Carry That Weight (a long time)

As much as there is wrong in the world, it's still perfect - beautiful in its existence and possibility.  

With out sickness, war and poverty man would be a robot; love and light would have no meaning.  We would be indifferent to nature and kindness.  Our purpose and work would vanish along with our free will - the will to do good in the face of all odds.  To care when no one cares.  To brush ourselves off, get dressed and go to work with our head raised high.  Even as everything collapses and the dirt of the world works hard to break us.  Somehow, the chosen few carry on.  

I have seen it in Haiti, after the earthquake.  In Colombia, amidst vengeful civil war.  In Zambia and other parts of sub-saharan Africa, with the everyday holocaust that is the Aids epidemic.  

Some people call this hope.  I don't.  It's not hope that motivates these people; it's the joy of expressing your will upon a situation that is supposed to defeat you.  It takes a brave person to fight the odds, to know with certainty, that certainty is not on their side.   

How difficult it is to accept this simple truth.  How unconsolable we get in the face of obstacles and tragedy.  If we only just remind ourselves that things are the way they are supposed to be, though our work is to make them, and ourselves, just a little bit better through our humanity, grace, dignity.  

The truly great are not products of their environment.  Where every indicator points to them becoming X, they somehow become Y.  Call them mutants; I call them human, truly human.     

Prison made Malcolm, Malcolm X.  It hardens most; breaks many.  But it made him, him.  And his truth thundered.    

Burdens strengthen, burdens break.  But you'll never truly live if your not grateful to carry that weight.  Most of us, our world, mediocre people, they spend their lives running from this.  They want the comforts of carelessness.  They want to be free though they forget that "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."  

And that was an Orwellian quote, if I ever heard one. 

Half a Home

Part 1 

There are few things sadder than an arrival, after such a long journey, with no one to receive you.  Rishi stood alone amidst the crowd outside Indira Gandhi Airport.  Taxis came forth and people slowly, in practical fashion, filed into them.  Other people met family, kissed children, smiles everywhere. 

But for Rishi there was no family nor the pomp or celebration of years past, when he would arrive with his mother and father, to everyone's embraces; the airport terminal turned carnival; flower garlands and laughter; hugs and tears of joy.    

Return was a cherished event coupled with the visceral impact of the Indian heat.  And the colors:  As if a switch had been turned on to the kaleidoscope, merry go around and roller coaster – all at once.  Though now, disheveled and with nobody around he knew, Rishi felt the ache only nostalgia gives.  His stubbled face held an empty expression, looking for solace in some strangers face, though everyone unaccompanied waited for their taxi with distracted unease, looking at their cellphones.  Airports can make you feel so, alone.     

At the luggage carousel, he felt his spirit turn; he hadn't expected such intense sadness.  He had a feeling nobody would show.  His mother said she had informed the family though something about the way she said it made him think twice. 

Now outside, he still looked around.  Perhaps someone had come?  Maybe it was a mistake?  Of course, a natural mistake, with the time difference and all.  

Back home, in his parent's Queens apartment, the time difference used to be ingrained through the two clocks upon the mantle; one Indian the other New York time.  He could never look at one without looking at the other, even outside the house; he would always know exactly what time it was in India.

The clocks were a constant reference point for Rishi's father, who would work overtime in the 70s to make one 5 minute phone call a week, to hear distant voices that haunted his memories and dreams.

Rishi's father was a man's man; rarely shed a tear, generally unexpressive.  But those phone calls were what he lived for.  The rest of the time was just in anticipation of that moment or in planning a return visit.  Gifts constantly collected, life was suspended till that very moment of return - in the airport terminal- when life truly bloomed, transforming Rishi's father; from a man who read the New York Times in brusque silence; watched Peter Jennings in a trance, into someone who had purpose again; India, family.

Whenever things got tough, his father planned a trip; it slowly became the solution to all problems.  And it worked.  Upon returning, for months, his father would have renewed energy to pay bills and go to work, only to slow down again, get into a rut and plan another trip.  India, India.  Repeat ad infinitum.  Not a bad life.  

New York was purgatory, a grand waiting game, for that moment of return.  His father enjoyed New York; it mesmerized with its energy, opportunity and edge.  But something about being in- between, in the greatest city on Earth (he sincerely believed this) made him feel more alive to everything.  In but not of it - nowhere and everywhere at the same time.  Debilitating for some, exhilarating for others.       

His father had come over on scholarship, to study at NYU for his masters in Math, and stayed on to work and gain citizenship, the typical immigrant story of its time.  But he was never at ease in this new dreamland, even though nobody waxed more poetic about it; about the subway; the 5th avenue library; the jazz clubs in the village; the New York Times, even.

And then Rishi was born, unexpectedly, or so his father said, after they started frequenting Atlantic City, leaving his sister with family friends.  His father gambled while his mother walked the boardwalk, and "that's where you were conceived, Lucky 7", referencing Rishi's year of birth; 1977.

Given his father's eccentricities, he wasn't sure if this was some joke or not.  His parents did obsess over Atlantic City; it's was almost always where they wanted to go whenever a long weekend came.  But he never really saw his parents touch, so it heartened him to think of time when they did.  Whether or not it was true, the very idea of them together made him happy.  His mother in a sari by the Jersey shore, holding his father's hand, as they looked over at the sunset.  Care free, gambling, eating together.  Probably not true, but hey, who knew?  He asked his mother about it once and she just laughed.  But then she laughed whenever his father did anything crazy because if he wasn't doing anything crazy he got depressed.  He closed the lights in the living room, put a blanket over his head and never spoke to anyone for days.   And then he'd watch old Benny Hill episodes on VHS and this one dance video of Sridevi, over and over.  We all have our unique ways of coping with our frustrations and losses.  But these episodes were intermittent and if they got really bad, there was always India if something didn't pique his interest first.   

