I Write the Book (Everyday)

 

For working class people like myself, our productivity serves as the vocation that directs and guides our lives, because labor is the greatest conduit to self-determination that we have. It was a really hard concept to describe to the average Americans I met earlier in life, like the feeling behind mia famiglia*, a shared closeness that bonds New Yorkers on a deeper level than your average cul-de-sac couple, because if you don't figure out how to live on top of one another in a small tenement flat with a shared bathroom on every other floor, you're fucked for life. You might just kill someone on the next "bad" day!

Much like our advanced solutions for recycling and re-purposing, our island nation began with limited space that demanded excellent and immediate solutions. While other Americans buried their toxic trash in empty fields that they hoped would just disappear like so much dust under a carpet, we were forced to live with our garbage strewn everywhere, as the price we paid for our failure to adapt. There was simply nowhere else to go. Our limited shared spaces created some funny dynamics, like the floating garbage barge denied docking pretty much everywhere (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobro_4000), and the infamous prison barge for our society's over-spill of convicts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_C._Bain_Correctional_Center).

When you can't take the train without a deep feeling of paranoia because the homeless drug addicts outnumber the people of the everyday working world, you've got a big problem, and when you can't walk down the street without the rank smell of a two-week pileup of garbage during the hottest season of the year (ah, August in the city...), you kinda want to solve those problems as quickly as possible. And so, we did. In the process, we became the world leader for innovation, adaptation, flexibility, and real change, because we had to. It's hard, and it's entirely human. But, on any given day, you'd find just as many working class people like me encountering the same situations with solutions already in hand (and cheaper than yours to implement, Baby Boomer) right now.

So, we waited. And waited. And then, we waited some more, for you to catch up to a reality that you check(ed) out of regularly with t.v., booze, pills, shopping, junk food, and whatever else the "idiot box" sells you, because you can't cope with the world you made—and then destroyed. Thanks for that, by the way. I heard one of the designers from the home-based reality show "Queer Eye for the Straight Eye" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Eye) joke that he'd simply become the maid service for a bunch of dysfunctional shut-ins, and it was easy to see why. "You know your apartment needs cleaning when you have air fresheners plugged into every outlet", was the most direct way one of the designers could explain the concept of "clean" to a drooling chronic case of angst.

For me and my hard-working friends, the class system was completely different than the false realities sold to us in college and on the job through popular t.v. shows and movies. There were no more "blue collar" or "white collar" designations anymore. We were left with those who can, and those who can't, with a million problems needing solutions, and all of them were yours, not ours. In order to live, we had to solve your alcoholism and indifference for you, by managing it better than you did, with your greater share of power and money. In short, we became the ruling class from every great time in history, like the samurai warrior class of Japan, or the enslaved architectural scribes of Ancient Egypt. Because we had to. We had to work our way out of it. We simply had to. We have to work. There is no other choice.

Work for me has always held the power of self-determination, as the ability to rise above the shitty overblown titles of the inept office worker, or the ineptitude behind the egotistical fast-food restaurant manager, doomed for a life of gruelingly repetitive banality. Anything but this. That's how we felt about it. Anything must be better than this. And we were right. It was. Our lives were/are so much better than the people in our families that we grew up with back then. I always describe my group ethos as thus, for our motivation: I don't want to die. That was/is our motto. SO inspiring, right! Yeah, sure. It's a great bestseller, if you package it for demented retards. We rose above the labels and strata of the American Dream, because the fantasy was never real for us. We became the work, and in the process, we began to rule the world. Through popular vote, of course. What else is there?

Pope Francis Verified account ‏@Pontifex

People are the primary artisans of their own development, the first in charge!

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* la mia famiglia. my family.  

À Votre Service

Vocational service is odd to outsiders, until you try it. My mother and her family are sometimes so disabled, that to them (mostly on the surface, when being a true "drama queen" really counts), the idea that I have a business where I can publish to you daily from a public library cannot penetrate the denseness of their disordered consciousness. "But...someone else gives you a job...and you don't have a 'job'!" 

None of them have business degrees, or MBA's, or business degrees from famous Ivy League schools with MBA's attached to it, like my brothers do, nor the entrepreneurial experience all of us as a family have, because as proud members of the merchant class, we believe that honest trade is a good measure in any kind of society. Fair trade is defined to us as a "win/win" situation, which is the only type of business I transact. You read me, and we all benefit from it. You see?

