On how we are saved from ourselves and how we save others from ourselves.
My best friend at the time was the all-island tennis champ. We had a misunderstanding one night. Never spoke again.
We sometimes held our senior class meetings at a local strip club. If for the backdrop.
Ran the 400-meter in track just to mingle with the all-girl sister school from across the island. I've forgotten all their names.
Graduation day was suppose to feel special. Woke up went down to the church and I stood tallest next to my class. Over.
Got accepted into USF with some grants and aid. Another ticket out. But apparently I haven't had enough of Florida.
Walked by the Naples Daily News building one day and went in to apply. I wrote "graphics department" at the top.
Illustrated features and made infographics on a Mac Quadra running Aldus Freehand. Learned about deadlines.
Weightlifting. Five-cent chicken wings. Botany and French at the college. I stopped drinking soda. Not sure what I was wasting for.
Bought my grandmother's old yellow 2-door Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. She always made us call her "mamita". Little mom.
At 21 I moved to San Francisco for art school.
She was 18 I think. I had her in a class but we met at the steps during break. So little did I know at that moment.
I wanted to be an architect. So I worked in his firm. Learned to draft on vellum with a straight edge and an electric eraser.
Florida escape. Again back in an all boys private catholic school. The teachers were friars who wore oversized rosaries around their waists.
Theology class. Father Mack's coarse hock breath stank thick of tobacco to the back of the room.
The first guy I met asked me if I was a leader of my crew back where I came from. Cause he is over here.
We all wore white polo shirts with an emblem print and gray slacks. I was tall and skinny. I carried a giant SLR around my neck.
Our junior class was around a hundred split in three groups. A was smart boring. C was dumb rowdy. B was cool. B
The humidity. I started to struggle with acne. I didn't date much that year.
I detailed my aunt's desert taupe 190E every weekend. My cousin got me into RC cars. I was photographer and editor of the school paper.
Whenever a typhoon came we boarded up the windows with large plywood sheets stored on the roof. Laid towels to seal the gaps under doors.
High winds. No electricity. When the eye passes above you can see clear skies. We shuffle the cars around to the other side of the house.
After the second half had passed leaves stuck on and over everything. Little green smiling snakes dangle on branches.
I would drive around the island with my uncle to survey the damaged spanish houses and kombentos under historic preservation.
The roads had a high coral mix. Slippery at the slight drizzle. Swarms of frog crushed and gummed into the tarmac.
Often you would see shrines on street posts for the Japanese who looked right instead of left when crossing the street.
I was the only junior still riding the school bus. I waited alone after school for hours for a ride just to avoid it.
My cousin taught me the stick. Arrogance failed the DMV driving test three times over. From then driving represented independence.
Drove a borrowed gray manual Toyota van which had an even longer green kayak mounted on top. You can't miss it.
Everyone knew everybody. Your family name often got you big favors from cops and car dealerships. As my friends did.
We drank. Rode at the back of pick ups. Shot BB guns at stray cats. Dove off bridges. Ate red rice with finedeni. Listened to reggae.
Fishing with spear slings snorkels and flashlights at night when fish were asleep. Strung them through the eyes with wire around our waist.
At night after we closed up we drank at the empty parking lot and raced cars around recklessly. Nothing much to do in this retirement town.
They smuggled items out the back door and stashed them behind bushes for later. But I wasn't into that anymore.
Back in LA I lived in a neighborhood called Atwater Village. I hear it's now a highly desirable location. It had everything:
Bordered by Griffith Park, Los Feliz, the LA river snakes through, Silverlake, Dodger Stadium, and Forest Lawn where my grandparents RIP.
I also use to yank Mercedes emblems off hoods in La Brea park. I never got caught. Now nothing here but Buicks.
I use to shoplift large sized chocolate bars from a grocery store across the boulevard. Got caught. An old man threatened to send me to juvy.
Not so much into petty crime and vandalism anymore. Naples was too hot and too humid for anything.
I fell for girls older than me by a couple of years. They liked me as a friend. Shared their cigarettes. Passed notes back and forth.
I saved every letter and many photographs. Until several months ago when I decided to delete the past. Shredder.
My best friend at the time didn't know I had a crush on her. She surprised me with a birthday cake once. I think the first I ever had.
In AV class I met a French guy who use to spike his eyebrows out with spit or gel. That's all I remember of him.
I went on dates with girls who had cars. To clubs and bars in Fort Myers beach. Sometimes all the way to Miami then back at sunrise.
Laid out to tan by the community pool. Drank lots of sugared iced tea. Watched a lot of television. Wasted a lot of time.
At a chinese restaurant in town where I get take-out I would get mistaken as a delivery guy by the old folks.
Took a job at a red lobster. I learned never to be an asshole to your server no matter what. At least not until you've gotten your food.
Gated housing communities. A black doctor and his family moved in across my grandmother's lot and was petitioned out by neighbors.
Finally my ticket out. End of sophomore year moved to Guam with my aunt and uncle. Just for a year. I stayed for two.