Like how one day, after school, his father gave him a cutting of a restaurant review from the New York Times.  It was written in that floral style only the Times gets away with.  "Read this article, look at how they divine they make it sounds."  Divine, his father had taken to improving his vocabulary during Rishi's SAT preparation but had retained his loose pronunciation and grammar. 

"We must go there, we must eat there, right now right now!"  He got into the car, revved the engine and blasting the horn to make Rishi hurry.  Rishi would feel a mad rush of energy and joy in those spontaneous moments.  His father thrived on unpredictability.  "Surprises, good surprises, are a precious thing.  Our lives generally have bad surprises but good surprises make up for the bad ones."  

His father was different than the other Indians, less "practical" and too showy, with tastes a bit too refined for a new immigrant.  Though he earned no more than his colleagues, he spent more, and feared less.  Looking at old pictures of his father you always noticed the well-dressed handsome man amidst tackiness and anxiety.  The corduroy blazer, the disco shirts and gold chains.  It's as if his father belonged on the Amalfi coast, with movie stars, instead of ugly modernist Queens with a bunch of square engineers as neighbors, colleagues and friends.  All Indian, all so uncool.   

Rishi always wondered what it was that made his father different than the rest, and with age, and some life experience, realized it was because his father was already quite well to do before coming to America.  He was the main breadwinner for his joint family and as a result the go-to man for all problems.  Money, prestige, respect, and already married to Rishi's mother; he had it all.  Only to leave it behind for a dream - or was it ambition?

"I wanted to study and come see what all the fuss was about," he said to him looking at him through the rearview mirror.  Rishi in the backseat, his mother up front organizing the tapes in the glove compartment, "Why doesn't anyone put the tapes back in the right covers?"  This was a pet peeve of hers, though nobody ever listened.

His father usually opened up driving, on those trips to Atlantic City, with the New Jersey Turnpike spiced by Bolly wood soundtracks.  It was as if the road ahead and the movement made him relax and look Rishi directly in the eye, albeit through the rear view mirror.  

It was on these trips that he learned that his father rented not a room, but a dirty mattress on Roosevelt Ave, for 8 hours a day.  He worked nights at a candy store, and took over the mattress from someone else, on his return, from a person about to do exactly what he just did; a low paying shift if not in a candy store, in a gas station or restaurant. 

His father could have gone back to India, and everything would have been fine.  He wasn't from a small village, or supporting a family, or any of that sacrificial stuff that paralyzes or motivates many a immigrant.  It was curiosity and adventure that drove him.  The same spirit of adventure that was bringing Rishi back, to India.   

Being of Indian origin allowed him to feel connected to something more authentic than his drab American life.  He saw in his Indian family a love and spontaneity few had in America.  The absence of absurd consumer comforts made them stronger, healthier and more alert to the visceral aspects of life.  Or, so he thought, in his romantic escapism. 

We all want to be somewhere else, and that far off place helps us make sense of what home means to us.  For Rishi, his depression about America was always a result of having India to compare it to.  It became a deeper fissure, an unwashed wound, that as he got older, held him back from ever being comfortable with who he was; where he was.

Rishi's father understood all this.  He knew that excesses and absurdities of the West could only be curbed and tempered by the East.  That is why he wanted Rishi to fall in love, with India - but as an American.  "India needs a De Tocqueville" he would absurdly say.  Rishi didn't expect such highbrow, political philosophy from his father.  That's what the New York Times did to him.  It made him memorize trite phrases that surprisingly worked within the context of what he was talking about.   "America is the greatest son, trust me.  The opportunities, dignity and possibilities.  The endless possibilities of being.  You don't know how lucky you are, you have choices, and options, that I never fathomed or thought about.  The problems in America are a result of bad choices.  Eating too much, drugs, sex, over-spending, but at least people have the choices and the second chances to make it right.  In India there are no second chances.  People are condemned to their fate, and lament and whither away wondering what could have been, if only, if only..."    

These diatribes were a common fixture in Rishi's upbringing, often colored by his father's constant unease for those he left behind.  Not guilt, just plain and simple longing.  If family defines a man's life, little else can substitute it.  If his father every knew love, or was ever pressed to describe it; it would be this one desire; to return to touch again his land and people. 

Rishi knew this meant more to him, than being with himself and his mother.  In this regard they were similar to families of artists, rocks stars or politicians, all of whom work for something bigger than themselves, only in Rishi's father's case, what filled that god-shaped hole was a huge, poor country, on the other side of the world, filled with smiling, adoring, pandering family.  Family.

Hunter

The awkward moments come in the morning, as the sun comes in through
the window, and I become aware of our nakedness. I try to leave the
light on at night as long as possible, before she says to turn it off.
In the dark, an animal feeling comes over me, I feel taken over by a
mystical force. With the light on I am human, and I stop, remember,
who I am and not what I am a part of. I know this is some great
cosmic dance and in the wave of it, I connect to something I know is
always around me. The sadness, the melancholy felt in the morning is
why we are not part of this feeling more often. We like to be
reminded of this genius, through music, art, and the other expressions
of harmony and perfection, though it would be better to be a part of
it. To live it. It may just be what our lives are supposed to be
about.

In the wilderness, with that feeling of hunting, being hunted and
resting when tired, eating when hungry. Some say we would have no
consciousness of it, that such an existence would be no different than
an animal. That we are more than just our instincts, that something
in us, the calculation and reflection lead us to create and make
greatness.

I am constantly swinging between the the two, spirit and the flesh.

She puts on her clothes, slowly. I have seen her do this many times
before. As she quietly combs her hair in the mirror and looks over at
me with a bittersweet smile. I come up to her from behind and feel
her tenderness throughout. Goodbye. Oh, goodbye.

The rest of the days I am alone. I work hard, and spend many nights
reading and thinking about where I come from, where I am going. It
feels like nowhere on the tough nights. I forget why I am here, why I
do this, what the point of anything really is.

