Its easy to philosophize about life from the safe distance of prosperity

I recently finished Tuesdays with Morrie. It was a wonderful book about a dying elderly professor dictating his last witty aphorisms to his former student, a well respected sports journalist. Morrie Schwartz was affable and generous with his knowledge and affection. Mitch Albom was there to chronicle the last but ever so poignant punctuation to his old college professor’s rich and wonderful life; as Morrie catechizes from his death bed. The chapters tick off the refrain we've all come to recognize as we enter the second decade of a culture suckled of Oprah’s Angel Network and the growing use of sustainable products on HGTV. And that is: to pursue what’s really important: family, friends, love, humanity. Now before you start throwing rotten tomatoes at me for taking a dying man to task over his ideas, I freely admit I agree with the vast majority of what Morrie says. That we don’t miss the water ‘till the well runs dry. So of course when I finished the book I called all my loved ones and even looked up a few old acquaintances. Books, like Tuesdays with Morrie or When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough: The Search for a Life That Matters by Harold Kushner, are designed to elicit such feelings of nostalgia and reverie. To make you slow your pace. Savor the great gift that life is. To laugh a little louder; to kiss a little deeper; to dance a little more freely and to work a little bit less. Like Alice Walker aptly and so beautifully wrote in her Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple:

“Listen, God love everything you love—and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration….Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

A lesson we can all live by. But here’s where things get sticky. Its easy to philosophize about life from the safe distance of prosperity. Now I’m not killing the messenger I’m just couching his message in the ostensible truth. These words were spoken by a highly educated college professor. Yes he was the scion of Russian-Jewish immigrants and yes he grew up poor in the Bronx, but after 30 years teaching in a prestigious college—Brandeis University is not McBurger University trust me—he was not hurting for cash. The author donated his sizable advance for the book to pay off most of Morrie’s outstanding medical bills. So the end of the professor’s life may have been tragic; filled with the pain and the shit and the phlegm that the great shrieking horror ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) brings, but it was tidy.

Now again don’t deride me. Alls I’m sayin’ is its easy to philosophize about life from the safe distance of prosperity. I used to work as a trainer in an agency that placed former victims of domestic violence back into the workforce, giving them software training as well as life skills. One of my trainees told me a very touching story one morning, that before coming in to work her 5 year-old accidentally knocked over his bowl of cereal and she scolded him fiercely. Then she caught herself and realized she wasn’t angry because he was clumsy but that she had decided to splurge and buy an expensive brand of cereal with her last $5.00. Now when safety and finances are that immediate proselytizing seems so disingenuous. Morrie stated that human culture was bankrupt and skewed itself to be the antithesis of what it should be. That we behave as if we don’t belong to the animal kingdom, as if we’re aliens visiting this planet. I hear this speech all the time. On the subway, pockets of conversation in Starbucks; we have all become casual anthropologist ready to expound on the degradation of the human race. On how humans subvert this planet. The movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (not the dreadfully wooden and unimaginative Keanu Reeves version but the classic Cold War Era spine-tingly masterpiece with Michael Renny and Patricia Neal) both had aliens arriving to eradicate earth of its biggest threat. Proliferation. In 1951 it was nuclear, in 2008 it was pollution; specifically human. Now this theory is not new. Once when I was a child I saw our man's pollution rise up and attack Tokyo in the form of Hedora, one of Godzilla's best rivals, the Smog Monster. It was spawned from toxic waste and flew across Japan trailing a thick fog of instant death. In the end after a climatic battle on Mt Fuji, Godzilla returns to the ocean with a parting glare at the scientists who discovered the acid secreting monster. I must admit this youtube clip is startling and even more so disturbing what with the latest catastrophe in Japan.



But why must our actions produce an acid secreting monster? If we have indeed evolved, following Darwin's principle of natural selection we are what we are because those are traits most favored for survival. Vis-a-vis man can not be an anathema to the earth AND have evovled to be such. We, as humans, consume. Now granted that consumption like cancer can be twisted out of control. As much as I love the luxuriant despotism of Imelda Marcos, she didn't need--(no matter how titillating a pair of Christian Louboutin 5-inch black patent leather Mary Janes maybe)--3,000 pairs of shoes. Baring excess is it wrong to want more out of life? Is it wrong to want a Mercedes? Is it wrong to want to have an extra room for guests? Is it wrong to have a little grandeur in one's life? I don't think answering yes will break some unwritten code of human ethics. Fine living is not the problem and I'm tired of the intellectual, spiritual or just plain bourgeois being delusory with us peasant classes about the meanings of life having no measure of gliteratti in it. I like a little bit of show-off-it-ness in my life thank you. And that doesn't subtract from my deeper spiritual path.

