My first time in hell.

I could tell you where it is, but I won't.

Admittedly it's part elitism, the relishing of insider knowledge on this matter only hours after its publicity, this solved mystery. But that's a fraction, a sliver. A significantly larger portion is out of concern. For you. For your safety. I have gone ahead; I don't think you should follow. I accomplished it with 3 other large grown men and even then our hearts were fluttering at times. We had to run briefly, slightly out of fear, mostly out of self-preservation. But the largest segment of the pie chart, the commanding majority: if you do want to find it, why spoil all the fun?

Most of you won't go. You can't. Not unless you're in New York City in the next week, maybe two. Past then and there may not be much left that's recognizable anyway. It'll be covered over, either with more graffiti or whitewashed by an embarrassed MTA. Eaten again by the City. And you'd have to be really dedicated to want to actually do this. Honestly, you'd have to be more than a little crazy.

My 11 day absence from New York ended in the early hours of Monday morning. If The New York Times had run the story at any time in that previous week and a half, I never would have known what I was missing. But there it sat, on the front page of the November 1st edition. A feature article describing "The Underbelly Project," a year-and-a-half-long workshop by major and emerging street artists conducted in a long-abandoned subway station somewhere in the five boroughs. The culmination was not an opening to the general public. That will never happen in the proper sense. Rather it was an invitation to only a handful of reporters in the world to cover the exhibit in an article, on the condition of anonymity for the artists' true names and also for the location of the exhibit.

Clearly I had to see it. Mainly for the street art itself, but exponentially more for it being held in an abandoned subway station, and that it was a giant, impossibly-tempting secret. A mystery built of sugar.

I turned my head to Kate, my friend beside me at work.
"You saw this right?"
"Yes. Looks amazing."
"We have to figure out where this is. I have to go."
She gave one of her signature pensive pauses, punctuated by a plotting smirk. "We can do that."

We rattled off the places we knew it could not be; eliminating three of the boroughs instantly. We used the other clues (the station's general size, its proximity to an occasionally reworked line) to narrow it down. Six minutes later she had her hunch. A quick search later that pulled up some images from this likely candidate station confirmed it. We looked at a photo from the slide show, an arresting piece proclaiming "WE OWN THE NIGHT" at the dead end of a track dugout, ringed by concentric rafters above. Then one from an older photo set of this likely station: it was the same dead end from the same perspective, here totally bare. It was the same photo, taken seven years earlier. One more search and she had years-old directions, admittedly vague, on how to get into this ghost station. In under 10 minutes I was set.

I texted my friends from California who were staying with me that week and set a time. 1:30am that night. A bit delayed, closer to 3, we got off the subway and crossed to the opposite side of the tracks for a better view to scout from. Encouraged by seeing an opening matching the directions, we crossed back over, then walked to the end of the platform, walked past the Do Not Enter sign and along the thin ledge of platform used only by workers and trespassers. This time of the morning we were safe from another train passing so soon and we ducked into the opening. A graffiti piece of a large Mayan-looking deity, mouth agape, lay just inside the opening. Not in the directions, but clearly where we needed to be.

We walked around several slanted aisles, each empty, or filled with discarded equipment, bottles. No stairs, no second hidden door. Embarrassed and perplexed, retracing through several times with little of anything to see I thought we had to give up. The only clue was another piece. 4 foot high letters, but the message was far too theatrical to be it. Right?

We looked up to wooden rafters and a barely visible cement ceiling some 30 feet above us. Our eyes traced that back down to see two extremely thin cords descending from the wooden banister, the one on the right making its way down to a loop at the bottom. For a foothold. Convinced this had to be the location and the means to get there, I turned back to the words on the wall. "Get Up. Get God." J______ went first.

Halfway up, "Fuck, fuck, it's breaking. It broke." A false alarm. He sturdied himself with the concrete ledge and used the still-holding rope for the last bit. He shone the flashlight. "This is definitely it. I see 'em."

My hands were already on the cord, my foot in the loop. I made it most of the way up to the concrete ledge that was the last boosting spot to the abandoned platform above, when the cord snapped. I fell back the twelve feet, twisting in mid-air to land on my side rather than with my back, which my camera was strapped to. Almost instantly after landing, before knowing that my jeans were widely torn or that my knee was bleeding, I assured them "I'm fine. I'm getting up there. I'm getting up." With a boost and more reliance on the equally flimsy thin metal pipes along the active line's tunnel than I wanted, I was on the ledge. Seconds later I was over the criss-crossed wooden banister. C______ came up as well while S______ kept lookout.

We wandered around mesmerized, I with the only camera snapping as many photos as I could. We navigated both the platform ledges and the drop-offs to the lower track-level six feet down in total darkness. After the initial shock and relief faded, something we weren't expecting became apparent. I saw them during the fractional flashes of my camera light, but had to switch to the play mode to read the tiny words on the viewfinder. That's how I learned we were being threatened.

The article stops short of the turn of the screw. Perhaps intentionally. The exhibit was not pristine when we came across it that early morning, as it appeared in the Times. The antique wooden table and chairs with a dinner set for two described by the writer was destroyed, a pile of wooden shards, except for one of the chairs which stood 40 feet away alone in an abyss. The look of a watchman's chair vacant, temporarily. About half of the works had been defaced, simple tags of static, intentionally ugly tags over complex works. Dogs pissing on every hydrant they pass. “GET OUT!”...."Fuck You, Fuck You" .... “Y'all Don’t Belong.....No No No No No”.... “The Tunnels Are OURS.” Words of anger, but ambiguously like those of a woken cyclops. One muttering in disbelief. Still debating how best to respond.

They were tags by the squatters of Hell Hou$e, their apparent chosen name for the station, furious that their turf had been breached, commercialized by whom they view as privileged, pompous outsiders. If such bile for the artists, what view of us? Something like groupies rather than guerrilla aficionados.

