Worth the Wait

At Reunion Arena I waited in line for three hours behind thousands of people to hear him speak to his Dallas supporters. Schools made a field trip out of the event. Moms called in sick to work to attend. Children ran around excited about the day when they would be old enough to vote.

Fort Worth was a much longer wait. I decided to spend my day staked out in front of the Convention Center. There were about 15 or so other avid supporters already there. The chilly Thursday morning had warmed up by the time the doors opened at the Forth Worth Convention Center six hours later. But my wait was not yet over. For two more hours I stood on the floor just ten feet away from the stage where he was going to address the 20,000 people who showed up to support him. My feet hurt and my body was worn out, but I kept waiting.

Although the polls closed at 7:00 on March 4th, I stayed for five more hours and witnessed each and every caucus vote be verified and counted to determine the delegate distribution for Precinct 1407. It was nearly midnight when the delegates were elected to go on to the District Convention on March 29th.

Hundreds of us swamped the narrow, front corridor of Thomas Jefferson High School. We patiently waited our turn to sign-in as elected delegates for our respective precincts. What took one hour the year before took nearly six hours this year. It was hot and most of us had plenty of other things to do on a Saturday afternoon, but we waited.

We were young, middle-aged and senior citizens. We were Black, White, Asian, Latin, and Middle-Eastern. We were students, teachers, preachers, retirees, fight attendants, and veterinarians. We were hungry. We were tired. We were determined. We were hopeful. And together we waited.

We waited because finally we were being counted. We waited because finally someone was speaking on our behalf. We waited because finally we were willing to fight for what we deserved, instead of settling for what we could get. We waited because the feeling of believing in something again ignited an inner hope in us that was extinguished a long time ago. We waited because if not now, then when?

For all these reasons and more, we waited for Barack Obama.

But, alas, our wait is finally over.

Twenty-two hours of standing in line and several months of roller-coaster primary results later and finally Barack Obama has succeeded in winning the majority of delegates in the Democratic primaries.

Ask any of us, and we'd all say the same thing: it was well worth the wait.

Art: Our Great Escape

I recently volunteered to be one of the judges for a teen poetry contest sponsored by the Dallas Public Library. One of my top selections was a poem entitled, "My Great Escape." The author describes that whenever she wants to leave the noisy life of the city, she escapes into a book. Books offer her a great escape from her life.

The more I think about her poem, the more I realize that most of us use various forms of art to escape, as well. Film, television, literature, painting, music, video games. We spend half our day at work attending to the mundane activities of our jobs--activities that may have once been new, exciting and promising, but now feel routine, necessary and empty.

And the second half of our days are spent escaping. We read James Patterson's newest thriller; we tune into American Idol auditions or new episodes of Lost; we play our favorite video games on our new PS3s; we watch the movies Netflix sent from our queue; we listen to music and drink a beer. And once we're relaxed enough, we go to bed and start the whole process over again.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with these forms of art. After all, art imitates life and there is plenty to learn about life through art. It's not the little picture that concerns me. It's the big picture. The one we can't step far enough away from our lives for long enough to see. But be cautious. Though art imitates life, it is no substitute for life.

We live in an escapist culture where escaping through art is so embedded in our culture and so necessary to the system in which we live, that it has become an unquestioned norm. I think there was a time when art was the voice of revolutionaries. A voice that caused riots and action. But now art has been seized upon by the system to function as a means to its end. But art is no longer the shot gun for revolution.

Art is a medium in which revolutionary thought can be expressed to the appeasement of the artist and absorbed to satisfy its audience with no real action necessary.

Art is our escape from the half of our lives we spend performing tasks like robots. It allows us to experience things we may never experience. But it is a deceptive and temporary release from our realities. A release that only rejuvenates us enough to get up the next morning and keep doing what we do without question.

This blog sort of functions in a similar capacity. If it weren't for the illusion of expression and reception of thought this blog provides me, I may actually be doing something, rather than just writing about it. In that sense the blog successfully subdues any revolutionary or controversial thoughts I have. Thoughts that could lead to action if not safely and quietly channeled into something else.

Call me naive and idealistic, even call me crazy, but I don't want to escape my life through art while the rest of my time is spent feeding into a system that depends on me living a meaningless and robotic life. I want to physically go out and experience a life I don't need to escape. A life no art can imitate.

Happy Commercialized Love Day!

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy Commercialized Love Day! Ah, yes, yet another human experience the great U-S of A has managed to commercialize and strip of any genuine meaning.

