Struggling to understand

    I did not always believe that everything happens for a reason. It was unclear to me why anything happened at all. The world, it felt to me, was chaos, all parts of it moving at random--just confusion. We were all so desperate to make sense of what happened to and around us that we invented all sorts of wonderful systems for understanding, or making believe, or whatever--and I have been dismissive of most of them. To use the word Ayad employed to describe Obama, I have been "supercilious" but that has changed recently. 

    Maybe I don't see the elegance of the superstructure, or perhaps I am only able to sense that it's there but not yet able to appreciate the subtle grace? Either way, I am beginning to think that everything happens for a reason, even if I have been too dim to perceive what the reasons are. In very short order, I was fired from my job, then went to working all the time to keep up with 5 kids & producing no new writing nor reading anything because of the amount of exhaustion I felt all the time, then my drug use increased to levels that I didn't even think was possible "wee handfuls" of pills (caffeine pills & wellbutrin in the morning, then at night sleeping pills in ever larger doses) as well as more weed than one human should be able to smoke without their lungs collapsing, then in the winter--I got sick, the kind of sick that laid me out and had me coughing up black stuff. I've coughed up a lot of things in my time, but never anything black. And now? I am sober, I am writing every day, I am no longer in the same state as my abusive sister, and I'm following a path that doesn't feel evil. How did I arrive here?

    At my most sick, I felt a hole opening up beneath me & I knew that at any moment I was about to drop into it--whether I committed suicide or I let the sickness take me, I was not long for this earth. I turned to my family for help, but sadly they thought increasing the amount of drugs I was on was the solution. My sister brought me more weed, encouraged me to get out of bed & get back to watching her 5 children. I thought constantly about how smoothly a razor would run up my wrist--how the blood would leave me like a river of silk, and if I had taken enough of the drugs that were everywhere around me--then the end of my life wouldn't even be that painful of an episode. I didn't blame my family, I love them fiercely & still do--they did their best to protect me from the homophobia of North Carolina, tried to help me be more "straight" and to survive the cold, hard Christian reality that I had been presented with. At their core, I know they love me.

    I told my sister and my mom, the two people on earth I knew loved me most, that I was thinking about death all the time. They changed the subject, puffing away at their cigarettes, my sister annoyed that I was being so selfish--why couldn't I continue to stay high & clean/cook/watch her children so she could leave and have fun with one of the men she enjoyed seeing? She didn't care that I wanted to die, nor do I think she really believed me--she thought I was talking about suicide as a way out of doing her chores, but everything I did, I did out of love for the kids. I wanted them to have good food to eat, a nice house to live in, and I wanted to protect them from the worst of what their mother was: angry, violent, abusive, manipulative, but above all: cruel. Yes, I loved her knowing that beneath her human mask was a sociopath who didn't understand empathy. 

    When I realized my sister would not believe me until I actually tried to kill myself--and because I knew in my heart that my desire to die was so real that if I was brought to the point, it would not be an attempt--I would follow through with it--perhaps for the first time in my entire life, I would actually follow through with something, instead I ran.

    I haven't stopped running. I ran from Virginia to Niagara Falls, then to Amherst, then to Providence, and now I'm in Pittsburgh. Each time, I felt I was moving farther from danger and closer to...something. Closer to something I needed to see, or hear, or do--driven not by my own will necessarily, but by something else. Some other force that I began to trust with my life. It's like, I've decided to let Jesus take the wheel, except I'm not sure that after my southern Baptist upbringing that I want to give the force that's guiding me a "Christian" personality or flavor. In Niagara, the falls filled me with awe--a sense of wonder, there were greater things in the world than pain. In Amherst, I picked up a book by Dawn Potter (The Conversation) and my love for poetry was reignited. In Providence, I had my first open mic reading and the other poets called me beautiful and brave, the first kind words I'd heard in so long that I didn't understand them at the time. Now, in Pittsburgh, I am starting to see that America is both less and more than I imagined it to be.