As arresting as the spotlight before me was, briefly illuminating scrawled threats, letting them come into existence, my mind was possessed by what our spot beam wasn’t showing. The other 330 degrees of world shrouded behind me, beside me. I kept half-expecting my camera flash to capture a figure lumbering towards me. Lumbering if I was lucky, rushing if I was not.

Down the sunken track dugout to the far side, still 15 feet from its end, my tiny miner’s light arched upon it. Upon him.

“Go. GO. Gogogogogo.”

I was briskly hurrying after saying the second, but J______ and C______ didn’t follow me until after I was done, when their lights had come across him as well. A man motionless on his side, an uncoiling fetal position, sleeping. But he did not stir with J______’s shocked yell and we never heard him afterwards. We regrouped at the opposite end, around a corner.

“It’s fine. Listen.... it’s fine. Just keep our distance, make it clear we're not trying to disturb him or anyone else.” In retrospect, absurd. The second we’d crossed the “Do Not Enter” sign back at the functioning station platform, we were intruding, disturbing him. Them. Trespassing, both on MTA property and inside Hell Hou$e, but only the latter really troubled me. (Y'all Don’t Belong..... No No No No No)

We carried on. About seven pieces later, J______ announced our warning call. “The spot has a minute left in it.”

I’d led us up but I wouldn’t keep us there without it. I photographed a few more pieces before returning to the path of our initial dugout, marked at the end by an American flag by Faile with a zig-zag pattern instead of stripes. We followed that track back to the middle and broke for the wooden banister. Five minutes of hesitant footholds, of easing down the others as they repelled, and frantic inhales of woken dust, inches of soot, and we were reassembled. Just in time for a train to rush past feet from us. We scurried around a corner, momentarily leaving our bags at the base. I doubled back to grab the gear and after hearing the line of cars pull away farther into the coming morning, we emerged back onto the ledge, then onto the public platform. The light, our first aside from the handhelds in over an hour, revealed our new layers of filth. We were covered in stagnancy, in time turned to soot, ash, and dirt.

The article came out yesterday morning. In this age of the instancy, I knew I wasn't the only asshole to figure out where it was. What surprised me was that there wasn't NYPD or MTA already waiting on the platform, blocking any possible access. What shocked me was that our hour up there wasn't filled with other groupies, other guerrilla tourists. That in all of New York City, for a full hour plus it was only us, the art, the art's backlash, the sleeping squatter we saw and any others that we didn't. That we spent an hour alone in the Underbelly. In Hell. Probably for the best that no one else tried to come up there too. Because the tunnels are theirs. And we don't belong. No no no no no no.

(post-script 11.11.10) The NYPD and MTA began sealing this up the following day. I actually suspect that the pile of wooden planks that we walked by in the alcove was a set of makeshift ladders that they had disassembled earlier that day, immediately after the article hit the public. Other people did manage to sneak in, but only a handful, and the only other pictures that I've seen were taken with a cell phone camera. A far larger number of people tried to break in and were either detained or arrested. But if you're moronic enough to attempt to break into a public transport station in New York City while wearing a keffiyeh over your face, you really have that arrest coming:

http://gothamist.com/2010/11/07/people_allegedly_arrested_trying_to.php

From where the palm tree grows.

Dear Cuba,

I found you.

It took some time, but you came. We had caught glimpses of you before. You were the children playing baseball in a grass lot with a massive visage of Che keeping watch. I heard your symphony sung by birds in the Parque Central; then a six piece band playing "El Cuarto de Tula", three singers coalescing into one voice. Yours.

On our first day here, you were a storm cloud in the Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón . A four minute onslaught of pounding rain, to warn us, a display of what our week could be like if you wanted it to be. You weren't the constant unexpected sunshine that followed for the rest of the trip though. That was beautiful but inescapable, sometimes sweltering. You were that fleeting flirtation in the waning afternoon.

Dear Cuba. I saw you this morning. The procession of uniformed children tossing flowers in the river, out to sea to honor Camilo Cienfuegos. But you weren't the children; you were the many-varied petals. You were what prompted smiles to bloom on their faces. And because their innocent elation was infectious, to spread on mine.

A week chasing you left me with a blister on the ball of my foot that I felt when I rested, paused in my pursuit of you. I looked at it for the first time this morning and saw it was a perfectly-formed crimson heart. You wanted to remind me that love must involve some pain, a struggle. That only someone you love so deeply can reach you in that way. But the pain is our hurdle; it fades. Tested and torn muscles rebuild stronger. Proven capable of bearing the greater weight of our future.

Dear Cuba. You were the woman that welcomed me and my friend into her family's home, and you were her fourteen-year-old cousin there. You asserted your strength, defiance, sovereignty, determination, independence, as others around acquiesced, settled, sold themselves. But you were also that girl's potential. The belief that the next generation that idolizes you will build on all of those virtues. Will manage to reach farther still.

But tonight I saw you clearest, and tonight I understood. You started with a four piece band; three guitars and percussion on an apple box. Not the one of the farmer, but of the filmmaker. The percussionist leaned back with casual artistry. I was impressed; taken aback. "Viva Stevie Wonder" was scribbled on the walls of the courtyard, the white temporal chalk on dark rojo.

You were in the third row as the bands made the air around us tremble. You had a string of flowers falling from your hair. I couldn't help but sneak looks at your dimples, your singing along to songs I'd never dreamed. I didn't walk over to talk to you. Not because I was nervous, but because I couldn't express myself with the passion that I wanted. Not a passion that I felt for you in that instant, but that I felt was required for this country. Something my second semester Spanish never covered.

