Life is slippery. Here, take my hand.

We all have those days, born from the frustration of merely existing, where we experience the most bizarre and upsetting realities. Everyday, as I walk the streets of New York City, I pass the writhing, dirty masses of the underworld, of a subterranean landscape of mental illness and social irresponsibility. We can walk by, walk away, but no matter where you turn, it finds you and confronts you. Humanity is a twisted souless thing, and the depths the mind will go in sickness and the effort of running away from expectations... are unfathomable.

I watch it, I consider it, but sitting in the midtown library, at 40th street and 5th avenue, I have been graced with the profound and terrifying and cannot turn away. I find myself paralyzed in mutual fascination and horror, as a woman in her late 40's plopped her unwashed body across from me, and has slowly acted out complicated and overlapping story lines. It is like watching one person act out a kipling short story, a cut away from alice in wonderland (including graphic descriptions of brain tissue being ripped out and losing herself in her cerebral cortex), an argument with a wheelchair bound dead father (how dare he try to steal an elephant's identity and give pieces of her brain away to other people to utilize), be shocked into sobs, inform herself there was no wicked witch's castle, because the wizard and wicked witch took up residence in allison's labia (which was only for her husband's use, privately), manifest a british accent, discuss the depravity of the british royal family, asking to be removed from the russian crown and turning down 100 billion dollars, of tits being ripped off, being in a courtroom pressing charges for attempted rape, sodomy, and murder, and dictating someone's foreign policy in regards to saudi arabia. But to be clear, she did state that she does not want to live with her daddy in the 1950's. She wants to live in her own time period. I can understand that.

The power of her conviction, the breadth of the stories being acted out in her helpless frame... shock me. That something can bubble up so concrete and perfectly formed from the recesses of our brain, entire lifetimes of non existent memories can wrack one person's body like truth...

And I sit here, as the stories continue to pour out of her ample, impassioned, and pungent frame. Accents, sobs and physical blows shuddering out of her as she plays every single role, from a dead father figure to phantom almost-husbands, sisters, judge, lawyers, royal families... and I actually sit here, bearing witness to this. This is the stuff of nightmares, of a bygone era where writers spent their nights in opium dens and their days obsessing over little girls, to eventually write stories about them delving into other-worlds of childish fancy with Freudian overtones... the power of the human brain to manifest realities, to hold on to pieces of information and weave together elaborate contexts and torture the uneducated and lost soul sitting before me with a cacophony of other people's imaginary lives.

In the lunacy of this day, there is a woman wandering around loudly and tearfully distraught over her lost library card, like a child had been ripped from her womb, and an insistent sound of a bullfrog I finally realized is emanating from the old man using the typewriter at the end of the table I sit at in a state of shock.

This is reality folks.

The Collectively Dismissed

Stephen Hawking and a number of biology and physics theorists have come to the lofty conclusion that " the whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired". The subway taught me this. Life has taught me this. But when reading the theory of relativity, which redefines reality as consisting only of contextual truths, which perpetually vary according to our mass and speed in space and time (which has conceptually become the same thing in science, aka spacetime) I begin to wonder what then becomes of Memory.

The proposed 4th dimension, if we were all to travel at the speed of light, exists as a continuum where time=light, so by moving at the speed of light, we are also moving at the speed of time, and the future is behind us, with the past at our fingertips in front of us. If history is possible, time travel must be possible. Perhaps the laws of inertia are in play with humanity, and we simply haven't ricocheted in the opposite direction into Unhistory. But if we had the profound ability to go back in time, would we hold on to our memories and relics of passing ages and people? Is this proposed 4th dimension somewhat of a key into the Collective Unconscious, that there may be an overlap that hints at the future experience? However scientifically learned we may become, one serious thing cannot be accounted for by space and time and quantum physics. This aspect of reality is as contextual as any other aspect, and reading the flow of history, of movements and recessions, temperature fluctuations and the resulting human reactions, we move with a force and depth of emotion through spacetime that makes the powerful evolution of a river much more appropriately used to describe history from its emotional/human side than for the Time association of the word History. OR maybe they two are intimately and inextricably connected. If Time heals all wounds, speed of time changes according to our emotional output, that it is possible to wait forever and remember forever, it seems Emotion is also a definitive aspect of our definition of reality, an ethereal quasi-component to the dimension we exist in: EmotionalSpaceTime. Emotion+Time=Memory. History is a Byproduct of Memory. Without the ability to remember what came before, we would not exist in Time. If we didn't exist in Time, which is equal to SpaceTime, we would not exist in Space. Without our emotional context, we would not exist at all.