   

     Still, I'm struggling to understand--what is guiding me right now? I know the next two places I'm meant to go, Detroit then Minneapolis, but I don't know why or what's waiting for me there. I think here in Pittsburgh, I was brought specifically so I could stumble upon the work of Ayad Akhtar (who had not even crossed my radar before, but who's lecture was meaningful and who's work I've been devouring voraciously) but possibly it was Sarah, the woman at Few of a Kind, who talked about Rumi with such a light in her eyes that I couldn't leave her store without buying a book--Mystical Poems of Rumi (second selection, poems 201-400, translated by A.J. Arberry) & I have not much knowledge of Rumi but on the back of the book was perhaps the words I was brought to the city to read:

            "You sell my soul for a handful of dust; what kind of bargain and sale is this?

                Give back the dust, and know your own worth; you are not a slave, you are a king, an emperor.

            For your sake there came out of heaven the fair-faced ones, the sweetly hidden."

    I sold my soul, to my family, and was a slave in a household that took nearly my life away. And now, am I a king? Or am I an "urchin" like I call myself, hiding in the balcony of the Carnegie Music Hall, looking down on the author I wish I was? Or am I neither slave, nor king, nor urchin--but something new? 

    Inside the book, Sarah slipped a handout for the Muslim Women's Association of Pittsburgh. This is the organization that I must dedicate my next poem to, I know that with a certainty that is becoming strangely familiar. Just like I knew I had to dedicate "The Smile" to House of Codec in Providence. It's how I know that it's not time for me to meet or interact with Ocean Vuong, but one day--I will have to. Why? To what end? I'm struggling to understand my role in any of this--but I'm desperate to understand, to feel that I'm not losing my mind. 

    Tonight, I came to the realization that I must "scrub" myself out of the book I recently self-published, Psalms for the Queer, and thus make it more universal. I need to make it easier for a wider audience of queer people to connect with the call to action that I'm putting out: we must reform our community, we must come together, there is important work that will require us all to put aside any differences that might exist between us. 

    Whether I am delusional or not, whether I am losing my mind or not--I do feel in my heart that I would die for this quest, for the goal of bringing the queer people of America together somehow. The work that we must do once united will be hard, and there's still a decent chance I will be mercilessly crucified for even trying to do this. Maybe I did die last winter, and this is my afterlife? Or maybe, I started to live last winter, and I am on a path that I long resisted. The whale has spit me out and now I am holding on to it as it swims in the great sea--knowing that I am in the middle of vast waters, that if I let go, I will certainly drown--but also knowing that if the whale decides to dive, I will have no other option but to go down with it--into the dark and murky waters. 

    I still speak in the language of Christianity--but it's the only language I was taught to use when speaking of spiritual experiences. Perhaps I was meant to find this book of Rumi's poetry because I'm meant to learn a new language to describe the mystical experiences that are unfolding inside & outside of myself. Now that I think about it--Rumi was inside Ayad's Homeland Elegies, page 315, I just went back to confirm:

            "I hope you don't have it already."

              I tore off the wrapping. It was on old edition of Rumi's Mathnawi. 

             "I don't. I've always thought I needed to read it."

              "That's what I thought when I saw your play. You know, they did it in Omaha."

              "You thought I needed to read Mathnawi?"

              "You're making fun of him at one moment in the play, and I just thought 'He doesn't know Rumi, because if he did, he wouldn't want to make fun of him..."

    The narrator goes on to say that he was making fun of the guy who "thinks he knows something about Islam because he's reading Rumi" and then Sultan, the character that gave the narrator the book insists that, "But anyone who reads Rumi does know something about Islam, beta. Something good, something important. For me, that book is my Quran." 

       Perhaps, I was brought to Pittsburgh to find Rumi's writings? I will go into the work with an open mind. I must note that yesterday at Ayad's lecture, he mentioned Søren Kierkengaard--making that the third time in recent weeks that Søren's come up--all from radically different sources. The universe nudges me again & again, so I must make the time to look further into Søren. How much time do I have? Certainly all the time in the world. 

Ayad Akhtar at Carnegie Music Hall & his lecture on Homeland Elegies

 

    Tonight was educational, I learned I've been pronouncing Pakistan wrong. My American tongue wants to say "Pack-ih-stan" but Ayad (hard A, A-yadd) pronounced it Pah-ki-stahn. The importance of pronunciation, or rather--the act of pronouncing in and of itself, comes up in Homeland Elegies. When Donald Trump is trying to ingratiate himself with Ayad's father (a cardiologist) by asking him how to say "Akhtar" correctly. 