A note on romance and comedy.

There is no relationship between romance and comedy though Holly wood begs to differ.  This formula, repeatedly is regurgitated to produce massive success.  People dig it.  Not the first (or the last) time mass consumption bears little semblance to reality.  Fantasy is yearning, but why do we want romance to be funny?  

And it must be noted nobody else but the Americans ever thought to combine the two.  Add romantic comedies to the endless list of inventions to come from the land of the free.  Up there with the atomic bomb, it is.  

Romance + Comedy = not getting laid.

Romance has always been tragic.  You lose yourself, you immerse yourself in a feeling; a person, knowing full well it won't last and probably won't end well.  Romeo and Juliet was the standard.  Now, it's You Got Mail.  

Contrary to popular belief, insecurity, chaos, risk and the mystery and uncertainty that stems from this drive people into one another's arms.  Amusing safety and security make the whole pursuit of another entertaining.  Try laughing in the midst of sex.  You got to stop laughing to get it up.    

What makes someone laugh, why is something funny?  Let me see, I happen to have a neurology journal at hand and it says :  "Physiologically there is an element of surprise, a perceived threat that doesn't manifest and sudden resultant relief relaxes us, and we laugh.  Ha ha ha."  

Comedy diffuses fear, in fact, it is the only in the absence of fear that comedy can exist.  They may combine romance and even politics with comedy but it's not possible do the same with horror.  That would either be funny or horrific but not both.      

But romance is ripe with fear, especially in risk averse cultures such as ours, it adds an element of uncertainty that's frightening because there is no clear path to success.  In a culture that likes to play by the rules and win, this is a whole new realm that must be sanitized and made safe.  Wouldn't want your precious feelings hurt now, would you? 

So what do you do?  You make light of it, to diffuse its seriousness.  

Why else do we also combine politics with humor?  For the same reason.  We like to laugh at our problems.  It makes them bearable, and laughter, if something is funny, means other generally find it funny, as well.  And collectively laughing probably is an update to the whole misery loves company.  Well, maybe now, misery loves a good joke (about itself?)  

No surprise that the rise of the Daily show and Colbert was during some of the most horrific public moments in recent times (9/11, Bush, 2 wars, etc)  

Why to do we feel a need to make serious matters funny?  What kind of strange defense mechanism is this?  

In the spirit of American pragmatism:  if it works, don't fix it.  Somehow this formula makes people happy, though they are probably confusing happiness with comfort, amusement and entertainment.  But "What is Happiness?" is an inconvenient question for a nation racing in constitutional pursuit of it.    

Laugh at your sorrows, fine.  But realize that the light heartedness/ lack of seriousness towards what is ultimately very serious - love, makes a fool of everyone.  And it takes out the suffering, the poetry, the seriousness of facing mortality and loneliness.  

Everybody laughing, everybody alone.  Amusing ourselves to death.  

Mon Amour

The human ability to adapt is both a blessing and a curse, as Dostevsky so aptly put it.  To survive is remarkable but soon turns tragic when you get used to a situation that is worse than animal. 

 

Similarly Haiti, the horror and the heartbreak lead to incredible moments of poignancy.  But the squalor and the absurdity of the situation are nothing to celebrate. 

 

On top of it, the place is over-run by Aid workers who slowly fill up the restaurants and bars.  I was in one yesterday filled with internationals laughing and drinking in revelry while just meters away the homeless and the sick wait out their fate in makeshift homes in camps.  I supposed it's trite to write about these usual scenarios and I was there too.  Though everyone wants a piece of this action for whatever reason, a travesty attracts the businessman, the do-gooder, the preacher, the poet and the prophet. 

 

There are daily strange encounters with different people and the varied reasons of why they are here.  It feels like a big party.  Who knew disasters were such fun.  And so many young white women; intelligent, well meaning, photographers, free lance journalists, students.  They are not the only ones but the ones that most stick out to me.  If anyone single handedly has benefited from female empowerment; it's me.  Wonderful for my love life, so I don't mock them, I just find it funny that's all.  I don't know why.    

 

My seductive powers tend to fall flat on cheerleaders.  But if they've read Milan Kundera – watch out.    

 

Everyone trying to make a mark, sincere, but adding in their special way to the circus of disaster relief.       

 

There is a deep desperate need to see real suffering and to do something about it.  The need to sacrifice, to be heroic is just as important as food and shelter.  In this way a fair trade is taking place, between us and them.    

 

We are both spirit and flesh, and forever the two shall joust.  It is what makes us human.     

 

And now normalcy sets in.  For those who have and have not both, with the usual hierarchy; the cruelty and injustice.

 

Communism, socialism, imperialism, colonialism all gave us someone to blame, some direction to the anger the human condition provokes.  Now, no longer.  All problems are technical and a due to a lack of proper coordination, management.  Or it's the fault of those who suffer, of governance and corruption.  And when that fails there is always bad luck to blame.  The Gods.  Fate.  Destiny.  This makes things a lot less emotionally charged.  Hard to get riled up over faulty bureaucracy.

 

Some countries export cars, others terror.  Haiti will export the threat of chaos, and constantly seduce with its limitless potential.  1 hour away from Miami, so close, so far.    

 

Success will require a strong response, though already the aid industry works under many contradictions and disconcerted efforts.  Would you want the tower of Babel to rebuild your country?

 

I'm a bit dismayed and confused by all this.  And the ways forward all lead to the same dead end.  If ever there was an argument for authoritarianism, this is turning out to be a splendid one.

 

Though I get down by the impossibility and absurdity, there is something intensely exciting about the atmosphere and work.  I am developing a lustful relation to the energy.  It enfuses every aspect of my life with deep meaning.   Boundless opportunities arise to make things move.   