Sometimes others have a direct interest in our not prospering. Wasn’t Eve seeking truth when she bit of the forbidden fruit? So does that mean curiosity is the original sin? Morrie teaches us with poise and grace to accept what we can't change. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with acceptance. I actually think that acceptance of the inevitable and immutable can be liberating. When we realize—and mostly that realization comes at the end rather than nearer the beginning of our lives—that we have a finite amount of time on this planet and the fallacy of the American Dream of upward mobility (which I discussed here) is concretized, you are freed to pursue what it is you are free to pursue. Unless you are a single mother escaping an abusive relationship and on welfare in a job training program spending your last $5.00 on a box of Fruity Pebbles. So the take away from Tuesdays with Morrie and other books of its ilk is this… work very hard when you’re young. Make a shit load of money then retire early and sit back, enjoy and spread the gospel of a new world order because its always easy to philosophize about life from the safe distance of prosperity. Amen.

Daryl T Sturgis: I, thee, the Narcissist

Daryl T Sturgis: I, thee, the Narcissist: "I recently reread the novel Sula by Toni Morrison and fell in love with the book. Not that I didn’t like it the first time I read it, but i..."

I, thee, the Narcissist

I recently reread the novel Sula by Toni Morrison and fell in love with the book. Not that I didn’t like it the first time I read it, but its lyrical meandering posture did strain my sensibilities and I felt it was one of those “artsy” books with pretty words that rambled circuitously around a taught but hydra-like plot giving gravitas to the mundane along the way; making the most inane seem sublime. But then when speaking of the character Sula’s reason for her egocentric and all too human behavior, Ms. Morrison compared her emotional terror to an artist without art.

“In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings: had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for And like any artist with no art form, [Sula] became dangerous.”

And there it was before me. I too have been on that knife’s edge many times, whittling away at what’s reasonable and what’s respectable to commit all sorts of emotional and creative fraud. I failed classes, jilted lovers, quit (or more likely was fired from jobs); I didn’t pay bills not because I was irresponsible but because I was bored. I was enthusiastic with my disdain for the ordinary 9 to 5. They didn't understand my aesthetic! I luxuriated in the hoopla. I was the consummate Drama Queen. Laziness, my canvas, histrionics my palette. The drama of eviction and subsequent search for residence allowed me to be as melodramatic and as narcissistic—as any artist is at heart—as I wanted to be. As if I was the star of my own personal grand Shakespearean five-act. "Out! Out! Damn spot!" Self-sabotage would be too simple an explanation. Too straightforward. If that were the case that would mean somewhere along the way I would have to see my own menace in the shadow of my behavior. But if it were a plot or unexpected event that cascaded God’s wraith down upon me, then the perusing theatrics would have been perceived as the inevitable result of my disappointment and disillusionment. I would excavate people's sympathy like mining gold. Munchausen by Sturgis Syndrome. I would lob off little bombs of self-destruction in hopes that the resulting explosion would dislodge some manna. Something special. Some pixie dust that would imbue me with the salt and the power I yearned to have. The artist way had constantly seemed to elude me.

A few days ago took one of those online personality disorder tests (look here) and received the results of borderline narcissistic personality disorder. Many of the symptoms do fit my personality. I have thankfully always had friends and family that allowed me to paint our relationships with a broad-brush. Narcissistic personality disorder is a condition in which people have an inflated sense of self-importance and an extreme preoccupation with themselves. A person with narcissistic personality disorder may:
• Have excessive feelings of self-importance
• Exaggerate achievements and talents
• Be preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, beauty, intelligence, or ideal love
• Have unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment
• Need constant attention and admiration
• Have obsessive self-interest

Those who know me personally will at once recognize that I exhibit none of these behaviors—and yes even I will at this point be ROTFLMBAO!! But to be assured I do think of others. I think of what they must think of me.

