Lucid, Not Afraid

I remember the day 9/11 happened - My brother Mario woke me up. He barged into my room and said that a plane had exploded over New York and the U.S was under attack.  I walked over to the T.V. and a few moments later the second plane hit. I saw it live. It was surreal. At the time I couldn’t think of anything else but my girlfriend and my family and making sure they were ok. 

I don’t remember watching the news often but after that day I was glued to the T.V. I remember noticing the crisp and shiny news programs covering the events and how they edited video of the tragedy as seamless as NFL replays.  They were so good at keeping me hooked. I watched the news for months after the attacks. No joke, they would say things like: “Next up! Find out why everyone is... AFRAID!”

And I was afraid.  I was afraid that another attack might hit San Francisco. I was 18 years old and as a fresh adult, I was afraid of getting drafted into a new war. I was afraid of the chaos. I didn’t feel in control. I didn’t feel empowered. I felt caught up. 

Me and my girlfriend walked to up to Bernal Hill that day and watched the city skyline, ready to witness our world fall apart. We held each other and I prayed to God that day - something I rarely did back then.

And then, years later, I became a father. I remember a lingering fear and anxiety (that still hasn’t completely vanished by the way) that no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t control my son’s fate.  Really, anything can happen - an earthquake, a freak accident, a fucking terrorist attack, a car crash. I couldn’t control any of that stuff. I felt helpless and it used to irk my conscience somethin awful. 

Spirituality helped solidify that feeling. God owned our fates. And so I surrendered fate to Him. And it felt better. I know that we will always be safe. At least spiritually. And that matters to me. 

But I still need to buckle my kids seatbelt - because that’s what saved his life. I still need to teach him to look both ways before crossing the street. I still have to earn a living. I still have to provide a home. God will not do these things for me. How I go about it is my choice. My control. It’s what I own. And that matters to me too. 

Becoming a dad has changed how I exist in this world.  I no longer feel afraid or frozen. I no longer feel powerless. I feel responsible. Tragic events are not surreal. I feel ownership of them. I feel outraged. That could be my son washed up upon a beach. 

And with all the tragedy around the world who wouldn’t be outraged? Paris, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Mexico, El Salvador, New Orleans, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Liberia, Sandy Hook, and the list goes on. 

How much of it is fate and how much of it is what we own? 

I know for many, the answer is not always clear. And it doesn’t have to be. But the worst thing we can do for ourselves is to feel fear. To feel helpless. To wait.

As a dad I need tomorrow to come. I need the sun to rise every morning. I have something to lose. Everything. I feel lucid about the world we live in. And while I surrender my fate, my life is mine to give. And I would give it in a heart beat to make sure you can have a tomorrow.

So buckle your seatbelt - because this is the world we live in. And we cannot afford to be afraid.

Abandoned

Our house was perched on the edge of a mountain, overlooking the Southbay.  You had to climb up 76 stairs to get to our front door from the street. The hillside was so steep they needed to build the house on top of a retainer wall 20 feet tall. I used to hang from that retainer wall and scare the shit out of my older sister. Beyond the retainer wall was where the neighbor’s property began. 

Truth is, I didn’t really pay attention to who lived in the next-door neighbor’s house before.  I never remember seeing people go in or out, except that one day an ambulance came to the house during the night and took someone away. Someone old.

The house was three stories tall and old and derelict. It was built 100 years ago and had fallen into disrepair. The surrounding forest of weeds forbade any kid who god forbid might lose a baseball near it. My siblings and I weren’t sure if any one even lived there any more. So naturally, after the storm of 1994, when a bunch of trees fell and school was canceled, nobody noticed that the neighbors hadn’t repaired their broken windows. I guess we just thought they hadn’t gotten around to it. I remember their red-orange curtains blew in the wind for days. Then weeks. 

Periodically I would notice someone’s shadow around in the house but never really saw who it was. Did I really see someone? Were any people still there? Maybe I saw the light inside the house turn on. Did I?

After a few months all of us kids knew something was up. We convened for a sibling council and proposed to my mother that we investigate the dilapidated neighbor’s house. We knew there were a few possibilties. Did the residents pass away? Were they still in the house but needed our help? Did squatters take over? Is this the house that “IT” lives in? (that was my question)

Not knowing what to expect, we geared up with protective gear, weapons, flashlights, (I wore all my hockey pads and face-mask) and us four siblings set out on our Goonie adventure. Even Mikey came. Mikey was my oldest brother -- the leader. He was way too responsible to lead us all into trouble, so I was stoked he was there. 

The property had a weird layout with a dank, mildewy concrete garage cut into the mountainside. The metal bars across the front door barred any front-entry, so we had to bop our way through the forrest of weeds to reach the back of the property.  When we finally breached the weeds we walked into the back yard and noticed a sink. 

The water was running. 