 

It is also hard not to be struck by the images of the people in the camps and streets.  It's not the misery I speak of, though there is plenty of that to go around, but the joy, smiles, a form of solidarity that emanates in the strangest of times.  I see it on the women selling their goods in wheel barrows and in the children as we patrol the camps at night.  Little hands come out of the darkness to hold mine.  All this endless cordiality and laughter in such despair.   

 

And you look up and see a whirl of kites soaring above.     

 

There is hardship, so much is lost, the future uncertain and a hard rain is going to fall.  But humanity and love burst forth.  Dare I say happiness?  Not the kind of happiness we seek in America, or anywhere in the modern world.  No.  We don't really know what happiness is, so we go searching for it.        

 

Real happiness is a survival mechanism.  When you ain't got nothing, it's the only thing that saves you.  What keeps you going, and it comes to you when you hit so low, touching that space where you end and God begins.  The poor and destitute are religious not because of ignorance.  It's because they feel the presence of the divine directly because they have nothing to distract them from it.

 

They feel the elements and thus fear them and pray.  They know hunger and eat joyously, and share what little they have.  They die suddenly and live and dance like no tomorrow.  I don't envy them, but am humbled by their natural spirit that takes this situation and makes it theirs.  With their distinct heartfelt mark.           

 

Haiti mon amour. 

Santo Domingo

Passion and its vicissitudes in a University billiards bar, with hot Caribbean girls who make me feel things inside I never knew I had. It’s sad to know what you’ve been missing. But change has to start somewhere, and longing and loss are always good beginnings, though it hurts.

While we work and struggle with nonsense up North these tropical darlings live and fuck effortlessly. I’ve seen this before, I’ve been here. It was a salsa club in Medellin, I went there during the afternoon and was having a drink as the sunlight beamed in. 70s Salsa blaring, I had it all. The girls, the drugs, the money, the life and it wasn’t enough.

I told myself I come from a great civilization, not like these passionate monkeys that don’t know what tragedy and suffering is. They’ve never had to fight war. Build cities, raise armies, invent the number zero. Fuck it, the Mayas don’t count.

Rackety rack go the balls all over the table and the sound makes a nice back drop to their coy glances. I smile and they smile back.

They touch me with their innocence. The joy of youth is a lack of self – awareness, not knowing what they got – till it’s gone. They’re Roman candles aflame, piercing the stillness of time with their light. Nobody knows when or how it will one day end, vitality.

Nothing worse then growing old. Don’t let them fool you. It’s all downhill, all the time.

So these girls and boys dance, as I watch them perversely from my bar stool writing these very words to capture their attempts of making the carnal, eternal. Colors everywhere. If this isn’t truth, I don’t know what is.

I want to make love, all the time. The older I get the more important it becomes. I have a purpose: Every girl is a part of my constellation. I want to look across, before the big sleep, one last time towards the heavens and see all these starlets come together over me; their sum greater than their parts, somehow making sense of my story in this desolate land.

Each woman is different but they are seduced in the same way.

I went after a woman before making my way down here. She lives on the Upper East Side, alone. I felt here body move to my beat. I took her with one eye on the Manhattan skyline, looking through her window at the bright lights, big city. You really can’t take the Queens outtta the boy.

And in the morning a bagel with lox and cream cheese with a black coffee to celebrate.

The refined gringo pleasures.

Sun and the Sea, no longer enough.

Albert Camus said "A man is not poor if he has but the sun and the sea." This was Oran, Algiers, cerca 1940, but when I read them in Queens in the year 2000, after my father died and we lost everything, I looked around me and felt even poorer in the grey desolation surrounding me. All I had was concrete, and awful 70s modernist architecture. We lost our mansion in the New Jersey forest, back to where it all began - in Queens - because that was all my mother knew, and all we could afford. I had no sun and no sea.

But I felt something deeper in Camus' words. He meant more than he said. I didn't have the sun or the sea, but every poor man gains something, if only he looks and feels, closely. It is there. And that is what Camus meant, that in a man's circumstance and plight, he gains something that is distinctly his own. The suffering, the struggle, nobody can take this away from him.

I looked around me, like a rat in a cage, sleeping in my mother's living room, stealing just enough money from her purse everyday to buy a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, to then write bad poetry, on napkins. Sometimes I wrote little love letters, wanting to slip them to the punjabi girls working behind the counter. They would look at my kara, my sikh bracelet, every time I paid them, every time I took my coffee, I could feel quietly that they recognized a piece of themselves in me. But we never said anything. My punjabi is terrible.

Why is it that we don't get what we want when we most need it? Fuck the world.

I looked out one night through the neon donut shop window and saw the train rumble by and beyond it, stood majestically, the public library. The library of my childhood, the place I went to use the telephone (to place bets) and to take a piss (and jerk off) when I couldn't make it back to the apartment. It was newly renovated and was shining in the darkness with its lights on, like a phoenix rising above all the dirt, filth and madness. There it stood looking at me, calling me. Another train rumbled by above. It came to me. I had my Sun and Sea, too.

I never took much to reading. I don't think any hot blooded young man growing up in New York City can. Too much noise, too much to do, too many people screaming at you. Hustling is much more fun and necessary. Carrying a book around my neighborhood was an invitation to get murdered. So much so that many people got two copies of their textbooks, one to keep in their lockers at school, and the other at home for homework. This way you never looked uncool, kept your street cred and your grades up (we all secretly wanted to go to Bronx Science, even if we pretended we didn't care).

But slowly, when one is unemployed, suffering mental anguish and has nothing better to do, books open up to you. I thought I would start with the classics. Kind of like the best ofs for nubile autodidacts. And then I explored world cinema, and then one day I came upon a journal on Latin American studies from Austin, Texas, about Cuba. There was a picture of Fidel inside. I saw that he and I shared exactly the same hands. I was moved. Yes, there had to be a greater purpose to my life. The library, like the Sun, reminds you of that through its unconditional nourishment. Knowledge also burns. But let's not get into that, just now.

