Friday, December 26, 2008

19 hour christmas



from the stroke of midnight
at the very start of december 25th
up until well after 3 a.m.
as i put the final finishing touches on my gifts

then back up again
just five hours later, right around 8 o'clock

AN ALL-DAY CHRISTMAS

laughter, food, gifts, hiking, family, friends
memories made

at the end of a long
(and not entirely easy) year
a day of joy and peace

now
as 2009 approaches
and this blog, more or less, comes to an end
i give thanks

for the blessings all around us
for the ability to step back and see life anew
for the pleasure and relief that can come with change
and for the awareness to see past form, preconceived ideas,
and the external world
into something real.

merry christmas and happy holidays to everyone

in the hope that 2009 is our best year yet.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Does A Body Good.


I saw the film "Milk" last night with a group of young, upwardly mobile gay men: a graphic designer, an artist working at Samuel French Publishing and (shockingly) two attorneys. As the credits rolled two of the friends kept saying to each other how sad the film had left them. "I've never seen a more depressing movie in my entire life," was one beleaguered response.

I couldn't have felt more differently. The film, which tells the story of the rise into office and subsequent murder of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected public official, actually left me feeling inspired, nostalgic, grateful, empowered and above all else overflowing with pride.

But that's not to say that "Milk" didn't leave me untouched by melancholy. The unspeakably powerful story aside, which is heartbreaking and tragic, what shook me from the very beginning was a sense of yearning (and possibly regret) for a life that I wasn't even alive to experience.

In short, I wanted to be a part of that movement. Not that I wanted to actually be Harvey Milk; with the government position, the newspaper articles, the schools now named after him and his place firmly set in the history books. No, I didn't need to be Harvey. I just longed to be a part of his orbit. Young, passionate, driven, angry individuals fighting time and again, even after they'd been bloodily knocked down.

It all seemed like such fun. Fun in a way that a night in Hell's Kitchen or a carefree trip to Fire Island could never be. (And, in all honesty, possibly fun in a way that only a well edited movie can make the day-to-day events of government life appear) God knows there's still plenty to fight for as 2009 is upon us. I'm just not sure I've found that role in the universe. I'm just not sure I've found that universe at all.

So many of us were beyond inspired by the election of Barack Obama into the Presidency. As I took the bus up to get a haircut near Columbia University a few days ago I noticed a New York Times headline stating "300,000 Apply for 3,300 Obama Jobs." Now that's a profoundly powerful political movement. And it's actually happening RIGHT NOW.

I suppose I have no right to complain. We are living in hands-down the most exciting political time of modern American history. And plus, I've always said I'm grateful to be a gay man who came of age in the late 90s and early 2000s. It feels a bit like what I imagine the Civil Rights Movement felt like for African Americans in the 1960s. A group of fed-up people finally finding their voice and making it heard LOUDLY.

I'm happy that I never grew into old age terrified or ashamed, just another crazy old Uncle Confirmed Bachelor... But I'm also somehow happy that I'm not one of the kids today, who perhaps find it almost too easy to come out to mom and dad at the ripe old age of 12. There's something to be said for having an awareness of just how much progress has been made. To have felt that confusion, that fear. But to have lived life openly anyway.

Maybe I'm just experiencing that New York City Eight year itch. After four years of college at NYU and a varied, generally exciting array of jobs and experiences since, I still feel that New York will forever be my home. I'm just also fairly certain that I want it to be my forever-home after having lived a couple of other places as well...

...The first quasi-real relationship I ever had in life was back as a freshman in college around the holiday season of 2000. It ended horribly, with him breaking up with me over the phone the day before Valentine's Day and then showing up stoned months later when I'd arranged to finally meet up and get "closure." But as life goes, time healed all wounds and he and I (while in no way friends) are linked up on Facebook and have chatted there once or twice.

The thing is that Facebook thrusts people's business in your face even when you aren't looking for it. With important "Notifications" like: Rebecca just changed her status to "In A Relationship" and: "Bobby just got in from 9 HOURS OF NON-STOP SNOW BOARDING! WOO HOOOO!" you end up learning things about your "friends" you might not have even been interested in finding out.

But this ex of mine seems to be leading (while not the life I'd have chosen for myself) a pretty fascinating, nomadic, potentially uber-cultured lifestyle. Sandwiched between his photos from Burning Man and his shots at Brighton Pride he seems to have spent the Summer of 2008 in Florida, New York, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark, Norway, the U.K. and Portugal. And apparently right now he's in Grad School somewhere in Manhattan.

I, on the other hand, have just been here all these years. And not even vacationing as much as I'd like. The point of this tangent is that I logged onto Facebook this evening after a looong day of recovering after a looong night of partying in the Upper West Side, Lower East Side and Williamsburg to find this posting from said ex...


"help me get my hands all milky

as winter officially sets in with the cosmic union of miley cyrus and the rockettes and a giant fur all gussied up and stuffed with lights and brights, and yesterday's sampling of that bewildering intrusion that is ice flakes from the sky, i have felt the urge not only to listen to gloria estefan's 'coming out of the dark' on a loop for six hours but also to begin planning for summer 2009, when the only ice i'll be confronted with will constitute of cream, or be politely melting in my lemonade.

i am looking to find a job/internship/volunteeropportunity/paycourse in sustainable farming or construction. i have researched and found endless opportunities to act as a farm hand for the summer, just in upstate new york alone, however i know that many of you have worked for such places and wonder what suggestions my friends may have. also, do you want to join me or can i join you? i am willing to travel anywhere in the states to work (except florida), stay a full three months, and get very dirty and even sleep on a mat. what i would like to take out of the experience is one or all of the following: the ability to befriend and milk a cow, biceps, 100 logged hours of chain saw operation, pectorals, carpentry experience, man hands, connection with the earth, farmer's tan, sustainable husbandry in general.

thoughts and suggestions?"



Ok. So first off, I have no desire to work on a farm. Ever. I also have no real desire to suddenly go into politics. Yet.. But I am inspired by my ex's commitment to continually live life anew. And I'm also confronted by the same dilemma Harvey Milk faced at the start of the film (and I'm assuming in his real life as well). "I'm 40 years old and I haven't done a thing I'm proud of."

26 is not 40. And I'm proud of a lot. But life swings past at a break-neck speed. This is our one and only shot. Is it everything it could be? Are any of us out there certain of ourselves that we're a part of something important, that what we do every day matters, that we are living to our greatest potential?

Because I don't feel unjustified in wanting every single bit of that. And I'm not afraid to continue the journey down that road. The road that will, with hopeful certainty, lead to my great undefined "it's" inevitable discovery.

This is not 1978. Harvey Milk hasn't been alive for over 30 years. But the world keeps spinning forward. It's a big, brave universe out there. From Farmland to City Hall. And there is much more work to be done.

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