    The most important lessons I learned from the lecture were:

            1. The importance of the "economic under-girding" when discerning motivation. Ayad's words were, "understanding where & how their bread is buttered." I used to think of motivation as something more ethereal, something akin to "being a good person" as an example of an underlying motivation--but living in America means paying for everything & how do you pay for the things you need/want? 

            2. "The muse needs to know where to find you." Meaning: writing at the same time each day, and if possible, the same place. The writing won't always flow, but the regularity of writing is the crucial element. 

            3. Transmission of knowledge is a sacred thing. I think I felt this when I was publishing Psalms--it felt important that what I was experiencing be shared, to help others avoid my fate. It drove me to rush the book, half-formed into the world--because I thought I wouldn't live long enough to worry about the end result anyway. I'll have more time to bring the actual physical, printed book into the world with more polish--but if it was the last thing I did--I wanted to transmit something of my life, something of myself into the world. I think that was a desire I had because I feel drawn to the sacred. 

            4. Acting -- inhabiting another person's emotional state but more importantly, stepping into "new or different" ideas is connected with Shakespeare, the "greatest author of all time." Ayad made the point that the connection between Shakespeare and his craftsmanship of acting & writing was not a coincidence. Developing empathy as well as being able to "countenance contradiction" will be important for me if I want to be considered a "good" writer. 

            5. "What is ahead of us is so gargantuan" Ayad mentioned almost casually how the future holds this absolutely enormous conundrum that no single human can solve. He mentioned both climate change & artificial intelligence as two problems that would impact either the generation being born in the last 5-10 years, or perhaps a generation not yet born. His point being that right now, we are glorifying individualism over collectivism. Not collectivism like communism, but rather, the drawing together as one people--to face a problem by pooling all of our talents & resources. The last time America even came close to this was during WWII when the whole country turned itself into a machine. Even the children going through the trash for scrap metal were part of it, the women who had never before needed to do men's work stepped up & admirably performed their "duty." To handle what is coming--we will need to move towards this again. A phrase he used tonight--about having the "pessimism of intellect, but optimism of will" stuck with me. It will require planning for the worst of human behavior but hoping for the best from the soul of every human being? 

            6. The most stunning moment for me was when Ayad said it was "pathetic" that America couldn't hold a real conversation about 9/11, even though that was over 20 years ago. He said we were unwilling to address the "genealogy" of what led to the attack. It wasn't an "act of cosmic evil" perpetuated against a "nation of innocents" (I'm not sure I'm quoting him accurately, but no one reads this blog so I think I can get away with it) & I'm wondering if that's part of my purpose here. To incite a conversation that allows us to move past the racial hatred we have for Muslims. On page 138 of Elegies, Ayad & Riaz are talking about a study which explored what the 5 most common words Americans thought of when thinking about Muslims: Anger. Separate. Suicide. Bad. Death. This led to the sociologist Norbert Elias and his quote: 

            "The established majority takes its we-image from a minority of its best, and shapes a they-image of the despised outsiders from the minority of their worst." (pg. 139)

        Am I not guilty of participating in this? I have branded all Muslims as "gay killers," murderers who toss "men like me" off of buildings to splatter on the concrete below. I was 13 when 9/11 happened, but the images of Muslim men were wild-eyed, bearded, fanatical, monstrous. It wasn't until I was in college that I made my first friends who were from Muslim families & this began to change, but by then--the deepest part of me still conflates all of the Middle East as the land where they actively hunt down & kill people like me. Imagine my shock when Riaz, arguably one of the most powerful Muslim characters from Elegies, turns out to be gay. There was a passage that resonated deeply with me, from the footnote on page 156--

            "I would come to wonder if perhaps I'd been an object of sexual interest to him all along, if perhaps he thought I was gay, too, locked even deeper in that closet than he was. Whatever the reason for the brief window of his appealing availability, by Labor Day weekend, it was gone, and that dazzling, ceramic impenetrability was back..." 

