An Open Letter to the People in My Life

Hola mi Gente
I plan to write a few posts based on my participation in the #OccupyWallStreet movement, but I have to get this off my chest first. Some who know me will find this offensive, fuck it…

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m harder to find these days, more distant, less talkative. There’s a reason for that (aside from my natural tendency toward solitude). Recent revelations have forced me to reevaluate my relationship with you. As I listen to you complain about all the little things in your life, please understand that I’m part of a social movement that forces me to witness the ruthless dispossession of human beings.

While you were bitching about your relationship with your daughter the other day, for example, I was spending time with an elderly woman who has lost everything she owns. She’s in her 80s. The last time I saw her she was sleeping at Zuccotti Park. Yeah, she’s one of the people you’ve been mocking.

As you griped about your baby momma drama, I couldn’t help but reflect that the other day I was sitting with a young lady, a recently graduated Latina, almost $100,000 in debt and unable to find a job.

As you were snidely pointing out to me that the people shopping on Black Friday are part of the 99%, I thought back to the brutal take down of a sixteen-year-old honors student at the hands of the police. Her crime? Challenging the assumptions of a society that makes Black Friday possible -- even a necessity.

I listen to you, my friends, lovers, my family, my network of loved ones, and I am thrown by the banality of your frame of reference. I am repulsed by your self-centeredness; you’re utter incapacity for empathy. But most of all, I am saddened.

And it’s not about whether you agree with my politics or not. Believe me, most people don’t agree with me. My frame of reference is Marxist and I advocate for a democratic socialism totally foreign or repugnant to you. People disagreeing with me for my political stance isn’t anything new or traumatic. What appalls me is your cynicism, your cruelty, your apathy, and your fucked up judgmental bullshit.

It’s not that you ridicule, or make fun of my participation in a social movement. That’s been a constant for as long as I can remember. I have always taken unpopular stances, fought for unpopular causes, and people have laughed at me for even longer than my tired eyes could ever tell you. What horrifies me is that you have no real stance. You have no solutions. You have no passion and it seems that when you see passion in others, it brings out something ugly and ignorant living inside of you. It seems to me that sometimes your soul has been starved or that you’ve become so hardened and calloused there’s no real heart at your core, only contempt.

And what’s ironic is that a lot of you don’t have to go too far back in order to acknowledge your own wreckage. Your children have been shaped and warped by it, your relationships have been destroyed by it, and there was a time when you felt as if the world were laughing at you and you felt like nothing. Most of all, I remember when you felt like shit, when your self-worth was almost zero. I remember that. So, today, you’ve managed some measure of social acceptability and now you have the arrogance to look down at others. How arrogant of you, how thoughtless, and how ugly you seem to me.

And let’s not get it twisted: I remember when your mother used food stamps, when the guys thought you were a hallway ho’, and when even your own mother wouldn’t open the door for you. I remember you crying because you couldn’t pay the rent and then rejoicing with you when you cried because you could pay the rent. I knew you when someone sacrificed their mental and physical health so that you could go to college and “be somebody,” and now that you think you are somebody, you’ve bought into the propaganda and laugh at those struggling to make a better or fairer society.

The sad thing, for me anyway, is that I’ve been struggling. I’ve been facing my own really tough challenges. Now I have to face the fact that, at that time when I need you most, I have to choose to love you from afar because I can’t stand to see what you have become. I can’t abide the realization that when you marginalize others, you’re also marginalizing me.

As I struggle, along with many other good people, people you can’t hold a candle to in terms of courage and will, I have to come to terms with the reality that perhaps I haven’t chosen well or wisely in creating my support network, and I have to say that I’m moving on, without you. I am, however, grateful that you have forced me to take an inventory and question: how does my friendship with you reflect on me as a person and, most importantly, am I truly living my values? I realize that many who even bother to read this will attempt to analyze me and label me “angry” or “hostile” or whatever the fuck the flavor of the month is. But I’m not angry. If anything, I stopped being angry a long time ago. I’m even moving past the sadness, and moving on.

I hope you do as well…

Love,

Eddie

Solitude vs. Loneliness

¡Hola! Everybody...
The revolution, my friends, will not be funded. Like many other non-profits, my organization is reeling from the financial malfeasance of the elites. Foundation giving is down significantly and state/ federal budgets are being slashed like never before. If you're a millionaire, or know one and you have read about my work, or even remotely like me, send me a note and some money...

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Today's blog photo is courtesy of Mario Tomic

-=[ Loneliness ]=-

Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.

