Dominick R. Domingo's Blog, page 4

CREATIVITY and HEALING &nbsp...

CREATIVITY and HEALING
             I recently posted an essay titled HEALING DIVISIVENESS from Within, about the various ways we might begin to bridge the cultural divide that has only widened with social distancing . Starting with the ‘man in the mirror,’ or doing as Ghandi encouraged and ‘being the change we wish to see in the world,’ society might then, the article suggests, collectively benefit on the macro level. What I found in putting my thoughts on the subject together, is that an entire book could potentially be written addressing each of the various factors I identified. I decided to distill each into a manageable, bite-sized morsel for consumption, for the A.D.D. sufferers among us.            I’ve always found the Internet (and social media in particular) to be a succinct illustration of how synchronicity operates, a microcosm of our interconnectedness. And sharing the essay confirmed it—not ten minutes after posting it, a dear friend reached out saying it had really spoken to her. Only moments previous to its appearing in her feed, she’d found herself suckered into the very kind of heated debate at the root of the vitriol the article sought to remedy. Ironically, (given that my friend and I share many mutual friends from our hometown) I’d myself caught wind of the venomous comment thread that had riled her. Somehow, I’d managed to resist temptation and scroll on, while she was regretting taking the bait. No doubt about it—she’d been triggered. During our conversation about it, a topic came up that had not made its way into my essay on the matter of divisiveness: among the fueling factors I chose to parse, I’d overlooked the role of Creativity. Or more accurately, the absence of it.            I’ve identified as an artist as long as I’ve been able to hold a pencil; it’s entirely possible I came out of the womb with one in my hand. Having chosen the arts and entertainment as a career path, I’ve been surrounded by creative types my entire adult life. The household I grew up in encouraged creative expression above all else—spilling glue on the dining room table was not only overlooked; it was encouraged. Between my time in the film industry and the twenty years I’ve spent teaching at a design college, I’ve had the pleasure of being surrounded by inspiring souls with a well-honed craft and a desire to connect their voice to a need we all share—that of fulfilling a purpose. These luminaries have given themselves permission to contribute to the whole of humanity.            There are infinite voices many must silence, or at least drown out, in order to give themselves permission to indulge any pursuit society has deemed impractical or (word of the day) ‘unessential.’ (Side note: the view of it as such is predominantly western, rather new historically speaking, and distinctly American.) Among the voices many have to squelch are those of an educational system that devalues the arts and throws money at team sports, (more essential how?) and the voices of perfectionism or the fear of rejection one might be exposed to after expressing oneself. Further compounding the issue, alive and well is the myth that the catharsis of expression is self-serving, a sentiment most often accompanied by the prudent western value placed on suffering in lieu of fulfillment, ‘hard’ work over inspired work. The list of discouraging voices is endless. And blissfully, thanks in part to the household in which I grew up—I heard few of them, or at least had the ears to tune them out.            For that reason, I can be a bit naïve about the depth to which the very same creative impulse I abided, when unfulfilled, can wreak destruction. Sure, I can recognize the buried dream in the eyes of a cynic. We can all smell the bitterness of a crushed pipe dream a mile away. We might even be able to connect an individual’s critical nature back to a history of having himself been criticized or discouraged. Personally, I am hyper-aware of stilted relationships with creativity—the degree of generosity with which one supports others’ endeavors or withholds approval. In case criticism and discouragement are not extreme enough to qualify as ‘destructive,’ let me offer this:  there is a reason that Hitler, a frustrated painter, wasted no time in burning the art. Enough said. In the extreme, when one procrastinates or resists working through their blocks (or voices, in this less-than-perfect analogy) it takes its toll on the body. Perhaps because I have made a career of playing coach or even cheerleader for creative expression in my teaching, I cannot count the times a loved one or acquaintance suffering from an ailment has confided to me “I just know it’s because I have no creative outlet.”            For the purposes of this essay, suffice it to say creativity is an innate human drive—the need to forge permanence or leave a mark. It should be said that this applies not only to the arts we recognize as such, but to engineering and architecture and technology, innovating and inventing and gardening and problem solving. The creative process is at work all around us every day. I regularly refer to the creative drive and creative process as my religion. For one, it could be argued that the very universe we live in was manifest through the ultimate creative process. The leap from wave to particle. Every one of us came into this world following the same stages of creation as a universe, those shared with the seven accepted models of the creative process: conception, germination, and birth. The life force that is consciousness was invisible before manifesting physically as the world we know; all man’s creations begin as abstract concepts that are made concrete in the perceptual realm. There is creativity at work all day, everyday, wherever we look. One could argue it is synonymous with life.            So what is the role of the creative impulse, fulfilled or unfulfilled, in cultural divisiveness? Consider a school of thought that exists in many circles: that which stops growing begins to die. It’s also been said that at all times, if one is not engaged in the act of creation, he or she is engaged in destruction. Overt destruction, or just as frequently, self-destruction. This is arguably the basis of expressive arts therapy, especially in underprivileged communities or as a key component in rehabilitation.            Admittedly, the aforementioned friend who introduced the idea of a stilted relationship with creativity into the premise of my article, was simply including it among a list of other factors that, very understandably, had led to her own current state of irritability. She lamented being triggered so easily and was searching for reasons. Having said that, my choice to address it in this context is not simply in order to suggest that we’d all be in a better mood if we had an outlet. It’s true that being deeply engaged in any creative process can be meditative, leading to inner stillness and wellbeing. However, I am hinting at something much larger:            If we can agree, for our purposes, that whatever is not creating is destroying (however extreme and diametric the suggestion) it is not a huge leap to consider that we create our thoughts. The thought forms we craft (or blindly adopt by default) have a direct, though reciprocal, relationship on our feelings. Together, the two constitute what many call our vibration—the one we send out into the universe to manifest as our reality. If I have not lost you, consider that creativity well may be an end in itself. That however it is we manifest our interior vibration in the exterior world (and there are countless mechanistic ways) the lens we wear at the very least determines how we view the world and what we expect from it. Many of us beat the drum of old narratives that have come to define us, thereby limiting our potential—the world’s potential. Many repeat stories of the past to explain a current state of dissatisfaction, citing a laundry list of conditions and circumstances that have stood in the way of manifesting their desires. Their happiness. Culture at large is no different; its mantras and narratives—its very history—can stand in the way of its forward march toward realizing human potential. Facts and conditions and probabilities are observed, then transmuted into tropes, conventional wisdoms, paradigms and thought forms. Collectively, they constitute the status quo we are inculcated with via social conditioning. The most seemingly benign colloquialism can be laden with counterproductive stereotypes and prejudice. Norms, mores and ethics are culturally relative, of course, varying from one house to the next and from one generation to the next. Baby boomers raised by a generation who'd suffered world War Two and the Great Depression know  moderation and prudence well. Myself quite unfamiliar with the materialistic mindset so ingrained in many cultures, I was beyond shocked when a student of mine repeated the conventional wisdom her mother had shared with her repeatedly with regard to marrying for love or money: 'It's better to cry behind the wheel of a BMW than to smile in the back seat of a jalope.'               Some personality types reject social conditioning from day one. The freethinkers among us (sometimes rebels without a cause) defy and question at every turn. But to others, the idea we can manifest deliberately with our thoughts—get our hands in the clay of life—is altogether new. Long before Covid-19, many of us sensed some kind of apocalypse on the horizon—be it a nuclear apocalypse, cyber war, or your standard Zombie apocalypse. And the creativists in my circle have said with every breath, ‘creativity alone will be our salvation.’ Not only in the ability to rub two sticks together to create fire, but in its capacity to shift paradigms and replace obsolete thought forms. The real apocalypse, arguably, is an ideological one.            By all accounts, there is a pervasive sentiment that push has come to shove and we are being called to action. Many are being forced to analyze societal ills in light of the need for change, or find their own purposeful contribution to needed change. Here’s how creative manifestation, getting our collective hands in the clay of our thoughts, can play a part. The frequency of a problem is far from that of its solution. This is why, when we lose our keys, they refuse to show up until they are good and ready. Let me explain—if the voice in our head repeats over and over again that the keys are ‘lost,’ that narrative becomes a lens that blinds us to seeing the elusive set of keys, or to be specific, blocks our subconscious—which knows exactly where we left the damn things—from yielding the information. The moment we move on to something else and stop perseverating, the damn things appear. We’ve all been there. Similarly, that celebrity’s name that is right on the tip of our tongue—you know, the one that was in that one movie—but whose name refuses to yield itself, will come to us in the dead of night. When it’s no good to anyone. It is then our subconscious is free, disentangled from the mantra that has been circulating as a literal neural circuit—or rut, as the case may be.            In this way, moving forward is the answer to escaping all ruts—even huge, cultural ruts—moving toward inspired action, rather than beating the drum of a problem, be it racial inequality, sexism, the war on drugs or the evils of the opposing political party. You get the idea. Moving forward and taking steps toward a solution, taking inspired action, is the ultimate creative act. Keeping our brains plastic and forging knew neural circuits are self-creation at its best. And acting on creative impulses, otherwise known as inspiration, is precisely what redeems us from forces of gravity, inertia and and entropy. It is what leads us toward a more vital force: momentum.            If we all reconciled our respective relationships with the creative impulse, exercised our own powers of creativity daily, and took the time to question our purpose and how we might be called to fulfill it, humanity would surely benefit, collectively. As our individual thought forms evolve (or re- create themselves) by extension, so do society’s paradigms and those of the critical mass. The path toward doing so might look different for each one of us; the role our ‘voice’ is meant to fulfill depends upon our respective skill sets, agency, and current circumstances. The role of creative expression might shift or evolve over time depending on our stage in life. But at any moment, the prospect might just be worth investigating!
*If you enjoyed this article, be sure to follow blog for more inspiration! (See header at top) 

CREATIVITY and HEALING

CREATIVITY and HEALING
             I recently posted an essay titled HEALING DIVISIVENESS from Within, about the various ways we might begin to bridge the cultural divide that has only widened with social distancing . Starting with the ‘man in the mirror,’ or doing as Ghandi encouraged and ‘being the change we wish to see in the world,’ society might then, the article suggests, collectively benefit on the macro level. What I found in putting my thoughts on the subject together, is that an entire book could potentially be written addressing each of the various factors I identified. I decided to distill each into a manageable, bite-sized morsel for consumption, for the A.D.D. sufferers among us.            I’ve always found the Internet (and social media in particular) to be a succinct illustration of how synchronicity operates, a microcosm of our interconnectedness. And sharing the essay confirmed it—not ten minutes after posting it, a dear friend reached out saying it had really spoken to her. Only moments previous to its appearing in her feed, she’d found herself suckered into the very kind of heated debate at the root of the vitriol the article sought to remedy. Ironically, (given that my friend and I share many mutual friends from our hometown) I’d myself caught wind of the venomous comment thread that had riled her. Somehow, I’d managed to resist temptation and scroll on, while she was regretting taking the bait. No doubt about it—she’d been triggered. During our conversation about it, a topic came up that had not made its way into my essay on the matter of divisiveness: among the fueling factors I chose to parse, I’d overlooked the role of Creativity. Or more accurately, the absence of it.            I’ve identified as an artist as long as I’ve been able to hold a pencil; it’s entirely possible I came out of the womb with one in my hand. Having chosen the arts and entertainment as a career path, I’ve been surrounded by creative types my entire adult life. The household I grew up in encouraged creative expression above all else—spilling glue on the dining room table was not only overlooked; it was encouraged. Between my time in the film industry and the twenty years I’ve spent teaching at a design college, I’ve had the pleasure of being surrounded by inspiring souls with a well-honed craft and a desire to connect their voice to a need we all share—that of fulfilling a purpose. These luminaries have given themselves permission to contribute to the whole of humanity.            There are infinite voices many must silence, or at least drown out, in order to give themselves permission to indulge any pursuit society has deemed impractical or (word of the day) ‘unessential.’ (Side note: the view of it as such is predominantly western, rather new historically speaking, and distinctly American.) Among the voices many have to squelch are those of an educational system that devalues the arts and throws money at team sports, (more essential how?) and the voices of perfectionism or the fear of rejection one might be exposed to after expressing oneself. Further compounding the issue, alive and well is the myth that the catharsis of expression is self-serving, a sentiment most often accompanied by the prudent western value placed on suffering in lieu of fulfillment, ‘hard’ work over inspired work. The list of discouraging voices is endless. And blissfully, thanks in part to the household in which I grew up—I heard few of them, or at least had the ears to tune them out.            For that reason, I can be a bit naïve about the depth to which the very same creative impulse I abided, when unfulfilled, can wreak destruction. Sure, I can recognize the buried dream in the eyes of a cynic. We can all smell the bitterness of a crushed pipe dream a mile away. We might even be able to connect an individual’s critical nature back to a history of having himself been criticized or discouraged. Personally, I am hyper-aware of stilted relationships with creativity—the degree of generosity with which one supports others’ endeavors or withholds approval. In case criticism and discouragement are not extreme enough to qualify as ‘destructive,’ let me offer this:  there is a reason that Hitler, a frustrated painter, wasted no time in burning the art. Enough said. In the extreme, when one procrastinates or resists working through their blocks (or voices, in this less-than-perfect analogy) it takes its toll on the body. Perhaps because I have made a career of playing coach or even cheerleader for creative expression in my teaching, I cannot count the times a loved one or acquaintance suffering from an ailment has confided to me “I just know it’s because I have no creative outlet.”            For the purposes of this essay, suffice it to say creativity is an innate human drive—the need to forge permanence or leave a mark. It should be said that this applies not only to the arts we recognize as such, but to engineering and architecture and technology, innovating and inventing and gardening and problem solving. The creative process is at work all around us every day. I regularly refer to the creative drive and creative process as my religion. For one, it could be argued that the very universe we live in was manifest through the ultimate creative process. The leap from wave to particle. Every one of us came into this world following the same stages of creation as a universe, those shared with the seven accepted models of the creative process: conception, germination, and birth. The life force that is consciousness was invisible before manifesting physically as the world we know; all man’s creations begin as abstract concepts that are made concrete in the perceptual realm. There is creativity at work all day, everyday, wherever we look. One could argue it is synonymous with life.            So what is the role of the creative impulse, fulfilled or unfulfilled, in cultural divisiveness? Consider a school of thought that exists in many circles: that which stops growing begins to die. It’s also been said that at all times, if one is not engaged in the act of creation, he or she is engaged in destruction. Overt destruction, or just as frequently, self-destruction. This is arguably the basis of expressive arts therapy, especially in underprivileged communities or as a key component in rehabilitation.            Admittedly, the aforementioned friend who introduced the idea of a stilted relationship with creativity into the premise of my article, was simply including it among a list of other factors that, very understandably, had led to her own current state of irritability. She lamented being triggered so easily and was searching for reasons. Having said that, my choice to address it in this context is not simply in order to suggest that we’d all be in a better mood if we had an outlet. It’s true that being deeply engaged in any creative process can be meditative, leading to inner stillness and wellbeing. However, I am hinting at something much larger:            If we can agree, for our purposes, that whatever is not creating is destroying (however extreme and diametric the suggestion) it is not a huge leap to consider that we create our thoughts. The thought forms we craft (or blindly adopt by default) have a direct, though reciprocal, relationship on our feelings. Together, the two constitute what many call our vibration—the one we send out into the universe to manifest as our reality. If I have not lost you, consider that creativity well may be an end in itself. That however it is we manifest our interior vibration in the exterior world (and there are countless mechanistic ways) the lens we wear at the very least determines how we view the world. Many of us beat the drum of old narratives that have come to define us, thereby limiting our potential—the world’s potential. Many repeat stories of the past to explain a current state of dissatisfaction, citing a laundry list of conditions and circumstances that have stood in the way of manifesting their desires. Their happiness. Culture at large is no different; its mantras and narratives—its very history—can stand in the way of its forward march toward realizing human potential. Facts and conditions and probabilities are observed, then transmuted into tropes and conventional wisdoms and thought forms. Collectively, they constitute our social conditioning. And the status quo is limiting by nature.            Some personality types reject social conditioning from day one. The freethinkers among us (sometimes rebels without a cause) defy and question at every turn. But to others, the idea we can manifest deliberately with our thoughts—get our hands in the clay of life—is altogether new. Long before Covid-19, many of us sensed some kind of apocalypse on the horizon—be it a nuclear apocalypse, cyber war, or your standard Zombie apocalypse. And the creativists in my circle have said with every breath, ‘creativity alone will be our salvation.’ Not only in the ability to rub two sticks together to create fire, but in its capacity to shift paradigms and replace obsolete thought forms. The real apocalypse, arguably, is an ideological one.            By all accounts, there is a pervasive sentiment that push has come to shove and we are being called to action. Many are being forced to analyze societal ills in light of the need for change, or find their own purposeful contribution to needed change. Here’s how creative manifestation, getting our collective hands in the clay of our thoughts, can play a part. The frequency of a problem is far from that of its solution. This is why, when we lose our keys, they refuse to show up until they are good and ready. Let me explain—if the voice in our head repeats over and over again that the keys are ‘lost,’ that narrative becomes a lens that blinds us to seeing the elusive set of keys, or to be specific, blocks our subconscious—which knows exactly where we left the damn things—from yielding the information. The moment we move on to something else and stop perseverating, the damn things appear. We’ve all been there. Similarly, that celebrity’s name that is right on the tip of our tongue—you know, the one that was in that one movie—but whose name refuses to yield itself, will come to us in the dead of night. When it’s no good to anyone. It is then our subconscious is free, disentangled from the mantra that has been circulating as a literal neural circuit—or rut, as the case may be.            In this way, moving forward is the answer to escaping all ruts—even huge, cultural ruts—moving toward inspired action, rather than beating the drum of a problem, be it racial inequality, sexism, the war on drugs or the evils of the opposing political party. You get the idea. Moving forward and taking steps toward a solution, taking inspired action, is the ultimate creative act. Keeping our brains plastic and forging knew neural circuits are self-creation at its best. And acting on creative impulses, otherwise known as inspiration, is precisely what redeems us from forces of gravity and entropy. It is what leads us toward a more vital force: momentum.            If we all reconciled our respective relationships with the creative impulse, exercised our own powers of creativity daily, and took the time to question our purpose and how we might be called to fulfill it, humanity would surely benefit, collectively. As our individual thought forms evolve (or re- create themselves) by extension, so do society’s paradigms and those of the critical mass. The path toward doing so might look different for each one of us; the role our ‘voice’ is meant to fulfill depends upon our respective skill sets, agency, and current circumstances. The role of creative expression might shift or evolve over time depending on our stage in life. But at any moment, the prospect might just be worth investigating!
*If you enjoyed this article, follow my blog! (See header at top) Will be sharing weekly inspiration and food for thought! 

For several years, I have toyed with...

      For several years, I have toyed with writing a book on 'Healing Divisiveness,' or some variation on the theme. But hosting few convictions, zero answers, and a healthy resistance to stating anything remotely definitive, I've managed to jot down little more than outlines, the  beginnings of essays meant to become chapters, and the like. Whenever I've tried to write anything remotely academic or prescriptive in the past, I've always gotten bored (read:wanted to slit my wrists or jump out the nearest window) and gone back to my first love: narrative.This time around was no different.        So far, I have resisted attaching any significance to what some are calling the 'new normal,' as ushered in by the #Coronaapocalypse. I have heard many speculate about the shift that will take place societally, but I have reserved a 'wait-and-see' attitude. However, today, a confluence of factors inspired a few ideas which I thought I'd share as #foodforthought or, to some, maybe even #inspiration! It loosely fits into the theme of my pipe dream, the aforementioned book that will likely never be completed. Enjoy!

