This will change your life.

I am happiness approaching. That is how he must see me. There are worlds and spaces between us, just as there are between his teeth. He wants nothing more than to be greeted, to be accepted, and to be seen.

In order to best accentuate the obvious lesson here, I must first rewind.

On November twentieth Chicago’s air is abundant with a bitter winter chill. It is warmed only by the sense of human anticipation. I spend the majority of this evening riding on commuter trains. Beginning on the red line, I ride to the Washington stop in downtown Chicago, a subway stop below the infamous Loop. I walk under ground, through a tunnel, over to the blue line stop of the same name. It is here that I catch a train northwest in the direction of O’Hare International Airport.

There is a quick stop made at Damen, where I walk several blocks towards Armitage in order to deliver a class assignment to a classmate at a bar called Darwin’s. Halfway between Darwin’s and Damen Street, on my way back to the train, my phone rings. The aforementioned sense of human anticipation is crippled by a call from Cleveland, Ohio. My guests of honor for the weekend, due to arrive in Chicago at 8:57 p.m. will not be landing now until sometime near, before, or after 10 p.m., lovely.

Tom, Jess, and Chris, whose names have not been changed to protect the innocent, arrive safely to Chicago. The train we board at the airport has a delayed departure due to construction on the tracks ahead, and a cluster of three other trains using the same tracks to get into the airport. So we wait. We play catch-up. We laugh at how tired we are, how bad their flight was, and how illegible their airline complaint cards are.

Arriving home just before midnight, I am allowed to laugh at the Friday morning class I have to wake up for.

We spent much of the weekend conversing over meals, over alcoholic beverages, between Wrigley Field and the Loop, and while walking near the waterfront. It was a battle for me to enjoy their simple presence, as I was hell-bent on showing them as much of the city as possible.

As thankful as I was for their visit, it was virtually impossible for me to be sentimental about it. I shutdown every heartfelt piece of commentary by changing the subject matter and I reserved myself from being the maker of any such commentary. It was not that I did not want to be sentimental and reflect on the nature of our relations, but rather it was my way of acknowledging the changes in our relations without having to highlight them.

As turbulently as it began, the weekend ushered itself to an awkward end with rains and winter winds. Their plane departed on Monday afternoon and the one-hour train ride back to my apartment gave me ample time to contemplate my second Thanksgiving away from home, but the first without friends or family.

For me, being alone on Thanksgiving was not an issue that would impart depression or make way for sadness. I looked at it as an opportunity to put everything that I was thankful for into perspective. I almost welcomed the idea of being alone as educational, or inspirational, or even influential.

Then, the aforementioned loneliness was interrupted by a phone call. Do you see the pattern here? On the eve before Thanksgiving, receiving a phone call, this is where the fairy tale begins.

Thanksgiving morning turned Chicago into a ghost town. I walked down main streets in downtown, where there would normally be traffic strewn for blocks, there were empty streets. Where there would normally be herds of businessmen and women walking to and from offices, there were families staring into department store windows. There were Christmas decorations in every direction, animated displays setup in windows along entire street blocks, and there was the sound of an angelic choir escaping from a festive tent in the heart of the city.

The morning is cold, crisp, gray, and silent. A feeling that can only be described as bittersweet.

I walk towards a bridge that stretches over the Chicago River. Cinderella approaches the same bridge that I am approaching; it is that kind of morning. Cinderella approaches with her stepsisters; it is that kind of holiday. There are no gowns, no ballrooms, no horse-drawn carriages, and no bickering. Today she is prince-less, that is without a prince. Today there is no family arguments, no melodrama, and no glass slippers. Today Cinderella runs to me. She is happy to see me, happy to hug me, happy to be prince-less.

Let me tell you, meeting Cinderella is a lot like spending the day with your childhood best friend, or conversing at length with your imaginary friend, or meeting the love of your life, or quite possibly combining all of these together into one person.

So we journey over the State Street Bridge and gather in front of Smith & Wellensky. Here I meet her step mother, her fairy godmother, her narrator, and of course her sound guy.

Every fairy tale has its loophole.