Keeping that in mind, my recent New York explorations brought some interesting questions and observations to the surface. I recently moved off the island of Manhattan to the very close Jersey City, overlooking the spiky New York skyline and I quickly became aware that Ellis Island lay within a quarter of a mile of the New Jersey Coast. My history classes never mentioned New Jersey during the decades of Immigration booms, no book I have read has mentioned the obvious proximity to the rest of the country the short ferry ride to New Jersey is, and that only the immigrants bound for NYC actually traveled from Ellis Island to New York. Everyone else was shuttled through NJ. The Gates of America are in New Jersey. Why is it so important for us to believe that New York was the major port for immigration? Ironically enough, the Island itself was a tiny little thing that was increased through landfill as it grew to be able to hold the massive numbers coming in through its gates, and after the 30's and into the 40's, when immigration dwindled in the face of America's Great Depression and Wartime Era... it was simply abandoned. Forgotten. A profound symbol for so many of freedom and citizenship was stripped away by its lack of prescence in our Collective Memory and became what it truly was when looked at with no emotional context. It was a fancy building falling in on itself, floating on an island of trash off the Jersey Coast.

Ellis Island started to draw photographers in the late 60's and images from the rotting walls and remnants of beautiful architecture from another time began to surface, spawning a new interest in this important axis of our history. It was rebuilt to its original splendor and turned into a museum. The bizarre part is that what came from this place was profound amount of ethereal Emotional things... there is an overwhelming lack of physical objects, because you can't SEE citizenship, or joy, fear or freedom. We seemed to remember that Ellis Island was an important piece of our cultural development... but walking the empty halls, it seems like we have forgotten why.

There were some interesting three dimensional graphs about the number and types of immigrants, and obviously, to fill the space they had to be really creative - these graphs will be something i will never forget, due to the power of their symbolism and ability to impact you with a sense of the weight of what they were there to show. There was a number that did jump out at me, one I have never encountered before. According to the map detailing the (forced) influx of slave labor, it appears that the amount shipped to Brazil is HUGE in comparison to the amount that came to the states. Huge. Have I ever heard in a class, read in a book that there was even slavery in Brazil at all, let alone probably the most massive number of forced immigration in the America's history? No. With that startling revelation, my profound respect for the power of context strikes me particularly hard. Passing thoughts about our obvious sense of guilt as a country is apparent in our intense focus on our own slavery history, versus memories of talking with brazilian exchange students when I was in high school. I remember during one conversation I mentioned the Holocaust, and these exchange students, seniors in high school, had no idea what I was talking about. Images from the Holocaust are burned into our developing minds starting in the sixth grade, and American school systems make that a required section of every year of our education until graduation. Who defines what is important? History itself depends on the person telling it. There is so much bias and emotional context, History is a constantly fluctuating line, and just as me and my brother have differing memories of the same events in our life, History is a grand Memory. What is truth? We can all talk about God, but his face in our minds would be different to every single person due to their frame of reference. He will have a deep rumbly voice like someone's father, kind crinkly eyes like another's favorite Santa Clause, the one they went to the mall to see every year. One is black, or has almond eyes and dark lashes, a pot belly, is loud or gentle, embracing or stonelike and stoic.