Dear Cuba. I could have kept talking to the Swiss girls. They were beautiful, but had no passion. They assessed attraction by arithmetic, reduced conversation to a quantity and I needed, need, passion on instinct. I preferred to keep vigil to the night around me, to join in the chorus with those around. With you. The words a mystery but the emotion an impossible clarity.

Dear Cuba. Years of longing and months of planning to come meet you are forever passed. In your history, you were mythology become reality. And now that we've met, you're myth turned flesh, and back again to legend. My lesson that you come from dreams, and to dream you shall return.

Dear Cuba.

We fell in love tonight. I hope you remember in the morning.



(originally written October 30, 2010)

Of a revolution, two.

I walked around the back of the police car before it pulled away. Abdel and Pilar were now both inside, if not free then at least together. He had squeezed into the center of the cramped backseat, next to the teenage prostitute whose flirtation and pleading at me through the car window had quickly jerked into confusion and fear seconds earlier. Ricardo, myself, and the car that had just rolled off with its human cargo inside were each older than the policia especializada officer that we were speaking to, the one that had started the confrontation. The one that had shifted the tenor of that Havana afternoon.

I type these words for you now rather than later. With an ending as unsurprising as this, why bother building to it?

Two hours earlier I was at my leftist best. If there is a second coming of Joseph McCarthy, a Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, or someone (God help us) nuttier that succeeds in resurrecting HUAC, my morning in Havana's Museo de la Revalucion was probably enough to get me blacklisted. Or exiled. Three stories of the Communist government's time capsule to posterity, complete with a giant park for relics of war vehicles. The typewriter Fidel Castro used to write "History Will Absolve Me," his brother Raul's combat boots, Che Guevara's rifle and beret, the yacht they used in the unsuccessful Granma uprising, Fidel's tank he commanded in the Bay of Pigs affair, the wreckage of the American B-2 shot down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a memorial flame to the dead that fought for the Revolution. Everything the embargo is in place to keep Americans from seeing, from spending their money on. But certainly no more offensive than the Ronald Reagan Library, and with about as much propaganda.

With our last sight-seeing stop during our 3 days in Havana complete, Ricardo and I walked across the street to one the countless all-purpose tiendas that heavily pepper the city. An amalgam of rum, laundry detergent, beauty products, candy, toilet paper, toothpaste, hot food, and beer for sale; we came in desperate want of the latter two. Neither a free table nor another tourist inside confirmed that we'd made the right choice. Our food was ordered, our bottles of Cristal beer were already sweating from the omnipresent humidity, and each of us looked around for some small vacancy coupled with eye contact as an invitation to sit. Ricardo managed first, and I walked around to the table's other vacant seat, next to a chain-smoking man named Abdel. A table behind me opened four minutes later. A few more minutes of indecision on where to eat, a few more Spanish captions to Revolutionary photos I could have laboriously translated, either of us going to the bathroom again before leaving the museum, and I could be sure Claudia would have seen her parents before she went to sleep tonight. Actually, any of those things and I wouldn't even know who Claudia was.

Instead it was the four of us. Abdel and Pilar with their red and black cans of Bucanero Fuerte, Ricardo and I our green bottles of Cristal. We were each ready for our next round before the food finally arrived. Somehow the smoke of unfiltered cigarettes wasn't a bother, somehow I stumbled through a description of my tattoo in Spanish when asked by Pilar. An hour of good conversation, if difficult to hear with the rowdy neighbors and TV blaring early 90s salsa music videos. When Abdel went to speak to some other friends outside, Pilar told Ricardo and I about their 16 years of marriage, their youngest child a 2 year-old daughter named Claudia.

I greeted Abdel's return with "Claudia?"
"Si, Claudia," his proud smile unobscured by the nub of a cigarette between his lips. He immediately reached for his wallet and a poorly developed dark photo of her. Barrettes, one purple and one green at the bottom of arching side braids, giving her backlit head the look of a trophy to match her paternal identity as one. Conversation switched back to our upcoming trip to Trinidad, the city that every Cuban we'd met urged us to visit, a decision that greatly pleased the couple. Soon we were invited to join them for more drinks at an African-Cuban club, a generosity and an opportunity for something so off the tourist radar we could not pass up. We'd spent days with strangers trying to coax us to one tourist trap or another, their salesman routine as stale as it was transparent. No different than my experience in India, Thailand, Egypt, Prague, Rome, Amsterdam. Experienced backpackers recognize the chasm between bullshit and sincerity, and we knew that Abdel and Pilar were on the right side of that divide.

It took merely the width of the street to get in trouble. As we got to the opposite sidewalk, the very existence of our unlikely foursome of two very dark-skinned Cubanos, a Peruvian-Canadian with a mohawk, and 6'4" white guy in preppy shorts and laceless Chuck Taylors was all it took for Abdel and Pilar to be detained by a member of Havana's Special Police. Their response to every question I managed to translate mentally pulled my stomach lower. Pilar did not have her identification. Abdel's identification was worn, peeling, its picture admittedly sketchy-looking. Minutes of radio conversation passed between the young officer and his superiors before he allowed us to speak the calm words that would eventually set them free.

Ricardo calmed down a frustrated, indignant Abdel as my rudimentary Spanish helped the officer see my explanation for what it was: innocence... the truth. Ricardo's far more fluent corroboration of who we were and where we were headed was the lynchpin that set us all on our way. We walked again, apologizing to Abdel and Pilar profusely for causing them trouble. Pilar's response, a sincere assurance that it wasn't us, made me more disconcerted. It replaced my guilt with sympathy as she explained how they are constantly stopped for identification without proper cause. That their quite obvious African-Cuban heritage forces them to endure constant suspicion. We shook it. We assured them that the afternoon would be great. How Ricardo and I were really looking forward to this club, which according to Abdel would not be a long walk.... which was correct.