I do not have commercial advertisers because I am a not-for-profit, and I come from religious family. Who better to fund me than my own kind, the same people who first showed me the beautiful traditions of our faith? They drove me to all those extra "Religion" classes after our regular public school curriculum days ended—our parents, grandparents, and anyone else who was trustworthy and going to Confession on a Saturday afternoon before a big holiday. They drove us to classes, church services, and all those devotional duties (besides religion class) that are required by canonical law for us to accept the rites conferred upon us through our ancient rituals, beginning at birth through to today. It's an important part of my service.

Yeah. It's a lot of school, study, and thought. Why do all that?! Lazy people have a hard time with honest labor that they can't easily game for a quick buck, and I have family who are much less ethical than me. My mom had the audacity to tell me the other day that I "just go to the library", after I showed her the Claddagh pin that the Director of the Library gave me as I sat here typing to you on St. Patrick's Day, because I'm here Monday through Friday, every single week (barring emergencies and holidays), banging it out on some old PC keyboard, off the top of my head, sitting next to your New York "public", and if you think that isn't hard, try it on your own with my minuscule budget, without any staff to assist you. 

Then, I presented my mother with the works of two master children's book illustrators, old books that I found here and bought at a bargain rate (to assess her ongoing decline, and any lessening in her acuity), a soil conservation program shadily sponsored by a pharmaceutical company through a Midwest university that I thought she might be interested in (as a former botanist who had a blessedly quick brush-up with breast cancer), and a coupon from our local carpet guy that we always use, with deep roots in the community. She heard...uh....some of it. Attention spans were never their strong suits, but that's a long list of medical diagnostics for another day other than today.

Suffice to say, I have family so disordered at times that they don't understand (and this is a very short list of their ongoing ignorance): devotional service (unless you're part of a clergy they can pay/control), vocational service (like doing social work, volunteer charity work, and/or teaching with skills that you can't buy at some broke-ass dollar store), and my continually ongoing artistic devotion with hardcore spiritual high notes, as endeavors so outside of their norms that they can't figure out how to infiltrate a presence like mine on the Internet, because computers are to be demonized and feared, lest someone "beats" you in that, too. It's arrogance and insecurity at its worst, and quite of few of them go down hard because of it. False pride is the worst kind of sin to carry. I strongly urge you to free yourself from it, through the Rites of Confession before this Easter Sunday.

Since they can't marginalize my website by attacking its quality, they say it isn't a "real job", like every threatened amateur afraid of artistry before them, and that truly is scary, because those inherited genetics are built from their fears. Because I don't work through a corporate entity someone can attack (like a public holding), then I must not be "in business", and since I can't be railroaded into accepting a high interest bank loan, then my father must not be my venture capitalist, since there are no shareholders to manipulate. There's just me and the obvious strength of my gifts. Ahhh....I see a dawn of recognition in your eyes. Good! You have to be as good as we are in this game called "Life" to know when someone is helping you build an edifice that can't be disseminated in thousands of little ways that gangsters, er, business lawyers can gain off your labor without you even knowing it. 

Needless to say, my few brush-ups with court systems, judges, and lawyers (none of my doing, actually, and through no fault of my own) taught me all I needed to know about how those venues are gamed by the players operating them economically, and that is not my joint. This is. What about me? As someone who's been in this little game called "media" since, well, almost all my life, I know that this freedom I have with you, my audience, is a much harder currency to earn than any money you can deposit in someone else's bank for their financial gain, and this New York girl ain't havin' none of that. You've already had more than your fair share, my dear family. Pour la Belgique.

 

Homeless for the Holidays

Through no fault of my own, I was homeless a few years ago because my family turned their backs on me for being economically dispensable to the unsavory family business that I had worked hard for, a business that was struggling to stay afloat from all of their excesses and not mine. I developed a publishing program for bargain books sold at B&N stores worldwide that's made me infamous throughout the industry. They wasted tens of thousands every year on decorating expenses, stupid parties, pricey real estate, and fancy white gardeners for their office balcony (that I never really had time to use), before they gave us a real 401K plan that we had to ask repeatedly for. My dad had once asked me to sell books only for a dollar or for free, as some sort of test of my "worth" as a publishing executive, and it was one that I easily accomplished. When the economy tanked yet again, they cut the staff who weren't family (or married to family/friends) and jettisoned the rest of us, which surprised me not at all, because I know how people who are bad at business react to stress: they don't. You do. 

