Do you ever feel like you don't exist? Like you don't matter? It hurts, doesn't it? Today, I share my thoughts from a few recent trips I took and an event that happened. As I traipsed the city of Minneapolis a few weeks ago, going out to different parts, exploring as I often do, the scooter my best friend, I realized how the United States has failed and continues to fail on the issue of homelessness. Some cities seem to hide it better than others, painting a false perception with a simple police baton, or some, like Portland, go in the opposite direction, even embracing it as a separate subculture. It's no secret we have a serious issue here, so I won't bore you on what we already know. That we need change. That we need more social programs. That we need governments who make it a priority. That we NEED. But in NYC a couple weeks ago, the problem was even more prominent. And I still wake up some nights with that sinking feeling that we must to do better. In a park one morning, sipping my too-expensive coffee, I noticed a cluster of people surrounding somebody. Of course, I tried not to stare, and of course, curiosity got the better of me. How appropriate as it centered around a cat. A woman sat with her cat curled in her lap on a hot and smoggy day, and people gathered to give her some money, some lingering, some simply dropping coins in a can by the sign that read: Please help me feed my cat. After a couple days in the city, you become a bit desensitized to homelessness. The first day, you find yourself giving money, smiling, doing anything to try to be...well...human. And as time goes by, you just don't know what to do. I'm not proud of this. I'm just being completely honest. We start to ignore it. We stop making eye contact. We have little voices inside our heads that say --"What will they do with the money?"--or "Jesus, not again?" As more time goes on, you just ignore it. We walk by. We try to pretend we didn't see. But we see it, damn it. And we can say or hear or make every excuse in the book, but we are suddenly looking at the homeless as a thing and not a person. As a problem and not a worthy living individual. As if this PERSON doesn't even exist. Why? How does that happen? But this woman wasn't being ignored. Instead, people cared. They cared, not about her, but about her cat. That was the sticking point. I heard murmurs: 'OMG. That poor cat.' And yup, stupid me, I started to cry. Maybe I was exhausted. Maybe I was hormonal. But the point is, no one cared about her. She wasn't important. But her cat? Her cat was important.
And the hardest part of all this reflection is that while food and hunger and shelter and all that is vital, it's the emotional part that keeps us living. I know. I have a dog that wasn't supposed to live through a week and with love and care, is going on 14! And I also know first-hand what being ignored feels like. It's awful. It kills self esteem. It can make us have moments of the darkness of feelings, of self-loathing. Imagine that feeling every day? Now imagine that feeling times 50 or 100 or 1000. Imagine being ignored by EVERYONE. Every. Single. Day. Yes, America. We MUST to do better.
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The lights, the sounds, the food and cultures, the wealth, the grit--New York is like no place on Earth. I haven't been everywhere, and likely never will of course, but I've traveled enough in and out of the country to know. I once wrote in a novel of mine that people always say big cities aren't friendly. I think the opposite is true. I think it's the friendliest place to be. Where can you find yourself eating the largest piece of five-layer chocolate cake at midnight, followed by the thickest slice of pizza right after and watch life as if it were midday? That's what New York is: Alive. Throw in seeing the hottest musical of our day, and you know you're alive. You know you're seeing history being made. You know you're a part of it. You know, unequivocally, that America is changing. That the face of America and what is means to be American is changing. Has changed. Will be changed forever. That I, too, am changed. That's what Hamilton made me feel. God damn! Where to begin. Let's just start with the music. The hip-hop story-telling of something we've only looked at through dry and boring textbooks suddenly became the most poignant story ever told. To remember what speech and writing could once REALLY do. How one person with so much passion and drive could do. What thinking could do. Follow-through. Persistence. Without such people, nothing changes. Without such people who knows what this country would have been, if anything. It's fascinating to think about that. And it's also fascinating to think about the person who created it too, here and now, a story so long ago, filled with all the poignancy of today. Lin-Manuel Miranda's gift of writing! His gift of the written word! The blending of cultures and story-tellers, America has a new face. And it's both recognizable and