Coney Island is going to be torn down - another relic from desperate times. P.T. Barnum and his contemporaries were the light in the darkness of the Great Depression, their bullshit and cheap thrills the only thing that the masses of poor had to lighten the monotony of starving and working and having nothing. I'm surprised no one has stepped forward to save some piece of this rich thread in the tapestry of American History, embarrassed when I saw how dingy and silly and falling apart it looked in comparison to the grand vision that resided in the recesses of my Collective Memories. Another symbol of the stuttering heartbeat of our culture, being washed away by the flood of people and their Greater Needs. What happens when we erase these pieces of history - the egyptians defined eternity through memories, and to wipe away someone's potential for eternity, they merely had to erase every picture and mention of that person's name from their records - when there is no emotional context, people who could remember these places and why they meant so much are gone, these places do not exist in space... will they cease to exist in time? Will they cease to exist at all? To continue on towards impending future and create new memories from our own context instead of just from a previous context of the people who will be phasing out during our lifetime, do we have to let certain memories go?

I recently saw the World Trade Center site for the first time. That is an event from my context, the images from that experience burned into the Collective Mind's Eye of my entire generation. A freshman in high school, my classmates and I spent the day wandering like zombies from class to class, sitting in silence, watching in horror as the trauma continued to unfold in front of us - every TV in the school stayed on. And we watched, and watched. It was not a Holocaust. It was not a Great Depression. But in our young lives, it is the only, the first and the closest context we have for the politics of horror, and the powerful feeling of helplessness that are the definition at the base of all of those things. They are building a museum on the site, and I am stricken with an odd sense of futility and devastation. We are consciously letting go memories of the light in the darker times of our development as a country, but forcibly declaring our priorities on remembering an act meant to strike terror in the American people.

And I wonder what will go in this museum for 9/11. Pieces of desks and unidentified human remains? Melted glass windows, and post it notes with meeting times that somehow survived? What is it that we are really looking to remember, and like Ellis Island, what physical objects could possibly convey the powerful emotions that surround the events of that tragic day? Like everything else, I imagine it will eventually fall from society's context and no longer be reality. It will be replaced with new memories.

"I am the ghost of a corduroy child- never listened, much too wild."

Tagging along with my sometimes lover and passionate best friend, who always leads me into fascinating experiences and surprising depths of emotions, I once again found myself facing the heavy gray door of the Drilling Company in the early hours of the morning, scraping up tape and painting over a myriad of scuff marks, baptizing the tiny theatre's stage new with a coat of black semi-gloss latex paint. My partner in crime was designing the lighting for the theatre's newest experimental production, to which she only vaguely described to me as being "organic", indefinable, possessing no book... and I painted barefoot in the night, with lights of different position and hue coming up and down, fading in and out in bursts of varied speed and color as she flicked through cues in her head. I wore patches of black paint as we stumbled home in the early dawn. It had been a year since I had painted a stage, since I had been up all night painting a space that would be brought to life by bodies moving across it. A year since I had to fiercely scrub huge parts of my body to barely remove those patches of paint, and I covered them as much as I could with sassy heels for my afternoon interview. Only later did I discover the parts I had missed on the backside of my right arm. I am what I am, sir.

That evening I was a part of the crew, one of the gang, I overheard bits and pieces of a runthrough, I was ready. It was a cool subject, cool group of people...

I had no idea what was coming.

A sassy waitress slung around drinks and coin change, the M.C. for the evening took names for the poetry slam that was supposed to take place. As the audience stumbled in a group at a time, a few people did come forward and speak with the M.C. before finding their places in the audience. With ease and familiarity, with subtlety and nervous energy, the intimate space quickly evolved into an interactive, all encompassing evolution, a tempestuous and vaguely uncomfortable transformation from the stereotypes we all hear, we all know to something we cannot escape. At first these social grenades are achingly brought up from the interaction of the multicultural cast, in artfully earnest and organic personal discussion with each other, that quickly escalates into pointed, witty commentary on the origins and perceptions of those stereotypical thoughts we all pretend to disassociate with. We as the audience are suspended in the perceptive dialogue, each of us responding to a different wealth of assumptions from the outside world, agreeing and disagreeing in our heads, wholly sucked into the Cypher...

what is the Cypher?

according to dictionary.com, the word cypher:
ci·pher also cy·pher (sī'fər)
n. The mathematical symbol (0) denoting absence of quantity; zero.
One having no influence or value; a nonentity.
A design combining or interweaving letters or initials; a monogram.