So began yet another typically old family pattern of dysfunction spurred on by the upsets present in my life, which goes something like this: if "Mama Marie" ain't earning, then she ain't eatin', and that was certainly true for me. I almost fainted from hunger on some of the worst days (during which my father had the gall to ask me if I'd ever gone hungry, after I'd exhausted all my funds, credit, and extraneous belongings, like any normal person would do to avoid being a burden to others), in between the outrageous emails I sent to my family that gave them full advance warning (because I can succeed at business without even trying, despite the lack of their expensively bought M.B.A.'s, thus adding more fuel to their envious fire) of my upcoming eviction due to lack of payment (with no legal advice offered from my lawyer uncle or the corporate lawyer my father has on retainer for his needs), even while my father congratulated me publicly for my success at earning a spot at a prestigious writer's colony (because he wanted me to teach him writing so he could pen his memoirs and brag about it), because I worked that hard to be good for them by compensating for their deficits during my homelessness, like any real mother would. 

In return, I got bizarre offers for a limo ride to some mental institution in Westchester for all my troubles, when I really just needed an expense check sent to me, like any other businesswoman in publishing who itemizes correctly and transparently. There's no secrets here, anymore. How else was I thanked? Well, every time they made the wrong decision about me, I told them the truth about their sicknesses, illnesses, deficiencies, disorders, impairments, addictions, and crimes against humanity that they owe me "big-time" for, because the only times I get pulled into badness of any kind is at someone else's say-so, and isn't that way it always is for people of good faith? We are tried and tested to see through all the badness around us by fighting our way through it, alone. It is in this way that you've come to be my adoring audience in the year 2015: because you asked me to undergo rigorous feats of strength that you can't do, like any true hero does, and I survived to tell you the tales about my amazing, death-defying acts of life, like an ever-ongoing Homeric odyssey of epic modern proportions delivered freshly and freely almost every day.

And so it came to pass that I found myself isolated and alone at some hotel room (during our most holiest of seasons) in the Sunset Park* section of Brooklyn, living by my wits and a tenuous room connection to the hotel's WiFi service, booking rooms at B&B's in the area so as to be ready to go to work on Monday morning, because I worked my way through it, just like I always do. Sure, a few days I had a small powder blue bag with me on the elevator in the morning that was remarked upon by one of my design assistants, but that was it. 

The holiday itself found me with absolutely no contact from anyone whatsoever: no good wishes, no phone calls of forced bonhomie. 
There was no gratitude or charity towards me of on any kind, except the G-dly ones I received by my own hand, because I walked several miles to be with my parish family at St. Francis of Xavier in Park Slope (where I was "shadowing" Sunday school teachers guided by Sister Kathleen, the former principal of the elementary school across the street, by following along with her lovingly designed children's curriculum) for church service on Sunday, because I said I would.  
I said I would be there.

http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org

 https://www.bowery.org/homelessness/

http://www1.nyc.gov/site/dhs/prevention/homebase.page

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Park,_Brooklyn

Share the Project

http://www.arcofrockland.org/

Do you remember that homework assignment from your elementary school days called "Show and Tell"? You chose an object from home, brought it to class, and then you got up in front of the entire class and your teacher to deliver an impromptu speech about it. For most of us, it was our first real experience with speaking in front of a crowd, and a nerve-wracking one at that. What to choose? What to say?! You spent your free time thinking about it, and then on the day of your speech, you second-guessed yourself all the way to the front of the classroom by fretting over each minute that passed by on the classroom's big clock, while another classmate did the talking. It actually does a lot of important tasks for human brains, organs that operate at their peak efficiency through utilizing all the advanced arts that are necessary for human communication.

