Now we are free

The fuzzy feeling in my head is still around. Guy and Sherlock are both in my mind as one word keeps popping in and out: discombobulate.

Palahniuk was the first bringer of good fortune in my life. He came up with my kind of country club. One of dingy basements where the concrete floor has enough give to crack a human skull. Where Pollock wears a different frock and Dexter has a masterpiece to analyze. It would have made Denzel proud to see death in the living.

Every time I let myself die a little it makes me realize just how much more alive I am. Because every time I give away a little bit of my soul I know that it's a tiny fragment of my life that lives on somewhere else. I've been genetically programmed to think like this...

And tonight I fought. Not a controlled environment like I do at the gym every other day. I dress my hand in boxing wraps and sparring gloves, warm up and then juke and jive tossing in a cross every now and then to keep the punching bag guessing. Everlast is a clever one.

On the wooden floor in a second. Using momentum and brute force the next to position myself in just the right way I sweating waiting for the next shift. Another one runs in and tackles me stealing my breath from under me. Face on the floor and my kidneys just got crushed. I jack knife with my legs and slam my forearm into a neck - not mine.

His back flat on the floor, my left temple throbbing and three dead knocks on the floor and it's over. I'm covered in a rain of salt water coming from everywhere, the room spins and the light is crystallized.

And now my body is at peace - warming down as my mind chooses to begin its own race. It's always something with the human body.

Hot Thai Booties

There's something non-sexual to be said about waking up and not knowing anyone in the room. While the gutter driven people out there might fantasize about gang bang scenarios where the close-up shots are prevalent... my thoughts are elsewhere. Surprisingly.

I'm talking about 2 hours of engaging conversation, lovely seventh grade dancing where you leave room for jesus, the holy spirit (or moses). I'm talking about soft, silk ties and the encounter of awkwardness with overactive hormones - and the sarcasm that follows.

Wake up in a room except the room is your world. And me being me that defines itself to everything in my proximity that revolves around my powerfully gravitational ego. Physicists talk about multiverses. The plebe speaks about the universe revolving around every individual. Presto! Now all we need is a whole bunch of knitting grandmas to get the string bit going and the whole equation is nearly solved.

There is nothing permanent about the structures we've managed to put together in the last 5,000 years. No archetype has been left untouched, no function unrefined. What makes us think that the same would apply in that brief blink of time that is our life?

For me it is hope.
For some it is faith.

I had a conversation today (as opposed to most days where I have several - and if by now my sometimes laconic style hasn't tired you dear reader, well, hold on to your seats because it's about to get bumpy). My friend compared my gender to lost puppies coming back after they are shoo-ed away time after time. Suckers for punishment in other words. She then went on to describe how complicated women are.

I was shackled last night.

Today was a reminder that I wish I could write heartfelt stories meant to be slammed into the quiet walls of a crowded room with sentiment and passion. A warm reminder of how I miss the stage. A dark memory that tells me that I can't talk about spaceships and I cant talk about an oppressed childhood but I can certainly talk about warm tortillas over a log fire with a thick wool blanket and the morning mist over the maize crops. These are my truths and I've been obsessing with them.

I wear a proud badge that spells minority in the US but it spells citizen elsewhere.

A girl sang an explanation: soy 100 por ciento boricua. I take boricua and replace it with myself. An explanation for my deranged emotional pattern of implosion. An explanation for my sometimes mispronounced o's and i's. It means a different perspective and I hope a cultured vision of the world. The third world gives you the worm's eye view of the world.

We are all human beings. I'm exhausted of being human.

I'm looking for the moment I see my parents exchange when they look at each other briefly with meaningful glances of understanding and love. It's not a twinkle. It's not a glow. It's unadulterated emotion. The kind rwandan children choirs or the crack of an old man's voice as he tells you his story or the view from the top of Bellavista evoke.

I'm still here trying to look past the glitz and glam. The razzle dazzle. The pizzazz of average human life.

And all I see is hot. thai. booties.

M&M

Those studied in the science of criminalistics know how to build a character profile. So are writers. Our approach is not quite as scientific - read, empirical - but is often a closer depiction of the average freak. I notice the more salient features of different people and combine them to create a super person. That can be everyone from a John Brioche to Jerome Norse.