and thesaurus.com states:
Cypher Synonyms: device, emblem, figure, hieroglyph, letter, logo, mark, monogram, number, numeral, rune, sign, type, answer, clarify, decipher, dissolve, elucidate, figure out, illuminate, illustrate, make plausible, make reasonable, puzzle out, resolve, solve, straighten out, tidy, unfold, unravel
Notes: character is what one is; reputation is what one is thought to be by others

One of the actors described it as being in a circle with no end, a literal translation of the numerical character we know as zero. It is also specifically associated with a code, and the cracking of it, or, as the last line of the definition vaguely describes as "a design combining or interweaving", letters or people, the act of multiple "characters" folding in over each other multiple times is a deft allusion to our lives and perceptions and experiences overlapping with other people's, that we are inextricably linked to the perceptions and experiences and evolution and epiphanies of the others caught in the cypher with us. So as the actors spit rhymes and make poetic and striking allusions to different forms of racism based on stereotype, the flow is periodically interrupted with a clinical/encyclopedic discussion of what skin really is: the history of evolution evidenced for us on our bodies. At the same time, we are reminded that biologically, once past the initial melanin content that floats on the surface, we are constructed alike, with membranes and tissues, muscles and nerves, emotional reactions, blood, sweat and tears.

The piece closes with the characters being reborn, baptized new with tap water and awareness, as they first investigate what they see on their own skin with fresh eyes: color, metaphor, experience, emotion. Reaching forward into the audience to describe what they see when they look at the individuals in the audience before them, the room resonates with words like "honey", "mahogany", "earth", "open", "cinnamon", "cream", "golden". Suddenly, these actors are speaking the language of my artist soul and heart and hands. No person's skin color can be found in a paint tube, all luminous and convincing skin is painted with equal parts light and shadow, warmth and coolness, subtle combinations of dioxazine purple and lavender reflections, of sienna and ocher and cadmium red, oxides and cerulean and titanium white, just as we are all colorful reflections of our environment and history. The actors find in us, the audience, the broad palette of colors and emotions that an artist begins with, all of the colors that will build a final product, a creative incarnation, a child born of inspiration and passion.

Just as this piece was born from the intellectual coupling of brilliant, inspired and passionate people.

Welcome to the Cypher.

Prayer for the dying

What is there to say? Taking the biggest scariest risk ever has been one of the best choices I've ever made. I dropped, left, threw away everything I couldn't carry, and moved to New York. No job, few friends... only the knowledge that somewhere out there, someone needed exactly what I have to offer. I now sell a designer's jewelery on the weekends at a beautiful street market and am interviewing with companies like Polo Ralph Lauren.

A beloved professor told me about his experience in NYC, before I realized the desperate reasoning that our conversations really consisted of, described a feeling of being packed in with commuters, of rushing on mass with a large body of other people, unindividual, faceless, pointless.

Like a mirror, we choose what we see.

Since being here, I am constantly enthralled with the flood of individuality that surrounds me. Every once in awhile, there are the ghosts of people I've known in the past, specters with faces I sharply remember, from high school, from college, people who might know private, vulnerable things about me, but are merely dopplegangers, look alikes, God chuckling as I am being reminded that I am connected to some larger fabric of the universe.

I have found, in this beautiful city, everything I need to live my life to its depth and breadth. Constantly stumbling on more of the quaint, bizarre, modern, profound, having so many random interactions that spawn connections, revelations, direction, purpose...



but there are things happening in parts of the country that are a deep part of me the rocks me to the core. Yesterday was the first day of hurricane season - and the gulf is a minefield, a disaster, choked with oil that refuses to capped off. Hurricanes are the earth's way of cleansing, exfoliating... with the steady increase in the water temperature, they have grown to consistently massive sizes in the last decade. How will they respond to the current state of the gulf? We already deal with the red tide, the algae that was spawned from run off polluted water from the mississippi and now rocks the gulf coast by sucking up all of the oxygen from the water and killing all forms of coastal life. How will the beaches of my childhood, where I swam while still in the womb, the only place I truly deeply call home... how will they look after this disaster?