It was the same thing for me in college. I took "Public Speaking" because it was required for all S.U.N.Y. school attendees, and then I "graduated" on to much harder skill sets, like talking about the projects I made all by myself at the world's premier art and design school. Bullshitting people you don't really care about for a good grade is an easy trick for most of us to pull off, but to be emotionally invested from your labors enough that you actually care about what you've made, and you want it to be well-received unanimously, is par excellence. A lot of people with some technical abilities do enough that passes off as skills people pay for, but a lot of the time, it's work we don't want to do ourselves because it's boring or dirty.

That's where we pick it up: you at the end of your rope, because you fear getting your hands really dirty, or because you're afraid of the risk that comes with those of us who are brave enough to fail in public without even trying. It means you're strong enough to survive a loss(es), so much so, you can visibly pick yourself up from the floor in front of a huge crowd, dust yourself off, heal, learn from your experience, and then get pissed off enough to do it better than next time. Some of us even publish the results. My father always told me that failure is essential to success, because it's true. If you win every single time you try something, then you aren't trying hard enough. Really brave warriors go out on a limb that can break at any time because that's where the sweetest, rarest fruit always is. So what if you fall down? Who hasn't?!

People afraid to fail in front of others are easily controlled through their visible fears. They're those athletes who illegally dose to have a secret edge over their opponents because deep down (or not so deep), they know they aren't good enough to succeed without rigging the contest to their advantage. They're the type of scumbag managers in your daily business who use access to your computer over a secure network to block or track your every move every chance they get, because they know they aren't good enough to be in your position of importance at a company. They're cowards, and cowardly people lie, cheat, and steal all the fucking time because they know they'd suck without you, their high performing muthfucka, to pick up their slack, and there's a lot of that to be had in this world.

I don't trust people who haven't been banged up enough by life because they're too afraid to live it. If you don't have war stories about your epic adventures (with some cool scars to show for your hard work), then you haven't lived enough, because you're too busy sitting on your fat ass peeking out from between lace curtains, like a punk ass bitch in your lazy cushy suburban home, passing judgement on those of us who love life enough to take risks, by taking a fall or two on our asses out in public. Ain't nuthin' but a thang to me, yo. In fact, in my chosen sport of MMA, we don't have "perfect" records (none of us do, really. Not one single athlete), because it isn't a fixed game like some of the shadier sports. There's no such thing as a "perfect" win in our world, because Samurai's accept that they are, like life, imperfect.

It can be jarring for fans of other sports that play dirty through drug use openly ignored, and/or with the assistance of funding from illicit gansta money to front their operation. Whachoo mean he lost? Whaaa....?! They can't even comprehend, because they've learned through a twisted game to expect a fake impression of perfection that's not real because it's a cheat. Some sports are choreographed for a narrative outcome like pro wrestling is, with it's funny over-acting and hammy role-playing, but make no mistake about it: when Brock Lesnar fought in the MMA, he fought a real fucking sport with skill sets so profound, it blows the minds of people who try it. There are just too many mathematical outcomes to predict statistically, and so our sport reflects the genius mentality of people who understand concepts like "hard" and "difficult to achieve" really well, because it's the life they live everyday: a tough game with the odds stacked so much against you, you can't help but draw on a crowd of admiring supporters.

And so it is with my charitable endeavors and active daily service to y'all. I do it because I love it, and I trained for it because I'm the best at it. But there are tons of fuck-ups. I don't have the money to operate a closed system of my own, so I "copy and paste" shit on some old fuckin' computer at the library, because it sucks too much to interact with my better (and older) plug-and-play Mac technology. I call them "Work-Arounds" that are essential to any "real world" type of living: those life situations that reflect the poorer thinking of the people around you who are too blind or dumb (or both) to put real money where it actually belongs. And so you see broken links with dead video uploads and missing photos (stuff I could never do for you at your rich white man's company without aggressive public censure in meetings or firing), because I'm operating under war-like conditions that accurately reflect the angst that I write to you about almost daily, on absolutely no budget whatsoever, because that's what the sick people around me choose in their deluded fantasies: a deliberately purposeful impoverishment that's my accurate lifelong reality.