This loophole is her sound guy, a constant reminder that this is not a fairy tale at all, and before long one of the stepsisters will be joined by, her good friend, Jeff.

So now, inside, around our circular table we sit. Starting from my left and moving clockwise there is Julie, Jessica, Catherine, Talia, Wes, Steve, and Amanda. This Thanksgiving, this is my secular family.

We are given menus, each menu is on a piece of paper which is framed in a wooden picture frame, and we are offered a Thanksgiving dinner that includes Pumpkin Bisque or New England Clam Chowder, Country Salad, Roast Turkey, and Pecan Pie or Pumpkin Crème Caramel. When Jeff arrives he sits between Talia and Wes. The waiter offers him a menu. The same menu we got, framed in a thick wooden picture frame, to which Jeff asks, “Did this fall off the wall?” We laugh; it was that kind of holiday.

Before our dinner is served Jeff suggests that we go around the table and say what we are thankful for, and so we do.

When my Lemon Pepper Chicken arrives it is a whole chicken and it is shown to me before the waiter carves it.

I should probably take this opportunity to explain that Julie is a good friend of mine. For as long as I have lived in Chicago, she has been touring the Midwest with a children’s musical version of Cinderella. I should also mention that this is the second time that she has visited me in Chicago, and it is our second Thanksgiving together.

Before, during, and after dinner, Julie and I talk, we play catch-up, we tell stories, and we laugh. We discuss the fact that five of us are wearing horizontal stripes, we talk about the theaters they have performed in, their knitting habits, and Steve’s mustard bottle. There is more food on the table than we can stomach, which makes for perfect leftovers, for them on the road, and me the college student.

In what seems like no time at all we are already ushering the cast of Cinderella back to their rental van, we are already saying goodbye, and I am already starting to walk home.

I walk. It is my pace that alternates based on the weather, my mood, or my destination. Tonight the sky is clear, the air is calm, and the city is glowing with Christmas lights, so my pace is slower and refined; I am in no rush. I walk holding my plastic bag of leftovers in my left hand.

As I step down off one curb and head across the street to another, there is a man standing just ahead of me.

I am happiness approaching. That is how he must see me. Me; dressed on Thanksgiving day in stylish jeans, a horizontally striped sweater over a white collared shirt, all beneath a brown leather jacket and brown knitted scarf. Him; dressed in dark winter sweats to keep him warm, a black winter coat, and boots, all weathered, all torn. His smile is triggered by my smile. There are worlds and spaces between us, just as there are between his teeth. As he asks for my attention, small fragments of crumb fall from his tooth, to his lip, to the ground. He wants nothing more than to be greeted, to be accepted, and to be seen.

And so talking to him is not the interruption I had expected. Talking to him is equivalent to bandaging a wound, minus all the stinging. He asks about my holiday. He waits for my response before telling me how unhappy his has been and will continue to be. He references all the families that just pass him by. There is not much that he has to say before I offer him my leftovers, and when I do the smile that wipes across his face is a smile that can only be described in one word. Bittersweet.

And so everything that I am thankful for lands within perspective. Sometimes we spend so much time focusing on and searching for a path of least resistance, that we fail to experience the beauty of the unplanned and the unpaved. We continue to orbit around our centers. Us; the satellites that we are. There is safety in routine. The atom around its nucleus. The universe around its sun. The body around its heart. The humans around their city. Satellites.

And if it does not make sense to you now, it will, some day.

+

I KNOW something you don’t know. That is how she greets me. Tiffany Whitmore. Everyday, she greets me with her cute girl smile and her cute girl ponytails and her cute girl shoes that tap against the pavement.

She is always afloat with happiness and always has something to say. She always wants to be a step ahead of me. Her with her maturity. Her mother says that she is ten years old going on twenty-five. Whatever that means. Tiffany pretends not to like me sometimes because I am the type of kid that finds farts amusing. Although, she always offers me bubble gum or lollipops or sugarcoated pretzels, along with a bad joke or a lame piece of gossip or some new piece of intelligence that she picked up from hearing her parents talk over dinner.