The subway my sea, with its ebb and flow, a steel wave crashing into manhattan day after day, never stopping. The library, knowledge, as radiant as the sun, opening me to the pleasures of the soul. Movement and knowledge, the modern day gifts for a poor man.

Bestial needs used to be enough. The sun, the sea, a good meal, making love to your woman, feeling the breeze in your air. Now it's about travel, in all senses, into the known and unknown. Escape. Paradise is a trap.

In my darkest moments, I remember feeling, that if this was all I had, it was enough. It gave me life, even if I felt a strange monotony in taking the train to Times Square and back everyday, just to think and watch people, and search for the great answers to the questions I had. There it was, everything before me, 2000 years of civilization in a building, the culmination of the world's dreams in a city, and back and forth I went, feeling lulled by a certain rhythm. A certain rhythm only the New York City subway (the sea) can give you.

Soon, I began combining all my pleasures into one. The train, a library book and a cup of coffee (with napkins and a pen, of course). 28 minutes Main Street Flushing to Times Square. That's enough time to fill to a young man's heart, to the brim. And to then get out and watch the world being made. And back, with the sun coming down, but at least I moved, and thought and bettered myself. Doing nothing, but moving, with my mind and my body. My primal needs met. Like in Algiers, with the sun and sea. No money, but you felt mother earth move her lips to your song. And you felt blessed inside, even if slowly you wasted away.

Love, come back to me

A woman is a woman is a woman. Even one who sells her self. Because we all sell ourselves, though some are more aware than others, what they sell.

For a night to feel that innocence, sweetness and joy of a beautiful woman in bed. To sleep and to feel and to hold someone until the morning comes.

After making love she wants me to fry her eggs. The hunger inside her is deep and true. I offer her the finest Belgian chocolate, prociutto, parmesan cheese, some left over caviar, even. No, none of that, she doesn't know what that is. She just wants fried eggs and looks at all the marvels I put in front of her with indifference. And in the darkness, naked, there we stood in the kitchen, with the neon lights from the apartment parking lot seeping in through the half drawn curtains. It's not enough light for me, I go to flip on the light switch; no light, electricity gone. She gets her cell phone, and uses it to guide me as I crack the eggs and then - sizzle, pop. I find her irresistible.

Kundera says to be careful with metaphors when it comes to Love. One metaphor can enslave a man to a woman forever, the deeper poetic meaning, etched in our soul, never letting go. But for me it's less metaphors and more the cinema of the moment, the pure aesthetic grace of being in a film together, no matter how absurd. If the story fits, wear it. And here I am after making love to her, I'm on the stove, in the middle of the night, frying her eggs and kissing her, and she's got one eye on me and the other on a late night dinner. Our passion may burn out, but the eggs won't; I am careful. She comes over behind me, caresses me, and says she prefers them easy over.

"An egg without salt, is like sex without love" - S. Dali

I make sure to add the salt, because I knew she isn't the type to care either way. She just needed something in her stomach and I just needed to feed her, in this moment we were meant for each other; salt and eggs; love and sex. How certain ideas once inside us bear a fruit so beautiful. I've often quoted that Dali quote at many a cocktail party, in vain and feeble attempts to appear cultured, sophisticated and interesting, and here it came to life, in the strangest of circumstance.

It reminded me to add the salt, to put a little love in, it takes so little, means so much.

She ate with that ravenous hunger, the hunger of someone who eats little but wants more, always. Her body was perfect, tight and strong. A body that works to survive is always a healthy body. Nature is perfect that way, it gives so much in poverty and takes so much in wealth. And makes both want to come to the other, to complete each other, master servant, we run to each other, east west, strong weak, the good and the bad, we need each other, each defined by the other, unable to live amongst our own kind.

She smelled of roses and the earth, and after eating, as if she had been sleeping in my bed for years, she snuggled up to me, and took the covers over her and smiled that deep smile of contentment. I looked into her eyes, and smiled too. There was no way to reach her through words. I only had my smile and my manhood, to let her know how beautiful she was. And my kisses, and when you can't speak, and no one can hear you, something deep down in us comes through to touch someone. And that is what I felt.

In the beginning there was the word, but I long for the time before the beginning when there were no words, only energy, innocence and a joy that no longer exists. Well, maybe for a night, on a strange island, until the morning comes.

In Memory

The only time I loved her was after I hurt her, when she cried tenderly; tired and defeated.  She was most beautiful to me then.  There was such a moment here in Africa.  We had fought violently and she slumped down, at a loss for words, engulfed in tears and pain. 

A man's heart breaks, at such moments.

After some time she calmed down, collected her dignity, wiped her face, and walked by my side to where we were headed to, before we had started fighting.  She had nowhere to go; she had to follow.

The sun was a big piece of orange candy in the sky, slowing falling, falling down.  We were walking side by side, and it was one of those African moments that make you forget yourself. 

I felt her slowly ease up next to me, grasping my hand in hers, tightly.  I squeezed back, feeling uplifted, ecstatic, to be where I was in the world, with that hand in mine.  There was confusion and uncertainty, though we had each other.  We didn't look each other in the eyes; we knew we didn't need to, nor could we if we wanted to.  I just closed mine while walking, feeling the sun set on me, everything fading away.  I wanted to be in that moment, for as long as possible, before it left us, forever. 

I felt a sun like this before, once before. 

On the 7 train heading back home, twilight hour again, again that same sun in our faces, the buildings rumbling by, painted across the sky.  I looked at you through the heat of that New York summer, naked and alive, those nights. 

I asked you, in that rapturous joy only children feel, if you wanted to marry me.  You said yes, I will always remember, with your chestnut hair in your face and a smile so wide the world could fall in it. 

