The Wonder

My heart swells with an intense love for I again am doing what I love.  My clouds came in the moment the music stopped playing.  Sometimes I feel like my soul is one giant record player.  But it stopped.  The needle didn't follow the grind of the record.  I heard nothing just people talking.  I write often about when you fall out of love with the one thing that feeds you.  I ate but was starving.  I loved but was always searching.  It has been a long road.  Confronted by all the fears you never realized you had.  New York brings things to you at a more intense rate.  Your strength is always tested, your weaknesses are always exposed.  The learning curve sometimes wrecks my brain.  But then you think of your story and know so far deep down that this happened to you for some odd reason and if you gave up now you still would wonder.  This wonder would most certainly take my last breath from me.  This wonder would make me search for the rest of my life.  It would kill me.

I am on my second journey of creating music.  Its the only thing that actually makes sense to me at this point.   The music is the best I have done to date.  If I would have given up, if you gave up during the process you will always wonder.  You will sit there with a half written book, pages tore and thrown away.  You will always paint your ending instead of living it out.  The doors are more open now, the instinct sharper.  I said before that I was in round 35 and had one swing left in me, I was actually in round 10 with much more to go.  Your reality seems much harsher then it actually is.

Here's to my new love affair with music..and in whatever you are doing just remember you are probably not done yet.  Keep going and remember its round 10 not 35 and you always one more punch.

Hurricane Sandy

I live 15 minutes away from Manhattan literally a 4 stop subway ride away.  If I didn't move about a month ago I would have been caught right in it without electricity and flooded streets.  This poem doesn't discredit the damage that many suffered in the mist of the storm.  Having said that I spend about 2 hours within nature a day if one was to quiet themselves for long enough you would hear her discontent, you would understand that she isn't done yet.

Right before the storm I thought it would be a good idea to go to the supermarket and that was a mistake.  I watched people scrambling to grab the last milk, fighting over the last loaf of bread. I was no joke the 75th person in line. The mood was daunting and everyone guarded their place in line as if they were entering the pearly gates of heaven.  Panic, frustration and selfishness..the hurricane didn't bring the brighter side of humanity to light perhaps the aftermath has.

Hurricane Sandy

Your mad at us
I see your frustration
Im not the only one that can sense your fury
That knows of our neglect
I walk into you everyday
From your invisible hush
Your kiss of a summers end to my cheeks
To your incredible silence
I hear that you could destroy us
And it saddens me to say that one day you most certainly will
You hold a grudge
You will sob the biggest tears
Until your hurt is known
You are keeping score
The biggest is yet to come
And we will all be
SHOCKED when it does
We will blame you as the destructive one
Even though I will know it was us all along
You whom takes and gives nothing back
Will be on channel 5 news
Talking about the home you lost
As if mother nature wasn't home enough for you
We will clear shelves in panic
Everyone for themselves
Every last crumb not one left for the mouse
Greedy
Arrogant
You may look the other way
However she always makes herself known
We shall only be so lucky
To walk away with nothing more then a bruise

The Red Stairs.

I think there is a hard truth that seems to slap you dead in the face.  That truth is somewhat of a hard pill to swallow and when you wake to its realization you wonder how you got there all along.  What road did I stumble down.  How did I at the crossing of right and wrong choose this?  Fuck, can I go back?  Am I here for a lesson..I found myself on my birthdays eve on the red stairs in Times Square.  That's where I wanted to go, so I went.

I remember the feeling New York gave me when I first arrived.  It was so shiny and filled with opportunity.  Flying into it used to give me butterflies and I swear the streets looked gold to me.  I went to red stairs in remembrance of this feeling.  I like watching people that come to NYC and go to Times Square for the first time.  Their eyes big and wondrous, they have been watching this place on TV every New Years from the time they've been in diapers.  I sat and I cried.  I truly have a heartbeat for New York but overtime it not only shows you what it can do but also what it cant do..for some.  It shows you what your capable of and what you still need to learn.  And it all happens at an intense rate.

I watched as little girls painted the massive big screens with hopeful envy.  I saw cameras as if they were fireflies in the dead of a forest.  No one looks down, everyone looks up to the high heavens.  So much light your almost blinded.  If Times Square turned all the lights off for 5 minutes I believe it could save enough energy to light a small village in Africa for a week.  I sat and I cried and then I prayed because I know I'm losing faith but more importantly I am the wall that blocks me. This truth is for everyone.  You are your own roadblock. You are the gatekeeper and you hold the key to EVERYTHING.  I sat and I smiled.  When your quiet enough you can hear your own fury.  You can see the storm that isn't settled.  Your not content, yet.  There is a beautiful thing that happens in that moment.  You want more.  Tears streamed beautiful streaks of black liner down the apples of my cheeks and I listened.  I sat in the dead of hopeful and losing faith and on those red stairs I chose hope.

