A Twofer This Sunday

Two big things! Big exciting things. Last week was probably the most exciting week for my creative/artistic life in years! 

Big Thing #1: 

My second book finally came out! Small potatoes, I know, but this marks a very big deal for me personally. It's a collection of short stories and things I've read at events in the Valley since 2016. It's called "Do Not Give Up Kid;" the title comes directly from my favorite Spotify playlist I ever made. Which is borderline ridiculous but whatever. I also think it sort of sums up the heart of the collection as well, since I generally don't think it constitutes a cohesive true "theme" as well. 

Here's my book. Shannon Youso did the cover. Hey she's crazy talented and runs a pretty cool nonprofit? Check out her stuff here. (She also did a portrait of my deceased guinea pig, Smores, which is awesome.) 

Big Thing #2:

I had a piece read as part of the Laughing Pig Theatre's Monologue Cafe last night. My essay, entitled "On Boundaries," was read by the phenomenally talented Tyneckia Lewis in an ensemble that consisted of other performers and writers in the Valley of the Sun. It was amazing - really, amazing - to see someone else interpret something I'd written. It was so cool! I'm still in awe of how she did it; I was like, "Damn, she gets it!" Huge thanks to Tayo Talabi and Taylor Moschetti for organizing this monthly event. 

On Boundaries

Do you think we sometimes build walls we should probably never scale? Even if curiosity compels us to try and jump, one foot after the other?

Hopeless romantic in me aside, I think you might be right.

Oh, it appears I am talking to myself. Well this works great because I’m my own best audience. 

I guess another way of examining walls is to think of boundaries. What you need to define that separates you from another person or entity. You are not your job. You are not your boyfriend and what you think you did to him. You are not your girlfriend and what you know you did to her. You aren’t your parents’ mistakes, even if they tried repeatedly to impart them on to you. Perhaps part of me is writing this solely to comfort myself. We are all a conglomerate of the experiences that have molded us, good and bad and completely pointless.

I have tried to scale walls. A few times. Recently, I’ll cringe and admit. I’m not at my best, but I’m not at my worst, either. 

I used to work at a zoo ten years ago. It was the summer that Coldplay dominate the radio stations (cringe again) and that the world really first discovered Barack Obama. I was in between semesters at school, and due to my lack of a car, the only time I could really work and not completely inconvenience my parents was during the humid Pennsylvania summers. The zoo was something of a dream job, but I was a janitor. People tend to think it was a lot more glamorous than it was. No, I essentially cleaned shit off toilets and picked up used diapers for three months. It was one uninterrupted lesson in humility.

But in between the diapers and the misplaced feces, I became friends with some animals. Giraffes, otters, but notably, the orangutans. I will never forget the orangutans because every morning at 8 AM, when I walked in with my worn-out rag to clean the windows of their habitat, the would follow me, study my actions, and proceed to mimic me. Despite the glass barrier caught in the middle, the orangutans and I forged a bond that was very real for a short time. But I would have never tried to break that boundary; if I did, they’d probably kill me. I mean, you remember that chimp that literally went apeshit back in 2009, right?

The same can be said of humans. I’ve been duking it out with a pretty vicious bout of insomnia lately. Partially because the heat in my apartment feels kind of like the exterior of a hot pocket, and partially because I am riddled with numerous anxieties. Either way, my long-term ex-girlfriend appeared in my thoughts for the first time in months.

“Are you fucking serious?”  I said to my brain. “We don't need to go down this road. It always leads to pain.” My brain, however, is a sadist. 

So one sleepless night, I did it.

I did what most Millennials will do when thinking about an ex love; I Googled her. And lo and behold, this brought about her blog. It turned out that she was doing rather well with her life. This wasn't upsetting to me; rather, I was glad and relieved she was finally healing from her own personal demons. Like me, she had a circle of hell in her head.

The last thing she had ever said to me was via text message. It was summer 2014 and I was in the midst of a tumultuous move. Her comment when I reached out to her then was as callous as she had ever had been in her cruelest moments.

“Please don't contact me ever again.”  The message was short but it succinctly got the point across. There was no mistaking her meaning in that. We (fortunately) never crossed paths or exchanged words until this past month.

I was overwhelmed with the urge to tell her how happy I was that she was doing well finally. Despite our personal hang-ups, the peace seemed long overdue. As cliched as it is, I was just happy for her and wanted her to remain happy.

I had been cognizant of the fact that I didn't want to cause her any pain or trauma or any sort of stress my memory might conjure. For a while, I was certain I wouldn't contact her at all. If the universe desired us to meet again well they would be an obvious sign; an omen like a blood red moon. Or maybe a plague of locusts.

 As anyone who has experience insomnia knows, one sleepless night begets another sleepless night. So I had many more of these to endure. Every evening, the thought seemed to linger above my head - Should I? Should I? Should I really fuck up her general well-being and send my well wishes? There were no dreams to fight these thoughts off with. At least, no good dreams. 

So I gave in. In a moment that required rare courage or tremendous stupidity, I wrote an email that was incredibly lucid given the obscene hour I fired it off at. The gist was - I wanted her to be happy and was relieved she was finally there. And I had come in peace.

Less than an hour later, I was shocked to discover her answer. Hers, much shorter than my semi-novella, was pithy but heartfelt.

“I’m sorry.” 

I had waited many a year for an apology I never expected to materialize. And now it was here, at my door, this mangy-looking creature I didn’t know what to do with. This unexpected gift that maybe was meant to kickstart a chain reaction of self-forgiveness in my personal journey. She may have hurt me, but I have hurt others as well. And forgiving myself has perhaps been the most astounding challenge of them all. If she could forgive me, this opened the floodgates to other revelations. 

I now think I was not meant to answer that message. To let bygones be bygones and feel permission to start anew. But the peace she had gifted me felt uneasy, mostly because I wasn't sure what to do with it. In her compassion, I hadn't swam. I had sunk like a stone. 

My follow-up was an invitation to catch up. I had always imagined someday we’d meet, but I knew it to be a naive fantasy. I didn't want to start a relationship with her of any kind; I simply wanted cordiality to exist in the space between us. I wanted her to keep her walls; they protected her for a reason. 

In the process though, I lost mine. They protected me for a reason. 

The invitation fell on deaf ears, she never replied. Reasons are reasons; I doubt I’ll ever know them. 

Some walls are not meant to be scaled.