I tell you this today, in this season of gratitude and thanks, because I don't ever want you to get it twisted with me, and because I care enough to commit my ideas and passion to you on this century's version of "paper" that is semi-permanent in this new digital age. This is my version of "Show and Tell" for you, because I care enough to humble myself by sharing broken work that is still better than any rich white muthfucka's gamed version that's aided and assisted by a thousand other people in support to just him and his goals (usually staffed with lots cheap women and other minority folk), who prop him up look like "Mr. Big Stuff", because he doesn't have the talent or the heart to fail publicly like I do. I want you to be clear about that moving forward, as we go forward on this enterprise that you support with your time and attention.

http://rocklandsample.org/

So, when you come across some joke of a "celebrity" who's puffed up with artificially padded social media accounts that are bought and paid for by advertisers and promoters (unlike yours, maybe), I don't want you to have any doubts about who they fuck they are, or how they got there. They're usually pumped up way beyond their actual skill sets, because most of them don't hold up to scrutiny up close and personal like I do, makeup-free on the daily and going on age 46, baby. That means no weirdo surgeries, no hidden cosmetic procedures behind closed doors, no airbrushing beyond all expectations tied to reality, no surreal overly moneyed shit to throw you off your game by bankrupting your pocketbook in service to someone else. I AM the real deal. Are you tho'? And why not, miss?

Because in my world, part of our "bragging rights" goes towards proud, prominently displayed post-fight photos that show you how we are never really injury-free from this life we battle through daily, smiling back at you through temporarily banged-up faces that show our hard-won war wounds, just like the bad-ass muthfuckas you know we are. I don't want you to be thrown by these supposed low numbers you think you see online, just like the too big ones represented by the false premise that some fat-ass porn star has got it all over you, because you care about teachin' yo kids right from wrong on the cheap, like my new friend Jeanne Newman does. Who the fuck are you compared to her, a woman who has devoted her entire life to public service through teaching and annual Thanksgiving dinners for her people? Just who the fuck are you, anyway? Because you ain't nuthin' to me.

You best be believin' that, because that's what time it is: only 350 followers on your page, or that many likes on your charitable site, or a paltry show of "thumbs-up" on your giving photo today? Oh hell, no. What the fuck is that, anyway?! Gone, baby. It's gone, gone, gone that-a-way. You are what's "it" to me. That's what's up. Same thing for my man Barnaby and his service to our beloved ARC friends, here in town (Hey, there Kevin! Mommy says "hi" and gives you big warm hugs all the time:), now takin' his act on the road to Massachusetts, armed with one of my lil' black stickers for prove positive of our unification. You know I do that, too! You think these people are unknown to me? Fuck y'all, then. You're a rock star to me in my world, baby. Don't think this false "divide-and-conquer" shit where you have to sweat it out alone on an isolated pocket is unknown to me as a strategy to keep you down. 

They're that afraid of us, my friends, because we are that strong and that good. Believe it. Believe in me. Believe. We've just grown out-of-bounds by one more person today, my friends. Yeah! That's it! We've grown by one, and now my wolf-pack is more full for it. Haha!

http://sharetheproject.org/20-2/

This one's for you today, Ms. Jeanne Newman! 

Thanks for all that you do daily. We see you!

https://www.facebook.com/sharetheproject/timeline

On the hunt

http://www.venisondonation.org/

If you're a regular reader of mine, you should know by now that hunger is a human problem, and not a food one. Humans have always used resources as leverage against one another in times of war, and what greater weapon of mass destruction is there if not for starvation? 

Many a cynic has gone on t.v. in some corporate-sponsored advertisement to disturb your Saturday ballgame viewing with horrible images of bloat-belly children in Africa, in a crass exploitation of so-called "white guilt" and the collective sense of responsibility we feel as hardworking, wealthy Americans. 

But, as my man Father Raphael (from Nigeria) pointed out to one such carnival barker who used the St. Francis parish to fund-raise, with his disgustingly lurid pictures of poor children: "When hasn't there been starving children in Africa?", which is a delicate, sensitive, and extremely intelligent criticism that opens up further under scrutiny. Aren't there rich people in Africa who care about Africans?! 
What happened to them all? 

As bad as the slave trade has been for many people of American descent, it isn't the full story about our world in crisis. It's sort of like my old housemate from art school, who immediately noticed when I didn't pack-rat my tiny hearing aid batteries for recycling later, because I replaced an old one for a new one while walking and talking with her on the street, and then tossed the tiny battery into a garbage pail. (Sue: they're mercury-free because I asked my audiologist on my next visit to town. Thanks for making me feel paranoid and irresponsible. Sleep easy, gentle hippie). 

