The Stupid Question

Hola Everybody,
There’s much to write about these days. Corporate news now barely cares to vet their sources and clamor to follow in Fox News steps. Democrats have for the most part given up any pretense to stand for anything other than their corporate masters and those who drink their Kool Aid wander aimlessly experiencing defending the CIA and NSA and stumbling around in a psychotic break.

But I’m tired and most people really don’t give a good goddamn anyway... and we will continue to get less.

Questions 101

You see things that are and say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’
 -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

I was taught that the only stupid question is the one you don't ask.

Why? An excellent question… 

It’s a question I have been plagued by since as far back as I can remember. I’ve learned to ask other questions -- sometimes looking in the dark for newer questions, or questions not asked. I am a born skeptic, a doubter, a trouble maker by nature -- “un mas que jodes, un travesio.” At various times in my life I have been deemed unfit to live among the free and a bit deranged, to boot.

But along the way I have learned that questions are the very substance of who we are and what we do. I have learned that almost everything we do, every decision we make, is a response to an inner question. It’s unfortunate, I often think, that Questions 101 is not a regular feature in our classrooms. But then again, does the status quo really want to nurture questioning in our young?

One of my favorite books, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, deals with this issue of questions. In it a massive supercomputer is designed to give the ultimate, the absolute answer, an answer that would explain “God, life, the universe, and everything.” But the computer takes seven and a half million years to do this, and by the time the computer delivers the answer, everybody has forgotten the question! So, nobody remembers the ultimate question, but the ultimate answer is: 42.

This is amazing! Finally! The Answer! So wonderful is the answer that immediately a contest is held to see if anyone can come up with “The Question.” Many profound questions are submitted, but the final winner is: How many roads must a man walk down?

Reflecting about “spirituality, life, the universe, and everything” is pretty much what my life has been about -- the unexamined life, in my book, is an unworthy one. Of course, the answer may be not as clever as 42. Perhaps the answers deal with matter, life, mind, and spirit, and the underlying evolutionary currents that seem to unite them all in a pattern that connects.

For some time now, I have tried to embody this spirit of questioning. I guess part of my personal mission is to prod others to question, to look for the unasked questions and to try to understand who decides what questions will be asked and why. I think that’s part of my motivation for posting my rants -- I want people to ask, to question, to investigate their lives. If I were to die today, I would like to believe that I made some difference in the lives of the people I touch. I would want people to say, “He was a crazy motherfucker, but he cared, and he made me think. Or something like that.

In this crazy world all we can be sure of is the punch line to this grand Cosmic Joke we call life -- death. In the midst of all this uncertainty, we fumble for meaning or something that gives us a foundation of sorts. Sometimes this clinging is the core of our pain, sometimes having no meaning in one’s life is a key component to pain. So then, this is my meaning -- my mission: to rattle the cage a bit, to ask the unasked question and to ask you, dear reader and friend:

Why not?

We -- the curious, the apathetic, the wounded, the lonely and the happy -- are all somehow compelled to mass together in order to create meaning. We huddle together and tell our stories by the fire to ward off the dark. But in order to avoid the Kool-Aid we must dare to ask the questions that need asking and support each other somehow when the answers are harsh or painful.

I remember a time when that was called community... 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Hittin' the G-spot

Hola Everybody,
Happy new year! 

Some years ago, I was having a discussion with my boss regarding my work. I had been experiencing some major challenges and feeling stuck. At one point, she turned to me and said, “You’re not hitting your G-spot, Eddie, that’s the problem.”

I was a bit taken aback by the comment because my boss is more often than not more politically correct in her language usage. Then I started laughing. I asked her to clarify and how she explained that not hitting your G-spot is a lot like losing touch with your creative flow. I’m known as a creative individual who makes it a habit to think “outside the box,” but sometimes, as we all do, I lose focus and can get stuck on what I can’t do, rather than what I can do.

But more importantly, “hitting the g-spot” is really about enjoying the process of what one does. It’s about being immersed in the work, of finding that balance between flow and dynamic tension. It’s hitting the g-spot even during difficult times or when doing mundane stuff, like washing the dishes or sharing times with friends and family. 