There is nothing more daunting then when you lose faith in yourself because then you lose faith in everything else.

BKL=BROOKLYN

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with approximately 2.5 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County (Manhattan). It is also the westernmost county on Long Island.


There was a moment that I felt it was all going to disappear, a time when I actually saw myself sitting on the edge of my parents lake.  Crying.  I want to remember this chapter, and its called Brooklyn.  Having moved into my own place I want to relish in this moment because I have never been so exhausted, so broke and yet so capable of anything in my life.  If you can move in Manhattan, you can do anything because moving in general is hard but moving in Manhattan is like pulling teeth with a tweezers.  Like painting a mansion with a toothbrush.  Like climbing a mountain in a wheelchair.  You jump through so many hoops I feel as if in my past life I was in the circus.  You get so high you feel like methamphetamine is childsplay and so low that the weight of it all makes you feel 2 inches tall.
But in turn do you know what it gives you? OWNERSHIP.

Up until days ago I lived in a part of Manhattan called the Lower East Side (LES).  I rented a room in a place that never felt like my own.  This little hood is one of the best in the city.  Its heavy, grungy, dirty, hip, bustling and nothing shy of attitude and an I don't give a fuck disposition.  Anything goes and no one will look twice at anything really. This hood taught me to dissolve judgement, to not be shocked by much.  The differences I saw become beautiful lessons about individuality and creating your own self.  This hood taught me to let my creative being shine.  To let my 1950's image grow and develop.  I had free will, I got to play into my inner self and have it reflect on the outside.  The only problem was that I didn't have space to turn off all the madness of New York.  This is a tricky subject to address because in order to relate to this one would have to understand what its like to live in Manhattan.

I rented a room and it was a perfect little room but it wasn't my own and the apartment wasn't mine either.  This always made me feel a little homeless even though I had a roof over my head.  The place was governed by someone else.  Their rules, their stuff and their space.   I went through my longest creative/writers block, a darkness so deep I couldn't see any light.  Most days I felt completely drained and every day I had to leave the LES (lower east side) and sit by the water just to feel normal.  I wasn't loving it anymore and perhaps my time spent there was done.  I went back into the hood that made me fall in love with NYC to begin with.  I reclaimed it, I owned it and now I needed a beautiful  environment that harvested my creative being.  Nothing is more stifling then a environment that doesn't bring sunlight after the rain, that doesn't hug you when you enter your home, I needed my own place.  The timing couldn't have been any more spot on.   I learned a lot and for that I am grateful and for someone to open their home to me that I will never forget.  

Approaching my 1 year, I got word that I needed to move and the panic resulted in countless sleepless nights and 6 gray hairs.  What the fuck am I going to do?  I cried but something inside said this is for the best and you are always taken care of.  That's the only thing I held onto for the next 2 weeks.  If I let go of that then I would be on a one way flight back to Minnesota, as I wrote prior that wasn't really an option.  Its interesting what one considers when your up in the air but its even more important to remember what isn't an option at all.  So then your not even tempted to flirt with it.  The weight of it all should of sent me on the next flight back to Minnesota, but it didn't.  I knew there was frustrating days to come and there was.

This whole time I have been thinking I could never leave Manhattan but now that I have a beautiful space in BKL (Brooklyn) I wonder how I lived, worked and played right in the center of the madness.  When I go back into Manhattan I now appreciate it.  I see how beautiful it is when I'm away from it.  I almost wasn't used to how quiet and peaceful my place was at first.  With a farmers market right around the corner and stores that would blow your mind I can finally say that for the first time I feel like I am home.

Moving Back to Minnesota?

This is my second time living in New York and this second time around I did it all on my own.   The first time I was here seems like a faded blur of distant memories that mean nothing to me now.  I took all the possible good away from it, nailed the coffin shut and buried it months ago in a place in which it belongs.  I visit the grave from time to time only paying my respects for what it taught me and how it changed me.   Now I am moving yet again within New York and when I knew I had to move my soul let out such a terrible cry that this was all hanging together by what felt like a string.  The thing about Manhattan is that it has taught me so much about myself.  When I first came here I thought everyone was their word and their word was good and trusted.  9 million fish swimming in a sea, I learned the hard way.  I believed in everything and everyone but now a trusted filter has been built and sometimes I fear its made me guarded.  My safety and protection was my number one priority.  The bottom-feeders always scared me and they know who's new.  It doesn't matter if you are in the countryside or a busy metropolitan, safety and protection is something you build in the inside and radiates onward. 

