Letters I Forgot to Send You

The Beauty of the Last

2009-06-07T01:04:00.000-07:00

And now the counting begins.

On Friday, James, my best friend and roommate called me to say "hey tonight is my last Friday night in New Orleans." There was something so weighty about hearing these words.

As the school year draws to an end so concludes my time in the Teach for America program, and most likely my life as a teacher. I have decided I will stay in New Orleans for at least another year. The plan is to find a day job that will allow me the freedom to devote more time to comedy. Yet even though I am staying, this still seems a time for endings and goodbyes. And therein I find a strange and unexpected beauty.

There is something about feeling the approach of the end that makes us live that much more fervently. We begin counting our lasts - our last visit to our favorite restaurant, our last walk down a familiar route. The familiar and totally ordinary becomes sacred. Our last time washing the dishes.

Yet given that I am not leaving, all of my lasts are last encounters with people that I care deeply about.

The last "family dinner" at Nirvana - a tradition we started to keep ourselves from dying with stress and subsequent malnutrition. Rolling out of the door full bellied into our last Sunday night prep for the coming week.

Playing guitar with James, standing in the middle of our stairwell - a place whose supernatural acoustic qualities were discovered by accident. Singing at the top of our lungs. Making up lyrics as we go. Wondering if this indeed will be the last time we play together.

My last week of teaching. As teachers are boxing up books and taking down wall decorations, I am putting more up. Posters and signs I create knowing that I will have to take them down within four days. They carry images of DuBois and Douglass, sayings I've kept for two years and neglected to ever put up. "We don't just run to the finish line; we run through it." "Fall seven times, stand up eight." So many lessons I have yet to teach my students and so have condensed into a chart paper slogan I pray they will read and come to own as part of who they are : "we never ever give up" "I am a maker of history" "impossible is nothing" "education = freedom" "I believe in myself."

A last kiss. Standing on her porch. A kiss urgently held as if it were possible to breathe it in and keep some part of it. The kind that compels you to suddenly turn around and bound up the front steps you just descended to kiss her again in a way that might be more permanent than your last one.

It is truly beautiful. There is something about the approach of the end urges us to live, to seize the moment.

"This is it," I whisper to myself, "Make it count."

"Make it count."

Mayme

2009-04-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

Grandma,

I know you are there. I know you can hear us.
Please fight. Please come back.

I love you,

CJ

What I love about the airport

2009-04-19T05:49:00.000-07:00

Dear airport news stand,

Thank you for the 300% markup on bottled water. I think $3.00 is a very fair price for water, and I am happy to pay it.

Dear united airlines,

thanks for your new baggage fees. 15 dollars for the first bag. I think this is pretty reasonable considering I pay 15 for one bag on any other form of transportation. Trains, buses, you name it.

Dear Sarcasius of ancient greece,

Thank you for inventing sarcasm.

Tell the truth

2009-04-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

Dear George,

In a few hours, I wake up to board a plane back to New Orleans. Exhausted and unashamedly procrastinating packing my bags, I happened to turn on a special in which the Kennedy Center was honoring you for your work in comedy. Throughout the course of this special, watching big-screened clip after clip of your most memorable material, I learned two things:
1.) I am awed by you.
2.) You are no longer with us.

And so I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for reminding me that truth is indeed greatest form of humor. Unapologetic honesty.
I have gotten so wrapped up in gimmick - wanting to be the next Andy Samburg - believing that funny has to be something never before seen, something dressed up and packaged and side splitting, that I had forgotten what first drew me to comedy.

I had forgotten the thrill of seeing Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Robin Williams stand before sold out thousands and issuing from these crowds the same collective breathless call: "that is so true..."

Its not about spinning gold from straw. Its about holding up a mirror.

Thank you.

- CJ

Doing time.

2009-03-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

Wow. It seems that the only time I am moved to write is when I have these very depressing broody thoughts. Apologies. But I just wanted to share this.

It was fifth period and I was reading with a student. Her attention absorbed in Sweet Valley High Book.

My co-teacher and I share a classroom. One side of the room she has set up a small half moon of small tables around which she gathers 4-6 students at a time. I do the exact same on the other side. In the peculiar overlap of space and sounds, I have developed the habit of tuning in and out on the conversations she is having with her students.

Lamel, one of her students sauntered in late, apparently upset that he had been given detention. He sat down to begin his work. A moment later, the collective reading silence in the room was broken by his voice: "you know" he said almost light-heartedly "detention is just like prison. You get one mark, thats 30 minutes, you get two marks you gotta serve an hour." It was something in his tone that struck me. It reminded me of the way a child tells his parent "you know Santa Clause is not real." A child letting you know he is on to your secret. A look of acknowledgment. Without another word, he returned to reading.