Life is full of countless opportunities for hitting the g-spot.

Sometimes when I sit down with my friends as we get together, sharing food, laughter, and good feelings, I am reminded that life’s greatest riches are found in such moments. As human beings, we are social creatures and connection and contact are like psycho-spiritual food. Without it, there is no meaning and we starve and wither. In the midst of our support network, we find common ground, we feel safety, and we rejoice, partaking in sustenance and good feeling.

That’s what life is all about.

I grew up in an environment rife with poverty, ugliness, and violence. But I was fortunate in that I grew up in a community. I was fortunate in that I grew up in neighborhoods where people looked out for one another, helped rear each other's children, and created some measure of sanity in a world that was at best apathetic to our existence. It’s sad truth, but community -- real community -- is hard to find these days. It seems to me that we have all contracted into solitary pockets of isolated small groups living in fear of one another and living lives of quiet desperation.

When I connect with friends and loved ones, I am reminded once again that community is not only possible, it is necessary and wonderful. Sure, there will always be personality issues and egos and pettiness -- the full catastrophe of life -- but at heart, when we come together, it is the principle of community that outplays the personalities.

When we’re too old and sent to nursing homes, our true possessions will be these moments of connections -- instances of hitting the g-spot. The only thing you will be allowed to take with you when you do “the transition” are those moments of joy that you accumulate throughout your life. And that joy will reverberate long after you’re gone and in that way, you will live through your actions.

Personally, I will always strive for community, whether it’s a cyber community, or a fellowship of men and women, or me acting out when they throw my nasty ass in some nursing home when I get old and cantankerous.

Oh yeah, if you came here thinking you were going to read something about female sexuality, then you need white Jesus!

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

On Friendship

Hola Everybody,
Yeah, it's Monday, but I was born on a Monday, so it can't be all bad. J

For anyone in the New York area, I am selling a Trek bike that cost me a little more than $500 for cheap. Send me an email, or leave a comment, for more information.

Fellowship and Friendship

Friendship and community are, first of all, inner qualities.
 -- Henri J. M. Nouwen

True friendship begins as an inner quality or attitude before it can be expressed outwardly. As a young man, I wasn’t careful about who I chose as companions because I always thought I was too fiercely independent to be affected by others. Not true... Oh yeah, I was independent enough, but the power of the group should never be underestimated, my friends.

My father used to tell me, “If you hang around the barbershop long enough, you will eventually get a haircut.” I didn’t fully understand what he meant at the time, but he was expressing an old truth about how our choice of friends is a reflection of our character. For Puerto Ricans the dicho (saying) goes, “Dirme con quien anda, y te dire quien tu eres... ”

As a young teen at 14, I sought friendship and popularity as a way of validating myself because I felt small inside. My response to this felt inadequacy was to create a persona I thought people would like: humorous, crazy, charismatic, outrageous, fashionable. The problem was that it worked. Starting with high school and after, I was one of the popular kids, becoming part of the “in crowd,” setting trends, and defining an experience. To this day, I still get people I don’t recognize coming up to me as if I know them.

But this all came at the price of losing my true self. Moreover, staying popular was work -- there are rules to this shit, you know. Eventually, in an attempt to escape popularity, I would break all those rules, but by then I was too popular to escape it. Breaking the rules became part of my mystique -- the basis for even more popularity!

LOL!!! Ahhhh... to be young...

Today I realize how fortunate I am because I can count many true friends. People who have been there for me through the years in good times and bad, who tell me what I need to hear rather than what I want to hear, and who accept me as I am -- a deeply flawed but loving person. These are people who help me be me, and not just the celebrity Eddie who is fun to be with, and who does and says outrageous things, but also the introspective -- dare I say even shy(?!?!) -- person who cares deeply about the world.

Truth be told, I like to say I’m a “people person” but I’m really not. I’ll never forget the day my mother turned to me while we were watching the movie, As Goodas it Gets, and said, “That’s you!” -- referring to the Jack Nicholson character. Not the obsessive/ compulsive part, but the character’s penchant for saying and doing things everyone else is only thinking. LMAO! I guess she’s right. Sometimes I can be brutal. Today, I like myself a lot better than I used to, but there is a dark side still lurking in here somewhere.