DIVISIVENESS
Healing a Fractured World From Within
            Divisiveness seems to be the word of the day. Most evident in the political arena, differing ideologies in recent years (or platforms, as the case may be) have led to nothing short of an impasse. Or more accurately, one standoff after another. Threats of a government shutdown blend seamlessly one into the next. No longer tempered by the lost art of rational discourse, these conflicts fester as seismic rage, revealing cultural fractures in a myriad of other areas—tiny fissures that have widened to rival the Grand Canyon, no bridge in sight. Each political party points the finger at the other for the current state of affairs, each administration blaming the last. Talking heads posit that the incorrigible conduct of our leaders began with Newt Gingritch or the Whitewater Investigation, or the spawning of Nancy Pelosi by aliens, with the inception of CNN or Fox News or mention of cigars and presidential penises being slathered across national headlines. If our representatives have lost the ability to see eye-to-eye or even cooperate, how can we be expected to?            I have always subscribed to the idea that change begins within. Michael Jackson suggested we all start with The Man In the Mirror to effect change. Mahatma Ghandi wisely counseled us to ‘be the change you wish to see in the world.’ We all know Ghandi is beyond reproach, in the way of Mother Theresa and Meryl Streep; the three can do no wrong. They are not just pillars, but—dare I say—a collective holy trinity of wisdom. And impeccable acting technique. Put clinically, the micro affects the macro when it comes to cultural change and paradigm shift.            The recent health crisis known as Covid-19, or conversely, quarantine, lockdown, or #Coronaapocalypse—take your pick—has served as a Rorschach test for the masses. Just yesterday, I spotted a post in my Facebook feed which managed, beyond reason, to make Q-Tips a political hot button while also linking protective face coverings (from medical grade K95s to your run of the mill stoner bandana) to racial profiling. Each added stressor to daily life seems to reawaken a sleeping giant, signaling not progress or even a pendulum swing, but outright regression. There are myriad aspects to the bobbing corpse of cultural strife, and an equal number of conversations to be had. Many are speculating about the significance of this moment in time, the challenges this pandemic poses worldwide. They predict the ‘big shift’ that will result, the social and cultural evolution that will take place. Hence the Rorschach test analogy. Personally, my own life challenges of late have preemptively forged a broadened perspective, one that has compelled me to resist projecting any significance on this impasse. Or in the spirit of this essay, the crisis/opportunity it represents. J Without a grain of cynicism, I have heard myself say, ‘I have a wait-and-see attitude; folks are pretty slow to change. As is society.’ If that sounds grim, let me add that I one hundred percent believe as Dr. King did: that although the arc of the moral universe is long, it does bend toward justice. I regularly point out the ways in which we are evolving as a species, however slowly. I am also enjoying the reduced traffic, better air quality, lower crime rates and (almost) reasonable rents in L.A. that have resulted from said pandemic, but these shifts are regional and far from permanent.            What has occurred to me in all of this is what I find most prescient, and what inspires the premise of this article. My entire adult life has been devoted to my craft—that of being an artist and a writer. Though no true artist or author wishes to identify an agenda, I did realize in my twenties that the umbrella informing all my work, regardless of concept or theme, was a desire to simply open eyes, hearts or minds. To many things—the multiple levels beyond the surface of any given moment, our interconnectedness, the metaphysical or spiritual aspect of biological life. But beyond those objectives, another aspect driving my work occurred to me in witnessing various reactions to the isolation demanded by this moment in time: my entire life I’ve touted the value of introspection and self-reflection. Some have called the current lockdown ‘an introvert’s dream.’ Guilty as charged. Being a freelancer who works from home anyway, and having been in self-imposed isolation due to the aforementioned health challenges, I have heard myself jest that very little has changed in my life, other than the ability to score toilet paper without resorting to the black market.            Ironically, the social distancing now required by law has forced many to slow down. This, in turn, has forced them to spend time with their own thoughts. For some, this means a return to their true essence or childhood self; to others, it means anxiety, panic and outright terror. ‘Doers’ are confronted with guilt for not accomplishing enough, for being self-indulgent or lazy. Speaking for myself, I can’t help but see this moment as an opportunity for individuals to get to know cobwebby corners of their minds, to witness their own thoughts and feelings without diversion. The requisite contemplation is an opportunity to separate mind chatter from spirit and parse ego-driven, mind-dominated thought forms from a pure state of being. Or better yet—to appreciate the flutter of a leaf and the dapple of light that’s landed on it, or the simple sounds of silence. How could the resulting stillness (otherwise known as wellbeing or inner peace) not collectively impact the world on a macro level? At the risk of quoting a 1970s Ginsu knife commercial, don’t answer yet; it’s rhetorical.            Many of the aforementioned divides could be bridged in society if we took the opportunity to do so—this opportunity. This moment of silence and stillness. Yes, the bridge begins with the person in the mirror and theoretically extends to tropes, collective thought forms and paradigms—even institutionalized dogmas on a mass level. Among the mental divides one could pinpoint that fuel cultural strife: the obvious political divide (Democrat vs. Republican,) the liberal versus conservative mindset, the debate between science and religion (which I correlate to underlying Empirical or Rational worldviews, respectively) and Western Medicine versus Eastern, (which correlate, arguably, with mechanistic or holistic models.) Then there’s the culturally pervasive divide between masculine and feminine in all aspects of society, from the conceptual to the practical, informing the current shift from an oppressive model of misogynistic patriarchy toward gender equality. There’s the right brain sensibility versus left, ageism versus youthism (or ‘Boomers versus Millennials’) capitalism versus socialism, all begging to be reconciled. These examples of opposing forces do not constitute a laundry list of grievances or even societal ills, but they are the tip of an iceberg. And now the clincher: they’re also illusions.            The thing is, everything’s in the semantics. The ideas are diametrically opposed due primarily to the insufficiency of language and a lack of perspective .            Socrates introduced what is now known as the ‘Socratic method.’ He found that if enough questions were asked, any definitive statement could be disproven. Example: the sky is not in fact blue; it appears so but only at certain times of day and subject to conditions like lighting and atmosphere. An apple is not always an apple: sometimes it’s a seed, or in complete decay. All its particles are subject to what is known as flux, or time and circumstance. Similarly, one could say that all accepted empirical fact is based solely on consensus. The former concepts were philosophical. But modern quantum mechanics confirms the role of the observer in all perception. Without an observer, waves do not fix as particles but remain in the field of pure potential. The narrow margin of perception that allows for consensus in human perception counts a very specific chemical balance among its requirements. If that precise balance of neural transmitters, peptides or hormones is off one iota, a wall can breathe or a shelf of yogurt in the supermarket can appear to extend to eternity, each stack of plastic containers arranged in perfect pyramids as far as the eye can see. Anyone who’s done shrooms or acid knows that. (Side note: author does not recommend dropping acid in a supermarket.)            Humans rely, arguably, on five senses (though science is beginning to acknowledge more than the traditional five) for our brains to filter, process and interpret stimuli. However, if a fly with five eyes comprised of millions of photoreceptors enters a room, it will experience the environment very differently from you or I—with a nearly 360 degree cone of vision. If a dolphin enters the room (never mind how) it will rely, among other senses, on sonar to orient itself—a sense we humans don’t even possess.            None of this is controversial or debatable (unless you are Socrates or generally an instigator) but in case you fail to connect the dots or see how any of this applies to the cultural divide, let me spell it out: the role of perception is paramount. Reality is subjective. So why would abstract concepts (morals, ethics, codes, ideas, values) be any different than the realm of the tangible? When asked to recount a purse snatching, every member of a test pool invariably describes the assailant as wearing a hat or pair of Vans Slip-ons of a different color than those reported by the other subjects. This fact is the reason I spend sleepless nights dreading the moment I am asked to participate in a police lineup. Similarly, I cannot imagine for one moment taking on the responsibility of being a judge, so sure of—well, anything definitive—as to have a hand in another’s fate. The play and film ‘Doubt’ beautifully and succinctly illustrate the hubris behind such confidence. In the context of cultural divisiveness, recognizing the role of perspective, across the board, is but one factor that could prove key to bridging it. Incidentally, another bi-product of broadened perspective is compassion. If only more of us practiced it.            The second factor we could all consider in order to synthesize seemingly opposing ideas is this: they are really only diametrically opposed due to what I call the Grand Illusion : the human compulsion to create opposites. This ‘black-and-white’ mindset is most dominant in Western culture: the drive to label everything as good, bad, right or wrong, from one’s sexual orientation to, well…a Q-Tip. To attribute good or evil, to apply wings or horns. Perhaps we could all benefit from a more eastern understanding that the Yin cannot exist without the Yang, the darkness without the light. That balance and harmony are innate when both are assigned value. That everything in life is neutral except our response to it; every crisis is an opportunity in disguise.            The Kybalion, based on Hermetic principles that predate Christ, speaks of gamuts. Rather than polar opposites, most concepts can be thought to exist on a continuum with extremes. Though the extremes are on opposite ends of a conceptual stick, they are not mutually exclusive. When it comes to any aspect of the human condition, like the gamut from love to fear, compassion to intolerance, or intellectualism to emotionality, most of us have experienced the full range at one time or another. Much as the body seeks homeostasis, the mind seeks balance. And we know when we are out of whack.  Both ends of any mental stick exist in all of us; I would posit that this reservoir of shared experience is innate to our humanity. The ability to tap into it explains Meryl Streep, for one.            The third phenomenon we might be wise to rise above, culturally speaking, is that of confirmation bias . It is as pervasive as gravity, and potentially just as dangerous.. Like gravity, its tug on humanity is as old as time. In the fourth century BC, Thucydides wrote of treason during the Pelopponesian war: ‘... for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.’ Simply put, confirmation bias is the sociological principle that people tend to look for, interpret, favor and recall that which confirms existing beliefs and prejudices. Imagine a sixteen year-old who throughout childhood has heard his father complaining about ‘those damn Asian drivers,’ or ‘women drivers,’ and internalized the stereotype. When he gets his license and is first cut off on the freeway, he will speed up to see what an idiot looks like. If the driver happens to be Asian, or female, he will file it with his current worldview, bias effectively confirmed. If the driver is neither Asian nor female, the moment will be forgotten. Confirmation bias manifests in many ways, from ‘cherry picking’ data to rhetoric to the editorial choice of what to give mental ‘airtime’ to. It is most often subconscious. But practiced demagogues expertly wield their understanding of its effect; in fact, they rely on it to manipulate the masses. It is a common sentiment that most are on ‘autopilot.’ Rather than developing a MetaSelf, exercising the ‘conscious observer’ that witnesses thoughts and trains them to be more productive, they remain preoccupied with the almighty dollar, keeping up w/the Jones’s, shopping at Sephora and injecting Sculptra into one or more body parts to get more ‘likes’ on Instagram.            A meme that got my attention recently stated: I have configured the parental control settings on my parents’ TV to disallow Fox News, and I truly believe this is what will save the world. I got a good laugh out of it, but also recognized its ring of truth. We are all guilty of submerging ourselves in propaganda that confirms our biases, or otherwise limiting our bubble to likeminded individuals. I am admittedly more likely to watch CNN or MSNBC than Fox News. I do believe that (conspiracy theories and ‘fake news’ aside) the truth is largely available to the masses. But it requires sifting through all reliable outlets, from MSNBC and CNN through Network News and Fox News to Al Jazeera, and judiciously distilling the information. In my twenties, before I was TOFTS and had more patience, I regularly tuned into the Rush Limbaugh show to remain abreast of all mindsets, with some innate understanding that I should resist settling into an echo chamber. That, or I was simply a glutton for punishment.            The fourth factor worth investigating (if I were in the business of persuading) would be the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance . When confronted with new information that contradicts or conflicts with old beliefs, we experience tension. This anxiety accounts for the digging in of heels, the refuge we take in the all-too-easy shelter of confirmation bias, and nothing less than shouting matches in the halls of the Capitol building. It is simply ego (synonymous with both mind-dominance and pride, arguably) that drives us to protect our ideas and beliefs at all costs—to be right. But the rare, evolved individual recognizes that all tension is an opportunity for learning and growth once resolved. Conflicting ideas become synthesized according to Hegel’s model of dialectic: thesis, antithesis and finally synthesis. Such a process can be seen as vital to all growth or evolution on both the micro and macro levels. In storytelling—a basic human drive, the theme imparted is categorically a product of conflict resolution. This innate understanding may be what drives a cultural addiction to drama, explaining the horrible turn of events that is reality television. And yet, if tension and conflict are the gateway to growth and evolution, where lies the problem with divisiveness? There may be no problem at all; discourse and conversation drive social reform. All mindsets play a part, from those of militant activists to pacifists, from those who work ‘with the system’ to those who fight it. But it’s clear most of us would prefer to see the progress enacted with a bit more civility. While understanding the role of ‘righteous indignation’ and ‘rage against the machine,’ we could begin to return to a climate where new ideas are not threatening and healthy discourse is a virtue.             I am constantly inspired by those individuals who take any opportunity to broaden their perspective, to expand their minds. Those intellectually curious seekers who have made a commitment not to be taxed by life or amass grievances, but to ever evolve. My peers often commiserate we were raised by a generation who had little capacity to ‘learn from’ their children. It is much more common now for new ideas (or those that each new generation believe they invented but which have been around since the dawn of time) to be adopted by older generations in their cutting edge form. It’s been said that beliefs are nothing more than ‘thoughts we keep thinking.’ In this way, our worldviews can be seen as jigsaw puzzles, one belief interlocked and fitted with dozens of others. Or better yet, as giant tapestries woven from many threads of belief. The thing is, it’s never finished. And we are our own weavers.            The fifth or final factor that could have an impact on narrowing the chasm would be what I call airtime . Returning to the example I cited earlier, that of the politicized Q-Tip and the face-mask-as-racial-profiling post seen on Facebook. It came from the usual suspect—one of many who seem intent to prove with every post—or virtual online breath, if you will—that the world is a shitty place. We’re talking everything from the last asinine thing an orange dictator might have uttered to a bloody dog being dragged across coarse asphalt. We’ve all experienced it—that image we can’t scroll fast enough to avoid, and then can never unsee. This type is not an Internet ‘troll,’ per se, but may suffer from extremely poor judgment. In defense of the ‘world-shittiness’ purveyors of social media, I will say many of them likely believe they are using the platform to expose or draw attention to underrepresented causes. However, a case could be made that they are, in fact, perpetuating them. Beyond the conversation to do with the ‘proper forum’ for such, there is the question of efficacy. We’ve all heard of the phenomenon of ‘copycat’ high speed chases and even school shootings. Another example from the lexicon of cultural milestones might be the failed War on Drugs of the '80s. The Romeo and Juliet effect is alive and well in modern culture. Due to the Law of Attraction, ‘energy flows where attention goes.’ Or put another way, what we put our attention on manifests. This is true for individuals, and societally via all forms of media. Consider the idea that the frequency of a problem is far from that of its solution. There just might be immeasurable value in fighting for rather than fighting against. Beating old, tired drums effects only perpetuation, whereas taking inspired action to move toward a solution can change the world.            It’s been said many of us are a walking grievances looking for a cause. And the current climate rewards the mentality. A climate of victimization and blaming has taken the place of the virtue of overcoming and emerging victorious despite circumstances. Personally, I recognize that all approaches work together, in order to keep everything in check, that all mindsets and approaches to effecting change have value. I really do say ‘Amen’ to all of it. Still, I can’t help but theorize that by recognizing our human compulsion to file mental grievances, my hunch is that progress would accelerate exponentially.             In this author’s estimation, by practicing judicious, convergent thinking, understanding perspective (also known as compassion,) exercising brain plasticity and rejecting the temptations of confirmation bias, many imaginary divides could be bridged. If more individuals adopted free-thinking in favor of the base drive to 'belong' or identify with a group at the expense of the 'other,' there would be fewer casualties. There would be no need to forge a common enemy. Evolutionary theory posits that any social phenomenon that has persisted over time serves the propagation of the species in some way. But there is catch-up time. As we evolve, obsolete institutions take their time falling by the wayside. Example: canine teeth. We can be smarter than our biology, and some would say that capacity is synonymous with being human.  If more individuals graduated from unproductive habits of thought that no longer serve them, once critical mass was reached, paradigms on the macro scale would follow suit. Sort of like ‘herd immunity’ from outdated thought forms. This is the way of dialectic.            Undoubtedly, the argument could be made that most cannot rise above their temperament or disposition. That DNA dictates a structural mindset, worldview, or ‘personality type’ that is set in stone. To this way of thinking, individuals appear to be bound by DNA to a type A or a Type B personality, to a distinct Enneagran profile, to their astrological sign by the stars or to their introverted nature by Carl Jung himself. But back to semantics. Each seemingly rigid chart can simply be thought of as a language—a way of looking at things; we are all complex amalgams of universal traits dictated by countless as yet mysterious factors. Further, epigenetics has told us for decades now that even DNA is malleable, more like clay than marble. We are all familiar with the shared role of nature and nurture on influencing genetic expression. Modern epigenetics indicates that every gene on one’s DNA strand can be expressed or repressed—squelched—depending on the methyl groups formed. These methyl groups are the malleable part, shaped by environment, habits, practices, diet and exercise regimes and…the chemicals regulated via our thought process. It is up to us whether those habits of thought are productive or destructive. The methyl groups we craft throughout life, like clay, those that express or squelch traits on our DNA strand, are what we pass on to our children in the moment of conception. Perhaps more inspiring is knowing we have an influence on the environment in which those children are raised—the values, morals, ethics, thought forms and principles they are exposed to. The implications are endless, especially in the intangible realm. Simple beliefs—about aging or love or money or how we culturally define success—are repeated by those who have observed the status quo, and thereby perpetuated as tropes, colloquialisms and limiting beliefs. By freeing ourselves from often-misguided sentiments, conventional wisdoms and understandings to which the mainstream has resigned, can we begin to create new paradigms. This is how we inch closer to our true human potential.            The characterization that many in society are comfortable with diversion is not a moralistic ‘call to action’ for humanity to reject materialism and superficiality and return to intrinsic values (though that would be nice.) Rather, it’s a gentle offering of perspective—one way to look at things. And this stolen, unforeseen moment of enforced isolation is the perfect opportunity for self-reflection and introspection. If we all recognized when we were on ‘autopilot,’ we might catch ourselves trapped in rut, a comfortable ‘habit of thought.’ We all have them! Most destructive thought patterns are actual neural circuits that can be disentangled. Not necessarily through hard work—mantras, positive affirmations taped to a mirror, or chanting while throwing a dead chicken over one shoulder. But by simply clearing the mind. It is during moments of quiet contemplation that our neural connections disentangle, leaving room for new, better thought forms. It would seem this is an elaborate sales pitch for the practice of meditation; it is not. Some quiet their minds by engaging in a sport like running; it is then that alpha waves replace reverie, or mental chatter, in the brain. Others achieve the same diminishment of linear thought while singing or playing guitar, allowing vibration to resonate through every cell of their bodies. I have been surrounded by fellow artists for decades; I count us fortunate for having had the opportunity to engage in the creative process regularly. When drawing or painting (from the model, a still life, or when plein aire painting on location) linear thought subsides and restorative alpha waves take over. Though I am a big fan of the creative process as personal catharsis and its larger impact on humanity, one need not have a studied craft to find the space where stillness, wellbeing and inner peace reside; anyone can indulge a stolen moment of what so sorely lacks in contemporary life: silence. Anyone—even those buried in diapers and chasing toddlers about can steal a moment here or there to align with their core essence, absent mind and ego. And in the end, self-care can only benefit those we serve. We simply have more to offer when we are in alignment. There is immeasurable value in the simple act of watching that subtle, nearly imperceptible flutter of a leaf, the dance of golden dapples of light thereupon, or simply listening to the subtle breeze—even if it stirs outside a dirty, snot-smudged window.

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DIVISIVENESS and the #coronaapocalypse

      For several years, I have toyed with writing a book on 'Healing Divisiveness,' or some variation on the theme. But hosting few convictions, zero answers, and a healthy resistance to stating anything remotely definitive, I've managed to jot down little more than outlines, the  beginnings of essays meant to become chapters, and the like. Whenever I've tried to write anything remotely academic or prescriptive in the past, I've always gotten bored (read:wanted to slit my wrists or jump out the nearest window) and gone back to my first love: narrative.This time around was no different.        So far, I have resisted attaching any significance to what some are calling the 'new normal,' as ushered in by the #Coronaapocalypse. I have heard many speculate about the shift that will take place societally, but I have reserved a 'wait-and-see' attitude. However, today, a confluence of factors inspired a few ideas which I thought I'd share as #foodforthought or, to some, maybe even #inspiration! It loosely fits into the theme of my pipe dream, the aforementioned book that will likely never be completed. Enjoy!