Reality is often the best fiction. And before I continue an apologetic sentiment is in order seeing as how I'll try to describe my current state of being. I am cognizant that some of what is about to follow might be disturbing -a potential mind f***- or might fall flat in what amounts to little more than a scrap of cheap faux deep thought. I hate the possibility of the latter but high risk is high reward. That's what Sorkin might say.

Picture a 67 year old man who peppers his english language with the occasional german beyond the potentially usual gesundheit. Try gestalht. Yellow - shirt. Juice - orange. A brilliant man who wakes up in the morning to thoughts of electrons derived from a dream including two differently distributed normal curves relating the dichotomy of knowledge between momentum and position. Equally disposed to discussing the collapse of the structural house of cards that the education system is in colleges around the country or the virtues of a chocolate that is naked.

What does exist mean?

Something tangible. Something real? Something I can picture or think about? Then does infinity exist? Something we believe to be real however undefinable?

A student might suggest that exist, like good, is an infinitely recursive word that probably lacks (with no certainty) an absolute truth (there's another one) to it. A definition that requires itself and the word it is defining to define itself. Something that could get an conventionally or universally accepted truth given validity only because of the social architecture that would allow us to accept it.

The man would carry on to ask questions that rarely come up. Questions that are usually there but left unchallenged in an average conference room. Why do we use what we know to be wrong? A continuous model in a quantized theory? Newton was wrong but on any given day F still equals m*a. Proofs are based on a rabbit inside a hat trick start. Do the integer numbers make sense? We can see five. Do -5m makes sense though?

And so you walk away from the man smiling at the thought provoked, the ideas simmering in the back of your head as you wonder whether the man will ever give you an answer to the questions. Maybe he'll make you settle for a scruffy proof or a proof by intimidation.

This is how education should be. Cloning and all. A thought experiment.

...

On/Off The Record.

The record was a city newspaper pushed off the stands and into the web by the ever driving force of the free market - freedom. Bloggers churn out stories four times a day when the writers of yore would take 7 days just to make copy.

It's entirely one of those self-deprecating entries in which I write about the detriment of the ethereal essence of the art I pursue so longingly only to find myself standing in the middle of the battlefield with a toy horse, a plastic sword and a cop arresting me. My name is not Brian.

In my experience dealing with pseudo-professional(s) agencies(people) there is a sense of self-entitlement that begs the world to bow down before them. The intellectual climax that beginning reporters achieve when they first get asked to be spoken to "off the record" is only comparable to hitting that sweet note(spot). G. Perhaps the example is exemplified in those agencies providing a service for the community at large - like consulting or putting on a conference.

Ingredients for a facade of seriousness regarding diversity and a protected environment in which 4 different lettered diversities can thrive in. Speakers about diversity. Luncheon with professors. Students from 8 schools instilled with tradition brought together at the most social of their peers. Add to that a clever name involving a plant and you're done. All thats left is the planned debauchery of the night in which the masquerade type masks and naked pictures run wild.

I'm part of the broad umbrella described on applications as diversity. I'm proud of that. In the words of Caulfield's classmates - Digression!

Being on/off the record bothers me. Whatever happened to understanding context? To reading the subtle hints taught to us by years of conversations, small talk and society's norms? The rocket science handled by those dedicated to it  - psychologists, psychiatrists and other sickos - seems to be so specialized that everyone outside of that realm is completely incompetent.

I only ask for one things.

Read between the lines.

Editorial Right.

I have little respect for the written word that derives its respect from a long-lost tradition of great journalists.  It is easy to walk into the Columbia Journalism program and feel absorbed by the leather chairs, the musty air of respect and gravitas. It's also easy to ride the flying horses of a merry-go round.

It was not until recently that I discovered that the often troubling titles in the Daily Pennsylvanian editorials are not determined by the editors. Or should I say - the writers?

The names of the editors' columns are sometimes funny - perhaps even appropriate. They reveal something about the ethos of random student number 7 in the college of arts and crafts studying business of engineering. Right? Why do we have to perpetuate the puns and easy, something offensive (to our intellect)  humor.