Now to a greater extend I am an altruistic person but before I start comparing myself to Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono or Oprah’s Angel Network let’s clarify I am declarative with my big dreams and notions of philanthropy but I have yet to do any. But are dreams enough? I recently had a conversation with my brother who has struggled most of his life with addiction. Not the LiLo—I’m a rich, white, blond celebrity; look at me and feel sympathy for my pain and upbringing because I’m just being used for my money and beauty—type of addiction but the—hard, menacing, six feet-six I’m going to do anything for a fix, so if I steal, I’m an outlaw, a thug and a menace so let’s make sure I get charged to the maximum so the world will never see the evil of my face and skin again—type of addiction. But he accurately surmised that the only way to change is to change.

Responsibility is a hard thing to run up on. Working a job doesn’t make you responsible. Paying your bills makes you responsible. Keeping your promises to those you love makes you responsible. Being true to your art makes you responsible. Living in truth with yourself and with others makes you responsible. When you are completely honest and start tallying up your accomplishments and measuring them against your failures, make sure those failures are thoroughly examined and diagnosed. For me, the vast majority of the wounds I carry were self-inflicted. There is no reason for cynicism and jadedness for it was my foolishness that led to so much heartache. I can not blame any one or anything for those years of loss and anguish. So now its time to move from self-indulgent to self-fulfillment; from pain and anger to excitement and fervor. Its time to take the long steps. The movement of my feet with pride and conviction. To take the danger that lurks under the light of all our eyes and turn it into something important. And hopefully you will want to read about it, because I want to write about it. Narcissism is such a hard habit to kick.

Misery, Sandwiches and Russell Simmons

These past few weeks since the New Year have been rather trying for me. I have sorta fallen into a morose angry state of torpor. A place were everything thing seems dire and permissible; fatalism, malaise, ennui and all those other SAT words that describe how I was wallowing in a lavish self-indulgent pity party. My contempt for the lot my life had been thrown into was opulent. I had tirade after tirade like a spoiled child. A mocha despot I had become and I wanted to be the enfant terrible. Norman Mailer and I are American writers after all. Why wasn’t Solstice being lauded as an instant classic of fantasy fiction? A tour de force. A stunning, sublime debut novel. Why hadn’t agents and/ or editors snapped up my work and populated the bookstores of the world with my obviously brilliant work? I whined and moaned and whirled around like a scorned demigod having to clean the staples of Augeus. Blaming others and events for one’s plight is easy. Its simple and agreeable. I can’t do [pick a goal] because of [insert obstacle/ excuse] so therefore I won’t try. But my morbidity ran deeper than that. I cherished my anger and cultivated my jealousy for others who have done better with such intensity that the discontent had grown Architeuthisian around me. I had morphed into a bitter giant squid. Kafka be praised, The Metamorphosis was complete when recently a doctor told me I might have several slipped disks in my cervical vertebrae. Now what? See my prophecy of doom has come true. I can’t workout, I can’t get my book sold, I can’t find a decent apartment in a nice area for less that the price of a seat on the last mission of the space shuttle; I just can’t.

Of course my friend rallied to my side. With platitudes and maxims they came, shinning like little beautiful beacons of hope to brutalize me into further despair. I think I wanted to feel bad. I compared myself first to this one then the next one. Ready at every turn to beseech God on why he had given me so many burdens with so few rewards; why he had given others so much for so little work. Didn’t I have to work TWO full-time jobs? Didn’t I have to help out my mother who in recent years fell to the same plight as millions more? She suddenly at 83 found herself jobless and at the bottom of a well of bad financial decisions. Didn’t I put on a happy face and grab a shovel and try to dig her out? At one point in 2009 I thought the walls would tumble in on me, crushing me under this mountain of responsibility. I suffered through wage reductions/ slashed hours at work/ repealed benefits. I was tormented by both bedbugs and ConEdison—due to a short in the electrical wiring of my apartment my electric bill was literally four times higher than it should have been. Even the four ConEdison technicians who checked it out couldn’t explain why I was being charged $527 a month for a one bedroom apartment in Marble Hill. 2010 dawned with the promise of relief. And indeed there was peace. The summer was radiant and I was on the brink of finishing my second novel The Goddess of Light. Of course there were a few minor setbacks after using some bad software but still things were on the up. Little did I know that Loki was waiting in the wings. A wicked little fucker poised like a fifth grade bully ready to steal my lunch money. Things started going gray in November and by New Year ’s Eve my life was, once again, in full tempest. Here in stanza 35 of the epic Norse poem Poetic Edda Völuspá, Loki shows his ass again.