        Have I too, not done this to men? Attracted to them, dazzling them with my personality and ability to if not find then make a good time happen, then when it becomes clear that they are certainly straight and nothing will happen, I drop them & move on. I've been intentionally celibate since 2016, but the point is I can't run from my past even if I'm not doing that anymore. At 33, I think "ah how foolish, insincere and manipulative I was at 25" but as I am learning from Sheila Moon's treatise on Navajo emergence mythology--we carry the darkness with us, even as we step into new realms of light. I will "fight" my demons again & again--but I'll lose if I think they are gone forever. No, they will be with me, and I must be vigilant for them. Instead of fighting them though, I must embrace them as familiar--it's only with self-love that I can win against these shadows--what I fight, I strengthen. 

            7. The last and possibly the most important lesson I learned from tonight's lecture is that grappling with the question is the critical thing--not arriving at the answer. There's a lot I have not engaged with because I don't trust that I will arrive at a solution. By not at least engaging with the really tough problems/conundrums/questions, I am playing into my pattern of self-defeating behavior/self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Struggling to answer the question is more important than arriving at the answer--because even though I am imperfect and won't have the solution, by struggling against the problem I will at least be trying & that act alone may inspire the smarter, wiser person to grapple as well. 

        On a last note, Ayad was very magnanimous tonight. The awkward way he wasn't allowed to finish whatever that last thought was, made me cringe. I don't think the host who was leading the post-lecture questions meant to stifle his thinking--perhaps she was simply delivering on ending the program at the prescribed time--but she talked over him rather than pause to hear what he was trying to say (thus I have no idea what he was trying to say), so if I'm ever up on stage one day & that happens--I must remember that being graceful is more important than being heard. Or, if I'm ever leading a conversation and hosting an author, I must allow them to speak when inspiration strikes them--perhaps they are realizing in that moment something that they believe is important to share, and as long as we're not past time by an egregious amount--there's no harm in letting them speak that thought. 

            I'm glad I went to the Carnegie Music Hall tonight, it was a humbling experience, in the good way. 

From Pittsburgh

 

After a brief visit to Provincetown, I left New England behind & have arrived in Pittsburgh! The first few cities I chose were pretty random (Niagara Falls, Providence, Provincetown, Pittsburgh) but now that it doesn't feel like I'm being hunted or running, I can focus on choosing where I go next. I don't feel as scared as I did when I initially left home so I can share that my next two destinations are Detroit, then Minneapolis. My first stop here in Steel City will be White Whale Bookstore. I'm pretty sure they have a section dedicated to Banned Books! 

Tonight, I'm going to spend an hour working with the Conversation, taking notes & using the revision prompts to try out different ways of seeing poems I've already written. One of them is "Take the last line of your first draft and use it as the first line of an entirely new poem" & I'm excited to try that out. It's easy for me to churn out drafts, but the important part of the process (for me at least) is the cutting & polishing. In Psalms, in the very first poem in the collection I talk about how a new draft is like a rough, lumpish, common stone. I need to take time working with it before it starts to even resemble a gem. They aren't all geodes though, sometimes, it's just stays a rock, something you thought might have a core of crystal but you carve & carve and suddenly you realize you just have a handful of gravel. 

Anyway, learning new techniques for revision will be helpful. Especially since I'm going to be editing the poems from Psalms for the print version that I've promised myself I'll have ready this week. It gives me a chance to clean up the pieces from the digital version that I panic published (I really did think I was going to die!) but I also need to now design the spine & back cover artwork. Should be fun!

Pittsburgh won't be like Providence. Not as many adventures or outings--I think I'll be spending more time with my nose to the grindstone here. There aren't any live poetry readings, or slams or open mics BUT there is one that's on Zoom? So I'll need to make sure I sign up for that if there's time, unless it's a Black History Month focused session, in which case I'll be be an enthusiastic audience member. 

Once I start heading west (San Diego is my eventual west coast destination) it's going to feel more real that I'm putting thousands of miles between me & Virginia. This will be healing (putting distance between me & the dangerous situation I ran from) and also painful--but my best friend told me today: "I wish I had your bravery, genuinely. It's so cool that you're putting yourself out there and on this big gay adventure." They told me this, I think, to remind me that it's going to take bravery to keep up with this journey--and while I don't think of myself as a brave person, knowing that they see me like that? It helps, and makes me feel less like a coward, less like a monster. 