DIVISIVENESS
Healing a Fractured World From Within
            Divisiveness seems to be the word of the day. Most evident in the political arena, differing ideologies in recent years (or platforms, as the case may be) have led to nothing short of an impasse. Or more accurately, one standoff after another. Threats of a government shutdown blend seamlessly one into the next. No longer tempered by the lost art of rational discourse, these conflicts fester as seismic rage, revealing cultural fractures in a myriad of other areas—tiny fissures that have widened to rival the Grand Canyon, no bridge in sight. Each political party points the finger at the other for the current state of affairs, each administration blaming the last. Talking heads posit that the incorrigible conduct of our leaders began with Newt Gingritch or the Whitewater Investigation, or the spawning of Nancy Pelosi by aliens, with the inception of CNN or Fox News or mention of cigars and presidential penises being slathered across national headlines. If our representatives have lost the ability to see eye-to-eye or even cooperate, how can we be expected to?            I have always subscribed to the idea that change begins within. Michael Jackson suggested we all start with The Man In the Mirror to effect change. Mahatma Ghandi wisely counseled us to ‘be the change you wish to see in the world.’ We all know Ghandi is beyond reproach, in the way of Mother Theresa and Meryl Streep; the three can do no wrong. They are not just pillars, but—dare I say—a collective holy trinity of wisdom. And impeccable acting technique. Put clinically, the micro affects the macro when it comes to cultural change and paradigm shift.            The recent health crisis known as Covid-19, or conversely, quarantine, lockdown, or #Coronaapocalypse—take your pick—has served as a Rorschach test for the masses. Just yesterday, I spotted a post in my Facebook feed which managed, beyond reason, to make Q-Tips a political hot button while also linking protective face coverings (from medical grade K95s to your run of the mill stoner bandana) to racial profiling. Each added stressor to daily life seems to reawaken a sleeping giant, signaling not progress or even a pendulum swing, but outright regression. There are myriad aspects to the bobbing corpse of cultural strife, and an equal number of conversations to be had. Many are speculating about the significance of this moment in time, the challenges this pandemic poses worldwide. They predict the ‘big shift’ that will result, the social and cultural evolution that will take place. Hence the Rorschach test analogy. Personally, my own life challenges of late have preemptively forged a broadened perspective, one that has compelled me to resist projecting any significance on this impasse. Or in the spirit of this essay, the crisis/opportunity it represents. J Without a grain of cynicism, I have heard myself say, ‘I have a wait-and-see attitude; folks are pretty slow to change. As is society.’ If that sounds grim, let me add that I one hundred percent believe as Dr. King did: that although the arc of the moral universe is long, it does bend toward justice. I regularly point out the ways in which we are evolving as a species, however slowly. I am also enjoying the reduced traffic, better air quality, lower crime rates and (almost) reasonable rents in L.A. that have resulted from said pandemic, but these shifts are regional and far from permanent.            What has occurred to me in all of this is what I find most prescient, and what inspires the premise of this article. My entire adult life has been devoted to my craft—that of being an artist and a writer. Though no true artist or author wishes to identify an agenda, I did realize in my twenties that the umbrella informing all my work, regardless of concept or theme, was a desire to simply open eyes, hearts or minds. To many things—the multiple levels beyond the surface of any given moment, our interconnectedness, the metaphysical or spiritual aspect of biological life. But beyond those objectives, another aspect driving my work occurred to me in witnessing various reactions to the isolation demanded by this moment in time: my entire life I’ve touted the value of introspection and self-reflection. Some have called the current lockdown ‘an introvert’s dream.’ Guilty as charged. Being a freelancer who works from home anyway, and having been in self-imposed isolation due to the aforementioned health challenges, I have heard myself jest that very little has changed in my life, other than the ability to score toilet paper without resorting to the black market.            Ironically, the social distancing now required by law has forced many to slow down. This, in turn, has forced them to spend time with their own thoughts. For some, this means a return to their true essence or childhood self; to others, it means anxiety, panic and outright terror. ‘Doers’ are confronted with guilt for not accomplishing enough, for being self-indulgent or lazy. Speaking for myself, I can’t help but see this moment as an opportunity for individuals to get to know cobwebby corners of their minds, to witness their own thoughts and feelings without diversion. The requisite contemplation is an opportunity to separate mind chatter from spirit and parse ego-driven, mind-dominated thought forms from a pure state of being. Or better yet—to appreciate the flutter of a leaf and the dapple of light that’s landed on it, or the simple sounds of silence. How could the resulting stillness (otherwise known as wellbeing or inner peace) not collectively impact the world on a macro level? At the risk of quoting a 1970s Ginsu knife commercial, don’t answer yet; it’s rhetorical.            Many of the aforementioned divides could be bridged in society if we took the opportunity to do so—this opportunity. This moment of silence and stillness. Yes, the bridge begins with the person in the mirror and theoretically extends to tropes, collective thought forms and paradigms—even institutionalized dogmas on a mass level. Among the mental divides one could pinpoint that fuel cultural strife: the obvious political divide (Democrat vs. Republican,) the liberal versus conservative mindset, the debate between science and religion (which I correlate to underlying Empirical or Rational worldviews, respectively) and Western Medicine versus Eastern, (which correlate, arguably, with mechanistic or holistic models.) Then there’s the culturally pervasive divide between masculine and feminine in all aspects of society, from the conceptual to the practical, informing the current shift from an oppressive model of misogynistic patriarchy toward gender equality. There’s the right brain sensibility versus left, ageism versus youthism (or ‘Boomers versus Millennials’) capitalism versus socialism, all begging to be reconciled. These examples of opposing forces do not constitute a laundry list of grievances or even societal ills, but they are the tip of an iceberg. And now the clincher: they’re also illusions.            The thing is, everything’s in the semantics. The ideas are diametrically opposed due primarily to the insufficiency of language and a lack of perspective .            Socrates introduced what is now known as the ‘Socratic method.’ He found that if enough questions were asked, any definitive statement could be disproven. Example: the sky is not in fact blue; it appears so but only at certain times of day and subject to conditions like lighting and atmosphere. An apple is not always an apple: sometimes it’s a seed, or in complete decay. All its particles are subject to what is known as flux, or time and circumstance. Similarly, one could say that all accepted empirical fact is based solely on consensus. The former concepts were philosophical. But modern quantum mechanics confirms the role of the observer in all perception. Without an observer, waves do not fix as particles but remain in the field of pure potential. The narrow margin of perception that allows for consensus in human perception counts a very specific chemical balance among its requirements. If that precise balance of neural transmitters, peptides or hormones is off one iota, a wall can breathe or a shelf of yogurt in the supermarket can appear to extend to eternity, each stack of plastic containers arranged in perfect pyramids as far as the eye can see. Anyone who’s done shrooms or acid knows that. (Side note: author does not recommend dropping acid in a supermarket.)            Humans rely, arguably, on five senses (though science is beginning to acknowledge more than the traditional five) for our brains to filter, process and interpret stimuli. However, if a fly with five eyes comprised of millions of photoreceptors enters a room, it will experience the environment very differently from you or I—with a nearly 360 degree cone of vision. If a dolphin enters the room (never mind how) it will rely, among other senses, on sonar to orient itself—a sense we humans don’t even possess.            None of this is controversial or debatable (unless you are Socrates or generally an instigator) but in case you fail to connect the dots or see how any of this applies to the cultural divide, let me spell it out: the role of perception is paramount. Reality is subjective. So why would abstract concepts (morals, ethics, codes, ideas, values) be any different than the realm of the tangible? When asked to recount a purse snatching, every member of a test pool invariably describes the assailant as wearing a hat or pair of Vans Slip-ons of a different color than those reported by the other subjects. This fact is the reason I spend sleepless nights dreading the moment I am asked to participate in a police lineup. Similarly, I cannot imagine for one moment taking on the responsibility of being a judge, so sure of—well, anything definitive—as to have a hand in another’s fate. The play and film ‘Doubt’ beautifully and succinctly illustrate the hubris behind such confidence. In the context of cultural divisiveness, recognizing the role of perspective, across the board, is but one factor that could prove key to bridging it. Incidentally, another bi-product of broadened perspective is compassion. If only more of us practiced it.            The second factor we could all consider in order to synthesize seemingly opposing ideas is this: they are really only diametrically opposed due to what I call the Grand Illusion : the human compulsion to create opposites. This ‘black-and-white’ mindset is most dominant in Western culture: the drive to label everything as good, bad, right or wrong, from one’s sexual orientation to, well…a Q-Tip. To attribute good or evil, to apply wings or horns. Perhaps we could all benefit from a more eastern understanding that the Yin cannot exist without the Yang, the darkness without the light. That balance and harmony are innate when both are assigned value. That everything in life is neutral except our response to it; every crisis is an opportunity in disguise.            The Kybalion, based on Hermetic principles that predate Christ, speaks of gamuts. Rather than polar opposites, most concepts can be thought to exist on a continuum with extremes. Though the extremes are on opposite ends of a conceptual stick, they are not mutually exclusive. When it comes to any aspect of the human condition, like the gamut from love to fear, compassion to intolerance, or intellectualism to emotionality, most of us have experienced the full range at one time or another. Much as the body seeks homeostasis, the mind seeks balance. And we know when we are out of whack.  Both ends of any mental stick exist in all of us; I would posit that this reservoir of shared experience is innate to our humanity. The ability to tap into it explains Meryl Streep, for one.            The third phenomenon we might be wise to rise above, culturally speaking, is that of confirmation bias . It is as pervasive as gravity, and potentially just as dangerous.. Like gravity, its tug on humanity is as old as time. In the fourth century BC, Thucydides wrote of treason during the Pelopponesian war: ‘... for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.’ Simply put, confirmation bias is the sociological principle that people tend to look for, interpret, favor and recall that which confirms existing beliefs and prejudices. Imagine a sixteen year-old who throughout childhood has heard his father complaining about ‘those damn Asian drivers,’ or ‘women drivers,’ and internalized the stereotype. When he gets his license and is first cut off on the freeway, he will speed up to see what an idiot looks like. If the driver happens to be Asian, or female, he will file it with his current worldview, bias effectively confirmed. If the driver is neither Asian nor female, the moment will be forgotten. Confirmation bias manifests in many ways, from ‘cherry picking’ data to rhetoric to the editorial choice of what to give mental ‘airtime’ to. It is most often subconscious. But practiced demagogues expertly wield their understanding of its effect; in fact, they rely on it to manipulate the masses. It is a common sentiment that most are on ‘autopilot.’ Rather than developing a MetaSelf, exercising the ‘conscious observer’ that witnesses thoughts and trains them to be more productive, they remain preoccupied with the almighty dollar, keeping up w/the Jones’s, shopping at Sephora and injecting Sculptra into one or more body parts to get more ‘likes’ on Instagram.            A meme that got my attention recently stated: I have configured the parental control settings on my parents’ TV to disallow Fox News, and I truly believe this is what will save the world. I got a good laugh out of it, but also recognized its ring of truth. We are all guilty of submerging ourselves in propaganda that confirms our biases, or otherwise limiting our bubble to likeminded individuals. I am admittedly more likely to watch CNN or MSNBC than Fox News. I do believe that (conspiracy theories and ‘fake news’ aside) the truth is largely available to the masses. But it requires sifting through all reliable outlets, from MSNBC and CNN through Network News and Fox News to Al Jazeera, and judiciously distilling the information. In my twenties, before I was TOFTS and had more patience, I regularly tuned into the Rush Limbaugh show to remain abreast of all mindsets, with some innate understanding that I should resist settling into an echo chamber. That, or I was simply a glutton for punishment.            The fourth factor worth investigating (if I were in the business of persuading) would be the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance . When confronted with new information that contradicts or conflicts with old beliefs, we experience tension. This anxiety accounts for the digging in of heels, the refuge we take in the all-too-easy shelter of confirmation bias, and nothing less than shouting matches in the halls of the Capitol building. It is simply ego (synonymous with both mind-dominance and pride, arguably) that drives us to protect our ideas and beliefs at all costs—to be right. But the rare, evolved individual recognizes that all tension is an opportunity for learning and growth once resolved. Conflicting ideas become synthesized according to Hegel’s model of dialectic: thesis, antithesis and finally synthesis. Such a process can be seen as vital to all growth or evolution on both the micro and macro levels. In storytelling—a basic human drive, the theme imparted is categorically a product of conflict resolution. This innate understanding may be what drives a cultural addiction to drama, explaining the horrible turn of events that is reality television. And yet, if tension and conflict are the gateway to growth and evolution, where lies the problem with divisiveness? There may be no problem at all; discourse and conversation drive social reform. All mindsets play a part, from those of militant activists to pacifists, from those who work ‘with the system’ to those who fight it. But it’s clear most of us would prefer to see the progress enacted with a bit more civility. While understanding the role of ‘righteous indignation’ and ‘rage against the machine,’ we could begin to return to a climate where new ideas are not threatening and healthy discourse is a virtue.             I am constantly inspired by those individuals who take any opportunity to broaden their perspective, to expand their minds. Those intellectually curious seekers who have made a commitment not to be taxed by life or amass grievances, but to ever evolve. My peers often commiserate we were raised by a generation who had little capacity to ‘learn from’ their children. It is much more common now for new ideas (or those that each new generation believe they invented but which have been around since the dawn of time) to be adopted by older generations in their cutting edge form. It’s been said that beliefs are nothing more than ‘thoughts we keep thinking.’ In this way, our worldviews can be seen as jigsaw puzzles, one belief interlocked and fitted with dozens of others. Or better yet, as giant tapestries woven from many threads of belief. The thing is, it’s never finished. And we are our own weavers.            The fifth or final factor that could have an impact on narrowing the chasm would be what I call airtime . Returning to the example I cited earlier, that of the politicized Q-Tip and the face-mask-as-racial-profiling post seen on Facebook. It came from the usual suspect—one of many who seem intent to prove with every post—or virtual online breath, if you will—that the world is a shitty place. We’re talking everything from the last asinine thing an orange dictator might have uttered to a bloody dog being dragged across coarse asphalt. We’ve all experienced it—that image we can’t scroll fast enough to avoid, and then can never unsee. This type is not an Internet ‘troll,’ per se, but may suffer from extremely poor judgment. In defense of the ‘world-shittiness’ purveyors of social media, I will say many of them likely believe they are using the platform to expose or draw attention to underrepresented causes. However, a case could be made that they are, in fact, perpetuating them. Beyond the conversation to do with the ‘proper forum’ for such, there is the question of efficacy. We’ve all heard of the phenomenon of ‘copycat’ high speed chases and even school shootings. Another example from the lexicon of cultural milestones might be the failed War on Drugs of the '80s. The Romeo and Juliet effect is alive and well in modern culture. Due to the Law of Attraction, ‘energy flows where attention goes.’ Or put another way, what we put our attention on manifests. This is true for individuals, and societally via all forms of media. Consider the idea that the frequency of a problem is far from that of its solution. There just might be immeasurable value in fighting for rather than fighting against. Beating old, tired drums effects only perpetuation, whereas taking inspired action to move toward a solution can change the world.            It’s been said many of us are a walking grievances looking for a cause. And the current climate rewards the mentality. A climate of victimization and blaming has taken the place of the virtue of overcoming and emerging victorious despite circumstances. Personally, I recognize that all approaches work together, in order to keep everything in check, that all mindsets and approaches to effecting change have value. I really do say ‘Amen’ to all of it. Still, I can’t help but theorize that by recognizing our human compulsion to file mental grievances, my hunch is that progress would accelerate exponentially.             In this author’s estimation, by practicing judicious, convergent thinking, understanding perspective (also known as compassion,) exercising brain plasticity and rejecting the temptations of confirmation bias, many imaginary divides could be bridged. If more individuals adopted free-thinking in favor of the base drive to 'belong' or identify with a group at the expense of the 'other,' there would be fewer casualties. There would be no need to forge a common enemy. Evolutionary theory posits that any social phenomenon that has persisted over time serves the propagation of the species in some way. But there is catch-up time. As we evolve, obsolete institutions take their time falling by the wayside. Example: canine teeth. We can be smarter than our biology, and some would say that capacity is synonymous with being human.  If more individuals graduated from unproductive habits of thought that no longer serve them, once critical mass was reached, paradigms on the macro scale would follow suit. Sort of like ‘herd immunity’ from outdated thought forms. This is the way of dialectic.            Undoubtedly, the argument could be made that most cannot rise above their temperament or disposition. That DNA dictates a structural mindset, worldview, or ‘personality type’ that is set in stone. To this way of thinking, individuals appear to be bound by DNA to a type A or a Type B personality, to a distinct Enneagran profile, to their astrological sign by the stars or to their introverted nature by Carl Jung himself. But back to semantics. Each seemingly rigid chart can simply be thought of as a language—a way of looking at things; we are all complex amalgams of universal traits dictated by countless as yet mysterious factors. Further, epigenetics has told us for decades now that even DNA is malleable, more like clay than marble. We are all familiar with the shared role of nature and nurture on influencing genetic expression. Modern epigenetics indicates that every gene on one’s DNA strand can be expressed or repressed—squelched—depending on the methyl groups formed. These methyl groups are the malleable part, shaped by environment, habits, practices, diet and exercise regimes and…the chemicals regulated via our thought process. It is up to us whether those habits of thought are productive or destructive. The methyl groups we craft throughout life, like clay, those that express or squelch traits on our DNA strand, are what we pass on to our children in the moment of conception. Perhaps more inspiring is knowing we have an influence on the environment in which those children are raised—the values, morals, ethics, thought forms and principles they are exposed to. The implications are endless, especially in the intangible realm. Simple beliefs—about aging or love or money or how we culturally define success—are repeated by those who have observed the status quo, and thereby perpetuated as tropes, colloquialisms and limiting beliefs. By freeing ourselves from often-misguided sentiments, conventional wisdoms and understandings to which the mainstream has resigned, can we begin to create new paradigms. This is how we inch closer to our true human potential.            The characterization that many in society are comfortable with diversion is not a moralistic ‘call to action’ for humanity to reject materialism and superficiality and return to intrinsic values (though that would be nice.) Rather, it’s a gentle offering of perspective—one way to look at things. And this stolen, unforeseen moment of enforced isolation is the perfect opportunity for self-reflection and introspection. If we all recognized when we were on ‘autopilot,’ we might catch ourselves trapped in rut, a comfortable ‘habit of thought.’ We all have them! Most destructive thought patterns are actual neural circuits that can be disentangled. Not necessarily through hard work—mantras, positive affirmations taped to a mirror, or chanting while throwing a dead chicken over one shoulder. But by simply clearing the mind. It is during moments of quiet contemplation that our neural connections disentangle, leaving room for new, better thought forms. It would seem this is an elaborate sales pitch for the practice of meditation; it is not. Some quiet their minds by engaging in a sport like running; it is then that alpha waves replace reverie, or mental chatter, in the brain. Others achieve the same diminishment of linear thought while singing or playing guitar, allowing vibration to resonate through every cell of their bodies. I have been surrounded by fellow artists for decades; I count us fortunate for having had the opportunity to engage in the creative process regularly. When drawing or painting (from the model, a still life, or when plein aire painting on location) linear thought subsides and restorative alpha waves take over. Though I am a big fan of the creative process as personal catharsis and its larger impact on humanity, one need not have a studied craft to find the space where stillness, wellbeing and inner peace reside; anyone can indulge a stolen moment of what so sorely lacks in contemporary life: silence. Anyone—even those buried in diapers and chasing toddlers about can steal a moment here or there to align with their core essence, absent mind and ego. And in the end, self-care can only benefit those we serve. We simply have more to offer when we are in alignment. There is immeasurable value in the simple act of watching that subtle, nearly imperceptible flutter of a leaf, the dance of golden dapples of light thereupon, or simply listening to the subtle breeze—even if it stirs outside a dirty, snot-smudged window.