“A ship journeys from the east, Muspell's people are coming,

over the waves, and Loki steers

There are the monstrous brood with all the raveners,

The brother of Byleist is in company with them.”

Indeed Loki had arrived. With his monstrous brood he smashed and dashed what little I had left. And like it says in this comic excerpt when Loki broods—let all who live BEWARE!

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Broke and disgusted. I felt like Charlie Brown and life was Lucy with a football. Good Grief! So here I found myself back once again at this fount of pain and disappointment. I folded into my sorrow and started to read. I found an old young adult novel entitled A Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich in my closet and thought at 126 pages it wouldn’t kill me to read it on the subway. The story was about the struggles of an inner city thirteen-year-old boy who very quickly became a junkie strung out on heroin and the chaos that became his life. The story is told in alternating chapters by Benjie and those surrounding him like his mother Sweets, her common law husband, Butler and a motley collection of relatives, pushers, teachers and friends. The book was written by the critical acclaimed playwright and novelist Alice Childress. The novella was made into a not so well received movie staring Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield. In the book Benjie’s principal speaks about poverty.

“One gradually learns begrudgingly to respect the poverty-stricken: They have endurance; they push their vitamin-starved bodies on and on from one day to another; they continue to stand up under humiliation and abuse.”

There it was: Leaping off the page at me; the horror that I faced everyday. I didn’t want to live like that. To propel myself through the murky ether of a dead-end job waiting for the death knell of my dreams. I was sanguine once, purple and swollen on my own arrogance to think that somebody would want to read my words. This was a sharp bitter thing to confront. I had truly hit my bottom. So I mopped. It was over. I was done. All I could see was me in some rancid fetid unflattering future, a bloated lonely curmudgeon like Max Jerry Horowitz in the animated film Mary and Max. I didn’t want that future for me but it seemed pre-ordained. A subject I discussed in an earlier blog here. But then something extraordinary happened. Now I’m not one for self-help speeches and the such, even thought The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz changed my life, but I came across a small bit of advice from Russell Simmons of all people. In his new book Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All, Simmons discusses the five rules of getting super rich. You can find them here. The one that stuck out to me was #2 Relentlessly Pursue Your Goals Without Appearing Needy. So I sat there on Saturday ready to be mournful and said to myself: Have I been relentless? Certainly Solstice the protagonist in my books was relentless. She stopped at nothing to become ruler of the world. But he also said don’t chase paper and if you do what you love it will come back to you. How many people can say they do what they love? My mother always told me you can never be truly rich or happy working for somebody else. I guess Russell and my mother have it right and my robust control over these meaningless things such as tee-vees, overtime and Gucci loafers ultimately are unfulfilling and unrewarding. When I write I am literally lifted off the earth and feel transcendent. When I create I see and feel everything as if there are electrical insects buzzing on my skin. It makes me want to be more and better. It makes me want to live without a life of misery and unhappiness. It makes me want to shine brightly and shower my friends and family with love. It makes me hope that when you read these words you feel the connectedness that I have with them and in a little way we become connected too. I want you to be transported, when you read the story of Solstice to a world where women are powerful and that children born in all the shades that we come in can see themselves in Newel. Solstice seemed to learn Russell and my mother’s lesson. She had riches and power beyond belief but it took a ten-year-old boy near the end of her life to truly make her realize that love and friendship and giving made you whole. That was the precious cargo we carry. Helping each other through the rough times. That being a Bodhisattva or a Good Shepherd of this earth is the only way to live. When you become nothing you gain everything. So now I will go forth with these harsh merciless lessons life has dealt me knowing that these lashes on my metaphorical back do not define me; they do not hinder me; they do not stop me. They help me to go forth and be fearless! And that’s all I needed to do in the first place.