A lasting iMpact? Really?

A potentially revolutionary concept - I'll let gizmodo and engadget and slashdot correct me if I'm wrong - should carry a little more weight in the seriousness of the literature written about it. Perhaps I'm too big of a believer in Gladwell's value-added story.

A writer should not be denied the great pleasure of naming their work. Parents have enjoyed the privilege of naming their child, sometimes even before he/she is born. You get to look through books and magazines, search for the etymological and ethnic origins of the name and the historically famous people with the name. This stuff matters.

Some, like me, write pieces based on a title. The piece writes itself once the header is on the page. Some daring authors write first and name later.

What's in a name you ask?

The writer's introduction in a column. A first impression is rarely removed by stylistically beautiful prose.  No amount of obscure references, listed sources or quoted John Doe's will remove the stench of an ineptly named piece. The name. Matters. And only one person can correctly title a piece in order to express exactly what he wanted to.

A rose would not be the same. The same as a Stradivarious found in the D.C. subway or a stolen Degas in a flea market in Mexico.

Call it the pretty red one, with the thorns and sort of nice smell.

Bob

I'm on a quest for a new social cause to decry. In the interlude, lets talk about Bob.

This weekend I did some insider research into the psyche of the opposite sex. Say it. For those few brave males willing to brave the pro-feminist sentiment of a crowd of rallied women, the experience is quite exhilarating. The suggestive graphic art, the bold statement made by a majora and minora walking around with the coarsest of sentiments and candy are a symphony for the ages.

And the show begins. There is no music, no backdrop - no set to speak of. Chairs, microphones and the quivering, sometimes panting voices of the artist in turn.

Particularly poignant or revealing was Japan and it's short staccato  style. Writing reminiscent of a machine gun often has the same effect. Chills on the back of my arm, a smile to my face - not because of the words but despite them - and thunderous applaud. Ah to be able to write with such poise and sentiment.

My suburban lifestyle of late robs me of that tortured artist experience.

And the orgasm. What a hilarious pleasure.

I've found in my field of research that it's a fingerprint. I wish I could be an orgasm forensic. An analyst of the subtleties of the moan, the tightening of the lower back muscles, curling of toes and the back-of-the-eye-whites rolling of the eyes. A regular day at the office would involve research -interviews,  surveys and dirty water cooler talk - and field research. I would walk through the department (I'd carry a laminate, not a badge) and be envied by men, respected by women.

My job would be to make people happy. Not haha happy but OMFG, I LOVE YOU! happy.

A world filled with normally heart-felt sentiments made real for brief seconds at a time. A race in search of a triple-stacked burger(consider it a euphemism).

It would be the story of Bob. The man who made a woman lover herself more than she thought possible.  A man reading more into a woman's girly parts with greater finesse and in greater detail than most husbands can read their 20-years-mortgage-and-kids wife.

Cheers Bob!

The king

There once was a king and he ruled over his magical land with distinct fairness and grace. He was a ruler made for the ages - sweet dance moves, white gloves and black curly tresses. His prince was an artists formerly known as something else. His queen (not Liza M.) was a single-name wig-wearing interest piece. Their princess wore pointy cones and did jesus cameo's.

A half-baked thought is worth a whole pastry.

There are those who play a role and sacrifice everything in their life to play the character they've built at every turn. The reason why an icelandic beauty wears a dead swan or 60's character only bears skinny ties. They're true artists. Like the old chinese magician pretending frailty only to fit a fish bowl - complete with fish and water - between his legs under a satin and silk costume.

I know those who are who they are despite their best intents. It seems like a carefully calculated act. Letting on only who they are. Most would choose to wear a different mask at every different encounter in their life.

Kings and Queens do not.

It would almost seem unilateral. Monotone. Routine. It would be - if they tried.

But there's something about having distinct smiles. About being truly amazed and happy about the curious world around them. It's in the way the enjoy the trivial and the pursuit. Perhaps it's in the dainty way they consider the weight of a G or the derived pleasure of a simple night of board games and friends.

They are few and far between - like the red aztec suns signaling the end of a century. The beauty of a personality without act. It provides a calm appreciative of Satie's masterpieces; one that would allow the sinking foot-in-snow feeling to be warm and fuzzy.