"Alto, identificacion."
Ricardo and I looked at one another then down at the officer behind the steering wheel who was speaking to Abdel. The words "no" and "fuck" are universal, as is exasperation. The officer looked at me long enough to acknowledge each of those three things from me but immediately went back to Abdel. Identical routine but this officer was more decorated than the first, I would guess just old enough to pre-date the Revolution, and clearly far less open to negotiations.
Ricardo busied himself with the officer's partner, Pilar with trying to wave down the first officer who initially stopped us less than a block earlier. I found myself looking around at those looking at me. The doormen at the expensive hotel we were in front of, the uniformed military guards at the museum's outdoor exhibition, the German tourists walking by. And the wide-eyed movement in the backseat of the police car; the officers' prior arrest. At fifteen too young for her profession, her insistent flirtation too much for both of those. Her presence really only served to disquiet me further, not just for obvious reasons, but also as an indication that this officer was not one to merely warn.

The first officer's arrival cleared up nothing, instead only prompting his superior to frisk Abdel and then cuff him, catalyzing furious shouting. He made eye contact with Ricardo and I as he was placed into the back of the car. He cut off our frantic apologies with a yell only partially directed at us: "This is the shit because of Fidel."

Pilar was next to him in the car just a few seconds later, choosing her husband over her own freedom. I stumbled another explanation to the officer. "No, no, no problema con nosotros..... Estan muy, muy simpaticos."
"Bien... estan muy simpaticos." He shrugged as he slouched into the driver's seat and turned his attention to the ignition and the sidestreet ahead. Too ashamed and guilty to attempt for eye contact with Abdel, I turned in disbelief and exhaustion to the girl beside him. Earlier she showed her own arrest was an annoyance and a joke, but the terror in her eyes confirmed that his was now more. I wondered if a younger, faded her was in a wallet somewhere in the city. The car drove away.

Ricardo's conversation with the first officer was almost over by the time I could focus on it. "They did nothing wrong-"
"Where are you from?"
"Canada."
"Canada. And there you can just speak against the government and get away with it?"
The irony answered the question for us. It took patience and restraint to keep both of us from pointing back at the Museo de la Revolucion and declaring: "They did."

I type these words in a casa particular, just after sundown, hours after I watched the police car turn the corner and Abdel and Pilar shrink away. I'm going to save this draft and place the file, like the others I have started in Cuba thus far, in a subfolder of a subfolder of an innocuously named folder on my desktop. A precaution I've never taken before in my traveling. Unless the absolute worst happens in customs leaving Cuba, they should be safe there.I type these words grateful that it wasn't me the officer asked the above question to; that I wasn't forced to lie about my nationality to a specialized police officer in a Communist dictatorship or be placed in the back of that already capacity squad car, an American caught with those in suspicion of being against the government.
I type these words hoping that Abdel and Pilar are okay. That once everyone in that car has calmed down and had their backgrounds run, that everything will check out. That Claudia will have her mother and father with her to kiss her goodnight. If not tonight then certainly tomorrow, and many after that.

I type these words with weight of uncertainty; at times the worst oppressor of all.


(***All of the above conversation took place in Spanish, but I translated the more detailed dialogue into English to make it easier to follow.)

Of a revolution, one.

"The things we need do not amount to much.
Made of abandoned wood, loose stones, and such.
This revolution maybe
Proves who you work for lately..." - Silversun Pickups

"Not all powers have to be discovered; some have to be regained." - John Fowles


A Cuba Libre is a rum and Coke, in some bars livened with a piece of mint or some lime. Its enjoyment derives from the sweetness of its individual ingredients, but also its simplicity. Anyone can make it, at pretty much anytime, with basics most people have already. From my experience, it's also what a lot of people start drinking when they're new to alcohol. It is later that they acquire the taste for bourbon, gin and tonics, martinis, old-fashioneds, but rum and Coke gets lost somewhere early on the road, crowded out by complexity.

It's a conversation I've had thirty or forty times. What I love about living in New York. It's really just rehashing the obvious, maybe confirming the stereotype that there is literally something to do at all hours. Any cuisine you want, any esoteric decor for a bar just a Metrocard swipe away. When bored with itself, the world turns to New York and the City, like no other in existence, quenches and electrifies. For visitors it often appears a cultural and social hurricane, but living there one is happily in its eye.

I spend most of my time with my nose to the concrete and glass mosaic, focused on the idiosyncrasies that add to the insiders' enjoyment. The brunch place in LES that will make pretty much any dish from any cuisine but will absolutely not accept parties of more than 4, the neo-speakeasies that change phone numbers every 6 weeks or can only be entered by dialing a certain number at a certain phone booth, the constant guessing game of what that night's color scheme for the top of the Empire State Building is celebrating; the little machinations that keep away the boredom in what is already the least boring city in the world. With only weekend trips since becoming acclimated in New York, this is my first true chance to step away from that masterpiece, to see what else can be found in other galleries.

Fittingly, I chose a place of further complication as my destination. The one country in the world that as an American I wasn't legally allowed to visit, where it was impossible to even look up flight prices because the embargo blocked such online searches. A country where hostels don't exist and you need to register your location with the government every day of your trip. I spent 40 minutes being searched at customs coming in, every item I owned examined in detail, the serial number of this laptop I'm writing on recorded in a customs agent's notepad in the Varadero airport. I can only imagine what's awaiting me at customs on my journey out of Cuba. And worse, clearing them when returning to the US ("A bit tan for spending 10 days in Toronto in late October, wouldn't you say, sir?") But it wasn't the complications that drew me, it was the taboo. The opportunity to not simply peek behind the curtain of the forbidden, but to spend over a week exploring what unknowns lurked beyond. An elaborate exercise in reverse psychology.