Yesterday she tried to explain puberty to me. She was way off. Sometimes I play along, allowing her to spout off things that really prove how smart she isn’t, all the while I am smiling and nodding and acting as if I have been enlightened, until she turns and skips away. Her and her girlie-girl shoes. Her salutation is the same as her introduction. I know something you don’t know. Lame.

So here I am. Sleepless. My bargain-priced clock and me, counting down the hours until sunrise. The voices and the echoes of the night are fading into a dull murmur; a virtual silence. With just over a week left until I go home, I find myself doing nothing but focusing on what got me here.

The focus of my studies revolved around the eight most abundant elements of the Earth’s crust. Our super aunt is cooking seven perfect meals; this was my very own mnemonic device. I had written and recited this device over and over again in order to remember oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium. This was at the focus of my studies, me the theater major, me the artist and writer, and here I was hell-bent on memorizing elements and categorizing rocks.

It got to a point where I was fantasizing about the rock cycle. Extremely hot metamorphic rock melting into magma, erupting from volcanoes. Cooling off to become solid igneous rock, which weathers, creating sediments. Sediments go through lithification, creating sedimentary rock, which then weathers and so on and so forth. I am sure you see the cycle, more importantly, the attraction.

This was my collegiate life in general education requirements. This is where I was stuck. Approximately ten minutes north of Boston, Massachusetts, in the historic town of Salem. Surrounded by witches and legends and folklore and myths, surrounded by elements and rocks and cycles. This was my lack of enthusiasm.

There was nothing complex planned in the architecture of my childhood. There was nothing in my upbringing to suggest that I was going to live my life differently. It was just me, the perfectionist, who began to see the world as nothing more than opportunity. Me; who was contemplating completing my foreign language requirements via night courses. Me; who witnessed the mundane routine that had become the life of the world around me. Me; who wanted something more.

I lay awake. The thoughts that race through one’s mind as he struggles to sleep are thoughts that cannot be paralleled by any other experience. I compare this semi-insomniac feeling to the possibility of sleeping on my back with a penny pinched between my lips. There is no rest when you are constantly aware that if your lips loosen then you will choke. The challenge is to trust that your body will stay conscious of the inherent danger, thus keeping grip on the penny while enabling you to sleep.

My clock slips past midnight. There are voices echoing through surfaces in every direction. The floor is offering the sound of some girl singing or talking or laughing. In her echoes, she reminds me of Tiffany Whitmore.

And Tiffany reminds me of bubbles, which remind me of childhood.

In mine and Tiffany’s world, there was no scientific fact, no reason given to the way things were, or rather the way in which we understood them to be. What we knew for sure was that we could either validate our world by defining it with fact, or we could invest in it with the simple complexity of our imagination.

I remember snacking on nasal mucus. In my mind this was more beneficial than spinach, or any other green vegetable that I was force-fed. Anybody who remembers their childhood differently is lying; either to mislead themselves or someone else. Children eat boogers, that is a fact; a fact that Tiffany Whitmore chose to see as a fault.

Tiffany’s childhood obsessions revolved around dollhouses and dresses and pretty things that shimmered. My childhood obsessions revolved around destructive action figures and dirt and things that would float and things that would sink.

With inches of snow on the ground, bundled in our snow suits, Tiffany and I get along, as we build snowmen and snow forts. We bring our imagination to life without hesitation. The reality of our childhood is the ability to bend reality, to believe in pop-up-book worlds and fantasy palaces and fairy tale endings.

This is Grand. Our imaginary secular kingdom. We are young adventurous pioneers at the center of that which we imagine. Beyond the snow-front of our yard there are gigantic towers of all shapes that stretch up through the clouds; huge white puffy clouds.

Here in Grand, Tiffany tells me, the flowers bloom all year round and it only snows here once every year, that being the week of Christmas. The snow never falls like a blizzard, but only in flurries, and every time a snowflake touches down against the ground it chimes a melodic sound. Any vehicle that moves through Grand does not bump, clang, grind, or screech, instead they hum, glide, hover, and jingle.

At the center of Grand there lies Neverwood Greens. Tiffany and I have mapped it all out. We know where the mayor of Grand lives and how to mimic his voice. We know where the lake is and how many mermaids live there. We know how fun the kingdom of Grand is and how lucky we are to be a part of it.