DIVISIVENESS- Healing a Fractured World From Within

       For several years, I have toyed with writing a book on 'Healing Divisiveness,' or some variation on the theme. But hosting few convictions, zero answers, and a healthy resistance to stating anything remotely definitive, I've managed to jot down little more than outlines, the  beginnings of essays meant to become chapters, and the like. Whenever I've tried to write anything remotely academic or prescriptive in the past, I've always gotten bored (read:wanted to slit my wrists or jump out the nearest window) and gone back to my first love: narrative.This time around was no different.        So far, I have resisted attaching any significance to what some are calling the 'new normal,' as ushered in by the #Coronaapocalypse. I have heard many speculate about the shift that will take place societally, but I have reserved a 'wait-and-see' attitude. However, today, a confluence of factors inspired a few ideas which I thought I'd share as #foodforthought or, to some, maybe even #inspiration! It loosely fits into the theme of my pipe dream, the aforementioned book that will likely never be completed. Enjoy!
DIVISIVENESS Healing a Fractured World from Within
            Divisiveness seems to be the word of the day. Most evident in the political arena, differing ideologies in recent years (or platforms, as the case may be) have led to nothing short of an impasse. Or more accurately, one standoff after another. Threats of a government shutdown blend seamlessly one into the next. No longer tempered by the lost art of rational discourse, these conflicts fester as seismic rage, revealing cultural fractures in a myriad of other areas—tiny fissures that have widened to rival the Grand Canyon, no bridge in sight. Each political party points the finger at the other for the current state of affairs, each administration blaming the last. Talking heads posit that the incorrigible conduct of our leaders began with Newt Gingritch or the Whitewater Investigation, or the spawning of Nancy Pelosi by aliens, with the inception of CNN or Fox News or mention of cigars and presidential penises being slathered across national headlines. If our representatives have lost the ability to see eye-to-eye or even cooperate, how can we be expected to?            I have always subscribed to the idea that change begins within. Michael Jackson suggested we all start with The Man In the Mirror to effect change. Mahatma Ghandi wisely counseled us to ‘be the change you wish to see in the world.’ We all know Ghandi is beyond reproach, in the way of Mother Theresa and Meryl Streep; the three can do no wrong. They are not just pillars, but—dare I say—a collective holy trinity of wisdom. And impeccable acting technique. Put clinically, the micro affects the macro when it comes to cultural change and paradigm shift.            The recent health crisis known as Covid-19, or conversely, quarantine, lockdown, or #Coronaapocalypse—take your pick—has served as a Rorschach test for the masses. Just yesterday, I spotted a post in my Facebook feed which managed, beyond reason, to make Q-Tips a political hot button while also linking protective face coverings (from medical grade K95s to your run of the mill stoner bandana) to racial profiling. Each added stressor to daily life seems to reawaken a sleeping giant, signaling not progress or even a pendulum swing, but outright regression. There are myriad aspects to the bobbing corpse of cultural strife, and an equal number of conversations to be had. Many are speculating about the significance of this moment in time, the challenges this pandemic poses worldwide. They predict the ‘big shift’ that will result, the social and cultural evolution that will take place. Hence the Rorschach test analogy. Personally, my own life challenges of late have preemptively forged a broadened perspective, one that has compelled me to resist projecting any significance on this impasse. Or in the spirit of this essay, the crisis/opportunity it represents. J Without a grain of cynicism, I have heard myself say, ‘I have a wait-and-see attitude; folks are pretty slow to change. As is society.’ If that sounds grim, let me add that I one hundred percent believe as Dr. King did: that although the arc of the moral universe is long, it does bend toward justice. I regularly point out the ways in which we are evolving as a species, however slowly. I am also enjoying the reduced traffic, better air quality and lowered rents in L.A. that have resulted from said pandemic, but these shifts are regional and far from permanent.            What has occurred to me in all of this is what I find most prescient, and what inspires the premise of this article. My entire adult life has been devoted to my craft—that of being an artist and a writer. Though no true artist or author wishes to identify an agenda, I did realize in my twenties that the umbrella informing all my work, regardless of concept or theme, was a desire to simply open eyes, hearts or minds. To many things—the multiple levels beyond the surface of any given moment, our interconnectedness, the metaphysical or spiritual aspect of biological life. But beyond those objectives, another aspect driving my work occurred to me in witnessing various reactions to the isolation demanded by this moment in time: my entire life I’ve touted the value of introspection and self-reflection. Some have called the current lockdown ‘an introvert’s dream.’ Guilty as charged. Being a freelancer who works from home anyway, and having been in self-imposed isolation due to the aforementioned health challenges, I have heard myself jest that very little has changed in my life, other than the ability to score toilet paper without resorting to the black market.            Ironically, the social distancing now required by law has forced many to slow down. This, in turn, has forced them to spend time with their own thoughts. For some, this means a return to their true essence or childhood self; to others, it means anxiety, panic and outright terror. ‘Doers’ are confronted with guilt for not accomplishing enough, for being self-indulgent or lazy. Speaking for myself, I can’t help but see this moment as an opportunity for individuals to get to know cobwebby corners of their minds, to witness their own thoughts and feelings without diversion. The requisite contemplation is an opportunity to separate mind chatter from spirit and parse ego-driven, mind-dominated thought forms from a pure state of being. Or better yet—to appreciate the flutter of a leaf and the dapple of light that’s landed on it, or the simple sounds of silence. How could the resulting stillness (otherwise known as wellbeing or inner peace) not collectively impact the world on a macro level? At the risk of quoting a 1970s Ginsu knife commercial, don’t answer yet; it’s rhetorical.            Many of the aforementioned divides could be bridged in society if we took the opportunity to do so—this opportunity. This moment of silence and stillness. Yes, the bridge begins with the person in the mirror and theoretically extends to tropes, collective thought forms and paradigms—even institutionalized dogmas on a mass level. Among the mental divides one could pinpoint that fuel cultural strife: the obvious political divide (Democrat vs. Republican,) the liberal versus conservative mindset, the debate between science and religion (which I correlate to underlying Empirical or Rational worldviews, respectively) and Western Medicine versus Eastern, (which correlate, arguably, with mechanistic or holistic models.) Then there’s the culturally pervasive divide between masculine and feminine in all aspects of society, from the conceptual to the practical, informing the current shift from an oppressive model of misogynistic patriarchy toward gender equality. There’s the right brain sensibility versus left, ageism versus youthism (or ‘Boomers versus Millennials’) capitalism versus socialism, all begging to be reconciled. These examples of opposing forces do not constitute a laundry list of grievances or even societal ills, but they are the tip of an iceberg. And now the clincher: they’re also illusions.            The thing is, everything’s in the semantics. The ideas are diametrically opposed due primarily to the insufficiency of language and a lack of perspective.            Socrates introduced what is now known as the ‘Socratic method.’ He found that if enough questions were asked, any definitive statement could be disproven. Example: the sky is not in fact blue; it appears so but only at certain times of day and subject to conditions like lighting and atmosphere. An apple is not always an apple: sometimes it’s a seed, or in complete decay. All its particles are subject to what is known as flux, or time and circumstance. Similarly, one could say that all accepted empirical fact is based solely on consensus. The former concepts were philosophical. But modern quantum mechanics confirms the role of the observer in all perception. Without an observer, waves do not fix as particles but remain in the field of pure potential. The narrow margin of perception that allows for consensus in human perception counts a very specific chemical balance among its requirements. If that precise balance of neural transmitters, peptides or hormones is off one iota, a wall can breathe or a shelf of yogurt in the supermarket can appear to extend to eternity, each stack of plastic containers arranged in perfect pyramids as far as the eye can see. Anyone who’s done shrooms or acid knows that. (Side note: author does not recommend dropping acid in a supermarket.)            Humans rely, arguably, on five senses (though science is beginning to acknowledge more than the traditional five) for our brains to filter, process and interpret stimuli. However, if a fly with five eyes comprised of millions of photoreceptors enters a room, it will experience the environment very differently from you or I—with a nearly 360 degree cone of vision. If a dolphin enters the room (never mind how) it will rely, among other senses, on sonar to orient itself—a sense we humans don’t even possess.            None of this is controversial or debatable (unless you are Socrates or generally an instigator) but in case you fail to connect the dots or see how any of this applies to the cultural divide, let me spell it out: the role of perception is paramount. Reality is subjective. So why would abstract concepts (morals, ethics, codes, ideas, values) be any different than the realm of the tangible? When asked to recount a purse snatching, every member of a test pool invariably describes the assailant as wearing a hat or pair of Vans Slip-ons of a different color than those reported by the other subjects. This fact is the reason I spend sleepless nights dreading the moment I am asked to participate in a police lineup. Similarly, I cannot imagine for one moment taking on the responsibility of being a judge, so sure of—well, anything definitive—as to have a hand in another’s fate. The play and film ‘Doubt’ beautifully and succinctly illustrate the hubris behind such confidence. In the context of cultural divisiveness, recognizing the role of perspective, across the board, is but one factor that could prove key to bridging it. Incidentally, another bi-product of broadened perspective is compassion. If only more of us practiced it.            The second factor we could all consider in order to synthesize seemingly opposing ideas is this: they are really only diametrically opposed due to what I call the Grand Illusion: the human compulsion to create opposites. This ‘black-and-white’ mindset is most dominant in Western culture: the drive to label everything as good, bad, right or wrong, from one’s sexual orientation to, well…a Q-Tip. To attribute good or evil, to apply wings or horns. Perhaps we could all benefit from a more eastern understanding that the Yin cannot exist without the Yang, the darkness without the light. That balance and harmony are innate when both are assigned value. That everything in life is neutral except our response to it; every crisis is an opportunity in disguise.            The Kybalion, based on Hermetic principles that predate Christ, speaks of gamuts. Rather than polar opposites, most concepts can be thought to exist on a continuum with extremes. Though the extremes are on opposite ends of a conceptual stick, they are not mutually exclusive. When it comes to any aspect of the human condition, like the gamut from love to fear, compassion to intolerance, or intellectualism to emotionality, most of us have experienced the full range at one time or another. Much as the body seeks homeostasis, the mind seeks balance. And we know when we are out of whack.  Both ends of any mental stick exist in all of us; I would posit that this reservoir of shared experience is innate to our humanity. The ability to tap into it explains Meryl Streep, for one.            The third phenomenon we might be wise to rise above, culturally speaking, is that of confirmation bias. It is as pervasive as gravity, and equally dangerous when not respected. Like gravity, its tug on humanity is as old as time. In the fourth century BC, Thucydides wrote of treason during the Pelopponesian war: ‘... for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.’ Simply put, confirmation bias is the sociological principle that people tend to look for, interpret, favor and recall that which confirms existing beliefs and prejudices. Imagine a sixteen year-old who throughout childhood has heard his father complaining about ‘those damn Asian drivers,’ or ‘women drivers,’ and internalized the stereotype. When he gets his license and is first cut off on the freeway, he will speed up to see what an idiot looks like. If the driver happens to be Asian, or female, he will file it with his current worldview, bias effectively confirmed. If the driver is neither Asian nor female, the moment will be forgotten. Confirmation bias manifests in many ways, from ‘cherry picking’ data to rhetoric to the editorial choice of what to give mental ‘airtime’ to. It is most often subconscious. But practiced demagogues expertly wield their understanding of its effect; in fact, they rely on it to manipulate the masses. It is a common sentiment that most are on ‘autopilot.’ Rather than developing a MetaSelf, exercising the ‘conscious observer’ that witnesses thoughts and trains them to be more productive, they remain preoccupied with the almighty dollar, keeping up w/the Joneses, shopping at Sephora and injecting Sculptra into one or more body parts to get more ‘likes’ on Instagram.            The fourth and final factor worth investigating (if I were in the business of persuading) would be the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. When confronted with new information that  contradicts or conflicts with old beliefs, we experience tension. This anxiety accounts for the digging in of heels, the refuge we take in the all-too-easy shelter of confirmation bias, and nothing less than shouting matches in the halls of the Capitol building. It is simply ego (synonymous with both mind-dominance and pride, arguably) that drives us to protect our ideas and beliefs at all costs—to be right. But the rare, evolved individual recognizes that all tension is an opportunity for learning and growth once resolved. Conflicting ideas become synthesized according to Hegel’s model of dialectic: thesis, antithesis and finally synthesis. Such a process can be seen as vital to all growth or evolution on both the micro and macro levels. In storytelling, a basic human drive, the theme imparted is categorically a product of conflict resolution. This innate understanding may be what drives a cultural addiction to drama, explaining the horrible turn of events that is reality television. And yet, if tension and conflict are the gateway to growth and evolution, where is the problem with divisiveness? There may be no problem at all; discourse and conversation drive social reform. All mindsets play a part, from militant activists to pacifists, from those who work ‘with the system’ to those who fight it. But it’s clear most of us would prefer to see the progress enacted with a bit more civility. To see the return to a climate where new ideas are not threatening and healthy discourse is a virtue.             I am constantly inspired by those individuals who take any opportunity to broaden their perspective, to expand their minds. Those intellectually curious seekers who have made a commitment not to be taxed by life or accumulate grievances, but to ever evolve. My peers often commiserate we were raised by a generation who had little capacity to ‘learn from’ their children. It is much more common now for new thought forms to be adopted by older generations. It’s been said that beliefs are nothing more than ‘thoughts we keep thinking.’ In this way, our worldviews can be seen as jigsaw puzzles, one belief interlocked and fitted with dozens of others. Or better yet, as giant tapestries woven from many threads of belief. The thing is, it’s never finished. And we are our own weavers.            In this author’s estimation, by practicing judicious, convergent thinking, understanding perspective (also known as compassion) and rejecting the temptation of confirmation bias, many imaginary divides can be bridged. If more individuals graduated from unproductive habits of thought that no longer serve them, once critical mass is reached, paradigms on the macro scale would follow suit. Sort of like ‘herd immunity’ from outdated thought forms. This is the way of dialectic.            Undoubtedly, the argument could be made that most cannot rise above their temperament or disposition. That DNA dictates a structural mindset, worldview, or ‘personality type’ that is set in stone. To this way of thinking, individuals appear to be bound by DNA to a type A or a Type B personality, to a distinct Enneagran profile, to their astrological sign by the stars or to their introverted nature by Carl Jung himself. But back to semantics. Each seemingly rigid chart can simply be thought of as a language—a way of looking at things; we are all complex amalgams of universal traits dictated by countless as yet mysterious factors. Further, epigenetics has told us for decades now that even DNA is malleable, more like clay than marble. We are all familiar with the shared role of nature and nurture on influencing genetic expression. Modern epigenetics indicates that every gene on one’s DNA strand can be expressed or repressed—squelched—depending on the methyl groups formed. These methyl groups are the malleable part, shaped by environment, habits, practices, diet and exercise regimes and…the chemicals regulated via our thought process. It is up to us whether those habits of thought are productive or destructive. The methyl groups we craft throughout life, like clay, those that express or squelch traits on our DNA strand, are what we pass on to our children in the moment of conception. Perhaps more inspiring is knowing we have an influence on the environment in which those children are raised—the values, morals, ethics, thought forms and principles they are exposed to. The implications are endless, especially in the intangible realm. Simple beliefs—about aging or love or money or how we culturally define success—are repeated by those who have observed the status quo, and thereby perpetuated as tropes, colloquialisms and limiting beliefs. By freeing ourselves from often-misguided sentiments, conventional wisdoms and understandings to which the mainstream has resigned, can we begin to create new paradigms. This is how we inch closer to our true human potential.            The characterization that many in society are comfortable with diversion is not a moralistic ‘call to action’ for humanity to reject materialism and superficiality and return to intrinsic values (though that would be nice.) Rather, it’s a gentle offering of perspective—one way to look at things. And this stolen, unforeseen moment of enforced isolation is the perfect opportunity for self-reflection and introspection. If we all recognized when we were on ‘autopilot,’ we might catch ourselves trapped in rut, a comfortable ‘habit of thought.’ We all have them! Most destructive thought patterns are actual neural circuits that can be disentangled. Not necessarily through hard work—mantras, positive affirmations taped to a mirror, or chanting while throwing a dead chicken over one shoulder. But by simply clearing the mind. It is during moments of quiet contemplation that our neural connections disentangle, leaving room for new, better thought forms. It would seem this is an elaborate sales pitch for the practice of meditation; it is not. Some quiet their minds by engaging in a sport like running; it is then that alpha waves replace reverie, or mental chatter, in the brain. Others achieve the same diminishment of linear thought while singing or playing guitar, allowing vibration to resonate through every cell of their bodies. I have been surrounded by fellow artists for decades; I count us fortunate for having had the opportunity to engage in the creative process regularly. When drawing or painting (from the model, a still life, or when plein aire painting on location) linear thought subsides and restorative alpha waves take over. Though I am a big fan of the creative process as personal catharsis and its larger impact on humanity, one need not have a studied craft to find the space where stillness, wellbeing and inner peace reside; anyone can indulge a stolen moment of what so sorely lacks in contemporary life: silence. Anyone—even those buried in diapers and chasing toddlers about can steal a moment here or there to align with their core essence, absent mind and ego. And in the end, self-care can only benefit those we serve. We simply have more to offer when we are in alignment. There is immeasurable value in the simple act of watching that subtle, nearly imperceptible flutter of a leaf, the dance of golden dapples of light thereupon, or simply listening to the subtle breeze—even if it stirs outside a dirty, snot-smudged window.

Here is the opening of my latest work, a Mythic Fiction r...

Here is the opening of my latest work, a Mythic Fiction reimagining of Icarus's fall from glory, and the fictional demigod Amitayus who plucks him from the waters of the Aegean. It is an epic love story and an inspirational tale of the journey we all share- that of discovering our divinity.

If you enjoy the sample, EMail me through the blog and I will send the full MS.

INTRODUCTION
            For ages untold, mortals have sought in vain to comprehend the gods. The words of men have ever fallen short of portraying the ineffable, insufficient to paint the awesome power, beauty and terror of the Celestial domain. Mt. Olympus was but an invention—an idea kings and peasants alike could grasp, one that satisfied earthly sensibilities. But verily the gods dwelt in the ethers, bodiless, invisible to men lest they chose to materialize on the lower planes. It was not as mortals imagined, the council of gods conferring about some chess table in the sky, thumbing long, white beards; the council was merely the silent communion of Celestial entities. It was only when visiting Earth in physical form that the gods found themselves subject to the terrible vanity man has ascribed them—the capricious, tempestuous wrath that earned them infamy.
            Man has ever muddled the line between the ethereal realm and that of Earth, further confounding the nature of the universe. Since the dawn of man’s existence, mortal charlatans have masqueraded as gods in self-aggrandizement, ambition or greed, chiseling themselves a name in history. Others, in the mortal quest for glory or power or redemption, have claimed divine heritage, fashioning demigods of mortal heroes. Usurping power or prestige from Celestial forces has cemented dictators, even dynasties, since the dawn of time. But the virtue is stolen; in truth, all of creation is made of the same stuff—stardust. There is divinity in all of us…

Chapter One
            The goddess Dianora had never encountered a mortal in all her time on the seashore. When one happened upon her, it was mere chance—or destiny—that sealed the irreversible consequence.            Dianora visited Earth no more or less than any other deity. She kept a low profile when she did, hiding out in a secluded cove along the immaculate beaches of Milos. Other gods made themselves known from afar, unleashing their wrath in the form of plagues or natural disasters. Still others, according to the lore of men, took physical form and ravaged mortal women or took them as brides. They asserted their dominion by flaunting unearthly beauty, soliciting adoration or terror. Dianora felt compelled to engage in no such vanity; she was content to quietly partake in all the sensual world had to offer—the very reason to materialize in the first place. And her cove, a tiny chink in an otherwise broad, undulating shore of polished igneous fringed with alabaster sands, was the perfect place to bask in earthly splendor. The grit of the sand was a reminder of her aliveness, the visual luster and the auditory lullaby of crashing waves. All affirmed her being, as did the subtle breeze that moved through her silken hair, tickling. In Celestia she had no golden locks, or if she did, they went unflaunted for lack of form to refract the light and illuminate their existence. One had to visit the material world to appreciate beauty or exhibit it. Frankly, she grew bored in Celestia—too sterile. Too devoid of, well—anything tangible.            Celestia was daunting, limitless; Dianora preferred intimacy. On the lower planes, where all was temporal, the hollow wind and surging tide were but breathless whispers of eternity. Her own breath took precedence here, so frail and tenuous. Somehow, she appreciated life more knowing it depended on the very act of inhalation and exhalation.            And so she found herself among the diaphanous swells, time and again, tracing the careening volcanic contours of bone white cliffs, so sensuous in their own right. Each drift was fringed with succulent verbena that spilled over like low hanging fruit. Stark blue nothingness imposed itself just beyond the rolling crests, both near and far at once. The cerulean expanse hovering over the horizon yielded to ultramarine above, at its deepest hue a reminder that home awaited. But a sole puff of immaculate white sailed across the nothingness, reminding her she was here, now. Oh, she’d have to return home, and sooner than she would have liked, but she vowed to carry this moment with her, to file it with all the other precious glimpses that sustained her between inhalations of the material world.            One day, the solace of quietly churning tide was interrupted by a scarcely audible stirring above. Rivulets of sand cascaded from a high dune, jarring her from reverie. It was not a riotous sound, but still it signaled the approach of something more than a sand crab. Though she’d never laid eyes on a mortal, part of her secretly longed to, for curiosity alone. She’d heard only lore of men—their folly, their fallibility, their fatal hubris. But the fact they were so faulted only appealed to her sensibilities, piquing a latent intrigue. Even so, she could not have been prepared for what rose up in her upon arrival of the cause of all the stirring.            He appeared from beyond the brink of the dune that was her refuge, standing stark against the cobalt sky—a mortal man. Such juxtaposition with the heavens made his countenance imposing, more godlike than her own, an impression only enhanced by the broad and blinding smile that spread across it. The man navigated the maze of verbena that clung to the sandy knoll, finally stationing himself at her feet and placing his hands on his hips. His hair fluttered in the breeze, dark as obsidian against the pale cliffs.            “I saw you from afar,” he said cheerfully. “I was captivated.”            Dianora felt her cheeks blush, something that could never have occurred in Celestia—only when inhabiting earthly form. The inability to speak was just as perplexing, and altogether new. In Celestia, words were not needed.            Sensing her awkwardness, the man kneeled to make himself approachable. “I was putting the finishing touches on my barge, just there.” Here the man made an ambiguous gesture toward a stretch of beach hidden by the dunes.            “You’re a mariner, then?” Dianora managed. Despite the capricious and tempestuous reputation of the gods, she’d been well raised.            “Yes, my lady,” came the answer. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he then offered. “I am Jakkobah of Adamas.” Here, the man raised a thick-muscled arm and waved toward the crystalline bluffs overlooking the beach like sentinels.            And then, faced with a lack of response, “I have not seen you there. In the village. Are you from afar?”            “Yes,” the goddess replied, prudence compelling her to refrain from saying more.             To fill the silence that ensued, the man launched into a summary of his chosen milieu, his family and historical roots. In Adamas, the fortified village on the cliffs above, most were fishermen, traders or mariners. He’d inherited the trade and the barge.            But Dianora heard none of this, so mesmerized was she by his terrestrial beauty. The man’s broad shoulders framed a chest in no need of puffing, nor did his slight waist need cinching—all held together in perfect combination, ideal in proportion and somehow more than the sum of its parts. An expanse of dark hair forested the ample chest, peeking from beneath a soiled tunic to rival others perfectly configured on his thick, sinewy forearms.  The wavy locks that spilled to his jawline were equally swarthy, effectuating a dark umber mane that shimmered with refracting sun. The man’s closely shaven jaw framed an impossibly fair smile and kind eyes, blue as the crashing—            “Well, would you?” the man entreated.            “Would I…?” Dianora felt blood rushing into her cheeks again, this time for having been so distracted.            “Would you like to see it?” the man repeated. “My barge. It’s just there.” Again, the ambiguous point.            “Well, I…”            Here the man reached out a bronzed, thick-palmed hand, entreating her to rise. The familiar incapacity to form words compelled her to take it, and despite her own objections, she found herself being escorted along the beach.            The barge was nestled just inside the inlet she’d always found so private; she marveled at having missed it on first materializing. The boat was docked in shadow, tied to the pilings of a single rickety pier.            The moment the two stepped on board, the man spun about wielding an enchanting smile. “Shall we set sail? Go for a quick tour of the cove?”            A bit surprised and trying to recover a modicum of her faculties, Dianora hesitated.            “You won’t regret it,” the man wooed. “She may not look that great, but she’s strong.” The smile was seductive, alluring, nothing less than an invitation to adventure.            Wasn’t adventure why she so often visited the material plane? Wasn’t it novelty and mystery and romance she so longed for—all the things that combatted the loneliness of eternity? She was just about to succumb, to answer the call to adventure, when the barge suddenly rocked.            She turned to the nearest portal and saw that the wind had whipped up and great, angry swells were beginning to mar the sea’s surface. It was her father reminding her to use her better sense, to remember her divine heritage and not dawdle on the lower planes. No deity could animate particles like her father, from afar no less.            Indeed, many gods interacted with the physical realm, orchestrated events remotely. Usually out of necessity, and for good cause. Others had their fun wreaking havoc while incarnated on earth, insinuated among mortals. It was then that flesh drives overtook their divinity. Dianora herself was still learning to manifest her will. As little as she knew about humans—their cunning and deception, their virtues and—beauty—she knew even less about manifestation. She was still earning her sea legs.            “I’d better get home,” she protested, sounding more feeble than she’d intended. She punctuated the worrisome declaration with a promise of more, a look that said she was torn. “As I said, I am from elsewhere. I dare not form too many attachments.” The moment the words left her mouth, she wished she could take them back, or at the very least that they betrayed nothing more than a reluctance to fall in love with the scenery. That a tour of the cove might cement attachment to the locale.            The man knew better. “I’m not asking you to marry me, love…”            The comeback was playful, fraught with good humor. But then, in a flash, something shifted. The look Dianora read in the man’s eyes was that of one rebuffed, one easily wounded by rejection. Instinct took over, bolstered by the entitlement social conditioning afforded him; he could take what he wanted. In a split second, he’d clutched her by the forearms, pinning her to the cabin wall.            “I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “Another day, perhaps.”            Here the man twisted, reducing her arms to little more than useless appendages that just happened to be attached to her body.            “I really must get home. I must—”            The man’s tongue was in her mouth, invading by force. His shaven jaw was suddenly prickly, abrasive as sandpaper. The coarseness of the beach sand had been proof of her existence; this lacerating grind shouted to her wretchedness and all she could not have known about human nature. Despite her blind innocence, in half a millisecond, she knew as smitten has she’d been by earthly delights—by the rolling waves and the breeze—as taken as she’d been by his beauty, she was wholly unprepared for such deception. In an instant, she knew the world was not what it seemed, and more than she’d bargained for.            The goddess forced her eyes shut, attempting in vain to quiet the churning of her mind, that she might dematerialize, cross over. But the space she sought was a world away, separated from her by fathoms of stormy sea, tempestuous crests cruel with froth, not a buoy or a lighthouse in sight. She’d not yet mastered the art of alchemy on the lower planes; she could conjure no superhuman strength to throw him off of her. Only in ethereal form would she have the power to animate waves to drown him. There would be no escape.              By the time he pried her legs apart and entered her, thick hand clamped over her mouth, she’d resigned. The lapping of waves took over, drowning out his grunts, the whistling of wind between imperfect slats. Only later would she wonder how she could have missed the signs, whether his intentions had been ill all along, or only once she’d rejected him.
*
            A deflowering, on Earth anyway, was the equivalent of a marriage contract. “No one wants used goods,” the man kindly explained to her as they sat on the cabin’s weathered cot moments later, staring vacantly at the floor.            The gods would agree, she knew.  Even if she mustered the courage to tell her father what poor judgment she’d exhibited and what misfortune had befallen her as a result, the council of gods would bind her to remain with her attacker. She had no choice but to do so, and to bear the child she learned weeks later was growing inside her earthly womb. Even if she saw an escape—some way of appealing to the better instincts of her father and the council, she was in the mortal’s clutches now. He’d have restrained her and forced her to stay. The goddess Dianora’s second lesson in human nature was this: Most would own a thing of beauty to satisfy ego, even if that ownership diminishes its charms. She was nothing more than a plucked rose.