I laughed and you became self-conscious.  I didn't believe in myself enough though you always believed in us.  You loved English and ugly modernist Queens, your paradise; my prison - but you set me free in it.  Making love to you there, in the very place I suffered and lost, so poignant; so true.  You showed me how a rose blooms in the desert.      

I didn't know what I had, no one does.  But that summer, those moments, were precious.  Nothing was as beautiful after that.  Everything after took on a sadness and more anxious mood.  We tried to do it over and over again, and it never came back, the sun, like it was that day.  It only returned in Africa - the great mother - tearing us apart, as we held each other, all tangled up in blue.    

I was driving her to the airport in a broken down car with a radio.  The entire night making desperate love, a love that tries to suck dry the very source of our endless vitality.  I was tired, confused, not sure when I would see her again.  The car filled with a deathly silence.   I took the road to the airport, a long expansive road opening up into the African horizon.  The sun shining her face, the wind blowing in her beautiful hair, I turned on the radio and held her hand.  And then, as if in a dream, a karaoke version of Let It Be came on, all cheesy and elevator music like.  She lunged for the radio to shut it off and I stopped her.  I said no, let it be, Let It Be.   I sang for her and she smiled sadly, "there will be an answer, let it be...".  

And then as she was getting into the plane, I knew it would all be in the kiss.  The kiss
never lies.  And we kissed, as passionately as we could, though I felt something patronizing and assured in her kiss.  As if she was kissing a child good night, and no longer her lover.  I could tell she would be alright, she would live without me.  And when you feel that, you know it's over.

A Speech to the Youth Of Africa

A speech I recently gave at a graduation ceremony for SPW - Students Partnership Worldwide - www.spw.org - the NGO I manage.   

91 volunteers spent 8 months living and working in rural communities of Zambia.  These words are for them, and their indomitable spirit.  

__________

I want everyone to know that I wrote my own speech, like Obama.  Who likes Obama?  Who knows, amongst us today, we may have not only the future president of Zambia, but quite possibly the United States of America.  

America is everybody's country.  The blood, sweat, tears and dreams of the world are tied up into America's destiny.  It is the reason I am here, so deeply honored to speak to you.  I suppose you want me to speak because you deem me important.  But you are the true heroes and dignitaries.  You are the most important people here today, more important than ministers, presidents, NGO country directors and senior managers.  We are brought up to respect these people of authority, as they seem very important.  But they rarely do anything as noble as what you have done.  You didn't just talk about social change, or give money, or take a class, you were social change.  You went directly into the community, lived with them, shared in their joys and sorrows, and broke bread with them, and listened, and guided and provided for them a service that the government cannot provide.  You took responsibility for your fellow countrymen and made their problems yours.  Do you realize how tremendous this is?  Do you realize what you have done?  You have done more than any of us who sit in our comfortable offices, and go to our conferences and trainings.  Who fly all over the world and buy expensive things in duty free shops ( oh, I am sorry, maybe that is just me).  

I am honored, first of all, to be here in your presence, asked to say some words to mark your tremendous achievement.  

You are truly the heart and soul of SPW, without your works and efforts, SPW would cease to exist. 

This is only the beginning, that is why it is called commencement.  Your new life begins here, in this moment, today, as you now you go on, into the world as ex volunteers of SPW.  

Let me remind you, that we have numerous managers, even our current country director is an ex-volunteer.  So the future is bright if you seize it and make the most of your experiences.  You will have help along the way, but the ultimate responsibility for your life is with you.  As the bible says, "ask and you shall receive", not receive even if you haven't asked.  You need to voice yourselves, be active and engaged, in a new york city word, as I am from New York, you got to be a hustler.  The world is yours, if only you ask for it, and see yourself as worthy of having it.  

Look at your older peers, and see where they have come from.  They were one day like you, and now they are coordinators, managers, country directors, and have traveled to Europe, America, India, and other parts of Africa to join the global movement to fight not only HIV/AIDS, but to give a voice to young people who consistently get spoken for, rather than speak about their own needs.  And this is what makes us special.  Youth teaching youth, youth leading youth, youth are our future, without the youth we are nowhere.  

I can't express in mere words my joy in working with fellow young people ( I consider myself forever young).  Your energy and joy is contagious.  Don't lose your youthful spirit, no matter how old you get.  It is the ultimate elixir against all the perils that surely come in our way, along life's winding path.  

You may not realize everything you have learned, but over these past months you have built the foundation for future success, both professional and personal.  Teaching, presenting, meetings, mentoring and being responsible for the day to day operations of the program, these are not little things at all.  These will help you no matter what you undertake next, and opportunities will be vast if you apply yourselves, and move with the same energy you moved with in SPW.  

And let's not forget about what you were a part of.  You were the embodiment of young people making a difference in their communities.

  

Your work makes a huge difference.  Not because I say so, or Richard and Mary, or anyone else.  This program has undergone external evaluation from reputable sources from the United States of America which have determined that your work changes young people's behavior.  This is a landmark for SPW, to have such results, and its because of your efforts.  You are making a difference.  You also have gained the support of the Finnish embassy, DFID in the United Kingdom, personal individuals, new Zealand aid and a host of others who have visited and continue to be impressed by your teachings, your enthusiasm, and your songs.  

I thank you very much, and for those of you who know me, know how much I like the songs of the program.  

I remember my first visit near kapiri, in a rural school, on a visit from new zealand aid.  It was my first day of work, four months back.  I observed a lesson, by a volunteer who had a michael jordan buckle on his belt.  And they came together and went through the lesson, which was excellent, though what struck me was the songs and happiness, the smiles, and positive energy emanating from that classroom.  That was beautiful, something magical for me to see and feel.  

The world has so much to learn from Zambia, from Africa.  