Until the sun sets and our mothers call our names.

Tomorrow we will return to throwing snowballs and name-calling, and Tiffany will retreat into her maturity by reciting some dumb song her parents taught her. Something about sticks and stones not breaking bones.

My clock now ventures into earlier hours of the morning. One wall offers the sound of a couple, fighting, arguing, and aggravating each other. The ceiling offers the loud obnoxious behavior of someone moving furniture or taming a four hundred pound lion or dominating themselves with a bolder, a slingshot, and a trampoline. The windows offer the sound of late night traffic being stirred.

My mind is now a panoramic montage of all things nostalgic. I do not know how long ago I stopped using my childhood imagination, but I do recognize that I must have moved away from Grand at least fifteen years ago.

It has only been approximately four months since I moved away from home and I miss it more now than I have ever missed Tiffany, or Grand, or maybe the truth is I miss them all the same.

Well into my twenties, I think I am just now beginning to realize what drives an adolescent male; his psychology, his thirst for excitement, his loyalty to his friends, and his relationship with authoritative figures. Prior to birth we have no choice. We cannot choose our looks, our language, our family, or our religion. The earliest choice we are given is the choice to live with what we are dealt and to make adjustments as we go. We learn this in our adolescent years, as a teenager moving into our twenties.

I begin to wonder if maybe the reason that I am not sleeping is because I did not have turkey this year. Perhaps a lack of tryptophan has lead to insomnia.

My eyes are plastered to my ceiling. I am once again counting down the eves before Christmas. There is just over a week left before I return home. Then there is my doorway offering the sound of elevators and people conversing.

What the hustle outside of my apartment tells me is that I am not alone. I am not wide-awake in a world of sleepers. I am not the only person tip-toeing through fields of shattered memories trying to re-configure them into a recognizable shape.

I am not the only person who grew up in a world that stripped down almost every myth that I sank my heart into. I am not the only person who recognizes the parallel between my childhood stories and the larger socially acclaimed, religious, iconic stories that exist to make life bearable. Perhaps what separates me from the religious family in which I was raised, is that what they see as truth, I see as a metaphor.

I am hearing elevator doors and city traffic and people arguing and loud music and Tiffany’s shoes?

Tiffany and I have our own tree house in Grand that overlooks the lake. We spent an entire night once counting mermaid fins and star tails. A star tail is the streak of light left behind a star that is falling out of heaven. Tiffany tells me that when a star falls from heaven it is only because the ocean goddess needs it to spread more light around the ocean floor. I believe her.

It is one of those nights when you can smell the snow before it starts to fall. Bundled in our snow suits, on the eve before Christmas Eve, Tiffany and I sit elbow to elbow in our tree house window and for the first time in a long time she has nothing to say, and neither do I.

And for the first time in a long time, we are both content in our silence.

Until, what Tiffany refers to as the Earth’s own shadow, tells us that it is night and our mothers call our names.

Tiffany’s girlie-girl shoes tap against the planked wood of the tree house floor. As she goes to leave she reaches into her girlie-girl backpack and pulls out a small, wrapped box. She places it on our tiny tree house table, she smiles, and she vanishes down our tree house ladder.

Inside the small, wrapped box I find a starfish with a note tied to it. “Your very own piece of light, from the heavens and the ocean goddess and me. Merry Christmas.”

The things that I knew as a child and never talked about, were the things that Tiffany talked about without knowing, yet I may be convinced that Tiffany did in fact know something that I did not know. The funny thing is, I still do not know what it was, because, in the reality of my childhood, there was no Tiffany Whitmore, in the same way that there was no Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy, and no Easter Bunny, there was just the idea. The willful suspension of disbelief. The story and the storyteller.

Fiction is as real as the faith we invest in it, and the same is true for reality. Reality can be as exaggerated and as fictional as we want it to be. In the end, it is not important how much truth goes into a story, as much as it is important how much truth comes out.

