The Streets

This evening, after leaving work, I walked from 51st Street on the East Side to 42nd Street on the West Side and then continued down a good long ways, managing to cross back over to the East Side and then well past Houston Street, where I currently live.

For anyone familiar with New York proper, you'll know it was a good long trek. But, despite what a very notorious Groundhog might have seen, Spring does seem to be peeking its warm and wet head back out at us New Yorkers. At least for the time being. And a deeper calling from inside of me overruled my usual laziness and demanded to be a part of it.

I didn't encounter any fascinating individuals or scandalous celebrities crawling out of their hotels as I made my way southbound from place of work to place of rest. I didn't come to any firm resolutions as to where my life was headed or how I felt about the events of the day. I didn't even listen to my ipod and experience the vast array of emotions that usually accompany the combination of music matched with Manhattan.

I just walked. Drifting between observer of the outside world and observer of the inside. Always watching a little more carefully as I crossed street after street after street, still stunned by the vehicular tragedies of the past few weeks. I zoned in and out of what is shaping up to be an all-together unremarkable life as I made my way the sixty sum-odd blocks home.

And now I'm writing about it. And you're reading about it. Isn't it all just so interesting, these lives we lead? The absolute normalcy of it all.

I write that with unwavering sarcasm. But, the truth is that normalcy can be a blessing, when faced with the alternative. I watched the film "Crash" tonight for the first time. For a film so intrinsically about racism and its dangers, I was struck even more deeply by its theme of violence. We all carry rage inside of us, that much is certain. It is only what we have available during our moments of rage that determines the fates of our lives as well as the fates of the people who we come into contact with. In response to this reality I have only one statement to make.

Sensible Gun Legislation.

Sensible Gun Legislation.

Sensible Fucking Gun Legislation.

We should not live in a country where it is easier to obtain a gun than a passport. We should not live in a country where a momentary explosion of involuntary rage results in an unexpected death. We were not designed to hurt one another, but we do. We were not designed to starve, but we are. We were not designed to have no chance at a better education, but that is now the case. And we were not designed to hate, but its existence is everywhere.

I am often left feeling helpless, worn down by the sensation that I don't know WHAT to do. Except to express the fundamentals of acceptance and peace to any and every person who will listen or read or converse or overhear. Because what you do and say and act out and believe matters to at least one person, I guarantee it. And what that one person does and says and acts out and believes maybe even matters to two.

The truth of the matter is that we are starving and failing and killing ourselves. The time has, without question, arrived to ask ourselves why? But much more importantly, the time has, without question, arrived to ask ourselves how do we kill it?

Now.