As our first full day here came to a close, my friend Ricardo and I walked several kilometers along the darkened El Maecon, much of it without conversation; but our silence wasn't born of a lack of interesting topics or boredom. For those minutes that swelled into hours, we merely wanted to observe rather than dictate. To inhale with nostrils, eyes, ears, and intellect the layers of the culture around us. We had left our casa paticular hours earlier in search of authentic Cuban food and a bar that locals would visit for this Saturday night in Havana. We gorged ourselves with seafood and flavorful entrees but failed in the latter. Few Habanas seemed to be congregated anywhere and we found ourselves for the second time that day on El Malecón, the winding highway and walkway that borders the ocean in the capital city. It was immediately apparent why the bars were empty. There were a few gaps of cement ledge in that hour-plus of distance, but they were either smaller than three feet or were the perma-damp sections where the Atlantic's waves scale the wall's height to reach land. The people of the city, what felt like the entire nation, formed a chain of laughter, smiles, passed bottles, and shared boxes of cigarettes along the salted breezes of the exhaling Atlantic. There was no festival, nothing special about this weekend for them. A beautiful Saturday night simply meant spending it along the ocean with the one person or handful of companions that they wanted to be with.

Take 10 Wall Street bankers and 10 everyday Cubans and ask who is less stressed. Who enjoys life more. Who is simply happier. It shouldn't take much to achieve this plateau; contentment is a quick, basic emotion. Stock portfolios and applications for private pre-schools, lists for clubs, closet coke habits, gambling debts and contrived crises only add impediments between us and our remarkably simple access to joy. Stockpiling of possessions and vices that build a barrier to keep us out rather than the two or three simple ingredients that can easily form a bridge. The basic combinations that can make us happy. Havana Club and Coca-Cola, a stick and something remotely round enough to work as a ball, one star and five stripes, a can of Cristal beer and conversation, a tiny waist and wide hips, the ocean breeze and the laughter of a friend, an acoustic guitar and portable bongos, eye contact and a suppressed smile.

A girl I recently ended things with didn't take it well and tried to insult me by saying "whatever, you don't even have a bed." And she's right. I don't have one. I also don't own a car, a tv, an iphone, or a normal computer. I don't have many modern distractions and conveniences because for 5 months I lived without them and felt more myself than ever. The true individual that I am, for the first time. I abandoned a lot things that in some ways prevented me from constantly feeling the emotions that most people strive and fail to feel. Or keeping me from being the person that I want to be. What I have instead is a supply of v-neck t-shirts, a pair of blue jeans, my camera and a stack of unfinished books. What I have is my passport. And vigilant determination.

I'm a New Yorker now. Only 10 months in, I feel and act like a true local, carry a disdain for snail-paced tourists, anything and everything Boston, and the G train. I'm surrounded by the machinations that keep life complicated, and fully enjoy them because in many ways they manage to keep the monotony of the status quo safely at bay. But some part of my heart beats with the rhythm of a Cubano. I'll indulge in the eccentricities but I don't ever feel ensnared by them. I don't need them. I have what I need. And because of that I am free.

(*written October 24, 2010).

On angels with dirty faces.

"You want to know what I've had to eat in the past twenty-four hours? One hot dog and twenty-seven pints of beer." - Eric (last name unknown)


I've been asked a few hundred times in the past seven months whether I miss L.A. My stock answer to such a stock question is "I miss my friends." I love Los Angeles, but New York holds so much more for me. Diverse inconsistency. I wake up each morning to the rumbling of industrial trucks and machinery on a small street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and then sit up to see the New York City skyline biting upwards into the blue morning. Last night I stood on a roof in Hell's Kitchen with several people, each of us drinking and looking out over a different perspective of that same skyline. Still the Empire State Building, but also the New York Times building- a neatly stacked pile of illumination cresting out of midtown, and most vitally one I had never seen before at night: a tall one topped with the giant red words NEW YORKER, proclaiming not merely a magazine, but a life. A choice. A burden. A struggle. A persona. But now officially my persona, my struggle, my burden, my choice. My life.

I don't miss the city of L.A. with an active longing because I honestly don't think about it except for impulsive palpitations. Wishing that the Hot 97 morning show playing at the gym was Kevin & Bean instead, for one. But this isn't a story about New York or California, not yet. At first it's about Jersey.

First time there. I've refused to go to the Shore, to Hoboken, to.... whatever the hell else is in Jersey. I've let several invitations and opportunities go uncashed. But today my beloved Los Angeles Galaxy were visiting the New York Red Bulls and their shiny new stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, and all the self-loathing hangovers in the world wouldn't keep me away.

The vast majority of people in Los Angeles, no matter how many Dodgers or Lakers games they attend, miss out on the experience of going to a game. My first time was in London, March 2008. I somehow convinced my great friend Jennifer to fly out from Los Angeles to London for the weekend to attend a Fulham/Manchester United game with me, then met up with 2 more friends there. The morning of the game, wearing my brand new McBride jersey at a flea market in Notting Hill, a vendor smirked at the FFC team badge on my chest before delivering his heavy cockney: "Gonna need a miracle today, bruv." A bit later we emerged from a crowded tube ride to see an armada of neon green: dozens of police shoulder to shoulder, cautiously appraising the supporters headed to the stadium. The Three Bells, a pub that we four had been to the afternoon before, was taken over by the Red Army, Man U supporters, nearly a thousand chanting in perfect unison. The Thames to our left, we walked through Bishops' Park, the former hunting grounds of Anne Boleyn, surrounded by children in miniature Rooney and Ronaldo jerseys, families of five and six in matching team kits. In New York five months later, I took the subway to a game at Yankee Stadium, the final one between the Red Sox and Yankees at the old grounds. On the 4 train, there was a lot of light-hearted jawing between fans, but there was also an elderly man in a pinstripe jersey and navy NY hat speaking to a group of teenagers. They were asking him in reverent, almost shy tones about the 70 years worth of games that he had been to. I became a silent addition to his audience as he described the best Yankees outfield ever, obscure players swallowed by history and the brightness of neighboring stars, memories of his father taking him to games, of being seated on his dad's shoulders as they entered the archways. Games in the days when night games and floodlights didn't exist, when every single man wore a hat to a game, and that hat was a fedora.