#

For so long as she has been recognizable as an actress, Kristin Stewart has been criticized for one thing, her seeming inability to portray any emotion with her face. This is not a judgement of her nor is it an assassination of her character or a criticism of the Twilight Saga. I have not seen nor read any of the Twilight movies or books. At this present moment I have no intention to do either. This is not a review but rather an observation that I made after reading Linda Holmes’ review of the most recent movie addition to the franchise.

In her review, Holmes writes, “But when a saga popular with pre-adolescent girls peaks romantically on a night that leaves the heroine to wake up covered with bruises in the shape of her husband’s hands — and when that heroine then spends the morning explaining to her husband that she’s incredibly happy even though he injured her, and that it’s not his fault because she understands he couldn’t help it in light of the depth of his passion — that’s profoundly irresponsible.”

The thing is, Twilight is not a love story. It can’t be. Twilight is not about a high school student choosing between two potential partners. From everything I know to be true about Twilight and from all of the adoration and critique that I have read, I can not accept that this movie is that same old cinematic story of a love triangle. It is in no way a throwback to Threesome or an homage to Fight Club’s vicious cycle of Tyler, Marla and the Narrator. That being said, I want to choose my words very carefully, because the intent here is not to divide or pick sides or to make even the most skeptical person snarl in disbelief.

This evening, as my Friday was winding down I hopped onto the good old fashioned (still uncensored) American version of the Internet and I watched and read content that related to all of four popular current event stories.

The first article was about the current race for American Presidency. The article focused predominantly on the recent follies of the Republican debates. There was a related video of Jon Stewart (presumably no relation to Kristin) on his Daily Show railing Herman Cain‘s recent attempt to answer a question pertaining to President Obama’s approach to Libya. Stewart commented on Cain’s hesitance saying, “it’s like he’s trying to download the answer but that little ball is spinning, he’s just buffering.” Cain pauses uncomfortably several times during his Libya answer and blames his stumbling on the lot of stuff twirling around in his head. To which Stewart comments, “being President is a real non-stop head-stuff twirl-fest.”

While humorous, the recent chain of “gaffes” amongst the Republican candidates running for President is nothing if not alarming. And that’s an objective view. If you look at the current state of The United States and economies around the world, it doesn’t take a Harvard graduate to tell you that something is amiss, that the world as a whole is in need of ideas and lucrative suggestions. If there was ever a chance for anyone to step forward and say, “hey! I know how to fix this thing,” today would be a greater day than any. Yet we trudge on, banner-waving the same hypocritical ideologies that led us here in the first place. We certainly don’t know how to fix a fraudulent banking system, correct job growth, stimulate the economy or perpetuate ourselves into better living but we do a fine job on a national scale of removing protesters from parks with unnecessary force.

Which brings me to the media circus that is Occupy Wall Street (OWS). There are those that applaud this movement and those who oppose it. Those who think it has many legs to stand on and those who think it’s a gathering drum circle of hippies with no merit. The critics of the OWS movement are quick to point out that while those involved in the protests are great at identifying the problems in our current system, that there are no logistical or probable ideas coming out of these protests that could fix the aforementioned problems. Yet, a quick cut to the ideas being brainstormed by those running for President and there’s not many great ideas coming out of that camp either.

The OWS, much like all of the predominant political parties in Washington, is a collective in need of a leader.

And what of this claim that OWS is just a drum circle making noise pointing out the inherent problems in the path our nation is taking? The squeaky wheel gets the grease and I am certain we can all agree that we didn’t overlook those Homeland Security ads that ran nationwide instructing us to say something if we see something. Because that’s what we do, when we see something suspicious we tell someone of authority, right? We make as much noise as possible until someone listens and our claims are investigated. I mean, that’s what you do in your own life, right? If there’s a mysterious charge on your bank statement or a confusing misprint on your phone bill or if the service at the restaurant was sub-par, we complain. We tell someone. So, surely, even if they have no idea how to fix the unmistakable issues at hand then they are at the very least an alarm summoning those who should know what to do.

I’m sure there’s more than a dozen people who wish there was such an alarm built-in to Pennsylvania State. Because that’s what we are supposed to do when we see something that we know is not right. You interrupt it. You stop it. You get in the way and you prevent it from happening again.