It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
disappointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed-

that is when loneliness receives the rivers...

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

I haven’t been “lonely” in a very long time.

Like many others, however, I have felt the cold sting of loneliness throughout my life. To feel alone and isolated -- even in the midst of life itself -- can be one of the most painful experiences. If we live our lives asleep, habitually running from pain and clinging to pleasure, loneliness is the cruelest punishment. For it is true, as human beings we die without connection. In a very real way, we can die from loneliness.

However, when I look back to the times when I felt loneliness, I realize now that it was me who was creating the consequences of loneliness. It was my reactions to the sense of feeling alone that created my suffering, for how can you possibly conceive of yourself as being alone? (It’s a rhetorical question, needing no answer.)

Just take a moment and reflect on that question a little: “who” is feeling lonely? If you perceive yourself as separate from all Creation then your loneliness is the vilest curse. On the other hand, if you’re able to penetrate through the surface, you quickly realize that this bag of flesh you inhabit is not everything. I am not merely a concept we’re all agreeing to call “Eddie.” I am much more than that. I am part of an infinite process that unfolds moment-to-moment.

This is not to say I don’t feel what we call “loneliness,” I just experience that deep feeling differently. Loneliness, or rather, running from loneliness, has made me do some really stupid shit. Like settle for less, or engage in sexual acts as a substitute for true intimacy. This escape from loneliness has at times cost me my human dignity and at other times made me cruel person. Until I stopped running…

Then I was able to face my sense of loneliness and feel, as if for the first time, the purifying coolness of my tears. Tears like rain, washing away all my pretenses and defenses. And when I finally stood there and saw with fresh eyes, I realized that I was never alone. The fact was that I had made of my desire a prison where I indulged in the excesses of my ego-driven madness for validation. I haven’t felt loneliness for a long time.

I guess the value of solitude depends upon the individual; it may be an oasis or a prison, a refuge or a punishment, a heaven or a hell. Ultimately, we make it what it is.

Today, I have realized that in my loneliness I can create a garden of solitude.

Love,

Eddie

Loneliness

Hola Everybody,
Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. I’m headed out. I might hit the office to tie some loose ends today, or maybe I’ll leave that for tomorrow. Not much else going on. The weather is mild (considering we’re in the middle of a NYC winter), so I’ll enjoy the day – maybe call someone tonight.

* * *

Today's blog photo is courtesy of Mario Tomic (click here)

Loneliness

Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.

It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
disappointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed-

that is when loneliness receives the rivers...

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

I haven’t been “lonely” in a very long time.

Like many others, however, I have felt the cold sting of loneliness throughout my life. To feel alone and isolated – even in the midst of life itself – can be one of the most painful experiences. If we live our lives asleep, habitually running from pain and clinging to pleasure, loneliness is the cruelest punishment. For as human beings, we die without connection.

In a very real way, we can die from loneliness.

However, when I look back to the times when I felt loneliness, I realize now that it was me who was creating the consequences of loneliness. It was my reactions to the sense of feeling alone that created my suffering, for how can you possibly conceive of yourself as being alone?

It’s a rhetorical question, needing no answer.

Just take a moment and reflect on that question a little: “who” is feeling lonely? If you perceive yourself as separate from all Creation then your loneliness is the vilest curse. On the other hand, if you’re able to glimpse through the surface, you quickly realize that this bag of flesh you inhabit is not everything. I am not merely a concept we’re all agreeing to call “Eddie.” I am much more than that. I am part of an infinite process that unfolds moment to moment.

This is not to say I don’t feel what we call “loneliness,” I just experience that deep feeling differently. Loneliness, or rather, running from loneliness, has made me do some really stupid shit. Like settle for less, or engage in sexual acts as a substitute for true intimacy. This escape from loneliness has at times cost me my human dignity and at other times made me cruel person.

Until I stopped running…

Then I was able to face my sense of loneliness and feel, as if for the first time, the purifying coolness of my tears. Tears like rain, washing away all my pretenses and defenses. And when I finally stood there and saw with fresh eyes, I realized that I was never alone. The fact was that I had made of my desire a prison where I indulged in the excesses of my ego-driven madness for validation.

I haven’t felt loneliness for a long time.

I guess the value of solitude depends upon the individual; it may be an oasis or a prison, a refuge or a punishment, a heaven or a hell. Ultimately, we make it what it is.

Today, I have realized that in my loneliness I can create a garden of solitude.

Love,

Eddie