Thank You, Marley

2008-11-15T23:31:00.000-08:00

"What do you think about classism?" she asked.

Marley and I were two perfect strangers. In a packed artists warehouse near the ninth ward we stood (standing room only) watching characters dance and shuffle around stage in blackface. Entitled "Uncle Tom: Deconstructed" the play was put on by a Virginia based theater group called The Concilliation Project. Traveling the country to put on plays about social justice and equality, the group had come to the New Orleans Fringe Festival to stage this harrowing work about white privilege and the legacy of slavery. Check em out: http://www.theconciliationproject.org . At the end of the play the cast lead a discussion about race in which they asked us, the audience members, to turn to a perfect stranger and share out thoughts.

Marley,a young woman about my age, blonde hair and blue pea coat, stood intently listening to me go on about how I enraged I get when white people talk about color blindness. "I totally agree," she responds. "It's kind of a privilege to even be able to pretend that you are color blind." I like her. She is honest about how she feels and when she is listening she looks like she is listening and not just preparing her next line.

"I often feel that class inequality has gotten as bad as racial inequality did in the 1960's" she comments, "but no one today wants to recognize what a big issue class is." I cringe immediately, recognizing this as the beginning of a conversation I have had so many times in which a white person attempts to use a discussion of class as a way to move away from an uncomfortable talk about race. I begin to launch my rehearsed counter-argument talking about how race was used to create the american class system. Somewhere in between a diatribe about the racialization of suburbs and the portrayal of black welfare mothers, I find out that she herself is on welfare.

"I had a baby, and we didn't have any health insurance." "So many people," she continues, "assume that my husband and I are lazy or something, but the truth is, we just didn't have insurance and now are on government assistance." As she spoke my image of her as this pea-coat-wearing-SUV-driving college girl dissolves and I found myself with very little to say in return.

For me, talking about race has become a sort of rehearsed battle - a chess game. With all possible moves anticipated, I have memorized a set of attacks and counter attacks. Staggering statistics, historical facts, carefully constructed analogies, and an ability to reference specific FHA policies - these, my weapons, I carry with me into cafes and dinners parties, bookshops and train stations as ready ammunition should I encounter a stranger passionately denouncing the evils of affirmative action or asking, "why can't those blacks get it together?"

But in this moment I found myself being forced to listen. For once.
Thank you, Marley. I am not used to having to interrogate my own assumptions. Nor am I used to having any conversation about race in which I am not intently focused on trying to "win."

It is a strange realization to discover that you yourself wear a mask.
My mask is that of radical black intellectual. I developed it in college when all it took to be "down for the struggle" was an ability to quote Fanon and talk about the problems of the nations public schools or prison industrial complex. By claiming this identity I escape having to interrogate my own class privilege. With this mask, I - Mr. elite Massachusetts boarding school, Mr. 30,000 dollars a year for middle school - can stand in an artists warehouse with a 24 year old white mother on welfare and tell her that class is just a diversion from a much larger, pressing issue.

Thats my mask. What is yours?

Crazy Guy

2008-07-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the placid silence of the Oak Park Public Library was broken by the terrified screams of a man that we could not see.

Turning from their laptops, folding newspapers, looking up from broad tables covered with reference books, people began frantically searching for the source of the disturbance with their eyes. The man's desperate panting could be heard beneath the squeaking of his sneakers moving back and forth across the floor. For a moment, he emerged from behind a bookshelf and met eyes with the room of concerned patrons. At this, a few taller white guys stood up, adjusted their khaki shorts and headed off towards the man. "We'll just see about this!!" Ten minutes later, after everyone had settled back to their reading, security arrived and did a customary fruitless sweep of Chicago Biography section.

Newspapers were unfolded.

Laptops exited sleep mode.

And I sat there wondering about the screamer.

Was he just some crazy guy? Or had he perhaps just woken from a nightmare? If he was indeed in danger, no one would have believed him. Thats not how it works.

April 4, 1968

2008-04-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

Snapshot 1: February, 2008
The timer has just gone off and we are getting into it. "Alright ladies and gentlemen. We had a rough day yesterday, but today I have some great things planned and I think that we can have a great class." Dori has his hand up. "I am not taking any questions right now." This moment - beginning class - always fills me with terror. A ship steering through shallow rocky waters. A ship that I seem to crash every day. And it is in this one moment, the day is still filled with possibility. Let's just hold it together folks, no one panic, and I will try my best to steer us through safely today. Trying to avoid both mutiny and shipwreck, I have begun trying to start the first few minutes of class as a tyrant. "There are no questions right now." "I am the only one talking. Your voices are off."

