere between the 24th and 26th floor of the western side of 6th avenue there is a lady who eats too much. I am not a peeping tom, and I don’t really know this individual. In fat, our paths have never crossed though I am certain that if they did on the street I would recognize her by the way her entire face is stretched back with a pony tail that is far far too tight for any human face.

I an most certainly not judging her. I mean, what right do I have to judge her? after all, if she wants to keep eating herself to death, what business is it of mine? if she really feels like her life would be far more complete with the cupcake making it’s slow, lumbering metabolic journey from her fridge to her ass, what is it to me?

I am just stating that there is a fat, obese, disgusting lady across the street. And that when I sit down to write I find it awfully distracting that she keeps making that short journey from the couch in front of her TV to that fridge. I mean, for fuck’s sake, if you are going to make that trip every 20 minutes, and if this is really the only form of exercise you are going to get throughout your day, would it not be just as simple to move the fridge to the living room and avoid the hassle altogether?

Anyways, that is not the point. The point is that I am here to start my first entry in a whole new blog, which is a rather significant task. I mean, I have posted on blogs before, so I realize the crucial element of getting a good start. Every blog needs a direction, and the first post in a blog could really be the first step towards virtual obscurity or phenomenal success. but with that said, would you not be bothered by a women who sits across the street in some Chelsea apartment and wastes away the perfectly good opportunity of living a meaningful, significant, productive life? of being an integral part of society? of stepping from the sidelines and actually taking part of the game?

I know…I know you must be thinking that it is completely pretentious of me to judge her. I know you are thinking that this cliche understanding of life as a gift we are obligated to experience rather than a quality we can afford to waste has been done and stretched and chewed over more times than an outback rib stake. And it has! Which is why it is frustrating to see people who still spend all of their time in front of a silly box with flashing lights trying to interact with the world without ever leaving the house or actually speaking to anyone but the reflection of themselves in the stainless steel door of the fridge. Right? Right!

Well, back to the original point, which was the writing of a first entry in a new blog. I always felt as though a blog is a clear and true representation of one’s self. After all, when expressing one’s thoughts, aspirations, dreams and perhaps even fears you are subjecting yourself to the judgment of the rest of the world. Of people you have never met and probably never will. Of Joe Shmoe in Bumblefuck Alabama who is tired of shooting beer bottles in the back yard. Of some bleach blond barbie who is recovering from the latest in a series of surgeries designed to make her look even more barbie-esque. Of some lady in Manhattan who seems completely disinterested in the outside world and who’s sole existence and connection with the outside world rests in the flimsy hands of a 16 pizza delivery guy. Seriously…what is theis lady thinking? you read about people like that, who die from cardiac arrests and are only found three weeks later because some neighbor passed by the door and got a whiff of the rotting flesh that in the meanwhile has been eaten by her five cats. Of these people who spend their entire days cooped up in the cardboard boxes that are NY apartments either waiting for the apocalypse, wishing for the apocalypse or planning the apocalypse. Regardless, there is always an apocalypse involved with her type, and that is never a god thing.

Crap, I am off the subject again. Right- writing your first entry. Well, there is really no science to it. I guess the trick is to find something that binds people. that connects them. Something that will be translatable to anyone and everyone who may or may not read or want to read what you have to say. And that can be anything, really. One can write about sports. About cars. About global politics and the demise of the patriarchal family structure in traditional Islamic states of central Asia. About chicks. About the economy. About computers, coffee and the bad combination that is the van diagram of the two meeting. I find that the best blogs are about nothing and everything. That the most interesting things come from people who are creative, talented, multi-faceted and eloquent. Most of all, it comes from people who are aware. Who have a different point of view and are talented enough to share it with others in an inciting, original way. Who understand the minutia of life and who care about expressing it just as much as they care about life changing affirmations, CNN headlines or late night epiphanies that reveal themselves when you are all alone in the dark.

Those who write about their cab ride. And how their team sucks. And how looking for a job is a nightmare that involves constant compromise and never ending malaise. Of traffic and the Iranian nuclear threat. Of anything, really, which includes one obese lady who is now staring right back at me from across the street.