Is it really up to me and my every miniscule action to save the world?! How can that be? I understand the Butterfly Effect*, and the implications that a small movement may have many miles away, but like my mom's exhortations about sending my uneaten broccoli to Africa, there's something about useless fretting that obscures much deeper issues.

When I had no money to give, I gave my blood. When I had no food to eat, I sold my belongings. When I had more time to spare, I gave it back to the church as an apprentice Sunday School teacher. 
Which brings me back to the same eternal question of: what can you do? Besides sending badly cooked vegetables overseas. 

This week, I urge you to look beyond the quick, obvious, and easy, as you reach back out into the world to help. What can you do right now, with just what you have on hand? 

Thank you for your patience while we right your wrongs, most directly with new legislation that addresses massive supermarket waste. 
Don't worry: we won't send you deer meat, if venison isn't your thing. 
It isn't mine, either.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/food_waste_loc/?bkmQyjb&v=61604

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
 

Crack the Whip

Lately I've been finding out how similar my experiences were to other alumni at the world's hardest school, through our magazine RISDXYZ (thanks to Amanda Blum for writing about it, in a piece called "Submission": http://issuu.com/risd/docs/risdxyz_fall-winter_2014-15?e=0/10291099), but at the time, we were deeply in "survival mode". I used to characterize my time there as "Art Boot Camp", because the purpose of our training was to weed out the weak and insane, leaving only the best and strongest among us to excel. And that's the point behind any really difficult process; it's similar to my martial arts training with its' belt ranking system, which is similar in tone to the military, and the same intense vibe as my former ballet studio. We all wanted to win at our chosen trade(s) and profession(s).

In that teeming cocktail of teenage insecurities and intensive learning is a road about a mile wide that goes right into the heart and soul of who you are as an artist/scholar/athlete/scientist/engineer/author/thinker. It's supposed to develop the strength and toughness that's necessary for us to go on. But not all of us make it. Just ask any Navy Seal: their C.O.'s tell them right beforehand that's the day's exercise is called "You Not Breathing" (thanks to Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson for that scene from their movie adaptation's first few minutes, of actual Navy SEAL training footage).

We did exercises called "Drawing with a Blindfold" or "Figure Drawing from Memorization to a 5-Minute Timed Clock With Your Back Turned to the Model"; you know, the kind of stuff that gives most students the "heebee-jeebees". That's the actual phrase one of my former housemates from R.I.S.D used to describe how she felt about her experience, and what her time there brings about nowadays, like a shell-shocked soldier struggling with PTSD. She went to our school for "Fashion Design", so she could be the real-life version of a Bryant Park show during "Fashion Week" in NYC, or a leading contestant on a major show like "Project Runway". Guess what she does now? She surfs, repairs wet-suits, and knits the same wool hat over and over and over again. Yeah, like, that bad.

Another rich suburban kid I knew, whose F.O.B. Armenian parents bought him everything he could ever desire, now works for a big factory studio (run by someone else), where he sits at one desk among many, compulsively animating the exact same robot car and/or booby anime girl with rabbit hybrid ears for his fetish fans and addicted gamers every single day, much like a dysfunctional business manager I worked with who HAD TO eat the exact same turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread every single day, or he would freak out.

My "fashionista" seamstress friend had a nervous breakdown over "my" unwashed dishes in the common kitchen sink during my RISD experience; you know, when I had all studio classes to complete AND three part-time jobs. In truth, they were a combination of all of our dishes in the house, but my cleaning compulsive mother had told her to "teach me how to clean", even though I've done every house chore known for her all my life. I'm talking about a "gnashing-teeth, hysterical tears with hair-pulling" type of tantrum over dishes, kids. My animation friend couldn't handle the all-day wait for "The Cable Guy" while living in his nice, new, and very white Brooklyn Heights apartment (all expenses paid) that his parents gave him back then. They also wouldn't have been able to live or survive in NYC if it wasn't for me, but did they ever tell me that? Uh, no: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/12/times-square.html.