But to get back to my point: it is through relationships and community that we create and recreate ourselves. If we can create a space, both psychological and “real,” in which we can accept ourselves in a community or web of relationships that will accept us also, anything is possible. Ever notice how sticking to an exercise program is easier if you have a partner? Imagine building a community like that -- where the participants, instead of competing with one another, encourage each other to be the best person they can be on a daily basis and be accepting when we fall short (and we will). 

Others are quicker to latch on to the negative and create a Jerry Springer-like atmosphere. These very same people are the first to point out the pathetic or unrealistic quality of such an ideal, but the true irony is they are the perpetrators. Some of us define ourselves in terms of negativity. It’s all we know.

I am fortunate, I belong to a group of men and women who love me for me and who encourage me to realize who I am. The thing is that we can all have this, every moment of the day. Whether we are stuck in a traffic jam or walking down the street, this kind of life exists only as a possibility until we grab the opportunity by the throat and decide to be part of this insane world. 

True friendship should exist as a mutual feeling of admiration, unconditional love, and a desire for fellowship. It should exist without demand. Sure, there are times some of my friends “fail” me in my expectations of them, but they’re human too -- they are bound to disappointment me! LOL Shit, I sure ain’t no walk in the park.

The important thing is whether we can love each other unconditionally and without malice. Maybe one more aspect about friendship is to accept it without trying to change people. That’s always an obstacle because sometimes our feelings make us believe we want one thing over another.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

In the Company of Others

Hola Everybody,
As I mentioned yesterday, my friend, Soffiyah Elijah will launching her new initiative, the Alliance of Families for Justice, at an event at the Black National Theater in Harlem (6:00 PM). I will be there because I believe in Soffiyah as a visionary leader who is passionate about criminal justice reform.

Would love to see you there! Her initiative seeks to… 

… Support the families of people with criminal justice involvement, empower them as advocates, and mobilize them to achieve systemic change.

Which to me means, community.

Making Community

... for the full flowering of the human spirit we need groups, tribes, community.
-- Margaret Meade

I was raised within an extended family that included a whole range of what sociologists call kinship relations. My family included biological and non-biological relatives. Later in life, I would discover that people I grew up calling “cousin” or “aunt” or “uncle” weren’t actually blood relatives. They were individuals that either adopted us or vice versa.

I have always been interested in community, but have despaired that real community has gone the same way of extended family relationships. Still, I was heartened to read Marget Meade, who noted that:

“99 percent of the time humans have lived on this planet we’ve lived in groups of 12 to 36 people. Only during times of war, or what we have now, which is the psychological equivalent of war, does the nuclear family prevail, because it’s the most mobile unit that can ensure the survival of the species. But for the full flowering of the human spirit we need groups, tribes, community.”

My extended family and childhood community made for great drama, comedy, and conflict (which I am putting together in a book of short stories tentatively called 704 E. 5th St.) This sense of kinship and community also gave me a much-needed sense of security knowing that it wasn’t just me and my mother at the helm of a precariously held family unit. To illustrate, I’ll give you an example from my life.

My father had been missing for some days and the family was worried. It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear for a day, but he always let us know of his whereabouts. Part of my chores as a young boy was to buy Italian bread and milk early in the morning. It was also expected that I would pick up the daily papers, one of them being the Spanish-language El Diario. That one morning, I went to buy El Diario and there on the front page was a picture of my unconscious father, literally splattered on the sidewalk blood trickling from the corner of his mouth (the tabloid was notorious for such photos). I ran home and showed my mother and aunts. My father shattered both elbows when he fell from a five-story building. He had also lost some memory and didn’t know who he was.

About a week or two after that, I was hit by a car during what turned out to be a minor riot in the Lower East Side community we lived in. Someone had escaped from the prison section of the nearby Bellevue Hospital, had stolen a police vehicle and crashed into several cars on our block in the ensuing chase. The police began beating the escapee, a young Latino man, which resulted in a riot. It was on our block and as kids, we thought the whole thing was cool. We noticed that one of the police had lost his badge in the struggle and when I raced across the street to get the badge (how cool!), I was struck by a speeding car and sent flying through the air. I tried to get up and run, but my knee had been blown out.