Its all in the date

I was just thinking this week that all the great milestones of science fiction and pop culture have passed us by. It started with the late George Orwell reversing the year in which he completed his dark apocalyptic masterpiece 1984 often written Nineteen Eighty-four. We got to 1984 and there was no great war with Oceania or rats in cages attached to Winston Smith’s face (though Big Brother and torture did seem surreally relevant in the sudden invasion of Iraq and the Gitmo/ Abu Graib tortures but that’s for another blog). From then the dates fell away like sheets stripped from a yellowing calendar. It was October 16, 1997 and the Jupiter 2 carrying Earth’s first family into space (along with its most flaming charlatan, his robot boyfriend and their adoptive and precocious ward—which gave us one of the most iconic television phrases ever “Danger Will Robinson!”) blasted off only to be Lost in Space. Obviously nobody asked Dr. Smith and he certainly would never tell.

Then there was the Grand Trilogy of early 80s sci-fi movies with twisty plots, hot ballsy women and straight up hardcore violence: Escape from New York (1981), Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984).

I still remember seeing the poster for Escape from New York when I went to see the movie at Hanes Mall Cinema IV—yes Junior a theater with 4 screens and not 50 was a big deal then. The poster showed the destroyed head of the Statue of Liberty with the caption reading: In 1997, when the US President crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in for a rescue. When this movie was released, New York City was sandwhiched between the catastrophic economic collapse of the Drop Dead 70s and the apocalyptic obliteration of the cracked-out New Jack City era. Even though it was only 16 years away, at the rate of decay it wasn't a far fetched concept that NYC would likely be a prison by the late 90s. Kurt Russell was at his badass zenith at that time. Shedding his Disney framework and going from Jungle Boy on Gilligan’s Island to the magnificent MoFoness of Snake Plissken right before our eyes. Remember the green and black wireframe CGI of New York City! We were all amazed. This was movie magic at its best.

Three years later a god came to earth swaddled in leather and attitude. The juggernaut known as Arnold Schwarzenegger bore down on the American psyche like no villain had done before. Norman Bates’ demure horror or the sheer scope of the psychopathic nuttiness of Travis Bickle had nothing on the T-1. It was a machine sent from the future to kill the mother of humankind’s savior. Imagine a Satan sending a demon to kill the Virgin Mary before she even met Joseph. Technology so unrelenting lethal that only the shark from Jaws could invoke a feeling so visceral. The Terminator unleashed a fury on the world that was unlike anything before. It was originally stated that on August 4, 1997 a computer defense system goes online. 25 days later on August 29, 1997 Skynet (the name still gives me Goosebumps) becomes self-aware and initiates a nuclear strike that all but obliterates the human race. There has yet to be a Skynet, but Google (which was started in 1996) has taken over the internet. Should we worry that Larry Page and Sergey Brin have created the construct that will bring about the death of man and not Miles Dyson?

Ape conquered man in 1991. The nineties must have been seen as a bleak distant future to visionary artists of the past. Roddy McDowall probably became the most famous talking animal supplanting Mr. Ed. In my favorite of the Apes Chronicle movies: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Caesar, an intelligent, talking chimpanzee—the offspring of Cornelius and Zira, the ape couple that befriended Charlton Heston in the original Planet of the Apes—grows tired of his people’s slavery (the story goes that in 1983 all cats and dogs died of a disease that left man companionless so we took apes as servants and pets). Caesar starts a non-violent movement of passive resistance that quickly escalates into full-out revolution. The original ending of the movie (before it was sanitized for happiness in which mercy was shown by the ape captors to their former human masters) had Caesar standing on a burning precipice overlooking a mob of orange-jumpsuited gorillas. They had Breck, the cruel white administrator and chief boogieman of Ape Management stretched out and shackled by the horde. MacDonald played by black actor Hari Rhodes begged Caesar for mercy. The film ended with man’s nearest genetic neighbor ripping Breck to shreds. Could you imagine the imagery of a black man and a primate lording over the death of a white former slave master? The bloody American future now theirs to rule. A very potent simulacrum of 1972 mores and to say the least you see why the original ending did not test well.



And speaking of monkeys; what does a black monolith and bone-wielding primates with a murderous streak stir up in your brain? Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick (author and film maker) created a movie borne from the crèche of cutting edge special effects. 2001: A Space Odyssey still widens my eyes and sparks my imagination. It was weird and overlong but the sequences for this movie still look good 42 years later. Skylab and the International Space Station not included, humans are nowhere near having a facility on the moon. Or living in some far-flung dimension where we're all warped into an old people living in what looks like a Central Park West classic six with a disco floor and wainscoting. You will notice that I am making little mention of 2010: The Year We Make Contact because it not only didn't have the gravitas or zeitgeist of its former, it was just plain boring. Jupiter turning into a sun. That's what the entire movie was about. Really?