And that was part of the challenge: surviving the little "psyche-out" head games and petty insecurities of the kids around you who fell down hard and didn't get back up. It wasn't just the students either. Wildly, obviously inept, mad teachers had open love affairs with their underage students, maybe even in violation of the state's minority sex laws, in clear view of the administration. It was somehow worse than my SUNY school as a violation of trust, because I paid for my education through my blood, sweat, and tears, and a diploma from this prestigious school could seal my fate among the elite for all times.

They knew that, and I got blacklisted with some other working class friends of mine for wanting a basic computer class as a primer for the real world, where I knew I had to work to survive and pay off my debt. Like, right away. There was much more at stake for me, because I had (and have) no safety net in my life but me, and so I risked much more by speaking out than my cowardly classmates.

It's what me and my childhood friends talked about (Hi, Donnel!), on all those night and afternoons when our parents were simply gone from our lives: how to go out into the world to make a difference, permanently. It's what my friends since Felix V. Festa Junior High remembered about me, as did all my friends from elementary school through to high school: leave no man, woman, or child behind. 

And so I give my service in honor of you today, and every day after, because I said I would. Our suffering hasn't been in vain.

http://becauseisaidiwould.com/

Monumental

Saving history from destruction, one piece of work at a time.

I decided to continue building on yesterday's themes about service and stewardship by writing to you today about a real-life situation from the past, and it is this: saving our greatest artworks from oppression and evil. Hitler and his regime didn't have one sole purpose in war, that of killing an entire religious ethnicity to create some wacky "master race". No, they wanted to wipe out any traces of our cultural past by stealing and secretly destroying the best of art, design, and statuary. 

It's a powerful story that's been largely untold until now. A handful of priests, nuns, clergy, and other lay people united with a small group of self-appointed warriors (who were also artists, writers, scholars, professors, and curators), and the few military men they could requisition, to rescue some of the greatest works of art that we have as a species; works that were to be burned forever (as so many were, or gifted to the German elite who stole them), so as to wipe out our past as a people, on NO BUDGET, with almost no support, and no additional resources granted to them of any kind from any ruling government, relying instead on their own ingenuity, bravery, and heroics, on the worst killing fields of Europe during the close of WWII.

Chew on that the next time you feel like you can't do something in life. I often live with less to get through tough economic times, so I know firsthand that you can do it, too. What are you waiting for? Permission? OK. Permission granted! Do it now!  I think she was worth it. What do you think?

http://www.monumentsmen.com/

Times Square

After I graduated mid-session from art school, a few of my friends made their way to my aunts' apartment in Kensington for cheap rent, some sanity, and a crash pad while they began their own art and design careers. It served us well. I began my apprenticeship in publishing for an annual salary of just $11,500 in 1993, and rates have not gone up much. A recent stint in an lowbrow indie house had interns who began full-time work at a wage of just $20,000, doing just what we did back then: sharing small apartments in the city by tripling and quadrupling up, such is the way of our chosen vocation.

We split the monthly maintenance fee of just $400.00 because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to eat food or pursue our various vocations. There was Lisa, an old housemate from RISD who worked at a sweater manufacturer, Ed, who worked for MTV studios, and then, after he left, an old friend from Oneonta who was in love with me stayed and wouldn't leave, working first as a waiter before beginning his carpentry apprenticeship under my support.

Lisa and Ed were both terrified and enthralled with New York City. At first, neither had understood my time at their tony white tower design school. Ed came from a wealthy family who catered to his every need, and Lisa learned to sew and make clothes under her mothers' wing. They both had it much, much easier than me, so my slow start fooled them into thinking they had a superiority that quickly evaporated in the Big Apple. Oh. Tough city kid from the craziest, hardest place on the planet. Yep, kids. Welcome to the Capital of the World! They started connecting with exactly where my true grit came from, and it greatly discomfited them. My seemingly junior status as a student began to cast itself into what it actually was: a working class kid who attended an upstate New York teacher's college for basic liberal arts studies at the age of 17, per my parent's orders.

