Dirty Dishes...

"...Hoy represento el pasado...no me puedo conformar..."

My father had me on weekend visitation rights.  As a young buck, I went from a shared room with George Washington Bridge views to living in a one bedroom apartment.  Sleeping on the couch from Friday night to Sunday I was more than just "OK".

Brooklyn...42nd Street, between 9th and 10th ave was what most today would call "a hot block".  A place where gunshots rang almost nightly and where the majority of the block housed squatters getting high in the abandoned buildings adjacent to ours.  I learned to smell it, to taste it...all while eventually not giving a sh*t.  There was a natural simplicity about that place and I felt great so long as dad held my hand.

With my mother, I traveled to France, Great Britain and other exotic parts of the world.  With my father, I enjoyed trips to Coney Island, Jones Beach, Great Adventures and eventually, Sunday service.  In one world, I had Chinese food, Burger King, Filet Mignon and an alarm clock buzzing right next to my sister's Menudo posters.  In another, I had a home cooked meal every night and a stepmother that would wake me up yelling at the cat..."Oye Chocho, ve y levanta tu hermano".  The contrast was something a young man wouldn't notice unless he opened his eyes as an adult.  I would find this difficult at the time.  I found this near impossible as someone that just wanted to love the wholeness of his family, however disjointed they would seem.  What lessons could I learn as a man from the totality of my experience?  The simple.

The idea of brushing off the inconsequential to focus on the tiniest of details after you've absorbed the bigger picture.  Where the type of rose mattered more than the dozen society expects.  Understanding the totality of my experience and crystallizing it down to something that could fit in the palm of my hands.  A simplicity that would make me a citizen of all the worlds I would soon encounter.

The trips, the cars, the house or lack thereof, would soon come to be no more than a backdrop to what was most important...the deep truth of all that's called "the moment".  Those seconds where you can find deep meaning in "the best" as well as "the worst".

As a man, I listen to old Spanish music and I appreciate the smell of roasting pig beneath the fresh coal in Puerto Rico.  Such music inspiring emerging memories of a child sliding on smooth, painted sidewalks under the pouring rains of Santo Domingo.  El Gran Combo brings back memories of the lost souls that would sing and play guitar by a metal barrel lit up with lighter fluid.  Burning newspaper under the gloomy street lights.  While Julio Iglesias and Camilo Sesto would flood my soul with images of my mother sipping fine wine out of her expensive wine glass in our over-sized living room.  These simple things mean so much more than the totality of my experience because they, in truth, bring out the essence of them all.

You remember what happiness is and just how fleeting it can be.  Learning that it is found in moments immersed by the beauty of the second...where time doesn't exist.  In that place where all that matters is that you're living.  Exhaling a sigh of relief with a smile of gratitude. Where you come to ask..."is life really so bad?"

In our one bedroom apartment my father had a small kitchen.  Beside the stove, hung up on the wall, there adorned a small plate.  Something purchased simply because someone said..."This would look great on our wall".  It had a saying I came to apply throughout my life.  A saying that would unknowingly impact me for years to come and would truly define who I am today...

"Thank God for dirty dishes, they have a tale to tell.  While others may go hungry...we're eating very well".

Yeah ;-)

~Moses Apollo