Howl

    As I tend to do when things get bleak, I re-watched Howl's Moving Castle last night. As usual, I laughed, I cried & I felt better for the whole experience. I used to fight hard against how deeply I feel my emotions, but now it's a part of myself that I wouldn't give up for anything. Yes, I've seen this movie a thousand times, but it still touches me. 

    Like Sophie, I was attacked by my very own Witch of the Waste, who's heart had been eaten by a demon of greed. This person shrunk me down & made me feel very old. Now, I'm on my own quest to break the curse I've fallen under & it hasn't been easy. The first & hardest thing I had to do was leave home, yes, very bildungsroman (a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education) and sacrifice something that I thought was very important to me (drugs) & while I've been sober now for weeks (a victory!) I'm struggling through a strange new jungle trying to avoid the quicksand. 

    Last night, I made the promise to myself that I wouldn't just try to do good things with my life, but be a force for good. The difference being that doing good means seeking out individual actions while being a force for good involves small, conscious, every day actions/behaviors/speech/thoughts that guides how you live every day. Being a force for good means smiling at every cashier, being respectful to elders, but also taking care of myself: eating meals again, showering regularly, taking care of myself is as important as taking care of others. This point was hammered home when Howl wouldn't get out of bed because in his words "If I can't be beautiful, then what's the point of living?" 

    For me, the selfish reason I've held myself back from the world was "If I can't be famous/beloved, what's the point of living?" That's silly, the only way I can be known or even loved is if I take the risky step of putting myself out in the world & actually enduring the mortifying ordeal of being perceived. I don't want to be famous anymore--that road leads to dragons that I'm nowhere near ready to attempt to tame. I would, however, like to read other's poetry & have them read mine in return. I do want to meet interesting, creative, kind people. Maybe I can help someone on their own road, even if it's just by making smile at how much joy I find in the little things. I thought I might be the flamboyant Howl, but there's an equally good chance I'm Turnip-Head the Scarecrow, who was also bouncing around trying to escape the spell he was under. 

    It's not necessary for me to "cast" myself in any of these roles, but it is extremely enjoyable. I try on the different characters like different outfits to see which one helps me see myself better. Before last night, I was positive I was Sophie--a young person living like an old person, so much so that when the Witch curses her making her age to an 80 year old woman, Sophie says "Well, at least my clothes suit me now." Meaning--she had long dressed herself and seen herself as a "grandma" type--which I very much vibe with. I call myself "Nana" all the time, and while I love that about myself (why would I say no to a blanket & a book?) I do get that I'm actually a 33 year old man who doesn't have to pigeonhole himself into the life of a spinster. 

    Diana Wynne Jones, who wrote the novel Howl's Moving Castle passed away in 2011, so I can't write her to let her know how much she changed my life with her book & how much I appreciate what she put into the world. I recently did that with Dawn Potter, I just dropped out of the blue into her blog & reached out and she responded! That's the first time I've ever reached out to an author & had them reply. Previously I had reached out to Tom & Lorenzo who wrote Legendary Children, but they didn't respond--which I don't blame them for--I am nobody. I'm just starting out on my journey & I genuinely have no idea where it's going to take me. No one owes me anything, especially not when I have nothing to offer in return.

    Tonight, I will be reading (hopefully!) at least one of my poems but possibly two if there's time. That's going to be scary, but if Sophie can put on her best hat & march into the palace to demand Madame Suliman leave Howl alone & while she's add it, put an end to the violence of her meaningless war--then I can get up in front of 50 odd Providence residents & read some poetry.

For my first open mic, "The Smile"

This is the poem I intend to read tomorrow, if there's time at the mic. 