Here we were, in a community that struggled under the weight of poverty and disease, and still some how the human spirit soars and sings.  It fights back against all circumstance and refuses to be defeated.  You were a part of this fight, this struggle for dignity and refusal to resign in the face of so many odds.  Don't see yourself alone in this.  Look around you and see who is here, people from different parts of Zambia, different tribes and languages, even all over the world, all coming and working together for a new and better world.  

We can't make it alone, we must seek help, genuine help, from anyone who wants to work by our side.  SPW is international, and we express solidarity with young people all over the world.  Be it America or Ghana, people are people, and we must learn from and work with each other.  We are more than zambians and americans or British, we are people, young people, who want to change the world, for the better, a place where young people are listened to, who help shape the world according to their dreams and aspirations.  That is a day I am sure will come upon us if more people do what you did.  It is for this day and the work required to bring it forth, that keeps me in SPW, and makes me happy to see that we can work side by side, for the years to come.  

My profound love, blessings and good wishes for your future.  A future brightened by the African sun.  

Don't call it a comeback (I've been here for years)

It doesn't take much to be happy.  All children know this; give them a stick and a ball and the great outdoors and they  are free.  

Television, we are bored without it.  Internet, makes us lonely without it.  Stimulating, titillating only to withdraw, leaving us dazed and numb to the simple pleasures.  

To sleep when sleeping, eat while eating, be while being.  Life and nothing more.  

We don't need much to happy.  A simple smile, and the basics, and we feel that warmth and energy inside of us.  You know that feeling, don't you?  The one that springs forth in effervescent bursts, where you feel happy being who you really are; a child of heaven and earth, both the sun and the sky.  My My My.   

  

Bare your feet in the soil of our mother and feel that cool warmth.  This is where you are meant to be, always. 

Some acts, even when performed for the first time, make you feel as if you have been and done them before.  A connection.  Re-legion; reconnection.  A religious experience.    

Swimming in the sea.  Feeling the sun brighten your childhood.  Love making.  Wine.  Meat.  Killing a man??

Yes, take me back to the essence, to the pure and harmonic, instinctual virtue.  When the Lion didn't apologize.    

But being there means no consciousness.  No literature, no art that is self-referential.  Though there will be dancing and singing, of course, though you won't remember enough of it to package and sell.  It will pass through you, like a rose does, in the desert, alone and free, both in its beauty and in its demise.  But it bloomed.  It bloomed for you:  ((((((()))))))    

Can you let go?  Can you go back?  Has the illusions of the modern world become more real than reality?  

I feel a rush with technology.  I can't imagine my life without popular culture.  Nature is over-rated.  I want to be moved while sitting still, in an office, during a meeting, I want all these thoughts and desires to rush into my head, converge into one big cataclysm.  

Cry, break free, and yearn for something better, always, that's what I want.  Always on the run, the ups and the downs.  Modern man, hear me blog and text, and live in an alternate universe where I am who I want to be.

What does this all mean?  Do these questions even matter, any more?  They hurt and torture me less, though I express them better.  My anguish has given forth to cogency.  It doesn't feel the same.  And I miss that.  I would give up clarity for opacity for it gives birth to ambiguity; the mother of all genius and ecstasy.  Contentment is not always a good thing.

When we don't need all this junk to make us happy, why do we do it, and why can't we live with out it?  

Life is more than "happiness".  

Creation, destruction, absurdity, resurgence.  To feel the Earth move, under your feet and the sky fall.  

No looking back.  Head into the abyss.  

Get your kicks before it's all over.          

  

HONOR

On a drunken revelry in Bologna, with an Italian professor, I chanced upon a universal truth that only comes to you at such moments of surrender, rapture.  When that dollhouse of a city shines with all its lights, through porticos and piazzas, only for you.  Only for you.  During my time there, I often pictured what Bologna looks like from up above.  It would make anyone say, "what is that preciousness?"  And I was there in that walled city and one night in particular, I remember quite fondly.           

It was myself and four white american classmates of mine, WASPS.  Anglo-saxon to the core, white as white can be.  I rarely hang out with white americans, not because I am a reverse racist or something, but only because they are usually so uncool.  I still give it a go, at times, who knows, there may be a Jack Nicholson, a Sean Penn, or a Johnny Depp amongst them.  But that's only in the movies, I am convinced.  Plus the cool ones all moved to France.  I digress.

We had a common purpose these white people and I.  We all loved dearly our cynical and tough-minded Italian professor who was so cool, so casually, effortlessly hip even though he was stereotypical; approaching 50 though always with younger women, and driving only classic cars; Porche, Alfa romeo or the Mercedes depending on his mood.  He chain smoked and always looked as if he had somewhere more important to be, and if he was talking to you, someone more important he needed to talk to.  But he indulged us, of all the uptight professors at our elite institution, he was the only one who drank with us - if only to mock us.  But such abuse turned us ON.  Yes, we wanted to be made to feel inferior, to be broken down only to be built up again, as cool as our Italian professor.  We worshipped him.  We wanted to look into the future with wonder and awe, wishing - dare I say hoping (our Italian professor hated this word)- that we too would eventually dress better, have young ladies, classic cars and the cigarette dangling off our lips as we popped champagne corks on the Amalfi coast, on our spare time, when we weren't engaged in the exciting and glamourous world of international affairs. 

He came to our parties, hit on our women, and then drove away with them in his fancy cars.

He outdrank us, and was always the last one home.  And the next day he would be in seminar as sharp as a razor bearing down on our collective ignorance.  He was tough and mean in the classroom, and jaded and cynical outside.  But we loved him, a group of us, don't ask me why.  Some people just have that kind of hold on you.  

He knew quite well that I was a romantic, and idealist, a lover of life.  We would often talk alone, about literature and women.  Though he studied in the UK and America, I could tell he loathed the Anglophone culture.  He couldn't truly open up, and I asked him, on a particular night, in the company of my classmates, if there is a difference between Italy and America and by extension the UK.