As for me, today, I caught the PATH train in the financial district, my long-sleeved Beckham jersey drawing glares from those around me in white Henry #14's. Shoulders brushing against two Red Bulls fans drinking tallboys cocooned in paper bags. I began talking with the man in front of me, his persistent questions finally overcoming the silence of my still moderately self-loathing hangover. His jeans, boots, and hands hinted at what he confirmed, that he was a construction worker at the World Trade Center site. We talked very little about sports, instead mainly about the still disastrous job market, hubris, and the causes and realities of falling empires. In twenty minutes we were shaking hands goodbye and stepping out into New Jersey. Into a flood of a lot more #14 Henry's. Into the noise of a lot more heckles from Red Bulls fans directed at me.

I attended the match alone, with a ticket I bought from a scalper minutes before kickoff. Once inside, I could have sat with my good friend Matt, who was at the game as well, but what I wanted most from this game was something that every other afternoon spent on this coast has failed to give me. I listened for the chanting, I looked for the checkered scarves, and after only a few seconds of searching, I spotted them. Beaming, hangover defeated, I walked in their direction.

Back in Los Angeles, at the many games I attended, I never sat with them. I never had a full conversation with any of them. But back when Jared and I would shell out 2 days of income on a ticket in the VIP section of games and would be the only ones down there standing, chanting, holding our scarves aloft during corner kicks or after goals, they noticed us. They hated every privileged golf-clapper in the VIP on principle, but they looked at us differently. They found us after games and shook our hands, nodded with approving smiles. We didn't just have their attention, we had their respect. The LA Riot Squad and the Angel City Brigade, the hardcore supporters groups of the LA Galaxy. The type of fans that stand and scream chants the full 90+ minutes of game time. The type of fans that fly 3,000 miles to give the Galaxy their extremely vocal support on the road. 50 made the trip to New York. But when they started chanting and clapping to the ire of the home crowd, they now numbered 51.

I spoke with Mike and Eric, both middle-aged fans that were more than just blind supporters, but guys that knew a hell of a lot about the game and the team. Mike had flown out for this game from Anaheim... Eric? From England. We talked about past games we'd both been to... the rivalry games, the Superclasico derbies, the international friendlies with the likes of AC Milan. Mike used a hushed tone twice this afternoon. Once to tell me "In 14 years, there haven't been a whole lot of games that I've missed." The other time was to extend an official invitation. Next time I was in LA at a Galaxy game, come to parking lot 13. He'd be there, with the rest of the ACB. Those were two sentences among two and a half hours worth of what felt mostly like catching up with a familiar voice in a familiar surrounding, even though in reality it was neither.

This really doesn't have to do with soccer. It has to do with Venn diagrams. With nostalgia. With something that I experience far less than some might expect because I equate it with a city and not with individuals: this has to do with being homesick. Aside from my friends, there are other things I miss about Los Angeles. Even if I had to go to New Jersey to find that out. When I go back for a weekend in September, I won't be able to make it to a taco Tuesday, or even out to lot 13 at the Home Depot Center. But I'll definitely be seeing Mike and Eric and around 48 other semi-familiar faces again next season, in the exact same section, probably in the same jerseys. Because the Galaxy was winning (did win, 1-0) and because the New York fans were so quiet, a few times during the game we chanted "This is our house." We said it like we meant it. I absolutely did. But for me, it was a phrase that had very little to do with soccer.

National anthem.

"If you're feelin' what I'm feelin', c'mon,
All you soul-searchin' people, c'mon..." - Delta Spirit

The hour struck somewhere during the rowdy Delta Spirit set, maracas slamming on to the heads of giant drums, Matt Vasquez leading the packed 9:30 Club in an egoless, self-unaware dance party. Emotions untethered, of both the band on the stage and us in the rolling, breaking crowd, limbs flailing along just minutes after he calmed us with a gospel spiritual, with an a cappella rendition of Ray Charles, after he brought many to tears with the song he wrote and dedicated to his grandparents- the lyrics tracing his grandfather's complaints of heaven's loneliness as he waits for his love to join him there. It was the hour of another midnight, another waning Saturday becoming a Sunday, but one of uncommon significance. That of July 3rd becoming July 4th, and the liveliest people in Washington D.C. recognizing the precise beauty of both that setting and that moment.

I arrived anxious to hear "Bushwick Blues," a song off their new album that couldn't describe me better if the lyrics contained my last name. After opening with that, Delta Spirit launched in to not merely the greatest concert of my life, but one of the greatest handful of hours. Hours with an awareness of context rather than self. Brilliant music heightened in that it poured forth from a guitar covered in scrawled black pen static that read "ZINN.... The people," in homage to the historian's A People's History of the United States. Bantering before the set closer, the ubiquitous "Play Freebird!" was screamed from the crowd, and they actually played "Freebird".... in doing so professing the fulfillment of their seventh grade-rockstar dreams in front of the largest band they had ever performed for, and on their favorite holiday. Matt Vasquez spoke of wanting to move a crowd like Louis Armstrong, and with the last song of the night he managed it, descending into the epicenter of the audience floor, calming all of our sweating bodies and beaming faces into silence and getting us to crouch low to the ground before leading us in the "Little bit louder now" bridge and ensuing chorus of "Shout!" as crepe paper streamers danced down from the rafters, our clutching hands reaching up to their dance through the vibrating air. A concert far more about this nation's incredible history and talents that we all embrace, than simply a rock-soul band from San Diego.