Nowadays, students can co-jointly enroll at Brown and RISD for liberal arts and specialized design studies, which is basically what I did on my own back then, anyway. If I hadn't diverged paths to their white castle, I would have gone on to F.I.T. in the city for my senior year, after spending three at Oneonta. It was called a "3:1 Program", meaning I would have earned two degrees in just four quick years: a Bachelor's in studio arts and an Associate's degree in Advertising Design, but my dad's business sprouted and profited, thus allowing me to change tracks with his approval, which I did, because that was the deal we struck up, one dark, lonely, rainy upstate night in the rain, a young me talking to him on a payphone. Oh. It was really like that. I simply hadn't had money at the time.

In my hometown they began rapidly putting the pieces of my puzzle together, and they didn't like. Not one bit. There was no "spoiled rich girl" routine, no bullshit phony act, no pouty foot-stomping that needed appeasing, just the brutal reality of my daily work and commuting grind on a shoestring salary, though in true competitive envy, they did try to sabotage me still, even after school, which exactly what my mentor at RISD told me would happen with supposed "art school stars". I began disappearing with grace into my habitat, and they couldn't swim on their own in my environment, and I knew it. School begins now, kids!

They had toted along all of their false preconceived ideas about my town, too, mostly petty generic stuff like tourist traps and bad food. I gave them the real deal every day, served up warm, and they hated it, choosing time and again for the phony thing over authenticity. Kids love dream worlds and fake fantasies, and this was no different. Ed drew other people's ideas during the day, and Lisa ran errands for other designers. She never successfully drew a single sketch that was approved or made on the production floor. She learned to get out sooner rather than later, which she did. They both did, running to points out west in sunny Southern Cali, a fool's paradise if ever there was, which they pitched and promoted to the hilt, just like they had bragged about "making it" in New York City on me and my father's dime with money, rent, and resources that they have never paid me for in full, to this very day that I write to you on a humble public library computer.

It was a huge slice of humble pie for them. No one cared about their fancy degrees! And why would they? At my publishing house, Yalies and Harvard grads were everywhere, littering each floor of the Flatiron with trust funds in their back pockets, in case they failed. And then, the truth finally struck them, because I read it all over their faces: I played the game hard, with no safety net. It was just me, running on my juice. Oh. Another bad realization for them, again, like <ooooff> a soft punch to the gut. Yep, they are indeed catching onto to our fair Gotham. That's the level, yo. Cue song, begin scene: "This is how we do it!"

And so, like every other "idea" they had about my town, they brought New Year's Eve to the table for me to enlighten them about, and I tried, dear readers, I really did, but like most disillusioned kids, they insisted on seeing it for themselves. Sigh. Oh, good, just what every tired and broke single "parent" like me needs: Times Square on New Year's Eve! And, just like I spelled it out for them, like I type it out word for word for you to recount with me, each and every scary bad thing that could happen did. You know, because I can read minds and shit, like some fucking t.v. psychic. It's magic!

We climbed the subway stars to a smoky Hell right out of any Hollywood movie, complete with terrifying cops in full riot gear, with battle regalia like huge Uzi guns, weapons Ed drew in his boyish cartoons but had never seen in person, because people like me shield him from it. Tear gas completed the hellish effect, casting a greenish haze everywhere that made shapes appear suddenly out of nowhere, drunk people careening and screaming and puking and stumbling, packing themselves into the square like rats. They clung to me, shaky and almost in tears, as I guided them through the insanely packed streets, delivering them safely to a party with, yep, more out-of-touch RISD kids. Wow! "Guys, it was just like Marie said!" My words spoken to them in the warmth and safety of my family's Brooklyn apartment were now finally made real to them through the conjuring that every good parents already knows; that of experience.

They cut ties with me eventually by turning on me, in recognition of my greater gifts that they could no longer pretend did not exist like they had done back at school, and like any embarrassed kid always does, they did it by withholding "thank you" to my face, knowing that I deserved for it my many services and kindnesses, instead choosing to hurt me with their feigned indifference, but isn't that always the way it is with children? They were beautiful and very young to me, then; spoiled and ungrateful, yes, as they lashed out at me in fright and anger because my ferocious home town was ill-suited to them like I knew it would be, but if you could see my face as I write this right now, you parents in my audience already know what you'd see: a softness that comes from empathy, compassion, understanding, and a mother's undying devotion to the very people she gave shelter to, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Amen to you, during this holiday week. Beware the many bugaboos that may be lurking behind a darkened street corner.   

'Tis the season for such things, my dears.