Chapter Two
            I have but one memory of my mother. It’s fog-shrouded and vague, diffused about the edges like an unfinished fresco on chipping plaster.            The image visits me still: in the faded tableau, I am five. A single white cloud sails by like a lonely ship in a vast sea. My mother is with me, laughing with her toes in the sand. It’s just her and I; the stolen moment represents the rare occasion on which my father has given her leave without chaperone. Her golden locks flutter in the breeze, the few that have escaped her woolen scarf.            All at once, she’s standing. She says she wants to feel the tide between her toes. She leaves her shoes on our blanket and romps down the steady grade to the margin of darkened, compact sand slick with reflections. I feel safe; it’s just her and I, my father’s ill temper nowhere in the vicinity to dampen our spirits. I lay back on the warm cotton blanket, fired up by the sun. It’s warm on my belly, but a subtle breeze tempers its wrath, forging tiny bumps. Her song comes to me amid the crashing waves and whistling wind—a lullaby. Her rich velvet tones mingle with the song of the sea, overtaking it entirely. She’s singing for me alone, I know. The soothing alto of her maternal voice soars with the enchanting melody, one I’ve never heard but which rings as familiar and comforting as her touch.            Moments pass, or an eternity. When I start awake, bolting upright, she’s nowhere to be seen. Her shoes are still beside me on the woven blanket. And then, I spot her on the crest of the neighboring dune. She’s facing northward, up the coast, gazing off at the point where the road out of Adamas merges with heaven. Her woolen scarf hangs loosely in her grasp; strands of honey-colored hair float on the wind, scattering golden light. For a split second, she turns over one shoulder and her eyes lock with mine. The inscrutable look in them haunts me to this day—something between profound regret and the elation of one standing on the brink of freedom. And then she dashes beyond the bone white hillcrest and is gone.            It’s the last time I see her. The memory visits me on countless occasions over the years. But it’s always foggy, as though seen through layers of etched glass, so much so that I wonder if I dreamt it or invented it altogether.
*
            I was named Amitayus. They say I was born at sea. On the Ziton, my father’s barge, to be precise. Any details beyond that seem to escape the man; his eyes grow cloudy with any mention of the past. The folks in town are no different with their downcast eyes and abrupt, stilted silence whenever I pass. I suppose it’s warranted, all things considered. After all, it’s shameful to be motherless. More virtuous to replace gossip with silence.            I’ll be nineteen years of age before I learn of my divine heritage. Until then, my mother, or the idea of her, remains of the earthly variety, no different than anyone else’s. There comes a day I learn to put her memory to rest—to keep her name from my tongue in self-preservation. Before the age of seven, every cell of me knew I’d done something to make her leave—something unforgivable. I bore the guilt without voicing it to my father, sensing the man carried his own burden. After all, what kind of man is abandoned by his wife with no explanation? Oh, I’ve heard the conjecture from the lips of cruel children at school, repeated from those of unscrupulous parents: she fell in love and ran off with another man. She was abducted by a lusty deity, or sacrificed by the gods or threw herself off a cliff and was swept out to sea.            The worst of the hypotheses has not yet occurred to me as I descend the rickety stairs from the wharf, at once splintery and polished by the sea. Father is overseeing the unloading of cargo from the Ziton’s bins, shouting commands to the longshoremen and dockworkers in Adamas’s port.  AT seven, I’m too young to be of any help; I’ve been told as much. I’d just be underfoot. So I wander to the beach, where white sands swell and dip as if to mimic the surf. From above, I’ve caught a glimmer among the littering of broken shells expelled by the sea where white foam churns against slick, darkened sediment. Abalone, perhaps. Or something equally alluring—the iridescent shell of some as-yet undiscovered sea creature spawned by Tethys herself.            As my toes meet the sand, the familiar smell of brine infuses all, as much like home to me as the waving seaweed forests that entangle the wharf’s pilings. But today the cool ocean breeze carries an exotic balm, something indefinable from further out to sea. I’ve nearly reached the lacy fringe of tide when a raspy voice calls out from beneath the wharf.            “Amit! I’ve been looking for you!”            I turn. Three silhouettes trudge across dank silt, blocking the square of bleached out light between barnacle-encrusted pilings. The largest of them takes the lead. When it emerges into the sunlight, I see that it is Dimitri, a boy from school. He is three years older and twice my size. The others share my age, and they tag along like hungry lampreys.            My heels stir the sand, readying themselves to flee out of familiar instinct. Instead, I bore them into the coarse sediment, standing my ground.            “I’ve been looking for you because I want to share something with you,” Dimitri explains. He’s halfway across the gritty stretch that separates me from the wharf, and I can read the stain of duplicity in his glacier blue eyes. There is nothing charitable in whatever he has to share. On approach, he cocks a thick eyebrow, lending menace to a crooked, disingenuous smile. Dimitri is ten, but swarthy fuzz has already appeared on his upper lip, which glistens with the sweat of impending puberty. He’s beginning to lose the roundness that I share with his two lampreys; his towering frame is wiry and agile.            I say nothing.            He plants himself before me on the suddenly tenuous slope of beach. The horizon tilts, laying claim on my equilibrium. Still, I hold fast and wait.            “I’ve just heard the most intriguing news,” he begins, relishing each syllable. The sun nearly blinds me as I look up at him, waiting for the rest. My heart accelerates.            “It comes from a very reliable source,” he assures me. The other boys are looking down, one of them stirring sand with his foot in reluctance.            I wait. Today’s news could not sting worse than any other tidbit of cruel gossip he’s been sure to impart.            “Seems there is a record of your father’s arrest, back when you were but a runt. The charges, you ask? Well, it’s not easy for me to tell you this, Amitayus, but we’re talking about nothing less than murder…”            The other boys’ eyes dart to me, unable to pass up the chance to relish my reaction, then back to the sand.            I continue to squint into Helios’s emanation, refusing to blink. My jaw tightens, lower lip girding that it not begin to tremble. My heels grind the sand.            “Yes—it seems he put your very own mother in a shallow grave.”            I refuse to give Dimitri the reaction he seeks. “I’ve heard that one already,” I lie, turning away toward the rushing tide.            “The good news,” he calls after me, “Is that there is also a record of his release. The revenue his shipping service brings in is too valuable to city hall. Nice break.”            “It’s not true!” I protest, despite myself. Suddenly I’m flying across the sand, having wheeled about like a puppet on a string. An unearthly force takes over, launching me headlong at full velocity so that the crown of my head meets Dimitri’s flat stomach, hard as granite. Even so, he topples back into the sand and I quickly straddle him. My fists punch incessantly of their own accord, unable to or not wanting to curb the rage that has surfaced from nowhere. The only lucid part of me is shocked at my own strength.            The lampreys jump in and pry me from Dimitri; the two of them manage to yank my thrashing form and fling it into the sand beside him. In a split second he has recovered his faculties and pounced, is now pummeling me with twice the force I was able to muster. Blood courses through every inch of me, searing my skin and setting my temples to throbbing. Only later will I feel the blood pooling in my mouth; for the moment I am but vaguely aware the mouthfuls of sand I spit between blows are stained crimson.            It seems an eternity my opponent maintains the upper hand, slugging and jabbing, me hot in the face and ears ringing, sure my jaw has been unhinged. The lampreys croon victoriously, kicking sand. Dimitri is slick with sweat now; I’m cloaked by the smell of it.            I manage, somehow, to wriggle from beneath his slippery mass. In an instant I am standing again, fists at the ready. The three of them circle, loath to advance at my ready fists for stance alone.            They lunge intermittently, but I am able to deflect. Still, in the momentary lull my heartbeat slows to normal. My breathing relaxes.            “We should call a truce,” I hear myself say.            “Suddenly a coward?” Dimitri taunts. “A moment ago you thought yourself a hero.”            “Who’s the coward?” I challenge him. “Three on one is not fair. You should pick on someone your own size.”            Dimitri can conjure no comeback. I turn my attention to his goons.            “None of this is true. You know it in your hearts.”            They avert their eyes. The three continue circling, the two younger boys glancing to their leader intermittently for cues.            I appeal to their reticence. “Be true to your hearts, what you know to be right. He is not worth your allegiance.”             I know not from whence my own words have come, nor why a sudden calm comes over me. My fists relax.            The inexplicable confidence compels me to fix my gaze upon each boy in turn. As if in compliance, they back away, lowering their fists.            Dimitri’s knuckles only gird. He looks from one boy to the other, thick brows merging in an intimidating scowl.            “What now? You, too, are but spineless jellyfish?”            If the boys were conflicted only seconds before, the effect grows millionfold and they turn on their heels. In a flash they are running across what remains of the beach toward Adamas.            The unearthly calm I will later recognize as faith turns me on my own heels. I find myself continuing on, not toward Adamas or home, but northward along the beach toward the glimmering jumble of broken shells that has caught my attention. If anything express drives me, it is the thought I refuse to give the matter further attention; I resolve to go about my day.            I do not look back.            I do not turn as the tide ebbs, reeling out to sea at startling speed and baring the beach. Nor as clumps of seaweed reveal themselves, strewn across it like flack spangling the cosmos. Nor even as the surge of tide mounts, the sound of it whipping up in a grand crescendo. The din is alarming as a tempest come without warning, the surge of sucking sea and riotous tumbling of waves, the reeling of tons of briny water back out to sea.            It is only Dimitri’s cries that make me turn.            A rip tide has spirited him far from shore, far beyond the longest pier in the wharf.*
            When my father returns from port, I retire to my room that he not see my welts, the blackened eye that sheds acidy tears from within. Sofia, our domestic, has prepared dinner; I can hear her setting the table.            I gaze into the warbled oval mirror in my bedchamber. I did not inherit my father’s swarthy coloring, nor my mother’s fairness. In my estimation, I’ve inherited in equal proportion. I’ve neither golden locks to refract the sun, nor dark ones to absorb it. My own hair is something in between, a sort of chestnut brown. This much remains familiar in my buckled reflection; the rest is scarcely recognizable. One of my normally wide sapphire eyes is swollen closed, as if to shut out the world. My jaw no longer clicks; swelling has fixed it in place, lent a hot thickness to it that denotes age and experience. I feel I’m gazing upon a future version of myself, one that would send Dimitri running away across the sand.            “Amitayus!” My father’s voice jars me back into the present.            Sofia has served dinner a good five minutes previous.            My father’s voice resounds throughout the rough-hewn cavern that is our home: “You will come to the table, Amitayus.”            I obey, fixing my eyes to the floor that he not notice my bloated and disheveled appearance. Once seated, I gaze at the cypress tabletop. But I can feel his eyes searching me.            “Cyril and Niko saw what happened,” he says simply. He’s referring to the dockworkers who have loaded and unloaded the Ziton as far back as I can recall. “They saw all from the wharf.”            I feel shameful.            And then: “They were proud of you.”            For the first time, my eyes raise from the coarse grain of the table, catching light. I am fond of Cyril and Niko; the news lightens my heart.            But the look in my father’s eye is stern and forbidding; I know to hold my tongue. I will not repeat the rumor, nor justify my self-defense with the sordidness of it. It’s too far-fetched to consider; it’s but a corner of my mind that tortures me with curiosity, the inkling that there might be a grain of truth in it.            “You must continue to be strong,” my father commands, cementing the silence. “You must pay them no mind.”I know better than to look to my father to dispel unease or shelter me. I’ve long since learned there is no solace to be had there. The man is not cruel. But he seems vacant to me, like a dried up spring or an extinct volcano. Toiling away at sea and in the various ports seems all he can manage—putting food on the table and a roof over our heads. I would say he is content to meet our basic needs, but he is not. He is merely resigned to it, longing for nothing more.“Hear me, boy,” he says with finality, heavy brows vanquishing me with a scowl. “Your mother will not be returning—that is all you need know. You must never let her name pass your lips, even to defend against lies. You must never mention her again. Ever.”
*
The deep well of purple blood drains over the next few days, fading to blotchy crimson and then diffusing altogether. With it, my hooded eye begins to open. Only a faint remnant of trauma remains when I return to mousike in Adamas.  As lessons come to a close, I spot Sofia waiting on the edge of the open rotunda, adjusting her woolen headscarf in the slight breeze that has whipped up. I restore my tablet and stylus to the designated storage chest and join her.         “Your father has asked that I bring you to harbor,” she informs me, her smile warm but inscrutable.I’m taken with a reticence I hardly recognize; it’s on but rare occasion he wants me there at the wharf—when Sofia has other engagements and cannot stay on to prepare dinner or if father has other plans for us.When I reach the pier I wave goodbye to Sofia and turn toward the Ziton.  My father is occupied on board securing her cargo bins. The longshoremen have just finished unloading a shipment. It’s Niko and Cyril who bound across warped planks to greet me, grinning mischievously. Before I can escape, Niko has grabbed me about the midsection and thrown me over a hulking shoulder. Cyril wastes no time in tickling me until on the verge of tears.  Doing so has been a ritual as long as I can recall. Even now these men are gargantuan and heroic to me, Cyril with his deep-set eyes and dimpled smile, Niko with his strong jaw and protruding chin, long coal black hair tied back save for one unruly strand. I find joy in being tossed about; in their hulking arms, I am impervious to the world. Truly, it’s the only place I’ve felt…safe. Though I will later learn I do not believe in gods or demigods, these men are the closest thing to it in my world: heroes.“You surely gave that menace what he had coming,” Cyril lauds once I’ve caught my breath. “Never seen anything like it. And the urchin was twice your size!”I find myself suddenly sheepish. Though their admiration and respect is anointing, I know full well diplomacy is ever preferable to physical violence. As much as I wish to bask in the men’s praise, a modicum of shame taints the glory.“That kid would have done you in,” Niko assures me, mistakenly assuming I saw what transpired when my back was turned. Faced with my blank expression, he informs me that Dimitri found a large rock—laced with sharp mussels and barnacles, no less—and was poised to heft it against my skull when the tide carried him out.“The sea goddess intervened at just the right moment,” he concludes. “The gods want you alive.”I smile at the thought of it.“Amitayus,” Niko begins, lowering his voice to a gentle whisper, “You must always remember this…”Here he takes me by the shoulders, his strong grip reassuring and insistent at once. “You have something special. A power within that is undeniable.”Cyril nods in affirmation, his deep-set eyes full of equal urgency.“But it will always be a threat to some.”After a moment, Cyril’s determined look yields to the broad, dimpled smile I know. “After plucking that terror from the water,” he assures me, “We gave him a good talking to.”Dimitri leaves me alone after that.A few years later, Thira will erupt and deforest our island. The cypress trade will dry up, forcing Dimitri’s father to find another trade and move the family to Crete.In the meantime, surely at my father’s urging, the longshoremen teach me to spar. Under their tutelage, I learn swordsmanship and wrestling. The skills they impart will prove far more practical than the javelin, archery, and sling training I receive at gumnastike. I’ve no plans to go to war, short of a Mycenaean invasion. But I’ll surely have the military skills for it should such an eventuality come to pass.
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The Seeker

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Amitayus is unaware of his divine heritage. He has but one foggy, time-shrouded memory of his mother: in it, she has lulled him to sleep with her lullaby on the volcanic shores of Milos. He wakes in time to see her poised on a swell of alabaster sand, gazing back at him. Her eyes are those of one on the brink of freedom, but they are mired with equal regret. She dashes beyond the bone white hillcrest and is gone.When Amitayus is seventeen, Dianora’s lullaby comes to him on the breeze, overtaking the song of the sea. Amitayus fights his practical nature—he has no use for gods or goddesses or mortal heroes—but knows he must heed the call. He sets out on the Ziton, his father’s barge, vowing to sail the seven seas to find her. His route intersects with Icarus’s flight path from the palace at Knossos, and it is Amitayus who rescues a drowning Icarus from the sea when the boy plunges from glory. The two continue on as a team, scouring the Cyclades for any clue of Dianora’s whereabouts. They face great peril, learning the cruel king Minos has put a price on Icarus’s head and they are being tailed by Petrus Kyriacou, the most ruthless bounty hunter in the Greek isles. An oracle warns Amitayus his desire is misguided and goes against the gods. But faith compels him onward to face the forces of nature that conspire against them—raging tempests, tidal waves, a Mycenaean invasion and the eruption of Thera that will one day incinerate much of the Cyclades. As it turns out, Zeus himself is determined to thwart the boys’ mission, but not for the reason Amitayus thinks. The truth of his divine heritage discovered through great fortune and equal defeat—ultimately leading him to Mount Olympus itself—is revealed only through peril. Ultimately triumphing over disillusionment, Amitayus’s journey toward redemption is one we all share. He learns in the end that the wrath of the gods was but a series of tests, that he might prove his heroism and secure his place in Elysium. The thing is, he’s not sure that’s where he wants to end up.Set in Bronze Age Minoan culture, The Seeker tells the stories of its gods, goddesses, heroes and mortals through the lens of Greek Classicism, borrowing from both mythology and history. The power of this rich reservoir of archetypes, tropes and symbols lies in its succinct approximation of the human condition. We are all made of the same stuff, Amitayus learns—stardust. There is divinity in all of us…

To Order

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The Nameless Prince Seth Bauman has issues. His Mom split ten years ago, right after his birth, and guardian Uncle Troy won’t discuss the past. Seth’s only friend is Mexican immigrant Elena, whom he must walk home from school through Silverlake’s gang-ravaged streets. When Elena is abducted by local gang ‘the Mayans,’ Seth has no choice but to follow the Boatman of the L.A. River into the sprawling network of sewers and metro tunnels concealing Mayan headquarters. To Seth the great labyrinth unfolds as a magical realm called ‘the Interior,’ whose residents immediately deem him the ‘Nameless Prince’ of prophecy, sent to save them from peril.       To find Elena, Seth embarks on an odyssey of riddles and self-discovery. Only in  ‘Interia’ is it safe to discover the truth about his past, and the forgiveness that will set him free. In rescuing Elena he rescues his own innocence. In fulfilling prophecy by learning his name, Seth discovers the greatness that lies within.
The Royal Trinity I t’s been five years since Seth rescued Elena—since he was the only one who could navigate all those abandoned metro tunnels and sewer systems and bring her back. They’re sophomores in high school now, but Elena’s stuffed away the trauma of her ordeal. She’s dating Ruben, new leader of the Mayans, the very gang who abducted her for ransom. Seth hasn’t forgotten the little girl he knew, imagines one day they’ll be together. But he knows you can’t save others from their demons. Under the guise of focusing on his studies, Seth’s forgotten the magic of his own childhood.
But one moonlit night, dragonfly Fidel appears on Seth’s windowsill, telling him Constantine’s in trouble. Seth’s taken back in time; Constantine, the Boatman was once his only friend. He, along with the Staff of Good Faith, guided Seth through the labyrinth to find Elena. What’s more, Uncle Troy reminds Seth of his lost twin deep in Interia. If he and his kingdom (quite possibly just a homeless colony) aren’t convinced to come out into the light, they’ll be trapped forever when the Modernization Project reroutes the freeway. ‘We’re talkin’ dynamite, Seth.’ Uncle Troy warns.
Seth’s left to decide whether the fanciful realm he imagined as a child was simply an escape, or represents a very real world in need of rescue. More importantly, he must decide whether he should protect his heart, or get involved and venture into a world he’s not even sure exists. Only in Interia will Seth learn it’s by saving others that we save ourselves…           