Seconds before, he had implored us: "If music has ever meant anything to you in your life, prove it, right now." We did. Substitute the word "music" with "America" and we accomplished that as well. With one phrase, Delta Spirit summarized what I've found myself striving to do nearly every moment of the past few months of my life. Because when you prove yourself out of internal desire and love of an ideal, rather than as a demand from others, it means inexpressibly more.

Midnight struck again the following night as Joanna and I stood on her roof, looking out over Washington D.C. and Virginia, with fireworks displays, at least 20, simultaneously erupting in all directions in the night above us. A few hours before we were on a balcony of the Capitol, watching fireworks ignite the air above the National Mall. Twelve hours later, we would be with more friends lazily floating down the Potomac River, the forests of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland inching by our sunburned shoulders.

July 4th in D.C. After the exile comes the embrace. Comes the recognition of what home is. And the privilege of proving what it means to me.

From one, many.

****It is important to me that anyone who reads this post understands that I do not hate Republicans, or all members of the Tea Party movement. I hate ignorance. It is a disease that exists on both sides of the aisle, and that I recognize as breeding in recent years. My writing below is admittedly passionate, if only due to my growing concern that the 2010's are looking eerily similar to the 1860's. Let this not be a condemnation but a call. Not to arms, but to minds.




"The God I believe in worked on a campaign trail." - Brand New

The roads of Washington, D.C. are on the grid system. Sort of. It's an exercise in controlled chaos, a roadmap I get in theory but don't really understand. More accurately it is an array of splintered streets and fractures. It is looking through the singularity of a lens and viewing the multitude of a kaleidoscope. From one, many.

I can't relate one episode to capture my time in Washington, D.C. My long, long overdue inaugural trip to our nation's capitol. I want to bring it all back, every second, every shared laugh with my friends here I was able to reconnect with. Every bite of the burgers at Good Stuff, the half-smokes at Ben's Chili Bowl, the sips of the orange slushy drink served in Mason jars known simply as Awesomeness at Little Miss Whiskey's, or beers at James Hoban's. I wanted to pack every tear shed during "Taps" at Arlington National Cemetery, not merely by me but those around me. The collective emotion that simple, familiar notes on a trumpet can conjure. From one trumpet, emotion and gratitude released by many.

The trip to D.C. is atypical of my travels so far. It lacks the exotic mystique of Southeast Asia or alien concrete of former Soviet bloc countries, but more than that it was not an exercise in solitude. I have friends there. My arrival delivers me to a setting where there are people that care about me. Not the spirit of frontier but of familiarity. That's something acutely vital to me, especially now as I'm so far removed from my close friends. Three months into my new life in New York, I only recently have felt I'm beginning to settle into a community whose niche I am tailoring myself. This reunion of friendship also means that many of my experiences in D.C. were shared. The memories are not solely mine to relate.

Near midnight Wednesday, my good friend Joanna and I visited the Lincoln Memorial on the 145th Anniversary of his assassination. We ascended the steps to where the giant gleaming statue of our nation's greatest hero sits perched, eternally looking out over the picturesque modern city, the capitol of the nation that he saved in its most desperate hour. As I walked up the steps, I thought only of one word: vigil. The spirit enshrined in that chamber, the one that fills those who visit for more than just a snapshot or a postcard- it is with this ever-present aura that he still keeps us safe. In the vacuum of that chamber by night, when the tourists are absent, that spirit is palpable. The central emotion of what kept our nation alive despite the depths of adversity is enveloping, penetrating. Hope. 145 years later, at a time of the worst division and partisanship in our history since the Civil War, the icon of Lincoln delivers hope.

I needed this the following day. Desperately. For curiosity's sake, I attended a Tea Party rally in D.C. There, I saw the fervor of total ignorance. I saw denial and bigotry masquerade as patriotism. I saw white face after white face after white face after white face coupled with the proclamation that this is the true representation of America. A bit later I was back at the Lincoln Memorial, descending the steps as Tea Party tourists ascended them, hands clutching signs that called our current President a tyrant. The same exact word that John Wilkes Booth hurled at Lincoln's already expiring body after he cowardly shot him in the back of the head. I felt like talking to these people, telling them "Stop. Turn around. Clearly you don't get it. Your presence here, in front of this statue and what it stands for... It is beyond a joke. It's blasphemy."

I couldn't. For the sole reason that this is not my country alone. We are a tapestry. From one flag, many stars. From one nation, many ideas. I have no doubt that of the two mindsets at the rally or on those steps, I'm the one upholding Lincoln's spirit. The one embracing healthy debate. The rational discussion of valid ideas rather than the hurling of hyperbolic and cliched insults. I want bipartisanship more than anything. I want a better America through union, not a tug-of-war government. Because of President Obama's historic victory, it's spewed by the right-wing these days, but no matter which side is saying it, the phrase "Take our country back" enrages me more than I can possibly express. To all those that say it, whether pundit or lemming, to every bumper sticker that proclaims it should be affixed another one:

Go fuck yourself.
This country was never yours to own. Just as it isn't mine. It does not belong to you, and the arrogance of your assumption only ratifies just how unworthy you are of it.

If you read even a few words of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and if you truly get what those documents are saying, you realize how absurd such a statement is. You realize that we are a kaleidoscopic nation, not by accident or modern evolution, but by the design and principles of our founders. From many, we are one.

I watched footage of the 9/11 attacks at D.C.'s Newseum and saw the faces of those around me in the packed room echo my emotion. This brought me back to that unforgettable Tuesday afternoon as I sat in an overcrowded hospital waiting room attempting to give blood. I don't remotely care what ideologies those around me had, on that day in 2001 or this one nine years later. My patriotism in the blooming of many diverse petals from the one stem of our nation is surpassed only by the union when these many synchronize into one force, one action, one hope. One singular wonder, like that of the U.S. Capitol illuminated against an ink sky.