There's la primavera, or the feeling of rebirth that is now represented by nothing more than baskets full of colorful plastic eggs and bunny-shaped chocolates.

Then there's la independencia, or freedom, the very foundation of this country, which to the average youth today means nothing more than a a day off from school and a chance to light firecrackers in the streets until 3 o'clock in the morning.

And let's not forget the big daddy of them all, la navidad, or the birth of the man born to save us all. This one may be worse off than the rest of 'em. Christmas is now the equivalent to crowded malls, angry shoppers, newly accrued debt and a jovial-big-fat-flustered white guy in a red suit.

Sigh...

So why not commercialize el amor tambien? Love is no longer something you feel. It's something you prove with the exchange of material objects.

Diamonds!
Red roses!
Expensive dinner for two!
Champagne so expensive you can't even pronounce its name!

Go ahead, treat each other like shit the other 364 days of the year.
Barely communicate or acknowledge each other's presence.
Check out other people.
Yell at each other about how you keep arguing about the same things over and over again.
Cry about how s/he never changes no matter how much s/he promises.

But not today.

Today, ignore all the non-love like aspects of your relationship and cover them up with a brand-new watch and pair of diamond earrings.

Now that's love.

We are the greatest country in the world. What other country could succeed in desensitizing, mass producing and exploiting everything and anything that makes us human?

Misery loves company

This may sound odd, but I am attracted to misery.

I do not aim to make people miserable. But should I come across someone and sense an inkling of depression and disillusionment I can't help but smile. Something about the rawness, the vulnerability and the devastation seem so real to me. So normal. So familiar.

We are attracted most to what we are most familiar. And I am all too familiar with misery.

It is without a doubt in my moments of greatest deprivation and destitution that my thoughts are most clear, that smells are most potent, tastes are most tantalizing and sounds have never sounded better.

But there is something about misery that happiness doesn't have. Misery motivates change and action. Happiness does not. No one in a state of happiness complains about it. No one who is happy says, "I can't wait to not be happy," or "I have to do something about my life because I can't be happy forever." If we were happy all the time we wouldn't move. And we all know how I feel about being in constant motion :).

But misery? That's not a place you want to buy a home and raise your family. Misery's the sort of place that once you move in, you need to move out. It's important to pass through though. It's the disappointments that teach us what we really want. The depressions that make us dream of happiness.

Light does not exist without dark.
Good without bad.
Happiness without misery.

But being attracted to misery? Now that can be a problem.

Even though I am not in a constant state of misery, my attraction to it and to people who exude it, can make me feel like I am, which then has a stagnating effect similar to constant happiness. Misery is necessary to pass through in order to get to where you are going, but if you stay too long you can get stuck.

And my wave is stuck in a loop.

As obvious as this may seem to others, it's occurred to me that bonding on mutual misery is not an appropriate foundation for a relationship.

-"I'm lonely."
-"Me, too!"
-"Let's get married."

-"I hate my life."
-"I hate my life, too."
-"Let's be best friends."

Not okay.

I have even found myself competing with friends and exes about whose life is more miserable?! Whose plight warrants more complaints?!

Definitely, not okay.

So I have to get out of the loop. I need to keep moving. And unfortunately (and fortunately), that means change. Change in me. Change in my relationships.

Chop Suey YOUUU!

One minute ago...

I sit and stare at the empty plate in front of me. It's a white plate with a pink and green floral print border. A shiny silver fork rests in its center. There is light brown residue glimmering in random areas of its surface. Remnants of the maple syrup that once spilled over a stack of whole wheat pancakes.

Two minutes before that...

I grab the Albertson's brand pancake syrup from the cupboard and take a seat at the kitchen table. It completes the setting. Bright yellow coffee mug to the far right. Pancake syrup to the left. Plate of hot and supple whole wheat pancakes dead center.

Poor pancakes. They didn't stand a chance.

Two minutes later...

What's wrong with me? Who eats this fast? I wasn't even that hungry. I'm not even in a rush.

It was like the Jasmine v. Pancakes showdown and no one told the pancakes...

One and a half minutes before the two minutes later...

WAM! BAM! CHOP SUEY, YOUUUU! TAKE THAT! HA HA! VICTORY IS MINE YOU SILLY, SILLY PANCAKES!

Thirty seconds later (or back to the two minutes later)...

Sad plate. It misses its whole wheat companions. I took them away from it.

Sigh.

To the dishwasher you go.

One minute later (or now)...

I can't believe I just wrote a blog about pancakes. And I like it.

We are not particles. We are waves.

It has recently come to my attention by a friend of mine that I do not know anything about myself, and that she does not really know me after all.