unrecognizable at once. Oh! How exciting. This musical, then, to me, is all about writing, and the effect the power of words can have, then, now, always. What struck me most as a writer myself, and of course a romantic, watching Hamilton was Hamilton, himself, as a writer. He used words to incite change, every time. Essays, of course, speeches and discourse, of course, but the love letters. Damn. Those love letters to women. In a digital age world, we often hear people mourn the loss of letter writing, but we still have it. It's still so important. We write letters to one another every day in emails, texts, and messages. It's no different when someone writes us poetry or words or lines or paragraphs--they're letters. Isn't how we still fall in love with someone so often? Through their words? Love is attraction through language. It's cerebral. It's always been that way. Eliza's song states: I saved every letter you wrote me From the moment I read them I knew you were mine You said you were mine I thought you were mine Do you know what Angelica said when we saw your first letter arrive? She said: "Be careful with that one, love He will do what it takes to survive" You and your words flooded my senses Your sentences left me defenseless You built me palaces out of paragraphs And there I sat, thinking about all the love "letters" I've gotten, have gotten, will get, and each time I want to give up writing, I realize, without writing, without the construct and beauty of words, we are nothing. Even when we fall. Even when we sin. Even when we love more than one person at the same time. Even when our hearts are broken.
We can use words in any way we choose, but when we use them for the ultimate, to love, when someone knows how to write, and write well, we are convinced they are special. We are convinced that we are special, because they've made us so through language. It's what Shakespeare meant when he wrote: Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. Everything about Hamilton is about language and words and their power. And I'm powerless now but to be changed forever. It's funny. My dad always loved that song from Fiddler on the Roof, maybe one of the earliest memories I have of musicals, a love of mine. And though I often hear people talk about the sunset and all its beauty, I rarely hear people talk about the sunrise. So today, I want to talk about the sunrise, something I haven't witnessed in a very long time. When I was younger and camping with my family, my dad loved to wake us up wherever we were to see the sunrise. He'd poke my brother and me, and we'd begrudgingly crawl out from under the warmth of our sleeping bags, remove the pillows from our faces that blocked the very sun we were about to revere, and either walk, or scramble into the car, to go see the sunrise at some ungodly hour before 6 am. As I grew into a teenager, I often "passed," my dad going it alone, decreeing: You only live once. After he passed, I often warmed at the thought of all those years ago, the thermos held tightly in my tiny hands full of the coffee he'd make I couldn't drink but loved to smell like I loved to smell his Old Spice. And this morning, I felt myself right back there. I set my alarm, something I loathe to do, made some coffee, poured it into a thermos, and went and sat on the beach to watch the sun rise. I could marvel and describe to you the colors and how the horizon met ocean and sky, that moment of grace where I know I'm important and not at the same time, a moment where I toasted my freedom on the 4th of July, and the inexplicable awe of nature. But instead, it was the smell of that coffee mixed in the with sea that I noticed more than anything, and I swore I saw my dad's smile in the clouds, a smile so infectious, anyone who met him talked about it. Before I knew it, the tears soaked my face, but they weren't sad tears. They were profound tears. I was sitting on that beach because I could, because my parents gave me a life that set me up to where I am now, a life where both my parents, but especially my dad, had made great sacrifices.
When I sat there, I knew I wouldn't be seeing a rainbow I often associate with my dad, given the weather, and yet, I kept looking anyway, because in that moment, I knew, though I am agnostic, there are greater things at work I'll never understand, like why my dad was taken from me so young. And even if scientifically there couldn't possibly be a rainbow, the possibility of it still existed. We don't have answers to everything. We never will. But my dad was right: You only live once. And so, I do, living freely, able to have the luxury to set an alarm if I choose to go see the sun rise with my dad. |
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I LOVE to write and read. I particularly enjoy reading erotic romance that has tons of emotion in it. I hope you will ask me questions and share your favorite authors and novels. I welcome all feedback.
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