The Smile

Against my will,
my spirit unspools
Backwards, backwards
into our bloody past,
as only a soul
can: spectral, dim
absorbent.
I hate this memory,
the smell of blood & dirt,
the taste of iron in the soil,
I feel again
the burning weight
of a Pink Triangle
on my chest.
Distract yourself
by counting your ribs again,
but oh my darling
don’t watch them lead
the love of your life
to be “cleansed” in Zyklon B.
Oh I can’t do this,
please let me forget
this past life,
I don’t want to remember
Majdanek, please stop your ears
from hearing the squelching
sound of boots
as the echter männer
march past you
not seeing another
broken queer
sobbing
in the bloodmud,
they can’t hear
the keening, the broken cries
that escape your throat,
like desperate animals,
killing themselves
to get free.
I lift my eyes
because I love you,
because I must Look
& oh how calm you are
they don’t push or pull you,
no my God
they never
broke you, bless you.
With your head held high
you quick turn away from
the long line of corpses
& I’ll never love you more
because you are using your
last moments on earth
to find me, see me,
so you can smile at me.
& that calms me,
quiets me,
as you knew it would.
You are helping
me to be ready
when they come.
I’ll think of you,
I won’t cry,
I promise you’ll be
so proud of me,
as I stand,
no longer another
emaciated joke
& proudly will I walk
to be with you again.
I miss you so much
I can’t think of eating,
so I give
my bread to Elijah
but it doesn’t matter
because the very next day
they come:
Stern, forceful, blunt.
It is only because of you
that I stand on my own.
I am strong because
I walk with your arms
around me. Outside now,
eyes dazed by the light,
I’m in my own long line
of men & women, many
who are wrong like me.
I think of the moment
I first laid eyes on you,
sipping steaming tea
from a rough clay mug,
reading Fichte with
a faint smile around
the corner of your lips.
I make my way inside
“the place with the showers”
& we are all crammed,
crushed together
for a bath–a bath!
Because suddenly
they care about lice?
From behind me the sound
of the clanging steel door,
& many of us are too hungry
too tired, too weak
to push or cry or scream.
From above now, a rain
of blue crystals.
Time warps,
seconds melt,
then: my God, my lungs!
my lungs, my God!
They are trying to send us
back to Sodom &
I am angry! I am sad,
there’s a taste in my mouth
that I can’t explain,
and a gray light
at the edges of my eyes.
Be brave, love,
brave enough
to realize that
these are your last moments
but you can use them
to be like him.
So turn,
you beautiful wreck,
before your eyes go dark
yes, oh angel, there you go,
look up & across–
now you’ve found her,
the young woman
with the yellow star
who sat with you
as you wept all night,
her skeletal hand in yours,
she didn’t ask, she knew.
Now, David, now, quick!
before you cannot meet
her sunken black eyes–
& oh thank you, thank you God
she’s looking back,
Now, David: Smile
& she can’t ask why
from across the room,
but she knows
because she smiles too
& not just at me, Alojzy
She’s smiling back at you.

From PSALMS FOR THE QUEER

Providence

Providence: the protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power.

Also, a city in Rhode Island, the one in which I currently find myself. The path to healing starts here, appropriately enough considering what Providence means. I almost died in Virginia, but ran in the night--thus saving my life, but leaving my friends & family behind. To finance this mad dash to safety, I self-published my extremely queer poetry under the title PSALMS FOR THE QUEER, even though I didn't feel ready. Now, it's reached #36 on Amazon:

Tomorrow is my first open mic poetry reading of my life at as220 in downtown Providence. If I get there early enough & get my name on the list. 15 slots for the 3 hour session is lean, so I'll need to slide in like a bandit. The thing is, my poetry is better read aloud I think, there's an element of performance that brings some of the subtleties to life. Here's the event poster:

For about a week, I had a blossoming Instagram account, but it got deleted today (thus my sudden foray into blogging) so, to ensure my content won't get erased with no notice & for no reason--I've bought my own domain, and I do intend on making it my own domain. As to why my account got deleted, I'm not entirely sure, I tried to appeal it but to do so you have to enter your username & every time I did I got a smug little message that said "this account doesn't exist." Like, yeah, because you just deleted it! 

Anyway, gonna shake that off. Zuck just hates to see a girlboss winning. I'll stop saying that when it stops making me laugh, and I'm determined to laugh about this entire fiasco. Well, having a social media account get deleted doesn't really reach the level of "fiasco" but I'm dramatic enough to turn almost anything into a fiasco. Maybe I just love the word fiasco, I mean I did just use it 4 separate times. That's the kind of next level Extra energy I intend to bring to everything I do. 

I did learn a lot about how poets are representing & promoting themselves on Instagram & I can use those lessons to continue hyping PSALMS. I'll need to start recording more of my work & putting it out there, on whatever medium serves my purposes best (YouTube?) & posting content on here regularly in hopes of drawing a regular readership. That includes posting some of my poetry as well as making posts about my journeys around the States. 

SO the adventure starts here!