My earliest memory. Playing with a wheeled toy on a cold floor. Being called to dinner. Moving out of the house. My father nailing the door.
In a bus. A green knapsack. A camping trip my uncle funded. I took a deep breath each time the thought of losing my parents entered my mind.
The nuns and priests made us pray and sing several times a day. Raise your hand, wait to be called, stand up if you wish to utter a word.
Humiliation was an effective punishment. Your khakis pulled down. In your undies at the back of the classroom for the rest of the day.
At lunch the parents bragged to each other about your grades. Gave you money for recess. Sprinkled baby powder on your back.
I had a pair of friends who were identical twins. We played with marbles digging small pockets between the concrete slabs. I use to win.
When there was a fight, all the kids would gather around and chant "Ali! Ali! Ali!" Throughout elementary school I only fought with nuns.
My house had a lush tropical garden. I would gather tadpoles, geckos, and all sorts of insects, start a fire, and watch them die.
I would whip dragonflies from flight, build slingshots to shoot at birds, lit firecrackers on frogs. I felt nothing.
Several cats lived in my house. I made it a game to sneak up to them. And kick them as hard as I could. I was seven.
My first pet was a black dog named Midnight. One day my father built him a cage. By morning he had strangled himself between the bars.
In my neighborhood I was fee to roam as far as I can. So long as I was home by dark. Stories of men in trees who eat children.
I made kites out of light sticks and tissue paper. At an obscure back alley store they sold large spools of thin blue plastic strings.
Running start let it go give it as much string as you have. Once you've lost control follow the string and fetch it in the next town.
Climb fences. Climb houses. Climb trees. As much as I have I never fell to my death. I nailed a platform up high a guava tree. I was eight.
My first bike had a banana seat couldn't reach the ground and an insane amount of reflectors. Someone held the back as I rode. Then let go.
I stripped the rubber off an electric plug to try and electrocute a house gecko. My dad yelled at me. Apparently I could have died.
I was a skinny kid. Never got sick much. Quiet. Sat with chin to fist.
Moving to LA I threw up several times in the plane. We landed in San Francisco first. Saw kids with freckles.
My grandmother picked us up from LAX. She brought me a black Raiders jacket. She told me that things are different here.
I had acquired a spear gun weeks before and fired one through my foot by accident. It bled. She took the stitches off once it had dried.
It was cold. Catholic school was in english. But here everyone spoke it. My relatives spoke spanish when they talked behind our backs.
Fifth grade or sixth. It was halloween. My teacher had me wear a some sort of wig in class. And told me I was a good looking girl.
There was a girl in class who everyone called ugly. Bees liked to go into her frizzy hair. By chance she was my partner at dance class.
At middle school in Glendale, the first question from one of the kids at P.E. was "where you from?" He didn't mean what town or state.
The hispanic kids, asian kids, black kids, and the undeclared. All hung out in their assigned spots on campus.
I wore baggy black tapered pants, buttoned up shirts, and a high push back fade that took up most of my morning getting ready.
Not a week went by without a fight, at times a stabbing. And the occasional earthquake and earthquake drill.
Eighth grade my friends would pull up at the back of the school with a stolen car and I would hop the fence and ditch.
After school at the courts one day some outsiders rolled in and I found myself with a gun pointed two inches from my face. He smiled.
I drew very well and lettered lot of friends names on bristol paper with markers and pen.
I entered art contests and won plaques and cash prizes.
Just as during birthdays my friends jumped me on my last day in LA before moving to FL. That's just how it was.
I wrote my friends for a while. Then we stopped. Oh god Naples Florida. I had no choice.
I tried out for the high school basketball team. Thought I was badass having played street ball. The coach had a talk with me.
Everyone was white. Across the moat behind the trees all the black folks lived. Called it "brown town". My first job was at a grocery store.
The elegy of this gifted object bathe in gray dusk dirge and discontinued duration. This is not sad.
We float in half-light high over uncertainty and trust nothing not even what the tree tops spell nor those spoonfuls Franz warned about.
The artists of this time are not painting on canvases they are hunting dinosaurs.
For what's sake?
To what end?
Happy hollandaise,Happy hollandaise,Save the mayonnaiseWrapped in cellophane forThe war!(repeat until it's no longer funny)
Anything created and exists for its own sake does not last very long.
The things which are costless to us plays on our laziness, the costly plays on our extremism. Keep the fulcrum well oiled.
Quality is the fierce consistency in the execution of promise in all its aspects and instances.
By approaching success directly you are eliminating the many number of other opportunities you have in winning.
"they each dreamed their dreams,
and then left the world."
Nothing by itself can be right or wrong, good or bad. You bring something to it. To observe is to participate. And in your criticism you yourself is criticized.
In truth, I love nothing. Which is another way to say I love everything. If everyone in the room is yelling then no one is yelling.
I don't believe in anything. That is a problem. I believe it to be a problem. Then the problem, by itself, is solved.
The principle of change does not concern itself with right or wrong and other dualities (there are others for that), but only on the dynamic itself.