Jesus Shoes

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JESUS SHOES

At the tender age of seven, I opened a fortune cookie that read, ‘You will marry young and have many children…’
“No duh…” I thought.
I had already internalized the unspoken expectation in our household. With an Italian-American father who’d been raised Catholic (and therefore possessed no concept of birth control,) and a mother whose family were largely Mormon, procreation was right up there with breathing oxygen or walking upright in terms of things we four kids were expected to do.
So it was as much a surprise to me as anyone when I learned I would not be fulfilling the fortune I’d received that warm June night at the Golden Pagoda in Chinatown. For the majority of my childhood, the word gay rolled off our tongues as freely as cool or bitchen. But it meant precisely the opposite. Anything bad, unappealing, negative, undesirable, or simply un-cool was deemed ‘gay.’ One would say, of anything from a puka shell necklace to a Barry Manilow song, ‘that is sooooooo gay.’ Without irony, mind you, in the case of Barry Manilow. I remember the precise moment in the summer of 1980, I realized the word applied to me.
The day started out uneventfully enough. My brother Tony and I made our daily trek through the sun-blistered alleyway adjacent to our property, to Verdugo Park public swimming pool. During the dog days of summer in the San Fernando Valley, swimming in the urine of the masses was preferable to planting ourselves for hours on end before the one musty swamp cooler that was meant to cool our entire house. And so it was that we would pad down that alley, the soles of our bare feet so blistered from the hot, buckled asphalt that they’d cultivated ‘pads.’
Tony was a year older than I. A year and four months to be exact. As children few could tell us apart, with our generic auburn bowl cuts. But now the bowl cuts had grown into distinguishable trademarks. Tony’s shaggy locks emulated the stoners he so looked up to in his new Jr. High school milieu, and my closer-cropped feathered locks communicated pending pubescence. Despite the chasm in our development (the world of difference between elementary school and Jr. High,) we’d remained inseparable. Often we’d be joined by neighborhood friends en route to the public pool. Today it was Robert Hatchford, or ‘Slobert’ as we’d named him, who called after us when we’d reached the halfway mark.
“Wait up!!” Slobert panted, hustling to join us.
My brother and I eyed one another, and for a split second considered ditching him altogether.
“What’s wrong with your pool?” Tony asked him instead. “You pee in it again?”
“Shuttup. It’s being cleaned.”
And then, Robert’s eyes drifted down to our feet with their summer pads. “Don’t you two ever wear shoes?”
“What are you, a wuss? Shoes are for wusses.” My brother answered.
“My Dad says only white trash run around barefoot,” Slobert informed us as we moved on.
I looked at Robert’s own choice of footwear. Sandals. There was nothing wrong with the nylon O.P. swim trunks or even the Hang Ten shirt, but any self-respecting Burbankian on the cusp of graduating to junior high school should have known that Vans slip-ons were the way to go. Instead, Slobert’s white tube socks peeked out from beneath woven leather sandals.
“Well our Dad calls what you’re wearing fag shoes.”
“Shuttup, you gay fag!”
It was true. Our generation did not have a monopoly on derogatory Victorian terms. My father would regularly refer to open shoes, a common sight in the 70’s as fag shoes. Even as a child I somehow understood that it was his City Slicker Chicago upbringing that drove him to refer to hippie footwear in this way, rather than calling sandals what normal people did: Jesus shoes.
“Well, I’d rather save the bottoms of my feet.” Slobert defended himself.
“O.K., but you look like a fag in the mean time...”
“Shuttup.”
“You shuttup!”
“You’re so gay!”
“You’re as queer as a three dollar bill.”
Robert stopped in his tracks. His face was red, cogs turning.
“Shuttup you… you… Gaylord!”
He’d gone and said it. ‘You gay fag,’ however redundant, had been a step up from ‘fag.’ But everyone knew that the royal slur ‘Gaylord’ was whipping out the big guns.
After a moment, Slobert’s temper cooled. We kept walking.
“I heard you can fry an egg on a manhole cover…” he parroted.
My brother and I looked at one another skeptically.
Just then Carlos Santa Maria appeared at the far end of the alley. His friendly swagger was unmistakable, the periodic flip of feathered hair. He was in his early twenties, and lived across from the Hatchfords. His family had moved to Burbank from Venezuela. He was one of five or so siblings, all young adults but still at home. Being of drinking age automatically elevated Carlos to Godlike status in our eyes. The only twenty-somethings we’d glimpsed in our neighborhood Mr. Hatchford had quickly dismissed as hippies, or—even worse—vets, as if they themselves had started the Vietnam War.
Carlos, though his hair was a bit too long, was a fine young man according to Mr. Hatchford. Not like those other wetbacks. The ones who wore jeans to the beach, cut off at the knee. The ones who wore hairnets to train their hair. The ones with the prison tattoos.
“Hey guys,” Carlos greeted us, flashing a broad smile.
As we passed, he issued Tony a high five. And then, turning, a wink in my direction.
When we got to Verdugo Park, the line of suburban delinquents without swimming pools of their own extended well onto the patchy, sun-scorched lawn. It meandered slowly into the dark interior where you paid your buck twenty-five. When we got to the window, I pulled a crumpled bill from the pocket of my corduroy shorts, and dropped a quarter on the metal counter. The teenage girl behind the counter scooped it up with a smile, handed me a paper ticket. She seemed to have been born for the job, like all the other teenagers who worked the pool. Her wavy blonde hair was tinted green from chlorine, and small flecks of missing pigment turned her tan skin pink, like Neapolitan ice cream.
She did not explain the protocol; we all knew the drill. Boys on one side, girls on the other.
I followed my brother, pushed through the metal turnstile into the chlorine-scented cavern that was the boys’ locker room. Once inside, there was another window to visit. The three of us traded our paper tickets for green canvass bags, into which we were to stuff our street clothes, in preparation for the mandatory pre-shower. I peeled off my cotton tank top, stuffed it into the bag, and then hesitated. My brother caught my reticence.
“M-o-d-e-s-t,” he mouthed.
“Shuttup.” I protested, turning away to set my canvas bag on one of several benches. The pre-shower, no matter how many times I’d done it, felt like forced humiliation. Like we were being deloused at Auschwitz. But more than that, my brother had hit the nail on the head. I was modest. Peach fuzz had appeared that summer. And though I had seen the Sex-Ed films at school and had an idea what it meant, I wasn’t quite ready to share it with the world.
I waited until Slobert and my brother had moved on, and stepped under the shower for a second or two. The bare minimum. At least if I looked wet I’d make it past the final window. Slippery now, I squeezed into my nylon swimming trunks with their Velcro pockets, and grabbed the canvass bag stuffed with my street clothes. At the window I passed it to another teenager, where it would be hung with the clothes of strangers.
“Here,” he rasped, handing me a metal clip with a number on it. He was greenish-blonde and tanned like the ticket girl, but donned a mouthful of braces that prevented his lips from closing all the way.
The clip he gave me corresponded with a number on the bag, allowing me to claim it later.
When I caught up with Tony and Slobert they had spread their towels on the cement deck near the far wall. This was often our home base, smack between the screaming elementary schoolers who inhabited the shallow end of the Olympic-sized pool, and the larger-than-life high schoolers who monopolized the deep end. Julie Houston was already there, posing in her one-piece bathing suit and vying for the attention of the high school boys. Also in attendance were Sarah Deason, the girl from up the block who let spiders spin webs on her hands, and Horace and Squint, her neighbors. No one was sure what school the brothers went to, or if they attended school at all. It was rumored that they’d already done time at juvy.
After setting up camp, my brother didn’t waste any time—went straight for the high dive. Not to be left out, Slobert and I followed suit, joining the line of ‘big kids’ that snaked across the hot concrete. In the same way that our elementary school was segregated—a small school yard for grades K-3, and a superior yard for grades 4-6, you knew you had graduated to the big time once you got up the guts to first attempt the high dive. It towered above in the stratosphere, taunting you with its slippery metal stairs and perilous plank. As we waited our turn, we watched a tubby kid around our age negotiate the turquoise fiberglass. His girth flounced as he inched toward its lip, arms suspended daintily. Even from a distance, we could read the terror in his eyes—he may as well have been walking the plank at the point of a gilded sword.
The crowd remained hushed as he readied himself for the moment of truth. And then, with a single now-or-never shift of his formidable weight, he was in midair. He hung suspended there for a fraction of a second, and then gravity got hold of him, compelling him hellward, his enormous mass plummeting through air so thick with anticipation it could be cut with a knife. As he neared the surface of the water the silence was cut with the hiss of air between molars, a synchronized expression of imminent dread from the crowd. He was in the wrong position, with no time to correct. This was not going to end well.
And then we heard it.
S P L A T !
The belly flop heard round the world.
The boy resurfaced to peals of laughter.
He swam sheepishly to the pool’s brick-lined edge, and left with few alternatives, hoisted his corpulent mass onto the hot concrete. When he stood, the crowd saw that a perfect magenta oval, like an eggplant, had seared itself into the blinding white flesh of his belly.
Again, peals of laughter. Louder now.
I looked around for a chicken exit. We had made our way to the base of the ladder; my brother was next in line, and then Slobert. If I ducked out now, I’d never live it down. I’d been braving the high dive since the previous summer, but it never got easier. I had yet to attempt an actual dive; opted instead for the tried-and-true cannonball more often than not.
My brother Tony had perfected not just a dive, but a somersault-dive worthy of the Olympics. When he flawlessly executed his trademark, cheers erupted from the crowd. Slobert frowned, and then his competitive nature kicked in, and he mounted the stairs. I half-hoped he would emerge with an eggplant or other vegetable imprinted on his belly. No such luck. No somersault, but still a perfect dive that cut the water like butter.
He’d been practicing. Shit.
I couldn’t turn back now. And the stakes had been raised. I would have no choice but to attempt an actual dive. There had to be a first time for everything, and it was time to bite the bullet.
You dive all the time from the low-dive. This is no different, I told myself as I mounted the first of two-dozen slippery metal stairs. Halfway up the wind kicked in, exaggerating the goose bumps that had already formed on my skin due to apprehension. I looked down, half wishing there would be an earthquake or other disaster to divert the focus of the crowd. Nothing. Not even a tremor. Their attention was riveted on me, anticipating my every move. Watching me breathe.
Suddenly I was at the top.
I inched onto the fiberglass, testing my traction.
I gazed into the choppy, marbled water so far below, imagining this is what the Earth looked like from space. The tiny blue marble. It was spinning now, a microscopic target no different than a wooden bucket in a three-ring circus. I looked to the lifeguards, one on each side of the pool. They sat on their thrones, elevated above the petty neighborhood children who were just waiting for me to fail. The lifeguards had always seemed so heroic to me—not like the toothy freckled teenagers working the window, but like superheroes. Tanned and toned, clad in fire engine red, bullhorns at the ready should some kid attempt to run on the slippery deck.
The lifeguard perched nearest the high dive was clearly their leader. His golden Christopher Atkins locks were somehow impervious to the swampy greenish effect of the chlorine that affected inferior heads of hair. His shone in the harsh sunlight, refracting its own aura. And his teeth, not to be outdone, gleamed stark white in neat rows against the tanned flesh of a sturdy jaw. He smiled at me across the miles. And then, raising a sinewy forearm, he made a gesture meant for me and me alone. The universal symbol of approval, of brotherhood, of genuine, unconditional support. The thumbs up.
Suddenly the fear dissipated that something would go terribly awry—the image of blood on concrete or tainting the immaculate turquoise water. Without another thought, I sprang from the board. The world whizzed by, cold in my ears, on my skin. In an instant it was over. Before I knew what had happened.
The silence of the world below the water consumed all, the crushing weight of it. The concrete floor was rushing up at me. I arced until perpendicular, orienting myself to the base of the ladder in my periphery. The stabbing pain in my ears gave way to sweet relief as I reached for it. When I yanked myself into the world above, the sound of cheering still hung on the air. Once I had my bearings, I looked up.
The lifeguard was there, framed by the sun, its blinding disc forming a halo. The iconic silhouette was unmistakable—another thumbs up. I’d done well.
I smiled smugly as I plopped spread-eagle onto the hot concrete next to Slobert. I’d brought a towel, but preferred the hot concrete somehow. I liked the way the water formed pools under my skin, squished warm beneath my bathing suit. It felt especially good today as my pelvis subtly rocked. The breeze was exhilarating on my skin, the sensations of warm and cool transporting me, lulling me into state of utter Zen.
I became one with the concrete. Head turned to the side, gazing up into the endless blue. With each blink, patterns floated to the ground, and I traced them with my eyes, trying to find their landing place before they disappeared. The lifeguard was there, lost in atmosphere, amid the torrents of raining molecules. But suddenly he was in crisp focus, obliterating the patterns that were just overcompensation for the field of blue nothingness. The sunlight not only framed him, carving deep core shadows into his chiseled form, but it glanced off, igniting tiny prisms of light that leapt from perfectly configured blonde hairs. I could see this, even at a distance. The richness of his deeply tanned calves absorbed the light, but the blonde hairs harnessed it, intensified it million-fold, sent it out into the world with a golden luster.
I’d always admired the lifeguards, looked up to them literally and figuratively. But gazing up at them, at him, had never been so mesmerizing. And the squishing of the warm water had never felt so…good.
Boner. The word floated into my head, from nowhere. The sex education films we’d been forced to watch at school, preparing us for the decadence of junior high school life, referred to them as ‘erections.’ But for some reason the clinical name evaded me today. It was the word ‘boner’ that I attached to what I was feeling down south. Hard-on. Woody. Stiffie.
Aha. So that’s a boner. Got it.
And then, only seconds later, another word came floating in, even more from left field.
GAY. The word GAY pushed out boner, woodie, stiffie, and hard-on.
So this is GAY. This is what that word means.
We’d thrown it around like no one’s business, to describe a Pee-Chee folder or the institution of disco. But this was no Pee-Chee folder. We’d heard the word uttered in whispered tones, by adults. Ted, the gymnastics coach at the Burbank Arts and Recreation center, and his special friend Jesse, the ballet instructor, were believed to be gay. But it had been an abstract concept. I now knew that they, too, in addition to having earrings in both ears and bushier beards than my ten year-old eyes had yet seen, enjoyed looking at the sun glinting off of lifeguards’ muscular legs.
Suddenly, certain pieces began to fit. I had yet to discover my own penis and the various things that could be done with it behind a locked bathroom door. But come to think of it I’d experienced a similar sensation to today’s when looking through the Time Life book I’d found in our bathroom, stuffed between Reader’s Digest and the Burbank Leader. Sexuality in general was not openly discussed in our household, in an educational sense. Only in the form of off-color jokes, or my father lining up my sister’s fourteen year old friends in order of breast size. My parents were products of their generation, who believed such things were better repressed and then discussed in therapy later. In lieu of the obligatory ‘birds and bees’ conversation, my mother’s way was to discretely slip the Time Life book among the others, hoping our curiosity would be piqued. The small hard cover book, on human sexuality, had endpapers featuring highly rendered illustrations of naked humans—a size-comparison chart of sorts. There was a mommy and a daddy, a teenage boy and girl, and their younger, prepubescent siblings. What this family were doing standing naked in a line-up I cannot say. But what I do know for certain is that I enjoyed looking at the daddy most.
There had been other clues. My father’s lifelong friend Jack had worked for the Heinz company for many years, and regularly brought home merchandising products. Many of them featured the Jolly Green Giant. Whether because of, or in spite of his coloring, I found him oddly attractive. He was super-human, colossal, strong and invincible. And he wore a short loincloth. Most importantly, he seemed kind and good-natured, in a way that my father wasn’t. He seemed downright, well, it’s right there in the name—jolly. I felt safe and protected somehow, sitting in that cold plastic chair molded in the shape of his hand, even while being lacerated by its sharp plastic seams.
When I got home from the public swimming pool, I immediately searched for the Time Life book. Incredibly, it was still there. I discretely double-checked the door lock, and then flipped excitedly to the endpapers.
Yup. It had not been my imagination. The daddy jumped off the paper, other family members fading into oblivion. His broad shoulders were thrown back to display proudly puffed-out pectorals, complete with rendered patterns of thick fur. His hands were planted firmly on his hips, stance wide enough to trap a grisly bear. And his genitals were, well, front and center.
I did not leave the bathroom for twenty minutes.
I’d discovered the greatest thing since sliced bread.
For some reason, that night as I was lying in bed, a thought occurred to me.
I wonder if it’s WRONG…
My discovery hadn’t bothered me in the least. It was new and exciting somehow. And maybe it was the Zen state I’d been in on making the discovery, drunk from the sun and meditative with alpha waves, but it felt right. It felt honest. It felt pure. And I really liked looking at those lifeguards. Not to mention my newfound pastime, which I planned to do plenty more of.
Still, the thought nagged at me. I’d heard it somewhere before—that gay was wrong. I mean—I knew it was bad. Ridiculous. Uncool. But was it morally wrong? What did God think?
I reached for my bedside copy of The Way, a hip 70’s bible geared toward wayward teenagers. The cover featured a large, bubbly psychedelic typeface, inside of which swirled a montage of smiling hippies. I thumbed through the index.
But as hard as I looked, examining every possible cross-reference, there was no mention of ‘gay,’ ‘gayness’ ‘gaydom’ or even homosexuality. I guess even with the dire need to save America’s teenagers from decadence, the publisher dared not speak the word.
I slept very well that night.
The next day, I went to the pool alone. But instead of paying a buck twenty-five to swim in urine-infested water, I went up to the concrete balcony overlooking the Olympic-sized pool. In solitude, I leaned against the railing and took in the scene below. The screaming kids were tiny—flecks of salt and pepper. And the lifeguards, so often heroic and godlike, were stunted, the height of their stations only half that of the balcony. It was hard to see the tiny prisms of light, the halos refracting from their golden locks.
On the way home, I ran into Carlos Santa Maria in the alley. Only now the flip of his feathered hair had new meaning, the smile was a temptation. I’d been acutely aware of the difference between zippered Toughskins, the norm in elementary, and the button fly jeans that the older kids wore. What I hadn’t noticed was the package beneath. As Carlos high-fived me in passing, I imagined I saw a hard-on beneath the taut denim.
Moments later, I was rifling through the scant reading material in our bathroom. To my own surprise, the Time Life Book was already losing its appeal. I would need new smut. Unfortunately, images of the male figure were few and far between in seventies culture. Pre-Calvin Klein, pre-Abercrombie and Fitch, the pickings were slim. Men were not to be objectified or viewed as sensual creatures. They puffed on cigarettes, wearing flannel shirts, staring off at a horizon dotted with saguaros. The quintessence of rugged maleness was the Brawny Paper Towel guy, Mr. Clean, or the Marlboro man. Later the advertising industry would realize its mistake and begin marketing to women and gay men, but for the moment men kept their clothes on in the media.
Except for Jim Palmer, God love him.
After ten minutes of madly rifling through every last magazine in our bathroom, I stumbled across it. There he was, in his tighty whities, furry as a Grizzly bear wrapped in shag carpeting, with one leg propped up on a box. Eureka! The Jockey underwear ad that would sustain a generation of young homos, bound by our shared lust for Mr. Palmer, locked in our bathrooms, wrists sore but giving it one more go-round.
“Where you been?” Slobert Hatchford had appeared beside me on the balcony at Verdugo Rec.
I couldn’t tell him I’d been dividing my time between being locked in the bathroom with Jim Palmer for twenty minutes at a time, and standing on that balcony processing something much, much bigger than myself.
“I been around.” I said instead.
“Well, you should come swim at my house. It’s way better than this piss pool anyway. And they’re done cleaning the filters now.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, and wandered away.