We were sure there must be someone around. But there was no sign of anyone. For a moment I thought of the Twilight Zone episode where the guy finds himself alone in an abandoned town. 

We turned off the faucet and looked around but the house was barred up from the backyard too. We eventually found a giant window that had been smashed in during the storm. We hoisted each other up into the house and into a giant room where we found ourselves surrounded by ceiling-high piles of plastic Safeway bags filled with God knows how many countless and nameless items. There were piles and piles of this stuff everywhere. It was like a bad dream. The entire room, an old dining hall, was filled to the brim with these bags. I was only 10 years old but I understood what kind of mess this was -- the folks who lived here were hoarders. 

We finally made it into the interior of the house, opened the door to the main hallway on the first floor and fifteen stray cats scattered across the house. Our house had been a stomping ground for a pack of stray alley cats and now we knew where they had been shacking up. 

Did we hear footsteps? 

Throughout the old house were dozens of piles of boxes with old antique items. I remember we found a old camera, a pair of really old eye glasses, and then, a box of old family letters. We didn’t read them in detail, but we could tell the letters were old. They were dated from at least 1930’s. The letters were written in a beautiful cursive and written in a distinct Southern dialect. I specifically remember one letter began with “Dearest Mama”. As I looked at the letters part of me felt a haunting sadness. The letters were a collection between family members over multiple generations spanning across multiple states and now they sat in a box, in an abandoned house. Should we stop reading them? Were we invading there private lives? I wondered.

We climbed up a narrow spiral staircase that spun 360 degrees and finally reached the top floor. It had a long hallway that came to a green door at the end. We walked down the hallway and passed by the room with the broken windows and red-orange curtains, still blowing in the wind. At the end of the hall we found a sign posted on the window of the green door. It was written in a messy childlike way.

Don’t Come In, it said

Sissy’s sleeping

The note froze us in our tracks. None of us could take another step forward. 

What was behind the door? Was someone there? 

We didn’t go into that room. We left it just they way it was. 

We went back home and reported what we found to our mother. The house was eventually claimed by distant family members months later and now some yuppy probably owns it. 

And the truth is that it didn’t matter what laid behind that green door nor did it matter the contents of those letters. The neighbor’s memories were for them alone. Their family, their special time and place.

And as for me, I went back to hanging from the concrete wall and now felt comfortable fetching my lost baseball from those forbidding weeds. 

Party Animal

I locked the car, shut the door, and slung my backpack over my shoulder. 

It was a sweet spring morning. The kind of morning where everything smells like wet grass and pine. 

As I walked toward class I heard music in the distance. It sounded faint. Far away but loud enough for me to make it out. Somewhere some party animal was seriously blasting there music at 9:30 in the morning. I thought, hey more power to them. They were listening to Pearl Jam’s "Even Flow". A 90’s classic that I was very familiar with. 

Eventually I reached campus and started climbing a huge staircase toward my classroom.It was an early morning History class. There were a maximum of 10 students at any given lecture and many students felt the class to be boring but I enjoyed myself.

In the distance I could still hear the music. Faint. As if really loud but from somewhere far away. The song had changed now. I couldn’t make it out, but it sounded like some hip-hop; maybe Reggae. 

My teacher had been lecturing about American pre-Civil-War history for so many years that he just spoke off the top of his head. No notes. I appreciated his enthusiasm.He rambled about quirky facts that he found amusing and once in a while he’d crack a good joke. He felt so comfortable in his endless monologues that he easily tuned out the distractions caused from late students or people talking in the hallway. He just kept on lecturing, locked eyes with anyone listening, and never lost a beat. 

For a moment I looked out the window and realized that I could still hear the music. Loud enough for me to hear it but from really far away. 

Damn! I thought. This dude's kinda rude blasting his music all loud like that! 

I still couldn’t make out the song but I knew it must’ve been really loud for me to hear it all the way up in my classroom. After a few more minutes of lecture and still able to hear the music, the rebellious part of me started to envy whoever was out there listening to their music so carefree. 

Well. I thought. I guess that’s kinda awesome. 

...And then I heard it. The next song.

No! I thought. But it was. 

It was the soundtrack to movie “Hook”. 

There's only one stupid ass who would have the soundtrack to the movie Hook on their fucking playlist.
And that’s because it was my playlist. 

From my phone. 

On its lowest volume. 

Choosing a Path

Every time I begin, I wonder why the hell I like doing this. 

I can’t breath. The sun is hot. My pack is heavy.

There’s dust everywhere and horse shit too. 

And most of this misery comes from traveling on a trail. It sucks on a trail. 

Better to travel across granite. To get there, you must leave everything behind. No trail. Just you. 

Commit to your wits and begin your own path. Up, and step, and up, and rest. Heavy steps. Each one bringing you closer to the top. 10,000 feet high. 