You chose one political party in your youth because you recognized it as the flagship of your morality, it represented your upbringing and your world view and your personal life goals. You supported that party’s candidates even when they misstepped, even when they misspoke, even when their views were not entirely succinct with yours. You gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Now however many years have passed and you step back, you look at the political arena, at the vast American perspective and you don’t recognize it. You can not wholeheartedly point your finger at any of the candidates on that debate stage and say with absolute confidence, “I think this person is qualified to run our country and speak on behalf of the free world.” You can’t.

Our relationship with our government is abusive. Which is to say that our relationship with ourselves is abusive. We are left standing in the middle of a love-hate relationship, expressionless and lacking empathy. Thus, while I personally agree with Holmes’ response that the latest addition to the Twilight Saga is a ludicrously unhealthy portrayal of young love, I can also confidently say that Twilight is not a love story. Twilight is the most brilliantly masked political satire of our time. While one arm of the political Medusa persuades you, seduces you and turns you, the other side goes after your offspring.

The one thing that is being widely overlooked about all of these simultaneous news stories, all of these articles and videos and news segments and sound bites, they are all related- forged together by ignorance.

Ignorance is the problem. And Bella’s facial expression is our answer.

So, while I admirably agree with Stephen King’s** comparison of J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer, the undeniable truth is that we are not a nation of inspired youth discovering our inner potential and overcoming our fears. Instead we are a nation of cold-hearted individuals, held captive by our fears because for so many generations we have been raised to believe that we have a limited number of options and in the end, no matter which choice we have made, we have found ourselves broken-hearted and abused by a system that was intended to be of us, by us, for us. Sadly, it has turned against us.

But then again what do I know?

.

** The quote I was originally referring to is this, “Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity… Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend”. However, there is debate over the source of this quote, though many websites attribute it to King, it appears to have come from Robin Browne.

Sometimes I wonder if from some alternate perspective
if palm trees look like legs,
if the sky looks like the ground,
if the Earth looks like it’s running.

We bend the truth sometimes with the intention of making a point.
Hypothetical penmanship.
The only difference between cursive and italic is intention.
If that’s true than it might seem like I’m changing the subject sometimes
but I’m really just trying to catch up on current events
like, where did you come from?

Lumberjack.
Please watch where you’re swinging that proverbial ax.

You’re making me as nervous as a palm tree is tall.
I get like that, top heavy.
Like a fainting goat.
Have you seen those things?
Legs locked.
We all have moments where we get tripped up,
so let’s cut to the part where we already know we’re not perfect.

When I see you I get all pancake mouth,
waffle cheek and syrup tongue.
Stomach full of strawberry fields–
forever, complete with caterpillars that found their wings;
they are breath-taking.
Even with the skydive knocked into my lungs I tend to say too much
but I’ll never talk with my mouth
fully full
with anything other than modesty. Honestly.
I know we just met but if we could please pretend that we’ve been friends for longer than we’ve been talking and that no matter how bad the service at this place might be if we could just pretend it was the greatest and if all of our nerves could be outsourced to laughter and if you could just keep filling my silence with your presence and if I wear too many of my flaws like flesh-tone band-aids that are supposed to blend in if you could just see them less like smoke signals and more like comfort zones then I’m sure we could get to the point where we finish each others life sentences.

You’re right, maybe that’s too much.
To ask.
In this moment.
I’m just trying to make up for all the homes I never slid headfirst into.

And there I go, running my basket mouth like a propane tank fire in a hot air balloon
when my intent was simply bonfire comfort and S’mores.

Cuddle.
Buddy.

Sometimes my metaphor– big as the sky, obvious.
I get like that, full moon and starry eyed.
I don’t ever need to leave the ground
so long as we still find time to look up
and wonder

if from some alternate perspective we all look like trees
with our truths stuck in the ground.

I’ll be right here.

This is how I write poetry. One lovely little nugget at a time. This poem, which I have already titled, exists in pieces in a text document that I have been toying with for almost a month now. It’s a good bye letter, an apology and a revelation tied into a metaphor about maps and truck stops and crossroads.