Scuffling through the alleyway on the way home, I took in the faded asphalt beneath my bare feet. Suddenly it was no longer rich and black, but weathered and lined. Coarse gray pebbles protruded from gritty aggregate, reflecting not the blue sky, but something heavy and gray and ominous. I kicked a pebble. It glanced off the base of a concrete wall and skidded to a stop. I kicked it again. This time it arced, leading me to a conspicuous pile of trash that spewed from an overturned trash barrel. There on top, lay a waterlogged copy of The Deep, a best selling novel at the time. Flipping through it, the word naked caught my eye, on page ten. I flipped further. There it was again—naked. That’s all it took.
Once safely locked in the bathroom, I started the shower for good measure. I parted the pages of Peter Benchley’s The Deep.
Don’t disappoint me, I thought. And Mr. Benchley surely did not. I remember the exact wording to this day, of the phrase I would read and reread throughout the duration of the summer. About midway through the novel, there was a scene in which the main character and his wife, having rented scooters, are touring the island of Bermuda. They are kidnapped, ostensibly by the ‘bad guys,’ and forced to endure a humiliating strip search. The man watches the other men stripping his wife.
‘The palpable excitement of the gawking men was contagious, and he could feel the blood rushing into his groin…’
My other outlet was an afternoon exercise program on VHF titled Body Buddies. In the seventies, before ON TV and Z Channel opened the floodgates and ushered in the Cable TV era, all one had to choose between was UHF and VHF. UHF housed the major networks, and VHF provided sad home for everything else not worth watching. Had it not been for the ultra-short dolphin shorts the trainer wore, I might have flipped right on past Body Buddies myself. Instead, I would re main riveted for hours at a time, huddled in front of my father’s small battery-operated television set in the kitchen, sound turned down. To say that there was no privacy in our household is an understatement. In addition to three siblings and myself, there were two parents, two dogs, a cat, two parakeets, a hermit crab, and the odd straggler living in our spare bedroom at any given time. And so it was that I found myself all too often conducting my gratuitous viewing in the company of the bread box and crock pot. Had I used the large television in the den, my sudden interest in exercise would have been suspect.
“What the hell happened to my goddamn batteries?” My father growled one day, baffled at their inability to hold a charge for any length of time.
As the summer wore on, and the novelty of my new pastime wore off, the big questions set in. At eleven, though I was incapable of thinking even a moment ahead, part of me was grappling with what my new discovery meant for my future. Simply put, how this would all pan out. Despite my initial acceptance, something had seeped in. Suddenly I was seeing and hearing things around me that had previously blended seamlessly into the white noise. When searching Reader’s Digest for the word ‘naked’ (to no avail,) I came across a humor article titled ‘How You Know It’s Going To Be a Bad Day.’ Number six posited, ‘You put your bra on backwards and it fits better.’ Number seven read, ‘Your son says he wishes Anita Bryant would mind her own business.’
I knew who she was. The orange juice lady. When it came to the news, my attention span was that of a nervous housefly on caffeine. Still, it was impossible not to overhear fragmented news stories about Ms. Bryant’s religious campaigns against the ‘homosexual agenda.’ When the newscasters covered the story, were forced to say the ‘h’ word, it seemed foreign on their tongues, and they spit it out uncomfortably. As if speaking Latin for the first time. My comprehension of all things gay was virtually nonexistent, and Burbank liked it that way. America liked it that way. San Francisco, I’d overheard, was where the gays lived. I pictured it as some sort of Mecca, neither glamorous nor decadent, but somehow unreal. I pictured all those sandal-wearing hippies with their earrings and bushy beards, in the far-off land of San Francisco, a world away. This was the extent of my familiarity with gay culture. Now I knew, thanks to Anita Bryant and Reader’s Digest, how mothers felt about gay sons.
A week later, glancing absently at the television set, my own mother confirmed as much. Taking in grainy concert footage of David Bowie—his spiked hair, his leather pants, his dual-colored eyes lined with plenty of black liner, she commented, “That guy’s every mother’s nightmare of a gay son…”
The next night my mother was at the Creative Arts Center where she was taking a painting class from her mentor, Paul Rubens. My mother often modeled for Paul, and another senior artist by the name of Claude, who sculpted nothing but fortune cookies and dragons. At the Creative Arts Center, my mother honed her earth mama skills—ceramics and macramé, in the presence of kindred spirits who could give her what her husband could not.
“Doesn’t bother you that she poses for him?” my Father’s friend Jack prodded. Before Jack’s stint with the Jolly Green Giant, the two had laid concrete together. Their mindset was blue collar to say the least.
“Nah,” was my Dad’s response. “He’s—you know…”
With that my father raised his burly arm in to the air, curled the bicep. But instead of making a muscle, he flung his hand the other way in an all-too familiar limp-wristed gesture.
My parents’ off-handed comments did not sting. They did, however, rise to the surface somehow like cream begging to be skimmed off. There was nothing mean-spirited about their reflections—they were the norm. This was a generation who felt the need to call Liberace and Paul Lynd ‘bachelors.’ My mother had made sure to expose her children to diversity—in the form of Ted, the gymnastics coach, and his special friend Jessie. But the nature of their relationship was never explained. And the silence spoke louder than words; the inability to utter the word left a vacuum in which my father’s slurs and those of society, were deafening.
The real downside to growing up in a society that dare not speak the word, is that little white trash boys must grow up, even next door to Hollywood, thinking they’re the only one in the world who has ever had a strange attraction to the Jolly Green Giant or Mr. Clean. In an effort to combat the isolation, to find someone, something with which to identify, I took a trip to the local library. To learn more about my ‘condition.’ If the mainstream media could hardly bring newscasters to utter the word, the burden would be on me to find my peeps, where I belonged. Later I would discover the unlikely bond I shared with those married Burbank men in the back seats of cars, but for the moment I would have to find it in a book. My quest for God’s opinion in my copy of The Way had been like searching for intelligent life on other planets. Maybe the Burbank Public Library would yield more.
I veered from the sidewalk onto the patchy lawn of the library, maple leaves crunching with each step. For some reason I looked to the street, where cars zipped by on the four-lane avenue. No one was looking; it was safe to proceed.
Just as I was approaching the glass door on the side of the building, a raspy voice called out.
“Heeeeyyy!” It was Slobert Hatchford. He was rapidly approaching from the Children’s library next door.
“Hey,” I called back, trying to muster the requisite degree of enthusiasm.
“You doin’ summer school too?” Everyone knew making up time was the only reason to go near a library in summer.
“Nooo…” I stalled, in order to conjure up an alibi. I’m researching homos would never fly.
“So...what are you doing here?”
“Whatever I want.” It was the best I could come up with.
“You’re coming to the library by choice? What a dork!”
“Shuttup, Fag.”
With that I marched into the library, not looking back.
Inside, the hermetic silence was profound. The heavy glass door swung shut behind me, destroying the frail tranquility of the sanctuary. Every eye in the room looked up, glared at me from beneath furrowed brows. I took a step.
Squeeeeeeeeaak! My Vans Slip-ons had never so much as muttered a peep. And now they were a deafening cacophony of impertinence.
A second step.
Squeeeeeeeeeaak! It even sounded gay. If no one here knew before why I came, they surely know now.
I cursed the soles of my shoes, and made a beeline for the card catalogue. The Librarian behind the counter eyed me disapprovingly, tracing my perilous journey across the Berber carpeting. She wore a silver pageboy, and a conservative pantsuit with slight shoulder pads. I’d dealt with her type before, not just at the library, but at the Hallmark store where the Korean proprietors assumed anyone under five feet tall was out to shoplift them into the poorhouse. This woman, all librarians, had made a career out of condescending, intimidation. I was not to escape her all-seeing radar.
At the reference section’s card catalogue, I turned my back to the main desk, and began rifling through the hand-tipped cards of the Dewey Decimal System. Each card threatened to burst an eardrum as it scraped its mahogany drawer.
Gastronomy…
Flip.
Gavarnie, Gavial, Gawain…
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
…Gaya…
What? No GAY? Nothing gay at all?
I moved to the ‘H’ drawer. Surely there was something. Homo-this or homo-that. The librarian scowled, her omniscient gaze burning a hole through the yellowed tabs. She was on to me. Still, I could not turn back now.
Aha! There, lodged between ‘homogenous’ and ‘Hona,’ I found them. Two measly cards, representing the two books in the reference section devoted to my condition.
I thumbed the first.
The David Kopay Story.
I read the brief description, typed faintly on the manila card: Autobiography: David Marquette Kopay (born June 28, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois) A Running back in the American National Football League, David, in 1975, became the first American athlete to come out as gay.
Hmmmmmm…I thought. Who knew? Another well kept secret. I would definitely be checking it out; maybe there would be pictures. Locker room pictures.
The second card represented a reference book titled Preventing Homosexuality.
Its cover featured the photographic image of two healthy, happy prepubescent boys playing tag football, while a third, glum and runt-like, played with dolls in the shadowy foreground. It was easy to key into his sad, disenfranchised expression, so close to the camera and all. The tableau behind him, diffused and dappled with sunlight, was like an out-of-reach fantasy, unattainable and clearly not on the menu for the pathetic boy.
A glutton for punishment, I cracked its cover.
Perusing the first few chapters, certain passages, certain words, jumped out at me. Freudian, Kinsey Spectrum, and APA, or American Psychological Association. I stopped here.
‘The American Psychological Association,’ the paragraph read, ‘lists homosexuality among its chronicle of mental illnesses…’
Hmmmmmmm. Mental Illness. I didn’t feel crazy.
I continued skimming.
More words, like aberration, abomination, unnatural. Sin.
I didn’t feel like a sinner. Sure, there was some shame attached to my newfound pastime, but wasn’t that true of everyone? Wasn’t everyone shameful about sex? Or at least modest? Surely I wasn’t the first. And besides, what Jim Palmer and I did behind closed doors was a private act. Were all private acts sinful? Like pooping or belching? Were all biological functions sinful just because you didn’t wish to share them with the world?
I didn’t like what I was reading. So I flipped ahead. And things weren’t about to get any better. On page 143:
‘The outcome of homosexuality is a negative resolution of the Oedipus complex, in which the male child renounces the competition with the father for the mother’s affection, adopting the homosexual position. This is often, if not always exacerbated by the domineering mother and absent or distant father…’
I thought about it. My mother was anything but domineering. Or smothering. Still, some of this had the ring of truth. Like a fortune cookie or an astrological reading, through its universality and the power of suggestion, it resonated somehow. I would later in life learn that all American men of my generation viewed their fathers as distant; longed for a closer relationship. But for the moment, these damning correlations, these statistical observations, these off-based misapprehensions relied on my suggestibility. I was being told, in no uncertain terms, what I was. Like it or not.
On page 200, in the chapter titled, ‘Who is at risk?’:
The symptoms of an at-risk boy are: excessively ‘pretty,’ sickly, sensitive, non-athletic, fear of rough and tumble play, lack of same-sex playmates, dislike of team sports, doll play, cross dressing or interest in women's clothes or shoes, effeminate speech or mannerism, taking the feminine role when playing ‘house.’
I thought back to the day my neighbor Maria had crossed the street, bubbling over with enthusiasm, after receiving Malibu Barbie for her birthday. Not just Barbie herself, but Ken, the Flower Power Van, and all the accessories one could want or need. Despite her attempts to seduce me into the world of Malibu Barbie, I will go to my grave saying I was not tempted in the least. Not even to peek beneath Ken’s fuchsia swim trucks to see if he was, well, anatomically correct.
And with regard to cross dressing—I would learn later it was primarily a heterosexual fixation, linked to sexual arousal, that the tradition of Drag within the gay community had more to do with embracing society’s mischaracterizations and celebrating gender-bending. Having little or no sexual attraction to women, I couldn’t imagine for a moment why I would want to dress in their lace panties. Simply put, the panties and I did not have a lot in common.
The final straw that day at the Burbank Public Library, the one that caused me to firmly snap shut the book’s antiquated cover and reject its outdated Freudian views, was the following passage:
‘Gay men, without the benefit of offspring or companionship, struggle with aging. Once unable to procure the sexual relations that have come to define their lifestyle, gay men take to paying for sex, or pandering to procure favors in sex clubs, dark alleys or adult bookstores…’
So this is what I had to look forward to.
At eleven, my bullshit detector was already pretty accurate. I didn’t buy a word of what I was reading. What I had learned was that the reason society dared not speak the word, the reason the newscasters choked on it, was the fear of revealing their own ambivalence. Their distaste. Or outright vehemence. My search for intelligent life, my search for kindred spirits, for a single example with whom I could identify, had led me here. To the Burbank public library, where the book I now clutched, with its cheesy cover, was telling me all that I was up against. That homosexuals would be represented in film, only so long as they were also degenerates or axe murderers. That they would be the second in line to have their throats slit in horror movies. After the black guy, of course. And how satisfying it would be when the limp-wristed, lispy character is finally thrown from the third-story window.
Standing there in the Mental Illness section, my condition lumped in with schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and the compulsion to wash ones hands five hundred times a day, I had no crystal ball. I could not know that the Zen-like self-acceptance that was my nature would come and go, ebb and flow. I couldn’t foresee that isolation would set in during adolescence, that it would both make me lonely and forge character. I had no way of knowing that in young adulthood I would cherish this character, count introspection among the gifts that were the flipside of the ‘gay’ gene. I would learn that the authors of Preventing Homosexuality were putting the cart before the horse—identifying by-products, confounding correlations with causality. And society would learn along with me, about the genetic components, the brain differences confirming it, about finger-length and pre-natal hormone levels. Television would go from sheepishly uttering the word ‘gay’ solely in reference to Jack Tripper, who was only ‘pretending’ to be gay, to allowing The Real World’s Pedro into our homes. The first real live homo, in his native habitat, living a respectable life. Letters from isolated boys living in cornfields in Iowa would thank him for saving them from suicide through his very existence. His visibility. Television would go on to feature a gay character in virtually every single prime-time show in its lineup. All novelties, granted, but eventually it would be a non-issue. Characters would be matter-of-factly gay. Unaffected.
I would come to forget the excruciating isolation, the profound silence of my youth. Only when trying to ‘make a difference’ for young homos through my filmmaking would I force myself back into that space. I would eventually be awed by the degree of change I’d glimpse in my own lifetime, to marvel at the very idea that the issue of Gay Marriage would even be on the table. I would live to see the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.’ My own niece would found the Gay Student Union, would tout tolerance as if she’d invented it. I would come to wonder what I might possibly have to offer her generation, so far ahead of my own. I would feel obsolete and purposeless. I would feel like a relic.
Until I reminded myself, that is, that my generation laid the groundwork. As did the Stonewall generation before mine.
I took one last look at the words on the page of Preventing Homosexuality, and slammed its cheesy cover closed with a THUD. The librarian looked up. I smiled at her, slipped the book back into its place on the cold metal shelf.
And then, Vans slip-ons squeaking with every step, enunciating my pride, rejecting the propaganda, I strolled past the librarian with her conservative pageboy and condescending scowl.
Outside, I surveyed the traffic slipping by on Verdugo Avenue. I no longer cared who saw me emerging from the library. Still, I chose the alley for some reason. It ran the length of Verdugo Avenue, but several hundred yards north. And it stretched from Buena Vista all the way past Verdugo Recreation center to my own home a good half-mile away. I looked down at the gritty, lacerating shards and pebbles punctuating the asphalt. It had once been slick and uninterrupted, was now corrugated with deeply etched lines. Somehow I wanted to feel it beneath my padded soles, every sharply protruding apex and recessed rivulet. Every nook and cranny, divot and pockmark.
I removed my Van Slip-ons, held them in my hand.
Only White Trash run around barefoot, Mr. Hatchford’s voice reminded me.
“Your son wears fag shoes,” I replied.
With that, I started padding down the alley, eyeing the long, long road ahead.

JESUS SHOES At the tender age of seven,...