I guess that leaves us with the only milestone left. 2019. The year Blade Runner takes place. Many esteem this to be the greatest sci-fi film ever produced and is considered Ridley Scott’s masterwork. It made the future sexy and violent all at the same time. This future wasn’t the grand pristine intellectually sanitized conquerors we meet in the 50s, who with bold courage brought humanity to the stars. Think Forbidden Planet (RIP Leslie Neilsen) Nor was it the wasteland of squanderers that let apes rule and pollution destroy us. Think Soylent Green is people!! What teenage boy doesn’t remember Joanna Cassidy and her snake, slutty and aggressive running away from Harrison Ford’s Decker in a clear plastic overcoat. At least strippers made it into the future. And with the way our economy is in free fall, the sex trade may be the profession with the highest growth potential. So if Blade Runner is the Holy Grail we only have 8 more years to achieve Philip K. Dick's avant garde vision of the future. Here's the recipe: we need to speed up wrecking our atmosphere so that Southern California is cold, wet and bleak, build some fire-belching factories in the San Fernando Valley and get on the ball with a race of androids that look oddly like Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer, that we call replicants. And there better be a Latino-Asian LAPD detective brushing up on his origami even as we speak!

What’s fate, got to do… go to do with it

What is fate? Is there such a thing? Do we follow chosen paths or do we create them? Was Barack Obama destined to president? Was I destined to be sitting here at midnight disenchanted writing this blog? Is it fate that my fantasy football team is once again at the bottom of the league the second season in a row, despite having a good roster of players? Hmmm. Karma, kismet; chance, luck, fate, destiny, doom.
Dictionary.com states:
–noun
1.- something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; lot: It is always his fate to be left behind.
2. -the universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably prescribed; the decreed cause of events; time: Fate decreed that they would never meet again.

We always think of fate in mythological terms. We’ve all heard the anecdotes. For example, when I first moved to New York in the last century my roommate (a former college friend) used the money I had been giving him toward the rent to secretly buy himself a car. After a huge confrontation that ended in kicking and spitting, I moved out. Shortly thereafter the block gossip led me to understand that said car had been stolen and ended up a burned out shell on the side of the Garden State Parkway. What went around came around. Now that was some cosmic retribution because I didn’t deserve to be robbed.

But that’s not what I’m speaking of. I mean real life predestination Presbyterian Style. A life path chosen before you were born. A walkway paved in such a way that no matter where you walk you will follow this Yellow Brick Road of Fate inexorably to Moirai, the Greek goddesses of Fate. It was written that even mighty Zeus, greatest of all Greek gods, was subject to their whim. And that’s exactly my question when seeking understanding of my purpose. Unlike the pristine Greek statues of perfect form, James Goetz’s 1946 line drawing of the Moirai is more to what I think fate must be— dark, chaotic, wanton, mysterious and a little bit sinister. I mean, you have no choice in the matter if it's your destiny, right? As I wrote in Solstice at the end of the climatic battle between Solstice and Queen Vivica there was destiny afoot.

"Vivica did not want to die, but she had no choice. Her death was foretold on that hot summer day twenty years prior when a porcelain-skinned baby dropped onto the red dirt of South Carolina screaming and raging for attention."

When I was in the fifth grade I had a dream. I was walking down the street between my mother’s house my cousin’s who lived next door, I came upon a man whose face I don’t remember. however, it shined as bright as the sun and he made me feel safe. He was God. He looked down on me and said “Daryl, I have a mission for you.” Then, suddenly, a huge red and pus-covered arm reached out from under a hedge and grabbed me by my Spiderman belt buckle and started dragging down into the grown. Of course, I woke up screaming. It gets better. When I was in college my best friend was into esoteric mysticism and new age spiritualism. I got my astrological chart read and I found out I have a kite. Unless you’re more than a Spencer Gifts astrologist (I’m telling my age) then you, like me, wouldn’t know what that means. A kite is a “fairly rare” configuration and signifies that I have a greater purpose or mission in life. Madonna and Oprah both have kites. Oprah has a network and Madonna has “conquer[ed] the world” just like she set out to do. And here I sit at midnight disenchanted writing this blog?