Joshua: "Are you ever NOT completely amazed when you see that? I mean, does it ever get old?"
JoJo: "Nnnnope. Never."

My faulty, idealist wish would be that from the many that visited Washington, D.C. during the time that I did and all those who will in the months and generations to come, one emotion of congruency and compromise would spring forth. Or to reverse the paradigm, that the one sight of Lincoln keeping nightwatch over the city that is the cradle of our nation, that many individuals will take up his burden, and carry on his legacy.

With glowing hearts (desplus brillants exploits).

"The person who doesn't make mistakes is unlikely to make anything." - Paul Arden

(or)

"Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity." - Michael Chabon


It's really only a mistake if you ask my malnourished bank account. If you ask a pragmatist. If you ask my impossibly nervous immediate family (who has no clue what I just did). It's really only a mistake if you want to play it safe. If you want to save up for a rainy day. If you put faith in the word "maybe." If you trust the word "hopefully." "Someday."

It's really only a mistake if you ignore the fact that not going is a far, far larger one.

I started my part-time job yesterday. The first day I have worked since July 2. The first time my income was not a lump sum from selling my car, or from Christmas presents, or a generous loan from a loved one. Wait... this is important, but not the beginning. This story starts earlier, kaleidoscopically.

The sportscaster/comedian Kenny Mayne spoke at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove a few years back and I listened as he talked about the certain sports events that you absolutely have to go to in your life. The Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, the World Series, the Olympics. I had never actually considered that last one.

A few months later, as my friends and I played the extremely self-destructive game of pub golf for my birthday, every bar on Main Street in Santa Monica was airing the Opening Ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. My friend Jeffrey surprised me by revealing that that was one of his lifelong bucket list dreams, to attend the Olympics. And the reason, from what my vodka-misted memory can recall, actually had little to do with sports or the events themselves. Rather the overall experience, the pageantry and spectacle of the world converging in one area for one massive celebration.

Sixteen months and 20,000 miles later I had insomnia. I was awake at 2 in the morning in my childhood house in Pennsylvania, an interminable two week visit to a village that was once home. And when I wasn't being lectured about disparaging the tea party movement or for not sitting at rapt attention during the homily at Christmas Eve mass, I was having withdrawals from the road. I missed the new experiences, the lifestyle, the camaraderie of backpackers. I missed what people far too often simply call feeling alive but really is the recognition and confidence of absolute sovereignty. At 2 a.m., I was still mulling over the invite I'd received a month earlier from another backpacker I had met in Jordan to visit Vancouver in February. A free place to stay and face value tickets to three Olympic events. I had no money, no job prospects, no clue even where I'd be living or how much rent I would be paying when I got to New York in two weeks. And then I realized what an idiot I was being. All the people in the world that would jump at such an opportunity, all the people that with starry eyes and meek voices say "Well, maybe... hopefully, someday" and I sat mulling it over. I leaped out of my bed and then had to wait a good ten minutes for my mother's ancient laptop to load to the point where I could send the email. One not much longer than "I'm coming. I'll figure out the details and logistics later, but I'll be there."

February 20th rolled around and, still no television job, only a part-time one that was being delayed by this trip and down to the vapors of my checking account, I boarded a plane to Vancouver.

For five months, I went to the world. I ran an absurdly large spectrum of cultures, people, cuisines, languages, customs, conversations, currencies, experiences. Memories. For the past five days, in Vancouver, I let the world come to me. A singer-songwriter belting out lyrics in French at the Maison du Quebec, telling an anecdote about his dreams of being a hockey player fizzling after one 22-0 peewee hockey loss in which he was the deluged losing goaltender- how his father played him a song to cheer him up and how his love of music grew from that. Tiny Russian toddlers clapping and spasmodically dancing outside of Vancouver's giant-disco-ball-looking Science World that served as the Sochi 2014 Pavilion, slapping together thundersticks printed in Cyrillic that they could barely hold in their growing hands. Germans rooting for America at a downtown sports bar called Malone's, even painting flags on their cheeks in support of the US against Canada in hockey, and then using the same palette of colors to paint Swedish flags on the faces of a family from Montana. Thousands of people simultaneously taking pictures of the striking Olympic Cauldron, unified in wonder of how beautiful something as basic as lights and fire could be. Watching part of the Slovakia/Norway game on a TV in the Hudson Bay Company's window, there was an incredibly violent hit where a Slovakian player was knocked unconscious, blood pooling from the back of his head after it slammed on the ice- a crowd of 15 or so assembled in silence and concern, finally broken by a man asking me in a trembling whisper what happened, and then translating in Czech to his friends what I was saying. Worry and fright that transcended languages, that was common ground. The city of Vancouver itself: stumbling upon a back alley in the Gastown district covered with some of the best street art I've seen outside of New York and Berlin- the alley was a government funded initiative for convicted graffitiers to create art more complex than simple tagging, the city allowing the street to be their canvas. I found this out from a homeless man who didn't ask for any money, just took joy in a stranger finding beauty and excitement in something he got to see everyday. Just relishing in the pride and opportunity to be a tour guide was enough for him. People I met for five seconds that I will remember the rest of my life.

The Olympics. It has so little to do with the actual events. In the same way Thailand had little to do with the famous temples, or Brussels with the Mannekin Pis, or New York with the Empire State Building, or LA, home, with the Hollywood Sign or Chinese Theatre.

Kenny Mayne was right for advising. Jeffrey Harris was right for wishing. And I was right for going.

The Golden Age doesn't happen in your living room. You walk outside your front door or take a plane to a new city and it meets you somewhere along the way.

Vancouver: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2117303&id=35804394&l=4e94846d6e