Here's to the king. An artist born, not made. Fully committed to the reality of his situational act. The representation of an absolute and relative truth.

_______ Five!

Wide open books

As a little kid I used to get punished with a few choice words: "if you don't behave we won't go to the bookstore."

It could have been that I enjoyed jumping into brave new worlds, exploring the trips and slumber parties of a pair of now pro-ani twins or wandering in a world full of red dragons, dark magic and beautiful princesses (for they are always beautiful). It could have just been my wonder at the hundreds of collective pages.

Some of the authors, of the beach novel variety, would churn out dozens of different new book at every other visit. Some would put a few choice words at a time culminating in an ouvre so grandiose that the critics would forego the traditional "...ravishing!!!...compelling!!!...X is a master..." for the more elaborate "A great writer than him has rarely lived."

In those pages, right along with the smell of must, dried ink and the occasional trail of publisher brand coffee were the stories of people. And those I loved.

I like to read people. And not through the metaphorical windows to the soul (the eyes) or through subtle nondescript behaviors but through the body and mental language that we so carelessly display for those with the right mindset. The words are always there but you have to see it. The MD's would call it the power of suggestion but I consider it my power of deduction.

It's elementary.

it's usually no longer than four words at a time with a lot of dirty pictures interspersed here and there. Sometimes you get lucky however and there's an interesting story to be told that extends beyond the usual baby daddy drama and high school tension that follows most people right up to when they turn 45. Everyone knows the midlife comes right after.

Some are generally sad, some are generally happy. You read the insecure and their story about neglect and quasi-abuse, sometimes self imposed. You might catch a bold and confident one and those make the most interesting reads. Look for the source, find the chink, find the strength and look at their side to find their pillars. Every one of them has them no matter how cool and independent they might appear. Wilde had a cook and a person to deliver groceries to him.

I'm still busy reading.

Yo-Yo

Understanding american slang took an irish movie, a book on a Canadian liberation organization and the introduction of hip hop. Yo!

I'm wound up tight and the melatonin looks particularly ripe tonight.

Flash in and flash cards on the table. There are books all over the floor and I'm still wound tight. I wonder why I'm putting myself through this tortuous process of judgements and trial and error and failure and deception. It's a non-climaxing feeling. There is a build-up. Then comes the reality of the act. And then, just as you're playing a back and forth, sometimes verbal, sometimes physical.

Nothing.

And using cheap literary tricks like a single word, single sentence paragraph feels redeeming. Or the use of homonyms to refer to the metaphorical and literal foundations on a song about making lemonade with lemons or better yet, eating lemons but not being bitta. And sometimes all that is required is for you to smile at the sound of another nubile young british voice. And there are those from unknown origin that sing to remind you of the time of this or that.

Writing to decompress.

And tomorrow is the day of judgement. The rapture. Not really but it's quite quite close to a scary amount. Putting your eggs in one basket and then surrounding the aforementioned basket with open flame, hammers (to crush the eggs with in such a manner that not all the king's men can piece them back together) and egg-snatchers does put the pressure on.

Start spreading the word.

Tonight?

Do you have plans? What are you doing tonight? You throwing down?

Sad questions all of them.

I don't presume to be old. I do however, presume to be wise.

The truth is social circles come in two flavors: dynamic and static. For most people who stay where they grew up, live and die within five minutes of where they were born, social circles are static. They're the south philly cops or steel factory workers. They are also agoraphobic writers who write two novels and then shut themselves away from the world they so carefully scripted. Sometimes its the football jocks and cheerleaders but thats usually a story left for hollywood writers and the back roads of the south.

Then there's dynamic.

It starts young. Your best friend might change every year depending on your homeroom situation or where you are in your hormonal period. Sometimes its the simple things like moving away or moving in. Change can come from without and not from within.

Especially in these beautifully awkward years we call the time of our life after an aptly named aging punk-ish rock group. It's changed.

