Soul Survivor

As the leading intellectual of a business (whether or not it's openly acknowledged to my face, since it's typically done behind my back as some sort of financial strategy), my first few days, weeks, months, and/or years of any new employment I had were fraught with difficulties, tensions, ego trips, paranoid schemes, covert meetings, and hurriedly hushed exchanges like I was just hired to run the universe instead of design some books. The grueling audition process I went through was supposed to ameliorate qualms and fears that average people have about content generators, but sadly, it did not.

I was subjected to rounds and rounds of emails, resume screenings, online questionnaires, personality profiles, psych screenings, drug tests (for a corrupt newspaper union, haha), with several more rounds of interviews with my portfolio shown to a variety of employees from different departments who would not have access to the highest levels of a house like I did, done to an insane degree. Such is the power to create a company (or destroy it) that we bring to the table as a group.

I'd always hoped that my relative openness, honesty, and transparency (in big business New York) would alleviate the troubled minds of the more pedestrian office worker vis-a-vis their limited perceptions about illuminators but, more often than not, interactions with a real genius doesn't actually make lower-level employees feel better about themselves or their career choices, which is why I often handed out books to inquiring office cows. You know: because that's what we do. Nefarious, I know.

So, it was no surprise to me when the feathers of any new house I joined were ruffled loudly and with much angst, most acutely from the large hen-house, since we're paid less than teachers, which makes modern publishing heavy on the female workforce. Lunches would be set-up and attempted, odd scrutinies would take place in the office kitchenette, bizarrely stilted interactions were forced in the hallways or bathrooms, interruptions about a fake crisis during my crucial deadlines were staged as a sabotage...to no avail. In our world, you either make something or you don't, because the future belongs to those of us wiling to get our hands dirty, and with the amount of work that I do, it isn't a carefully calculated life of leisure devoted to one's over-priced manicure or shiny new gadget. It's more like: "I made this <pat book>. See?" Good! Now I can go back to work.

We'd published books about assholes in business, as me and the other much deafer art director in the office yelled back-and-forth, reading aloud from a book about company stereotypes, like the common "office bike": the desperate blond (always blond!) receptionist who sleeps around because "everyone gets a ride", within clear earshot of the reception area. Still, no avail. They kept on coming. Scooter was one such douchebag whose limited prowess barely masked his deeper ambitions of artistic glory, as just such an example of a tool. No one liked him, but he managed to form icky alliances within the company like we were competing for the last piece of roasted rat on a remote desert island for a sick "reality" game-show about starving people and their madness. What was the point?

He seemed genuinely baffled by my gifts, as much as he hated any kind of reference to them. He'd find some excuse to come back to the design studio, then draw out a weird discussion that could have been more easily done with a ten-second email, to slowly walk back to his cramped overheated office scratching his head about the obvious truths I just told him about the book he showed me, because acquisitions was supposed to be his game. He thought he cleverly hid his lack of a buying streak with our designated wonk at a major book retailer, by pretending to question us about a potential book property up for re-licensing like it was playtime at the zoo, and I just fucking ripped his head off in the lion cage, every single time.

Naturally, like all the other inept "lifers" at that company, he just happened to "fall into" publishing, just like he fell into my den of protective lionesses filled with nursing cubs. Shoo! On an afternoon like any other afternoon, he seemed to finally have an epiphany about who I was, discreet as I managed myself to be amongst those who are not of the calling. As the rays of golden light struck sharp shapes across the back wall of my studio desk, he came back excitedly (for once) to show me a book that just crossed his desk. Did I know it? Nope. Ah...here he hesitated, like a student daring to give an apple to his favorite teacher. Did I know this book was like me? Yes, Scott. I did. Happy All Soul's Day, on this beautiful autumn day in 2016.

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.

 

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

The Lemurs of Madagascar

http://www.patriciawright.org/

Just like the movie, I had to wait an irrational amount of time for something this cool to be freely available on DVD. "Tighty whitey" parents of the 'burbs often cop this arrogant attitude about life, partly to cover their fears about getting discovered as a project person from the Bronx. Of course, the accent (and the raging 'tude) is a dead giveaway to me, but sometimes they pull off the magic trick of affluence with the right amount of condescension to cover up their crippling insecurities; like believing you are all-powerful by keeping a well-known children's movie (that's right: for kids!) for an inordinately long time after checking it out of our lending libraries, totally disproportionate to your actual sphere of influence.

It's weird, but that's the point of view of people schooled to think they can say, do, and act any way they want, because their rich daddy is a lawyer (or chiropractor), so often did me and my friends get threatened by their whiny asses in the open halls of public school. They were in over their heads, and we knew it. Once they grew up somewhat, and figured out that we were more adept at secret beatings than getting nabbed by the POPO, they just shut the fuck up and went away.

