Love Bytes

One of the best decisions I ever made went down over ten years ago. I was visiting New York for the second time and staying with a guy named Scott Lubeck, who at the time was working as am assistant editor for Martin Scorsese. Scott's crib was small but it was in Midtown. More importantly he had both a slide and a flatbed scanner. And I had a certain folder with me, a folder filled with a good 15 years of my early writings. Some were handwritten. Others had been done on my Mom's old Smith Corona typewriter. I scanned them all and dropped them in a file along with some personal letters, save AIM exchanges and other personal nonsense. I'd never bothered to read them until now.

Boy did some of my early work suck. I mean looking at it now I'm embarrassed that such collections of words ever came from my pen. However, within them was the DNA for work that was to come, as well an indication that my triumphs and pitfalls with the opposite sex were even then be captured in primitive versions of the same kind of Woody Allen meets Raymond Chandler prose I used today today.

I found my creative samples for USC, the short story that my last screenplay was loosely based on and so many of the letters I exchanged with lovers and friends over a good decade. Hindsight really is 20/20. Knowing what I know now, there were so many different things going on with different people that I didn't realize. There were some people who were trying to reach out to me but didn't know how. I was so crushed by my own disappointments that certain things just flew right by me. As I'm living and breathing solitude and meditation these days so many things are becoming crystal clear. Though I have no regrets, the glare from eyes wide open can be a little jarring.

I spend way too much time questioning the universe. Allowing emotion to get in the way isn't as noble as it once seemed. As I look back on my years as a man on fire I'm stunned that I didn't manage to give myself a heart attack over things that amounting to nothing but fleeting foolishness. Certain connections just weren't meant to be made. Though the specimens were fine, certain seeds weren't meant to bloom. So many times I tried to slide under the gates meant to keep me out of places where I didn't belong. It was a blessing that all I even ended up with as a result were cuts and bruises.

I spent years being angry about things that didn't matter in the end. Suzy reminded me of this the other night, that people like us live by a different set of rules, and as such navigating the waters of the everyday is a complicated process that require clarity in making every decision. I was on my way to going like Icarus.

I wouldn't slow down so the universe slowed it all to a stop and then shifted me into neutral onto the exit I might never have chosen on my own. Now I'm coasting towards new beginnings, shining light in the dark places of my past of present that I hid from in fear of what I might see. It is death and life at once. These are times that I will not forget.

Shoutout to Jeanell for her latest triumph. Shoutout to Dervish and Suzy for pointing me back toward the clouds. Shoutout to Pegram for telling me not to forget what it hurts to remember. It's always been women who have given me the best advice in this life, plain and simple. My children will grow up with so many aunties it's going to be ridiculous. And those Autnies are going to spoil them to death. I can see that as plain as the day that's coming. Out.