I suppose I am maturing? Growing boring. The shot! Shot! SHOT! mentality of yore is no longer thrilling. The thrill of the hunt is still there however and, I suppose, if the beach novels at the airpot are any indication, will continue to be there till I'm 60 and I'm rocking a Jack Nicholson soon to be George Clooney vibe. The desire to meet people is still deeply entrenched. The opportunities to do so in a pure(New York?) state of mind seldom come.

And all I want to do is use that line Lorelai once suggested to her mom.

Hello.

Blank me.

There's about a foot of snow outside and I'm planning on reading a 10k. I've never ran one.

There's a collection of thoughts regarding the idea of the Higgs-Bossom particle that confuse my every thought. The particle that gives everything mass must have mass itself in the most minute of ways. A particle made of nothing but itself. A particle so small we can't show it exists but so large so as to give our world a physical reality. The god particle.

The same idea follows the collective imagination. The reason why people around the world come up with the same discovery/idea/architectural wonder at the same time or near the same time. Einstein's relativity comes up short when you deal with thought. He missed that dimension. That's why the Aztecs and Egyptians built the pyramids. Why purepecha is most akin to the Swedish language and why slavery and prejudice (not racism) arose all over the world. The same reason why countries around the world accepted gold as a unique standard. We should have picked trees. Think of the better world we would live in.

While I'll admit. Collecting my thoughts on a piece like this is not uncommon. Today it's different though. There's no underlying thread, I don't think.

Loaded Questions

Do you think it's ok that young man just committed an ethically/morally/legally wrong thing son?

A question that came up throughout my childhood more times than I care to admit. What was I supposed to say? I think it's cool/awesome/very legit... Of course I would respond with the softball answer of choice - I think it's wrong. It was only when I turned 12 that I realized these were the loaded questions. And I began to ask them. And respond to them in shockingly annoying ways.

To my parents the response was simple. There is an answer you want so lets pretend I just did. I don't mean that to say that I was rude or discourteous to my parents. I was always respectful of the people who had imbibed in me the values that allowed me to identify the right from wrong. I was a pigeon toed child raised in a new country with a new ideology- respectful but independent - it was the year of the boar.

How'd you do on that test? How was your weekend? Has you ever been cheated on?

When did questions start acting like auto-rhetorical devices. People, most people, aren't looking for answers. They're looking for attention. A moment to discuss your own personal drama.

I've read getting to yes. I've read Terry Fadem. And the art of woo and prying for deeper answers. And I hate loaded questions almost as much as unloaded guns or an ill-shaped conversation.

The Belly of the Beast

The lightbulbs don't flicker down there.
It's built like an underground bunker. Winston Churchill would have felt comfortable planning the Normandy storming here. It could also be a huge psych ward with patients distributed in wings in accordance to insanity or sanity. It's also the place where on campus recruiting happens.

It's fluorescent.

Starting at 745am the place begins milling with juniors and seniors playing ant farms in pretty black and gray pinstriped suits. The great tango we entangle ourselves in is carefully punctuated by the same awkward conversations.

Person 1: Zup. Um. Who are you interviewing with?
Person 2: Big Bank One, and Private Equity Firm Two, and Venture Capital Three. You?
Person 1: Nice, sick, nastry, congratulations, awesome (I don't know who you are). I'm doing just this one today.
Person 2: Oh... (shift gaze to the floor looking for that pernicious piece of lint he dropped 20 seconds ago) Well good luck with that.
Interviewer: Person 1? - Pause for smile, handshake.

Bump. Set. and Spike. The role playing begins.

Maybe the interviewers are playing good cop, bad cop. Two separate tables or just the one little one. The place feels clinical.

You've prepped for days now. Maybe you did a case in preparation for a finance interview. you reviewed the basic concepts of finance and accounting and your life - in that order of importance.

The major firms will teach you their own models leaving everything you've left in the classroom where it belongs. In the classroom.

At this rate finance majors should simply stop regular schooling at grade 4th once we've mastered the basic add, multiply, subtract and divide. Everything else is on the job experience. It would certainly give the markets a very naive quality to them. A certain innocent quality that not even Volcker could question, n'est-ce pas?

Willingly we file into the beast knowing we will be spit back out, tail between our legs, our head still dangerously held high - it's that ivy league sense of entitlement.

Love OCR.