The event would ensure me childhood celebrity, for I came out on the front page of, yes, El Diario (and the whole slew of New York dailies), as well as a side note to the local evening TV news. From then on, my friends would introduce me to their parents as the kid who came out on the front pages of New York’s daily newspapers: Ma, this was the kid who came out in the news!

About two weeks after that, my mother, who by now had to visit my father and me every day as well, was preparing the breakfast oatmeal for my two sister’s and youngest brother, who was about three years-old at the time. Alone and stressed beyond belief, she went to comb my sisters’ hair during which time my youngest brother reached up and spilled boiling oatmeal on his arm. He suffered third degree burns.

My father was supposed to have both arms amputated, which he refused. Instead, they did a series of experimental operations over two years, which saved his arms. I believe my father was one of the first to have tendons taken from one part of his body and put into his arms -- he made medical history. My little brother would recover. He was the only one that didn’t make the front pages. I would have a cast for about 2-3 months. We lived in a 5-story walk-up in the Lower East Side and my mother, a petite woman barely five feet tall, would carry me up those five stories.

So, imagine that. Imagine you’re a single young mother of four, living in poverty, who now had to visit the hospital every day to tend to your husband, oldest son ( I was about 7-8 years-old), and toddler. On top of everything else, her parenting skills were being questioned by family and friends.

“Why was her son playing the streets?”

“Why did she leave her infant child unattended?”

To this day, I don’t know how my mother kept it together. Actually, I know part of the reason she didn’t go stark raving mad. We had family. We had our tribe, our community. Immediately, a cousin was sent to our apartment and she would help with caring for my sisters while my mother would visit the three different units at Bellevue Hospital. Family chipped in as they could, and though we lived in a poor community, there was always someone we knew, or who knew someone we knew, that would help if they saw my mother struggling with packages, for example. It wasn’t much, but I have to think that whatever little assistance my mother received had to be a relief for her. So we weren’t really alone. I will never forget those days and everything my mother did.

I would submit that part of the attraction of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and the rest, is that they offer the illusion of or substitute for community. It is a space where you can come and share and vent. In times of stress, sometimes you can go online and get at least some measure of empathy and compassion from your chosen group. I say illusion because ultimately I believe community should have at least some measure of a physical dimension to it. I can’t touch you, kiss your tears, or hug you. Still, cyber space has become a form of community for many people. We lead lives of quiet desperation in sprawling enclaves that make it almost impossible to commune with one another. 

It’s a disease, this fracturing of connection.

I would guess that most reading this would not consider themselves “tribal.” Your community, if you have a community at all, is probably defined by friends and family scattered across an extended suburban sprawl encompassing most of this country. We tend to live, work and play with people of similar education, income, race, age, physical attributes, and worldview. We rarely, if ever, have to deal with The Other. In fact, this is why there’s such a backlash against formerly incarcerated people. We don’t see them as humans, as part of community, because we’re socially incestuous. 

We don’t even like our own. We put our old people in homes and our younger ones in childcare centers. Certain lawbreakers of a certain color are put behind bars (where they become worse) and the physically and mentally challenged are kept out of sight. Through our tax dollars, we ask that trained personnel to handle these Others so that we don’t have to. We can get on with our careers and “personal growth.”

Most of the people I know haven’t a clue as to the social skills necessary to live in a real community. We have a lot to learn. How did our ancestors weave their intricate webs of inclusion? What can their experiences teach us about the community’s need for conversation, especially for listening and speaking from the heart? What do tribal people know about ritual, place, and the invisible world that can help us rebuild a community for our children and ourselves? What would happen if we followed the model of the salons of pre-Revolutionary France? 

Today, the neoliberal Koo-Aid is about exclusion -- who doesn’t belong and why. And this myopic mindset serves as a disease of isolation. We had better learn to live in the company of others or we will surely become the first species to cause our own extinction.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…