JESUS SHOES
    At the tender age of seven, I opened a fortune cookie that read, ‘You will marry young and have many children…’     “No duh…” I thought.     I had already internalized the unspoken expectation in our household.  With an Italian-American father who’d been raised Catholic (and therefore possessed no concept of birth control,) and a mother whose family were largely Mormon, procreation was right up there with breathing oxygen or walking upright in terms of things we four kids were expected to do.    So it was as much a surprise to me as anyone when I learned I would not be fulfilling the fortune I’d received that warm June night at the Golden Pagoda in Chinatown.  For the majority of my childhood, the word gay rolled off our tongues as freely as cool or bitchen. But it meant precisely the opposite. Anything bad, unappealing, negative, undesirable, or simply un-cool was deemed ‘gay.’ One would say, of anything from a puka shell necklace to a Barry Manilow song, ‘that is sooooooo gay.’ Without irony, mind you, in the case of Barry Manilow.  I remember the precise moment in the summer of 1980, I realized the word applied to me.    The day started out uneventfully enough.  My brother Tony and I made our daily trek through the sun-blistered alleyway adjacent to our property, to Verdugo Park public swimming pool.  During the dog days of summer in the San Fernando Valley, swimming in the urine of the masses was preferable to planting ourselves for hours on end before the one musty swamp cooler that was meant to cool our entire house.  And so it was that we would pad down that alley, the soles of our bare feet so blistered from the hot, buckled asphalt that they’d cultivated ‘pads.’     Tony was a year older than I.  A year and four months to be exact.  As children few could tell us apart, with our generic auburn bowl cuts.  But now the bowl cuts had grown into distinguishable trademarks.  Tony’s shaggy locks emulated the stoners he so looked up to in his new Jr. High school milieu, and my closer-cropped feathered locks communicated pending pubescence.  Despite the chasm in our development (the world of difference between elementary school and Jr. High,) we’d remained inseparable.  Often we’d be joined by neighborhood friends en route to the public pool. Today it was Robert Hatchford, or ‘Slobert’ as we’d named him, who called after us when we’d reached the halfway mark.    “Wait up!!” Slobert panted, hustling to join us.    My brother and I eyed one another, and for a split second considered ditching him altogether.    “What’s wrong with your pool?” Tony asked him instead.  “You pee in it again?”    “Shuttup.  It’s being cleaned.”    And then, Robert’s eyes drifted down to our feet with their summer pads.  “Don’t you two ever wear shoes?”    “What are you, a wuss?  Shoes are for wusses.” My brother answered.    “My Dad says only white trash run around barefoot,” Slobert informed us as we moved on.    I looked at Robert’s own choice of footwear.  Sandals.  There was nothing wrong with the nylon O.P. swim trunks or even the Hang Ten shirt, but any self-respecting Burbankian on the cusp of graduating to junior high school should have known that Vans slip-ons were the way to go.  Instead, Slobert’s white tube socks peeked out from beneath woven leather sandals.    “Well our Dad calls what you’re wearing fag shoes.”    “Shuttup, you gay fag!”It was true.  Our generation did not have a monopoly on derogatory Victorian terms.  My father would regularly refer to open shoes, a common sight in the 70’s as fag shoes. Even as a child I somehow understood that it was his City Slicker Chicago upbringing that drove him to refer to hippie footwear in this way, rather than calling sandals what normal people did: Jesus shoes.   “Well, I’d rather save the bottoms of my feet.” Slobert defended himself.“O.K., but you look like a fag in the mean time...”“Shuttup.”“You shuttup!”“You’re so gay!”“You’re as queer as a three dollar bill.”Robert stopped in his tracks.  His face was red, cogs turning.  “Shuttup you… you… Gaylord!”He’d gone and said it. ‘You gay fag,’ however redundant, had been a step up from ‘fag.’ But everyone knew that the royal slur ‘Gaylord’ was whipping out the big guns.  After a moment, Slobert’s temper cooled.  We kept walking.  “I heard you can fry an egg on a manhole cover…” he parroted.My brother and I looked at one another skeptically.Just then Carlos Santa Maria appeared at the far end of the alley.  His friendly swagger was unmistakable, the periodic flip of feathered hair.  He was in his early twenties, and lived across from the Hatchfords.  His family had moved to Burbank from Venezuela.  He was one of five or so siblings, all young adults but still at home.  Being of drinking age automatically elevated Carlos to Godlike status in our eyes.  The only twenty-somethings we’d glimpsed in our neighborhood Mr. Hatchford had quickly dismissed as hippies, or—even worse—vets, as if they themselves had started the Vietnam War.   Carlos, though his hair was a bit too long, was a fine young man according to Mr. Hatchford.  Not like those other wetbacks.  The ones who wore jeans to the beach, cut off at the knee.  The ones who wore hairnets to train their hair.  The ones with the prison tattoos.“Hey guys,” Carlos greeted us, flashing a broad smile.As we passed, he issued Tony a high five.  And then, turning, a wink in my direction.When we got to Verdugo Park, the line of suburban delinquents without swimming pools of their own extended well onto the patchy, sun-scorched lawn.  It meandered slowly into the dark interior where you paid your buck twenty-five.  When we got to the window, I pulled a crumpled bill from the pocket of my corduroy shorts, and dropped a quarter on the metal counter.  The teenage girl behind the counter scooped it up with a smile, handed me a paper ticket.  She seemed to have been born for the job, like all the other teenagers who worked the pool.  Her wavy blonde hair was tinted green from chlorine, and small flecks of missing pigment turned her tan skin pink, like Neapolitan ice cream.  She did not explain the protocol; we all knew the drill.  Boys on one side, girls on the other.I followed my brother, pushed through the metal turnstile into the chlorine-scented cavern that was the boys’ locker room.  Once inside, there was another window to visit.  The three of us traded our paper tickets for green canvass bags, into which we were to stuff our street clothes, in preparation for the mandatory pre-shower.  I peeled off my cotton tank top, stuffed it into the bag, and then hesitated.  My brother caught my reticence.“M-o-d-e-s-t,” he mouthed.“Shuttup.” I protested, turning away to set my canvas bag on one of several benches.  The pre-shower, no matter how many times I’d done it, felt like forced humiliation.  Like we were being deloused at Auschwitz.  But more than that, my brother had hit the nail on the head.  I was modest.   Peach fuzz had appeared that summer.  And though I had seen the Sex-Ed films at school and had an idea what it meant, I wasn’t quite ready to share it with the world.I waited until Slobert and my brother had moved on, and stepped under the shower for a second or two.  The bare minimum.  At least if I looked wet I’d make it past the final window.  Slippery now, I squeezed into my nylon swimming trunks with their Velcro pockets, and grabbed the canvass bag stuffed with my street clothes.  At the window I passed it to another teenager, where it would be hung with the clothes of strangers.“Here,” he rasped, handing me a metal clip with a number on it.  He was greenish-blonde and tanned like the ticket girl, but donned a mouthful of braces that prevented his lips from closing all the way.The clip he gave me corresponded with a number on the bag, allowing me to claim it later.When I caught up with Tony and Slobert they had spread their towels on the cement deck near the far wall.  This was often our home base, smack between the screaming elementary schoolers who inhabited the shallow end of the Olympic-sized pool, and the larger-than-life high schoolers who monopolized the deep end.  Julie Houston was already there, posing in her one-piece bathing suit and vying for the attention of the high school boys.  Also in attendance were Sarah Deason, the girl from up the block who let spiders spin webs on her hands, and Horace and Squint, her neighbors.  No one was sure what school the brothers went to, or if they attended school at all.  It was rumored that they’d already done time at juvy.After setting up camp, my brother didn’t waste any time—went straight for the high dive.  Not to be left out, Slobert and I followed suit, joining the line of ‘big kids’ that snaked across the hot concrete.  In the same way that our elementary school was segregated—a small school yard for grades K-3, and a superior yard for grades 4-6, you knew you had graduated to the big time once you got up the guts to first attempt the high dive.  It towered above in the stratosphere, taunting you with its slippery metal stairs and perilous plank.  As we waited our turn, we watched a tubby kid around our age negotiate the turquoise fiberglass.  His girth flounced as he inched toward its lip, arms suspended daintily.  Even from a distance, we could read the terror in his eyes—he may as well have been walking the plank at the point of a gilded sword.The crowd remained hushed as he readied himself for the moment of truth.  And then, with a single now-or-never shift of his formidable weight, he was in midair.  He hung suspended there for a fraction of a second, and then gravity got hold of him, compelling him hellward, his enormous mass plummeting through air so thick with anticipation it could be cut with a knife.  As he neared the surface of the water the silence was cut with the hiss of air between molars, a synchronized expression of imminent dread from the crowd.  He was in the wrong position, with no time to correct.  This was not going to end well.And then we heard it.S P L A T !The belly flop heard round the world.The boy resurfaced to peals of laughter.He swam sheepishly to the pool’s brick-lined edge, and left with few alternatives, hoisted his corpulent mass onto the hot concrete.  When he stood, the crowd saw that a perfect magenta oval, like an eggplant, had seared itself into the blinding white flesh of his belly.Again, peals of laughter.  Louder now.I looked around for a chicken exit.  We had made our way to the base of the ladder; my brother was next in line, and then Slobert.  If I ducked out now, I’d never live it down.  I’d been braving the high dive since the previous summer, but it never got easier.  I had yet to attempt an actual dive; opted instead for the tried-and-true cannonball more often than not.      My brother Tony had perfected not just a dive, but a somersault-dive worthy of the Olympics.  When he flawlessly executed his trademark, cheers erupted from the crowd.  Slobert frowned, and then his competitive nature kicked in, and he mounted the stairs.  I half-hoped he would emerge with an eggplant or other vegetable imprinted on his belly.  No such luck.  No somersault, but still a perfect dive that cut the water like butter.He’d been practicing.  Shit.I couldn’t turn back now.  And the stakes had been raised.  I would have no choice but to attempt an actual dive.  There had to be a first time for everything, and it was time to bite the bullet.  You dive all the time from the low-dive.  This is no different, I told myself as I mounted the first of two-dozen slippery metal stairs.  Halfway up the wind kicked in, exaggerating the goose bumps that had already formed on my skin due to apprehension.  I looked down, half wishing there would be an earthquake or other disaster to divert the focus of the crowd.  Nothing.  Not even a tremor.  Their attention was riveted on me, anticipating my every move.  Watching me breathe.Suddenly I was at the top.I inched onto the fiberglass, testing my traction.I gazed into the choppy, marbled water so far below, imagining this is what the Earth looked like from space.  The tiny blue marble.  It was spinning now, a microscopic target no different than a wooden bucket in a three-ring circus.  I looked to the lifeguards, one on each side of the pool.  They sat on their thrones, elevated above the petty neighborhood children who were just waiting for me to fail.  The lifeguards had always seemed so heroic to me—not like the toothy freckled teenagers working the window, but like superheroes.  Tanned and toned, clad in fire engine red, bullhorns at the ready should some kid attempt to run on the slippery deck.The lifeguard perched nearest the high dive was clearly their leader.  His golden Christopher Atkins locks were somehow impervious to the swampy greenish effect of the chlorine that affected inferior heads of hair.  His shone in the harsh sunlight, refracting its own aura.  And his teeth, not to be outdone, gleamed stark white in neat rows against the tanned flesh of a sturdy jaw.  He smiled at me across the miles.  And then, raising a sinewy forearm, he made a gesture meant for me and me alone.  The universal symbol of approval, of brotherhood, of genuine, unconditional support.  The thumbs up.Suddenly the fear dissipated that something would go terribly awry—the image of blood on concrete or tainting the immaculate turquoise water.  Without another thought, I sprang from the board.  The world whizzed by, cold in my ears, on my skin.  In an instant it was over.  Before I knew what had happened.The silence of the world below the water consumed all, the crushing weight of it.  The concrete floor was rushing up at me.  I arced until perpendicular, orienting myself to the base of the ladder in my periphery.  The stabbing pain in my ears gave way to sweet relief as I reached for it.  When I yanked myself into the world above, the sound of cheering still hung on the air.  Once I had my bearings, I looked up.  The lifeguard was there, framed by the sun, its blinding disc forming a halo.  The iconic silhouette was unmistakable—another thumbs up.  I’d done well.I smiled smugly as I plopped spread-eagle onto the hot concrete next to Slobert.  I’d brought a towel, but preferred the hot concrete somehow.  I liked the way the water formed pools under my skin, squished warm beneath my bathing suit.  It felt especially good today as my pelvis subtly rocked.  The breeze was exhilarating on my skin, the sensations of warm and cool transporting me, lulling me into state of utter Zen.I became one with the concrete.  Head turned to the side, gazing up into the endless blue.  With each blink, patterns floated to the ground, and I traced them with my eyes, trying to find their landing place before they disappeared.  The lifeguard was there, lost in atmosphere, amid the torrents of raining molecules.  But suddenly he was in crisp focus, obliterating the patterns that were just overcompensation for the field of blue nothingness.  The sunlight not only framed him, carving deep core shadows into his chiseled form, but it glanced off, igniting tiny prisms of light that leapt from perfectly configured blonde hairs.  I could see this, even at a distance.  The richness of his deeply tanned calves absorbed the light, but the blonde hairs harnessed it, intensified it million-fold, sent it out into the world with a golden luster.I’d always admired the lifeguards, looked up to them literally and figuratively.  But gazing up at them, at him, had never been so mesmerizing.  And the squishing of the warm water had never felt so…good.Boner.  The word floated into my head, from nowhere.  The sex education films we’d been forced to watch at school, preparing us for the decadence of junior high school life, referred to them as ‘erections.’ But for some reason the clinical name evaded me today.  It was the word ‘boner’ that I attached to what I was feeling down south.  Hard-on.  Woody.  Stiffie.Aha.   Sothat’s a boner.  Got it.And then, only seconds later, another word came floating in, even more from left field.  GAY.  The word GAY pushed out boner, woodie, stiffie, and hard-on.So this is GAY.  This is what that word means.We’d thrown it around like no one’s business, to describe a Pee-Chee folder or the institution of disco.  But this was no Pee-Chee folder.  We’d heard the word uttered in whispered tones, by adults.  Ted, the gymnastics coach at the Burbank Arts and Recreation center, and his special friend Jesse, the ballet instructor, were believed to be gay.  But it had been an abstract concept.  I now knew that they, too, in addition to having earrings in both ears and bushier beards than my ten year-old eyes had yet seen, enjoyed looking at the sun glinting off of lifeguards’ muscular legs.  Suddenly, certain pieces began to fit.  I had yet to discover my own penis and the various things that could be done with it behind a locked bathroom door.   But come to think of it I’d experienced a similar sensation to today’s when looking through the Time Life book I’d found in our bathroom, stuffed between Reader’s Digest and the Burbank Leader.  Sexuality in general was not openly discussed in our household, in an educational sense.  Only in the form of off-color jokes, or my father lining up my sister’s fourteen year old friends in order of breast size.  My parents were products of their generation, who believed such things were better repressed and then discussed in therapy later.  In lieu of the obligatory ‘birds and bees’ conversation, my mother’s way was to discretely slip the Time Life book among the others, hoping our curiosity would be piqued.  The small hard cover book, on human sexuality, had endpapers featuring highly rendered illustrations of naked humans—a size-comparison chart of sorts.  There was a mommy and a daddy, a teenage boy and girl, and their younger, prepubescent siblings.  What this family were doing standing naked in a line-up I cannot say.  But what I do know for certain is that I enjoyed looking at the daddy most.There had been other clues.  My father’s lifelong friend Jack had worked for the Heinz company for many years, and regularly brought home merchandising products.  Many of them featured the Jolly Green Giant.  Whether because of, or in spite of his coloring, I found him oddly attractive.  He was super-human, colossal, strong and invincible.  And he wore a short loincloth.  Most importantly, he seemed kind and good-natured, in a way that my father wasn’t.   He seemed downright, well, it’s right there in the name—jolly.   I felt safe and protected somehow, sitting in that cold plastic chair molded in the shape of his hand, even while being lacerated by its sharp plastic seams.  When I got home from the public swimming pool, I immediately searched for the Time Life book.  Incredibly, it was still there.  I discretely double-checked the door lock, and then flipped excitedly to the endpapers.Yup.  It had not been my imagination.  The daddy jumped off the paper, other family members fading into oblivion.  His broad shoulders were thrown back to display proudly puffed-out pectorals, complete with rendered patterns of thick fur.  His hands were planted firmly on his hips, stance wide enough to trap a grisly bear.  And his genitals were, well, front and center.I did not leave the bathroom for twenty minutes.I’d discovered the greatest thing since sliced bread.For some reason, that night as I was lying in bed, a thought occurred to me.I wonder if it’s WRONG… My discovery hadn’t bothered me in the least.  It was new and exciting somehow.  And maybe it was the Zen state I’d been in on making the discovery, drunk from the sun and meditative with alpha waves, but it felt right.  It felt honest.  It felt pure.  And I really liked looking at those lifeguards.  Not to mention my newfound pastime, which I planned to do plenty more of.  Still, the thought nagged at me.  I’d heard it somewhere before—that gay was wrong.  I mean—I knew it was bad.  Ridiculous.  Uncool.  But was it morally wrong?  What did God think?I reached for my bedside copy of The Way, a hip 70’s bible geared toward wayward teenagers.  The cover featured a large, bubbly psychedelic typeface, inside of which swirled a montage of smiling hippies.  I thumbed through the index.  But as hard as I looked, examining every possible cross-reference, there was no mention of ‘gay,’ ‘gayness’ ‘gaydom’ or even homosexuality.  I guess even with the dire need to save America’s teenagers from decadence, the publisher dared not speak the word.I slept very well that night.The next day, I went to the pool alone.  But instead of paying a buck twenty-five to swim in urine-infested water, I went up to the concrete balcony overlooking the Olympic-sized pool.  In solitude, I leaned against the railing and took in the scene below.  The screaming kids were tiny—flecks of salt and pepper.  And the lifeguards, so often heroic and godlike, were stunted, the height of their stations only half that of the balcony.  It was hard to see the tiny prisms of light, the halos refracting from their golden locks.On the way home, I ran into Carlos Santa Maria in the alley.  Only now the flip of his feathered hair had new meaning, the smile was a temptation.  I’d been acutely aware of the difference between zippered Toughskins, the norm in elementary, and the button fly jeans that the older kids wore.  What I hadn’t noticed was the package beneath.  As Carlos high-fived me in passing, I imagined I saw a hard-on beneath the taut denim.Moments later, I was rifling through the scant reading material in our bathroom.  To my own surprise, the Time Life Book was already losing its appeal.  I would need new smut.  Unfortunately, images of the male figure were few and far between in seventies culture.  Pre-Calvin Klein, pre-Abercrombie and Fitch, the pickings were slim.  Men were not to be objectified or viewed as sensual creatures.  They puffed on cigarettes, wearing flannel shirts, staring off at a horizon dotted with saguaros.  The quintessence of rugged maleness was the Brawny Paper Towel guy, Mr. Clean, or the Marlboro man.  Later the advertising industry would realize its mistake and begin marketing to women and gay men, but for the moment men kept their clothes on in the media.Except for Jim Palmer, God love him.After ten minutes of madly rifling through every last magazine in our bathroom, I stumbled across it.  There he was, in his tighty whities, furry as a Grizzly bear wrapped in shag carpeting, with one leg propped up on a box.  Eureka! The Jockey underwear ad that would sustain a generation of young homos, bound by our shared lust for Mr. Palmer, locked in our bathrooms, wrists sore but giving it one more go-round.  “Where you been?” Slobert Hatchford had appeared beside me on the balcony at Verdugo Rec.I couldn’t tell him I’d been dividing my time between being locked in the bathroom with Jim Palmer for twenty minutes at a time, and standing on that balcony processing something much, much bigger than myself.“I been around.” I said instead.“Well, you should come swim at my house.  It’s way better than this piss pool anyway.  And they’re done cleaning the filters now.”“Yeah, maybe,” I said, and wandered away.
Scuffling through the alleyway on the way home, I took in the faded asphalt beneath my bare feet.  Suddenly it was no longer rich and black, but weathered and lined.  Coarse gray pebbles protruded from gritty aggregate, reflecting not the blue sky, but something heavy and gray and ominous.  I kicked a pebble.  It glanced off the base of a concrete wall and skidded to a stop.  I kicked it again.  This time it arced, leading me to a conspicuous pile of trash that spewed from an overturned trash barrel.  There on top, lay a waterlogged copy of The Deep, a best selling novel at the time.  Flipping through it, the word naked caught my eye, on page ten.  I flipped further.  There it was again—naked. That’s all it took.Once safely locked in the bathroom, I started the shower for good measure.  I parted the pages of Peter Benchley’s The Deep. Don’t disappoint me, I thought.  And Mr. Benchley surely did not.  I remember the exact wording to this day, of the phrase I would read and reread throughout the duration of the summer.  About midway through the novel, there was a scene in which the main character and his wife, having rented scooters, are touring the island of Bermuda.  They are kidnapped, ostensibly by the ‘bad guys,’ and forced to endure a humiliating strip search.  The man watches the other men stripping his wife.  ‘The palpable excitement of the gawking men was contagious, and he could feel the blood rushing into his groin…’My other outlet was an afternoon exercise program on VHF titled Body Buddies. In the seventies, before ON TV and Z Channel opened the floodgates and ushered in the Cable TV era, all one had to choose between was UHF and VHF.  UHF housed the major networks, and VHF provided sad home for everything else not worth watching.  Had it not been for the ultra-short dolphin shorts the trainer wore, I might have flipped right on past Body Buddies myself.  Instead, I would re main riveted for hours at a time, huddled in front of my father’s small battery-operated television set in the kitchen, sound turned down.  To say that there was no privacy in our household is an understatement.  In addition to three siblings and myself, there were two parents, two dogs, a cat, two parakeets, a hermit crab, and the odd straggler living in our spare bedroom at any given time.  And so it was that I found myself all too often conducting my gratuitous viewing in the company of the bread box and crock pot.  Had I used the large television in the den, my sudden interest in exercise would have been suspect.  “What the hell happened to my goddamn batteries?” My father growled one day, baffled at their inability to hold a charge for any length of time.As the summer wore on, and the novelty of my new pastime wore off, the big questions set in.  At eleven, though I was incapable of thinking even a moment ahead, part of me was grappling with what my new discovery meant for my future.  Simply put, how this would all pan out.  Despite my initial acceptance, something had seeped in.  Suddenly I was seeing and hearing things around me that had previously blended seamlessly into the white noise.  When searching Reader’s Digest for the word ‘naked’ (to no avail,) I came across a humor article titled ‘How You Know It’s Going To Be a Bad Day.’ Number six posited, ‘You put your bra on backwards and it fits better.’ Number seven read, ‘Your son says he wishes Anita Bryant would mind her own business.’I knew who she was.  The orange juice lady.  When it came to the news, my attention span was that of a nervous housefly on caffeine.  Still, it was impossible not to overhear fragmented news stories about Ms. Bryant’s religious campaigns against the ‘homosexual agenda.’ When the newscasters covered the story, were forced to say the ‘h’ word, it seemed foreign on their tongues, and they spit it out uncomfortably.  As if speaking Latin for the first time.  My comprehension of all things gay was virtually nonexistent, and Burbank liked it that way.  America liked it that way.  San Francisco, I’d overheard, was where the gays lived.  I pictured it as some sort of Mecca, neither glamorous nor decadent, but somehow unreal.  I pictured all those sandal-wearing hippies with their earrings and bushy beards, in the far-off land of San Francisco, a world away.  This was the extent of my familiarity with gay culture.  Now I knew, thanks to Anita Bryant and Reader’s Digest, how mothers felt about gay sons.A week later, glancing absently at the television set, my own mother confirmed as much.  Taking in grainy concert footage of David Bowie—his spiked hair, his leather pants, his dual-colored eyes lined with plenty of black liner, she commented, “That guy’s every mother’s nightmare of a gay son…”The next night my mother was at the Creative Arts Center where she was taking a painting class from her mentor, Paul Rubens.  My mother often modeled for Paul, and another senior artist by the name of Claude, who sculpted nothing but fortune cookies and dragons.  At the Creative Arts Center, my mother honed her earth mama skills—ceramics and macramé, in the presence of kindred spirits who could give her what her husband could not.“Doesn’t bother you that she poses for him?” my Father’s friend Jack prodded.  Before Jack’s stint with the Jolly Green Giant, the two had laid concrete together.  Their mindset was blue collar to say the least.“Nah,” was my Dad’s response.  “He’s—you know…”With that my father raised his burly arm in to the air, curled the bicep.  But instead of making a muscle, he flung his hand the other way in an all-too familiar limp-wristed gesture.My parents’ off-handed comments did not sting.  They did, however, rise to the surface somehow like cream begging to be skimmed off.  There was nothing mean-spirited about their reflections—they were the norm.  This was a generation who felt the need to call Liberace and Paul Lynd ‘bachelors.’ My mother had made sure to expose her children to diversity—in the form of Ted, the gymnastics coach, and his special friend Jessie.   But the nature of their relationship was never explained.  And the silence spoke louder than words; the inability to utter the word left a vacuum in which my father’s slurs and those of society, were deafening.    The real downside to growing up in a society that dare not speak the word, is that little white trash boys must grow up, even next door to Hollywood, thinking they’re the only one in the world who has ever had a strange attraction to the Jolly Green Giant or Mr. Clean.  In an effort to combat the isolation, to find someone, something with which to identify, I took a trip to the local library.  To learn more about my ‘condition.’ If the mainstream media could hardly bring newscasters to utter the word, the burden would be on me to find my peeps, where I belonged.  Later I would discover the unlikely bond I shared with those married Burbank men in the back seats of cars, but for the moment I would have to find it in a book.  My quest for God’s opinion in my copy of The Way had been like searching for intelligent life on other planets.  Maybe the Burbank Public Library would yield more.I veered from the sidewalk onto the patchy lawn of the library, maple leaves crunching with each step.  For some reason I looked to the street, where cars zipped by on the four-lane avenue.  No one was looking; it was safe to proceed.Just as I was approaching the glass door on the side of the building, a raspy voice called out.“Heeeeyyy!” It was Slobert Hatchford.  He was rapidly approaching from the Children’s library next door.“Hey,” I called back, trying to muster the requisite degree of enthusiasm.“You doin’ summer school too?” Everyone knew making up time was the only reason to go near a library in summer.“Nooo…” I stalled, in order to conjure up an alibi.  I’m researching homos would never fly.“So...what are you doing here?”“Whatever I want.” It was the best I could come up with.“You’re coming to the library by choice?  What a dork!”“Shuttup, Fag.”With that I marched into the library, not looking back.Inside, the hermetic silence was profound.  The heavy glass door swung shut behind me, destroying the frail tranquility of the sanctuary.  Every eye in the room looked up, glared at me from beneath furrowed brows.  I took a step.Squeeeeeeeeaak!   My Vans Slip-ons had never so much as muttered a peep.  And now they were a deafening cacophony of impertinence.A second step.Squeeeeeeeeeaak!  It even sounded gay.  If no one here knew before why I came, they surely know now.I cursed the soles of my shoes, and made a beeline for the card catalogue.  The Librarian behind the counter eyed me disapprovingly, tracing my perilous journey across the Berber carpeting.  She wore a silver pageboy, and a conservative pantsuit with slight shoulder pads.  I’d dealt with her type before, not just at the library, but at the Hallmark store where the Korean proprietors assumed anyone under five feet tall was out to shoplift them into the poorhouse.  This woman, all librarians, had made a career out of condescending, intimidation.  I was not to escape her all-seeing radar.At the reference section’s card catalogue, I turned my back to the main desk, and began rifling through the hand-tipped cards of the Dewey Decimal System.  Each card threatened to burst an eardrum as it scraped its mahogany drawer.Gastronomy…Flip.  Gavarnie, Gavial, Gawain…Scrape.  Scrape. Scrape.…Gaya…What?  No GAY?  Nothing gay at all?I moved to the ‘H’ drawer.  Surely there was something.  Homo-this or homo-that.  The librarian scowled, her omniscient gaze burning a hole through the yellowed tabs.  She was on to me.  Still, I could not turn back now.Aha! There, lodged between ‘homogenous’ and ‘Hona,’ I found them.  Two measly cards, representing the two books in the reference section devoted to my condition.I thumbed the first.The David Kopay Story.I read the brief description, typed faintly on the manila card: Autobiography:David Marquette Kopay (born June 28, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois) A Running back in the American National Football League, David, in 1975, became the first American athlete to come outas gay.Hmmmmmm…I thought.  Who knew?  Another well kept secret.  I would definitely be checking it out; maybe there would be pictures.  Locker room pictures.The second card represented a reference book titled Preventing Homosexuality.Its cover featured the photographic image of two healthy, happy prepubescent boys playing tag football, while a third, glum and runt-like, played with dolls in the shadowy foreground.  It was easy to key into his sad, disenfranchised expression, so close to the camera and all.  The tableau behind him, diffused and dappled with sunlight, was like an out-of-reach fantasy, unattainable and clearly not on the menu for the pathetic boy.A glutton for punishment, I cracked its cover.Perusing the first few chapters, certain passages, certain words, jumped out at me.  Freudian, Kinsey Spectrum, and APA, or American Psychological Association.  I stopped here.‘The American Psychological Association,’ the paragraph read, ‘lists homosexuality among its chronicle of mental illnesses…’Hmmmmmmm.  Mental Illness.  I didn’t feel crazy.I continued skimming.More words, like aberration, abomination, unnatural.  Sin.I didn’t feel like a sinner.  Sure, there was some shame attached to my newfound pastime, but wasn’t that true of everyone?  Wasn’t everyone shameful about sex?  Or at least modest?  Surely I wasn’t the first.  And besides, what Jim Palmer and I did behind closed doors was a private act.  Were all private acts sinful?  Like pooping or belching?  Were all biological functions sinful just because you didn’t wish to share them with the world?I didn’t like what I was reading.  So I flipped ahead.  And things weren’t about to get any better.  On page 143:‘The outcome of homosexuality is a negative resolution of the Oedipus complex, in which the male child renounces the competition with the father for the mother’s affection, adopting the homosexual position.  This is often, if not always exacerbated by the domineering mother and absent or distant father…’I thought about it.  My mother was anything but domineering.  Or smothering.  Still, some of this had the ring of truth.  Like a fortune cookie or an astrological reading, through its universality and the power of suggestion, it resonated somehow.  I would later in life learn that all American men of my generation viewed their fathers as distant; longed for a closer relationship.  But for the moment, these damning correlations, these statistical observations, these off-based misapprehensions relied on my suggestibility.  I was being told, in no uncertain terms, what I was.  Like it or not.On page 200, in the chapter titled, ‘Who is at risk?’:The symptoms of an at-risk boy are: excessively ‘pretty,’ sickly, sensitive, non-athletic, fear of rough and tumble play , l ack of same-sex playmates , d islike of team sports , d oll play , cross dressing or interest in women's clothesor shoes, effeminate speech or mannerism , taking the feminine role when playing ‘house.’I thought back to the day my neighbor Maria had crossed the street, bubbling over with enthusiasm, after receiving Malibu Barbie for her birthday.  Not just Barbie herself, but Ken, the Flower Power Van, and all the accessories one could want or need.  Despite her attempts to seduce me into the world of Malibu Barbie, I will go to my grave saying I was not tempted in the least.  Not even to peek beneath Ken’s fuchsia swim trucks to see if he was, well, anatomically correct.And with regard to cross dressing—I would learn later it was primarily a heterosexual fixation, linked to sexual arousal, that the tradition of Drag within the gay community had more to do with embracing society’s mischaracterizations and celebrating gender-bending.  Having little or no sexual attraction to women, I couldn’t imagine for a moment why I would want to dress in their lace panties.  Simply put, the panties and I did not have a lot in common.The final straw that day at the Burbank Public Library, the one that caused me to firmly snap shut the book’s antiquated cover and reject its outdated Freudian views, was the following passage:‘Gay men, without the benefit of offspring or companionship, struggle with aging.  Once unable to procure the sexual relations that have come to define their lifestyle, gay men take to paying for sex, or pandering to procure favors in sex clubs, dark alleys or adult bookstores…’So this is what I had to look forward to.At eleven, my bullshit detector was already pretty accurate.  I didn’t buy a word of what I was reading.  What I had learned was that the reason society dared not speak the word, the reason the newscasters choked on it, was the fear of revealing their own ambivalence.  Their distaste.  Or outright vehemence.  My search for intelligent life, my search for kindred spirits, for a single example with whom I could identify, had led me here.  To the Burbank public library, where the book I now clutched, with its cheesy cover, was telling me all that I was up against.  That homosexuals would be represented in film, only so long as they were also degenerates or axe murderers.  That they would be the second in line to have their throats slit in horror movies.  After the black guy, of course.  And how satisfying it would be when the limp-wristed, lispy character is finally thrown from the third-story window.    Standing there in the Mental Illness section, my condition lumped in with schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and the compulsion to wash ones hands five hundred times a day, I had no crystal ball.  I could not know that the Zen-like self-acceptance that was my nature would come and go, ebb and flow.  I couldn’t foresee that isolation would set in during adolescence, that it would both make me lonely and forge character.  I had no way of knowing that in young adulthood I would cherish this character, count introspection among the gifts that were the flipside of the ‘gay’ gene.  I would learn that the authors of Preventing Homosexuality were putting the cart before the horse—identifying by-products, confounding correlations with causality.  And society would learn along with me, about the genetic components, the brain differences confirming it, about finger-length and pre-natal hormone levels.   Television would go from sheepishly uttering the word ‘gay’ solely in reference to Jack Tripper, who was only ‘pretending’ to be gay, to allowing The Real World’s Pedro into our homes.  The first real live homo, in his native habitat, living a respectable life.  Letters from isolated boys living in cornfields in Iowa would thank him for saving them from suicide through his very existence.  His visibility.  Television would go on to feature a gay character in virtually every single prime-time show in its lineup.  All novelties, granted, but eventually it would be a non-issue.  Characters would be matter-of-factly gay.  Unaffected.I would come to forget the excruciating isolation, the profound silence of my youth.  Only when trying to ‘make a difference’ for young homos through my filmmaking would I force myself back into that space.  I would eventually be awed by the degree of change I’d glimpse in my own lifetime, to marvel at the very idea that the issue of Gay Marriage would even be on the table.  I would live to see the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.’ My own niece would found the Gay Student Union, would tout tolerance as if she’d invented it.  I would come to wonder what I might possibly have to offer her generation, so far ahead of my own.  I would feel obsolete and purposeless.  I would feel like a relic.Until I reminded myself, that is, that my generation laid the groundwork.  As did the Stonewall generation before mine.I took one last look at the words on the page of Preventing Homosexuality, and slammed its cheesy cover closed with a THUD.  The librarian looked up.  I smiled at her, slipped the book back into its place on the cold metal shelf.And then, Vans slip-ons squeaking with every step, enunciating my pride, rejecting the propaganda, I strolled past the librarian with her conservative pageboy and condescending scowl.Outside, I surveyed the traffic slipping by on Verdugo Avenue.  I no longer cared who saw me emerging from the library.  Still, I chose the alley for some reason.  It ran the length of Verdugo Avenue, but several hundred yards north.  And it stretched from Buena Vista all the way past Verdugo Recreation center to my own home a good half-mile away.  I looked down at the gritty, lacerating shards and pebbles punctuating the asphalt.  It had once been slick and uninterrupted, was now corrugated with deeply etched lines.  Somehow I wanted to feel it beneath my padded soles, every sharply protruding apex and recessed rivulet.  Every nook and cranny, divot and pockmark.I removed my Van Slip-ons, held them in my hand.Only White Trash run around barefoot, Mr. Hatchford’s voice reminded me.“Your son wears fag shoes,” I replied.With that, I started padding down the alley, eyeing the long, long road ahead.