"If we're gonna fly, we fly like eagles...arms out wide.
If we're gonna fear, we fear no evil...we will rise"
My name is strength...
I feel the need to clear up a few misconceptions people have about me. To start, people think that I cannot cry. Oh I can and I do, I just don't let the tears cloud my vision. People think I do not feel pain. I feel every blow received. I've just been hit so many times it's turned into lessons on pain management. People think I have no doubts. I do, but I have learned to answer them quickly enough to never let them slow me down. Yet the biggest misconception about me that people have is the worst one yet. People think I cannot fail. I will tell you the secret of my success. For the most part, I can only succeed after I have learned the trappings of failure. Why? This allows me on subsequent tries to identify and avoid those trappings altogether...demanding I stay clear and resolute. So you see, without failure, I cannot ever truly reach my full potential. Ever growing in the cyclical "rise and fall" until the "rising" takes hold.
Oh and one more thing. I am often confused with stubbornness. Don't buy into that. Pride is the
engine of stubbornness. I am at my best when I am vulnerable. Humility is the engine of vulnerability. Without it...my hosts will never truly come to "the end of themselves". The place
where course correction is finally realized towards the road to success...
"Summer carries Apollo home into a beaten down hotel room. The bed creaks as he sits to contemplate the night's fate. He take off his shirt as he gets up to open the window. The fan oscillating only hot air. The only source of light; a dim lamp and the clear moon coming through the window. Dry sweat on his skin as a hot breeze pushes forward the sheer curtains ever so slightly. His music is hypnotic. His groove is lucid...he's hungry and she wants to see him. It's gonna be a long night..."
Experience is the worn out reel and the well chewed meal. It's the night's nursed drink and exstacy's brink. Fixated and focused on the seconds that drip like hot wax on skin. Like slow deliberate raindrops fillin up a set of cups hand forged out of old pieces of tin...
There is nothing more tempting than "secret knowledge". To "know" what one does not know.
"How do you know?"
"They told me"...
"Then how is it a secret?"...
"I got one for you that you might not have heard yet"
There is a wizard behind a red curtain that stands hidden before the masses. Oh...he's something special and mysterious but seldom seen or known. It's eye opening to finally discover his existence but did you know? That behind him? There is another curtain...scarlet in hue, velvet in texture. Those behind this particular curtain have no "title" and are hardly ever seen. Born with names like "they" and "them"...they control the wizard. It's quite dangerous to find them so most would rather not. As this tale often goes, one would think to end here but alas...no. There is, in fact as yet...another curtain. This one is black, moldy and covered with ash. Inside that room...is something dark. A thing that carries ancient names, disguised as anything you want OR need it to be. Sly...slick and wise. In fact...wise enough to fool "them" and "they" into thinking that A) they can control it and B) that it has no match simply because behind it...there is no curtain. Oh...but there is "something". A thick rear wall littered with pinprick sized holes just behind it. Pinprick sized holes that allowed a blinding light to intermittently flash into that darkness...weakening it every time. A fact strategically kept obfuscated to anyone but itself and whomever the light that's shining behind that wall was emanating from. A light that shines by way of a universally constitutionalized law coming from the other side.
"Oh...you knew this already!!"
"Please excuse me..."
"Secrets!!...right!!"
"I'm not quite done..."
One day some in the masses revealed the wizard and he laughed at them...as another simply took his place. On another day, some in the masses revealed the "they" & "them" behind the scarlet curtain only to have "they" & "them" laugh at the masses because over time...they too would eventually be replaced. It took a season for a few in the masses to discover the "it"...and oh..."it" laughed in mockery. Why would it laugh? One would think it would thrive "unknown" so what such laughter? It knew that once the masses came to discover it...it could become whatever the people wanted or needed it to be. Basking in the total control it desired more than anything else...able to spin its yarn in any way, shape or form required. How so? Because by the time the masses went through all the mental and spiritual gymnastics to get to "it"...they would have been conditioned to believe anything. Directed and defined by an existential crisis in all the twisted realities that have infected their minds up to that point. No longer knowing who or what they are...strung along by some complex fix called..."secret knowledge". Slaves under bit and bridle by shock and surprise. Thinking the more they "know"...the greater in command they are. When just the opposite is true. Neat trick huh? Yeah...I thought so too...
As to the blinding light that shines through the pinprick sized holes? Well...that is the secret of all secrets. VERY few can stand the truth of it so it has remained hidden save for but a few. Yet how could something so powerful remain hidden? Well, you see...it's not behind a curtain & you've more than likely have been carrying it with you all your life. It's just too simple to find interesting & it's beauty is too common to stand out. Nurturing it...is unimpressive. I liken it best to a piece of coal you've carried in your pocket. Something simple you inherited at "birth"...deemed "renewal", "discovery" and "growth unto power" by those that know it's true value. Yet sadly, most pay no mind to it. They're usually too busy...out looking for diamonds...
Three movers do their best to get a couch up a flight of winding stairs:
1) The one that wants to be seen as at the top. He navigates & pulls.
2) The one at the bottom just cares about the job gettin done. He bears most of the weight...yet goes unseen.
3) The one that wants to be counted among them with less invested stays in the middle.
Which one are you? Measure your heart, not by position or status...but by it's truest intent. When you come to understand this simple truth, you will seldom be disappointed in choosing people in your circle or midst of real value. Or even...who has more to teach...
I've known & know a few & their worth has & is seldom celebrated but when crowns are counted among men & women according to the truest measure of a soul...I will be thankful to be able to recognize the names. I only pray to humbly be among them some day...their example has been worth a thousand lifetimes to me.
Their roles seemed thankless without praise but in time...the value of their hearts became clear to those with "eyes to see". I see some of you even now as you read this. Even though you never asked for it...your day will come. Wait for it...now smile. I'm out...
"...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".
Beauty's moon shines in mist to breathe life into death, light into darkness & even love into hate. To shine upon all that's passed. Revealing all hidden memory to see pain, heartache & struggle as silent road signs stationed for all the sacred paths we were designed & destined to walk. Once endured...now rewarded with experience that filters its lifeblood into the very nature of all that we are. Manifest in gratitude...the prelude to peace. Breathe my people...