I walk in the projects everyday just to feel my inner instinct pull and tug.  I walk without headphones so I remember to listen.  The heavy has enriched my soul in more ways then I could ever explain.  I walked into the afraid and smiled the whole 8 blocks even though the energy wanted to take from me.  I held steady.  Manhattan taught me that.  It hands you experiences over and over again until you learn and graduate to the next level, this is also called life.  

When I found out I had to move, I thought about letting this all go.  Surrounding myself with the deep love of my family and friends.  Going back to the land that raised me and taught me about my inner connection to nature.  Running into my parents lake that has been cleansing me since I was in diapers.  I want to have my niece fall asleep on my chest.  I want to drive and know where all the stop signs are in-between my parents house and my small hometown.  I thought about it but then this inner thing happened.  I hear a no.  Its faint, but its there. When Im really quiet and the city is asleep, I hear it.  It doesn't come from my head or my arm or even my leg, it comes from my gut right underneath my heart.    I didn't go through what I went through for me to cash it all in after such a short time.  Its not a pride thing, or that I would feel like a dog with its tail between the legs. NO.  Its that Manhattan wont let me go because Im not ready to let Manhattan go.  We have always loved each other and I made it one year by myself and I know it has more for me that if I give up now it will put a pit in my soul.  A deep regret that will read on every inch of skin I have.  It will take the blue away from my eyes and the inner hope and faith I have will resemble that of a prune. No.  No.  No.  

Thats why Im not ready yet because I have this inner fight that says you are in round 37, never said this was easy and you are a bloody fucking pulp but you have one more swing left in you.  So swing god dammit. 

Pursue it With Happiness or Not at All.

It haunts me what I could of been.  What I should do today but don't.  All the belief of a thousand men but not a shred of fucking hope on most days anymore, from the one whom actually makes it all come to life.  Although its not over yet most days I journal about fear, theres a whole other series you never get to read..

I sit down by the waters edge everyday for 2 hours.  If I don't, Manhattan will get me.  Don't forget my love for NYC but my forever happiness for nature takes precedence.  Always.  I sit alone within nature and most days fear creeps in like a haze of a lingering rainstorm.   My faith is shaken because when you are an artist you live it on most days, alone.  There is so many people around you yet you could be in the fullest of rooms and feel, still alone.   You could have the most incredible of families and still at the end of the day feel, alone.  You study, you write, you follow, you pursue and somehow in someway you never fully feel comfortable with what your doing.  The difference is you don't follow some written out formula.

Grow. Go to high school, go to college..graduate (or not).  Job, marriage, baby, back to job.   Marriage continues, life resumes.  Baby grows.  Money is tight, love plays out. Marriage buckles, child learns.   2nd baby comes.  Job bends.  Marriage resentful. Kids grow.  And all the wonderful things in between.  Its most certainly not the end yet, life resumes.  And it all continues.  I wish I could follow this.  I admire this life, most days I want this life.  An artist wont have this life.  I wont have this life.  Not that theres nothing that happens in between this life and that life.

The point is that we all have different pursuits.  The most open of hearts to share it with a child.  The courage to abandon yours for theirs.  Regardless if by accident or planned, to be involved in life..is living.  Continuing to see it grow and to choose to stick with it is a character builder.  A mother, an artist is no different.  They harvest a seed and watch it grow.  Maybe a different flower. different intent but passionate about something.  ANYTHING is so very important in our time of distractions.  So live your life and when you do decide that it wont be a job done 50% that when people speak at your funeral they will remind everyone else what you did here.

It

is

that

short...

Go 100% towards it.

Without A Row

I found myself on a boat
Submerged in the ocean
The most discerning thing is I have not
One roe
The waves kick up mist
Making it harder to see
I feel
Everything
I'm in the middle of the mass
Seeing not one
Of anything
Can anyone hear me?
The feeling of being alone
Is everywhere
Uncertainty is all I know
When life becomes more real
The more unreal everything else seems
The boat could tip
The boat stays steady
The tide pulls in
The tide pulls out
Either way I'm not budging
Fear only takes up sail
If I need it to take me back
I'm not sure where back is anymore
So I float
The storm is coming I know
I haven't even hit the roughest of waters
I haven't even tasted the salt
Its not over yet
When I scream
I can only hope life hears me
It wont
In the distance
A patch of green offers relief
Of something new
But even there I will keep my boat
Just in case I need to set hell to the sea
Without a row
That's where I'll be