Through eons of time the glaciers warped and polished the rock. They formed smooth mountain sides dotted with megalithic boulders. The mountains are layered like thick cake batter and dolloped with granite peaks. 

Continue climbing. 

The dust clears and there’s no more horse caca. You can see the sky again. You’ve reached the boundaries of the Tree Line. 

Enchanted colors painted with the most deep hues thrive in this land. Tiny magenta-violet and orange-pink wildflowers bow with every gust of wind. Turquoise dragonflies and white butterflies with orange faces flutter like magic fairies. 

Look around you. 

Laser-straight veins of pink quarts, giant rocks teetering on their edges, and crystal clear tarns nestled between cliffs host mountain trout. 

All of it unspoiled. All of it right.

Camry Perspective

Shabazz

                As visitors stepped through the entrance, a pair of rusted iron shackles welcomed them into the historic gallery. The shackles looked warped and twisted as though someone had tugged and pulled on them. Once upon a time, they had bound men through the Atlantic Passage and into slavery, today they sit encased in glass under a showcase spotlight.

               

                Mounted on the walls were black and white portraits of slaves that hauntingly stared back at me. Nearby, an old copy of Fredrick Douglass’s autobiography sat on a podium; also encased in glass. The book, pristine and untouched, had biblically thin pages and showed no signs of wear. I wondered if anybody had actually ever read through it.  

               

                As I walked through the gallery, I caught glimpse of a framed letter. The letter was written with an old-fashioned typewriter and had a stationary with a crescent moon and star.  The stationary had Arabic style letters that spelled the name Al Shabazz. I immediately knew who the letter was from. It was a casual correspondence between Malcolm X and his autobiographer, Alex Haley.

               

                I used to idolize Malcolm X when I was young. His autobiography was a story of transformation and conviction. His book helped change how I valued education. He taught me to love books again; to love the dictionary. Carefully, I read the contents of the letter and there it was; his signature. It was written in blue ink. I pictured myself in his presence as he signed it.

                ...The year was 1964. Malcolm had signed dozens of papers that day. It was late and he was exhausted – he hadn’t eaten much. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up just passed his wristwatch. The same wristwatch he always wore. The other people in the room were having a discussion about President Kennedy when outside in the hallway, the phone began to ring.  He looked up and saw me.  I was there with him.

             The museum employee (probably witnessing my deep gaze into space) asked if I had any questions and in the blink of an eye I returned back to 2013. 

______________________________________________

                I understand everyone does not attempt to connect with the past as I do. For me, this connection is a chance to travel through time and empathize with the past – I try to imagine what life was like. I try to connect.  Without this connection, I fear our past will become nothing more than distant relics of a forgotten history, enshrined and untouched, encased in glass.

The Hawk

We went up to the neighborhood hilltop and found a nice perch. I suppose there were lots of days like this back then. I spent a lot of time on that hilltop. Bernal Hill. Such a noteworthy hill that its even got its own family of hawks living on it.

My friend was young like me. He wore a red 49ers jersey with a matching cap. His cap’s bill was kept straight and it still had the stickers on (I hated it when guys wore the sticker. Always thought it was stupid). I don’t remember his name. Jesus, it must have been over 15 years ago. Somehow we knew each other and decided to kick it. We had both grown up in San Francisco but his personality was much more thuggish than mine. You see, San Francisco before the dot-com boom was much more working class. Some neighborhoods had (and still have) dozens of rundown apartment complexes that were quite rough with aggressive mobs of youth running around - not all of them were exactly “gangs”. The result was a diverse breed of tough street kids who learned to navigate through a fairly ghetto urban environment. - This guy was an example of this world. He was a white kid who talked with a New Yorky kinda accent and sagged his pants. (The sagging pants annoyed the shit out of me too back then but whatever…)

As we sat there he told me about himself. He saw himself as being really hard core and felt that he had to “grow up at an early age”. He wasn’t a gangster as he didn’t claim any turf, but he seemed to be affiliated with them. He went on to explain to me all the crazy shit he’d seen and how that made him super ghetto. I’m not sure how we got into this conversation, but that’s pretty much all we talked about. Apparently, he wanted me to know just how hard he really was.

It was almost sunset. And the raptors who charm that beloved hill began to hover our heads in search of their next meal. We both looked up at the same time and saw the hawk. Its wing span curled up at the tips and it flapped only minimally. It sailed right in front of the sun.

“Oh shit blood! Lookit that bird!” he said.

He paused.

All of a sudden his smile faded and his face went completely relaxed. His lips were serious. Staring at the hawk, his eyes weren’t stern anymore. They had softened. His eyebrows arched into a look of wonder - almost concerned. Desperate.

“Hey blood…”

He paused again. His eyes still fixed on that hawk.

”..I wanna be a bird blood..”