Don't worry, I’m about to wrap this up. What if WE DO HAVE a path in life laid out for us by the Moirai like a cosmic GPS. But what if that path is just shadows? Or merely moving images in the dark? Or pin pricks of light on the wall? Dots on a page? Braille to the sighted. What if we don’t read the road markers correctly? What then? Will some otherworldly spirit show up and make sure we are on the divine and narrow? These are all very interested questions. But then I think there also very good answers. The choice isn’t made for us. There may be some etching in the dirt or some movement and commotion, but we don’t have to follow them. For better or worse we make up our own destinies. Of course, there are building blocks in place that make Oprah, President Obama and Madonna who they are. Such factors as education, ambition, people who believed in them, as well as faith in themselves are all such important ingredients. If we can find meaning out of the meaningless then I would say there are no coincidences. We as humans can read something special into almost anything. Omens and signs guide us. Like believing in miracles. Simply because you believe, then miracles do manifest. I believe that sometimes random acts happen without that magic elixir of caprice or premeditation. Evil is always afoot. Crap just happens sometimes. If we view these markers telling us to till the soil of our lives in a different way and it profits us, wonderful. If not, oh well. Life is long and hopefully we will learn to not regret the idea that we did not read the markers they way they were presented. I will leave you with a poem that every seventh grader knew when I was in school. It still resonates today when I contemplate my fate. Maybe it was fated that this poem has stayed with me.

Invictus
By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Its like déjà vu all over again

Recently a friend of mine posted this on facebook: “Hard work pays off. From time to time, you have won by sheer luck. But most of the time, you get the reward because you did the work. Good Morning.” This got me thinking.

How does hard work pay off? And if the formula is that easy why don’t more people follow it? I think to begin we have to define what the reward is? For most of us in this celebriality driven consumerist frenzied society, reward is greatly defined by what rappers rhyme about in their lyrics or what every housewife on the Real Housewives of Banality has or wants to purchase, from new lips to the that oh so perfect lapdog. They crave money, cheddar, moulah. Power and fame (infamy). Now we’ve always had a personality driven society. We are human after all. In ancient Roman people bought sweat from the gladiators thinking it would make them beautiful.

Rags to riches. You may not know Horatio Alger, Jr., but if you’re an American your very day-to-day existence is affected by this man’s work. He wrote many young adult books on how down-and-out boys might be able to achieve the American Dream of wealth and success through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others. We all (especially in the creative, entrepreneurial sector) have entire mythologies about people who started out with nothing and who made themselves into huge blasting successes. JK Rowling went from welfare to billionairess. Tyler Perry went from homelessness to running his own multimedia-multimillion dollar empire. I even have such stories in my own family. I can’t count the number of times at family gatherings that I heard the story of my grandfather Dr. Island Lemuel Johns. A grandson of slaves born in 1892 who walked 16 miles from his hometown of Auburn, NC to Raleigh to earn a medical degree from Shaw University. All the while working odd jobs to make money. He died when I was 6 but I still remember being driven by the now parking lot on Patterson Ave and Fourth Street where his office was located, being told of his accomplishments. How can I live up to that feat?

So what does all this mean? That if I’m not the first black man on Mars that I’m a failure? A flop? A nobody? I think the problem is that we should measure reward incrementally and individually. I have a good friend whose philosophy is get it as quickly and as easily as possible. Of course I eschew his ideas. But we are economically equal. Materialistically he actually has more. So must I conclude that hard work is debunked by crafty laziness?

So in the end which side is right? Nobody. As always when it rains it rains on everybody. Some people work hard to get little, others work little to get a lot. That has no bearing on the course of action you must take. At the end of the day I may not have sold a million books (yet let’s not forget that) but I have worked hard on my craft. I have learned in great and small increments how to be a better writer, businessman, and person. It’s the struggle that makes you smarter and better. The difference I have noticed between myself and my get it quick friend is that he has not learned anything. He continually makes the same mistakes over and over. Like the bible says in Mark 8:36: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? My friend may have riches but as quickly as the came they can (and have in the past) left just as quickly. For me the wealth of emotions, ideas, people that I have encountered working hard for my dream will enrich my life forever. My epitaph may never read "...he came from nothing to conquer the world" but I bet if I keep working hard I’ll (or at least that hard work) will be remembered long after Bravo and its legions of personalities have faded into dust.