And now that I think about it, I don't know anything. At all.

Every time I think I know myself or my place in the world, something changes and I quickly realize that I in fact know nothing. Socrates believed that knowing you know nothing is actually knowing more than every one else who thinks they know anything. A true philosopher never comes to any certainties, only to continue questioning, and maybe this is more natural than trying to know.

It makes senses actually. If all matter exists as waves in constant motion and only appear as particles in the eye of the observer, then the same must be true of me, as well. Who I am and what I am is in constant motion. To know me is to stagnate me, make me a particle instead of a wave. No wonder than if you avert your eyes and return to view me, what you thought you knew you no longer know. For I am not to be known. I am constantly changing. To stay the same would be unnatural.

Perhaps this is why relationships don't work out for me. Most relationships are dependent on a certain knowledge of each other to continue. "I know him better than he knows himself," or "Oh, I know him, he would never do that," or "That's so unlike him," or "I guess I never really knew him." It's the knowing that keeps us together and the not knowing that tears us apart. But the presumptions of knowing can be suffocating and limiting. Eventually you become confined to being what the person you are with knows you to be. But this knowledge is forced and unnatural. For as fellow matter we are not to be known or stagnated. We are meant to be ever changing and in constant motion. We are not particles. We are waves.

Liberating isn't it?

Hmmm...no wonder I love the ocean and music so much.

So maybe I'll never know myself. You'll never know me and I'll never know you. But, isn't it the not knowing that makes life worth experiencing anyway? And isn't experiencing life what makes it worth living?

There's no time like right now...

I like to think everything happens for a reason.
It's not always the reason we want it to be, but it's always the reason it's supposed to be.

I met a guy a few months ago. I knew we had a connection. I just didn't know what that connection meant. Plus, I was at a weird place in my singleness. I like to call it the "So bored with life even rejection is more entertaining" phase. In any case, I knew that this "boy meets girl" story was destined to be short-lived.

A couple of weeks into it, a good friend of mine suggested that I tell this guy exactly what I wanted from him. I told her that I didn't know what I wanted from him. And that was the truth. I knew more or less what I wanted out of a relationship. But I honestly was not looking for a relationship, especially not from him. But that can't be right, can it? I mean, what else could possibly result from the boy meets girl story?

Boy + Girl = Relationship. Duh! It's elementary, my dear Watson!

We live in a "means to an end" society that depends on equations like this to keep the system in place. It's so embedded in our minds that even I was starting to think I wanted a relationship out of it. When I didn't even want a relationship PERIOD.

I think that sometimes we're so busy trying to make things happen in our lives that we miss out on the things already happening.

The truth is, this guy and I have a lot in common. We have the potential to help each other grow as friends, as fellow human beings trying to figure out this life. To place him in the role of boy and me in the role of girl without consideration of who we are, where we are in our lives, etc. would be to completely impersonalize our experience. This is of course advantageous to the system we live in. As it depends on us to fill the equation, get married, buy a home, get a mortgage out, have children, focus on paving the way for them to live the American Dream, get stuck in the struggles of capitalism and do our part in keeping the game going.

Think about all of the things, people, experiences we miss out on because they don't fit the equations, because they are not the means to the end we think we want or need. Wants and needs that probably aren't ours to begin with. Wants and needs imposed by society to keep the game going.

Separate situation, yet somewhat related...

I was sitting in the car with my brother. He was criticizing me for only working part-time, as if working full-time and being miserable is the only thing that gives my life value. He kept saying that he just doesn't want me to lose sight of the future and get stuck in complacency or go insane with so much time on my hands (interestingly enough, this is a serious concern of many of my loved ones; i'll have to address it in another blog). This is how our conversation went after that:

"Omar, I feel like I've spent my entire life dwelling over the past or fantasizing about the future that I've never lived in the here and now." I said.

"That's because right now doesn't matter." He said.

"Right now is the only time that matters. It is the only time that exists." I said.

The present is the only time that exists. The past is simply the way our brain chronicles present moments that have already passed. The future is simply present moments we have yet to process and experience. So when someone says, "Now is the time to do something." Now is literally the only time we can do anything. That's not to say that it is not important to remember and learn from the past or to plan for the future, but only as it relates to the right now. How does what I'm doing right now relate to what I've done or learned from in the past? How does what I'm doing now relate to getting me where I want to be in the future?

I like to think about that every time I tell myself something doesn't matter because it does not play into the future I have mentally created for myself or because it doesn't fit the equations society has drilled into my unconscious. ...