Me and my friends here at the Pearl River library had to keep checking my online queue for months, making adjustments around some rich asshole who thinks $400+ change for a missing DVD is justified because their little Maury has "difficulties" at school, or because they are so busy, they just couldn't be bothered to drop one DVD into the mail or a box, just like the President of the U.S! It's such delusional thinking that I've stopped trying to communicate with the insular and insane of Rockland, just like I did with their scaredy cat kids who scream when they are squeezed slightly, and that's exactly why this post isn't kid-friendly either, parents of Hollywood: I want more of this type of movie, and less of you. Much less of you.

Special shout-out today goes to the lady from New York who had the guts and ingenuity to stick to her guns, by following her chosen fields of study to wherever they called her: all the way to the lovely people and beautiful animals of Madagascar. She's from SUNY Stony Brook, yo! Way to represent your peeps! Thanks, Dr. Wright: you do us right here at home. We proud of you, girl! Keep going!!

http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/centre-valbio/people/patwright.html

http://www.patwrightlab.net/

http://www.rhinebeckcsd.org/newsdisplay.php?ID=36

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
 

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/

No Budget

I'm often greeted with amazement about my prodigious prowess, along with fear, awe, hatred, ignorance, and trepidation. "Is it magic?!"
Sure, let me wave my friggin' fairy wand. The truth is: it is, and it isn't. It's in my nature, and when great people do great things through their good works, together we can move mountains. I work with a zero budget to produce this service free of charge to you, and I pledge to you today that it is my strong desire to continue to keep this an open resource for all, with no prejudices against you, because I believe in the power to change more than any other force.

The other simple truth is that I am far from alone, although at times it may seem that way to someone who does not live independently like a healthy, mature adult does, but the other reality is this: I see other strong people of faith working their "miracles" almost daily, far from the sight of the afflicted among us. Case in point: Master Educator, Healer, and Builder Michael Konstalid, who collects old materials to create special needs furniture for our beautiful children of New York on NO BUDGET. That's rights, folks: zero money down.
 
 

Michael Konstalid: educator, healer, builder, thinker, and doer.

Today is about you, Michael. I thank you for your great service, without the media's cameras, or an industry's gold statue, or even a nod of the head kindly in your direction on some days (far from it, truth be told), as so often happens for those of us who love more than we despise, because we are an actively living faith.  I see you.

http://nyti.ms/1b1xFU6

Into Great Silence

A beacon of light in the early morning.

I knew before I saw this documentary that it would blow me away, and it did. I've always been deeply envious of the monastic life that my Catholic brothers and sisters live in Christ, because I know I am capable of such discipline, as it is evidenced in almost facet of my daily life: the ability to hone in on difficult concepts and easily grasp them (in any language I find them in), my superior (and manifold) modes of communication, and my vastly rich interior spiritual life (that exists beneath the surface of the human eye, mostly); such is my innate understanding of complex material. I just get it. And so, my mission has not been to a beautiful mountain retreat, but rather to master the arts of walking among humankind without being unduly hurt by them, which I have so far succeeded in doing, clad as I am in a sort of natural protection that is also heightened by the martial arts of self defense I have learned along the way thus far.

But that doesn't mean I don't still long for it, especially after particularly challenging days as a lay person out among so many troubled, average people. Get me off this planet! G-d hears me, and knows that my task is to talk with you, sometimes at you, in the hopes that even through your incomprehension, you gain something through the repetition, just like any master teacher would do in any field of study.

And so I watched the DVD walking step by step with them but also apart from my brothers, and felt much frustration from the distance, even as we have an intimacy through our worship that is so acute, you may not ever feel it, though I am forever grateful for this expression of our shared faith. They are some of my best friends that I have never met in person, separated as we are by time and space, close as that gap is dissolved through our One True and Only Begotten Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Through Him, we have become One, a manifestation of the divine that is as unique as an individual, and also as close together as The Holy Trinity exists in perfect union, permeable as these states of being are spiritually.

As I watched them in the dark early morning hours, so the film opened with early morning vespers, our common calls to prayer bathed in the same fragile, dawning blue light, and even as I was sometimes moved by tears of joy about this shared connection and experience, while also feeling frustration and some anger at our physical distance, I know am never alone. Tucked away in a remote corner of this good green earth are a group of devoutly beautiful humans who know exactly how I feel, without me laboring to speak it to them, nor sign it to them, nor repeat it over and over like some brute form of water torture, like I am speaking to a dumb, mute beast stricken with ignorance. 

That is the perfection of our shared understanding and knowledge. Come see it for yourself, and find that you will never have a more beautiful art experience than this in a movie, for it is done. You will not top this, as so many of you are incapable of achieving this glory that is G-d in the Highest, even as my life as a prayer will ever be devoted to igniting that flame of passion within the heart of each and every one of you, in fellowship and kindness.

Live, my friends. Live it, and then maybe you will be some form of it some day, but most importantly....just live. Live and love life, a precious gift. See it, and know it, and be still. Live.

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.