He said:  "Let me put it to you this way.  In the form of an allegorical exam.  Imagine you are at school, and your school has a strict honor code against cheating.  You know this though one day during an exam your best friend asks you for answers.  Do you help him?  Do you tell on him?  What do you do?"

Our Italian professor's answer differs from answers most WASPs give.  

So does mine.

real love

Yes, yes.  This is the article I have been waiting for that perfectly explains why I look for love outside of the hyper-educated liberal elite that I am a part of.  RISK.  PASSION.  LUNACY.  That is what makes love so grand.  Not the companion-ship bullshit currently being played out in sunday brunches across the nation and at IKEA.  FUck.  

I knew something was wrong and leave it to the NY Times to FINALLY figure it out.  Because they themselves ARE the hyper educated liberal elite, they are a bit slow on trends and only 5 years down the line get it right.  Iraq war, slow food, and Kristof wrote about polluted water supply the other day.  When I was talking about, way back when, I was called paranoid.  But things slowly take their turn in America.  

Obama is compilation of everything that has come before.  The country truly responds and changes, albeit slowly, but it comes around and is not tied to any dogma.  At heart, we are a practical people, and if it don't work, we are game to fix it.  Health care is coming around.  And eventually so will all the other irrational and unjust policies out there.  We have been pushed to the brink.  And there is no better time to be American, and to be a part of all these changes.  I see them clearer in the distance.  

The times, they are a changin.  

I still loathe Americans, don't get me wrong.  We got a long way to go.  Especially culturally.  The hyper pragmatism is daunting and completely uncool.  It gets things done, though so do sweatpants.  But like Seinfeld says, if you wear sweatpants outside the house, you might as well say you've given up.  For Americans, what they have given up is:  The good life.  

Time to be a dignified Empire, worthy of emulation.  Step it up, come on, the world depends on us, if you haven't realized already. 

_______________

It's been a good month for reckless romance in America. The nation's most famous reality-television father, Jon Gosselin of "Jon and Kate Plus Eight," threw over his marriage for a fling with a 23-year-old schoolteacher. Not one but two prominent conservative politicians torpedoed their careers with public confessions of adultery — with Mark Sanford's Argentine disappearing act eclipsing John Ensign's accusation of extortion against his lover's spouse.

These irrepressible passions make a fascinating counterpoint to the complaint, advanced this month by two of the nation's finest essayists, that modern relationships have been drained of danger and purged of eros.

In her new polemic "A Vindication of Love," an assault on the idea of safety in romance, Cristina Nehring complains that contemporary couplings have so restrained true passion that "the poor beast has become as impotent as it is domestic." In a post-divorce essay for The Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh autopsies not only her own marriage but those of her peers, a cohort of middle-aged Los Angelenos who've let the quest for security turn them into sexless drudges.

Both writers depict a country where pragmatic anxieties — think of the children! think of the mortgage! — are forever trumping romance and dulling the libido. Theirs is a nation of nesters who have clipped their own wings.

So which is the real America? Is it Tsing Loh's dystopia, where everyone "works" grimly on their relationships, and post-feminist husbands happily cook saffron-infused porcini risotto but rarely practice seduction on their wives? Or is it tabloid country: The land of Jon minus Kate, and governors who vanish to "hike the Appalachian Trail" — not to mention gossip-column fixtures like Britney Spears (rumored last week to be contemplating her third marriage in six years) and the mistress-parading Mel Gibson?

One possible answer is that our stars and politicians are a species apart — more impulsive and incautious than the average Dick and Jane, and more libidinous as well.

But the evidence suggests the opposite. The high-wire love lives of a Jon Gosselin or a Mark Sanford — or a Spears, or even a Lindsey Lohan — are remarkably true to the America that watches their shows, buys their CDs, and votes them into office. It's the highly-educated, highly risk-averse milieu lamented by Nehring and Tsing Loh that's a world unto itself.

Their complaints about this world's romance deficit are substantially overstated, obviously — and shot through with a dash of self-justification. (Tsing Loh had an affair; Nehring recently became an unwed mother.) But both do put their finger on a post-sexual revolution paradox — namely, that the same overclass that was once most invested in erotic experimentation ended up building the sturdiest walls against the passions it unleashed.

As Nehring observes, our hyper-educated, socially-liberal elite is considerably more romantically conservative than its blasé attitude toward pornography or premarital sex would lead you to expect. The difficult scramble up the meritocratic ladder tends to discourage wild passions and death-defying flings. For bright young overachievers, there's often a definite tameness to the way that collegiate "safe sex" segues into the upwardly-mobile security of "companionate marriages" — or, if you're feeling more cynical, "consumption partnerships."

This tameness has beneficial social consequences: When it comes to divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births, Americans with graduate degrees are still living in the 1950s. It's the rest of the country that marries impulsively, divorces frequently, and bears a rising percentage of its children outside marriage. Indeed, if you're looking for modern-day Percy Shelleys or Mary Wollstonecrafts (to pluck a pair of Nehring's romantic risk-takers), you're more likely to find them in Middle America than among the environmental lawyers and documentary filmmakers who populate Tsing Loh's depressing social world.

Better, perhaps, if this dynamic were reversed. Our meritocrats could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess. (Though such excess is more appropriate in the young, it should be emphasized, than in middle-aged essayists and parents.) But most Americans, particularly those of modest means, would benefit from greater caution and stability in their romantic entanglements.

Maybe this reversal could start with some creative matchmaking across lines of class and politics. The dutiful, somewhat-boring husbands from Sandra Tsing Loh's Los Angeles, for instance, sound like ideal soulmates for Kate Gosselin, the soon-to-be-single mother of eight.

And as for Cristina Nehring, who can't live without being "derailed by love, hospitalized by love, flung around five continents, shaken, overjoyed, inspired and unsettled by love" — well, maybe someone should introduce her to Mark Sanford.