"But this is a question about social studies" Dori insists, hand still in the air.
Dori is the coolest kid in the 6th grade. A mixture of astounding intellect and unpredictable commitment to actually applying himself, Dori constantly inspires awe among his peers - either through his insights or direct laughing defiance to teachers orders.

I accept his question.

"Why are we not learning about black history and its Black history month?"
The other students are enlivened by his comment. A chorus of affirmations and shows of support begin to erupt around the room. 'I hear that.'
'yeah, why is that?'
' that's what they are doing at all the other schools...'

"Actually, I would love to teach about that, Dori," I respond. "In fact, I even majored in black history at college."

"That's even worse," Aldin retorts. "How you gonna have majored in it and not taught us a thing about it?"

These students, 12 - 14 years old, have no idea that they have tapped into a secret little shame that I have been hiding from - tucking under my pillow every night of February, swallowing as I trudge the stairs up to my room in the heaviness of 11pm.

"Well guys," I pause...fumbling for the words...."we have to study for the LEAP Test. That's what we need to be focusing on as our first priority. I promise you, that next unit will be all about black history."

Wow, I think to myself, the college me would have been furious with the me that is now a teacher. So let me get this straight future CJ, you are not going to open your mouth all black history month because you are obsessed with your students passing a standardized test? You must be out of your mind.

The next day, I promise them that the last 10 minutes of every class will be devoted to black history. Every day I tell them that their bad behavior and inability to focus has cost them their black history time, thus passing the responsibilities of my own failings neatly on to them.

February passes. Thoughts of covering the poor people's march enters my head as a sub activity of a lesson on measuring distance with the 4th graders. How far is it from Alabama to Washington? It is late so I decide to scrap the idea. Kings birthday passes and I have said nothing.

Snapshot 2: April 4th 2008

In the midst a shortened class, already to late in the period to review our test, I scrap the lesson's objectives and decide to take the introductory conversation about King's Death (10 minutes on the lesson plan) and stretch it for rest of the 30 minute period. A worksheet, quickly scrawled in my childish handwriting reads. Who was martin luther king? Why was he important.

Who was Martin Luther King Jr.?
Answers from my 4th and 5th grade class include:
• He was Mr. Luther King Jr
• Civil Right Leader and Nobel Place Prize (an answer from many students incorrectly copied from a poster in my room)
• A man who stop slavery
• He whis the man had stop race

Why was he important?
• He gave peace and love to this world (a peace sign, a heart, and a picture of a globe accompany the actual words)
• He wanted peace
• He helped people bring peace to ecuder
• Martin luther king is important because he is from america
(The rest of the answers for my 15 student class are left blank)

We talk. I play the recoding of Bobbie Kennedy announcing that king has been killed. We define segregation. We role play. I knock stuff off kids desks and yell at them (all in jest of course) and ask them how difficult it is to restrain themselves from wanting to do something back to me.

"There are always two choices," I say, "revenge/ hate, and love." "The same choices that King and the blacks of the civil rights movement were facing upon hearing his death are the same that we face everyday in how we treat one another." Somehow my classroom remembrance of King's legacy has devolved into a take-away message 'stop hitting and calling each other names in class.' Part of this is because of my lack of preparation. The other is out of sheer dumbfoundedness about how to talk about race in a room in which Cassie, sits in the corner as the lone white student. Her head is on her desk and I feel like I am looking at her more than the rest of the class.

For your exit slip today, please write me a note about what our conversation has made you think about.

Student responses are as follows:
Dear Mr. Hunt...
• Talking about martin luterking makes me sad because king died.
• Learning about Martin Luther King made me sad and think about violence.
• This made me think about segregation
• Me think about stop harm people. I want to cray.

I sit in my classroom reading these in the fading light of evening. Not yet turning the lights on. The air conditioner is whirring. The heat makes the air stick to your body. And I feel like I want to cray. For all the things they do not know. For all the things I have not taught them. For all the fears and struggles with planning and holding myself accountable to those state tests that keep me from making talks of civil rights the air we breath in my classroom.

There is a closet in the corner of my room so messy that I have moved a shelf in front of the doorway to keep kids from entering and even looking into it. On the floor of this closet sits a big yellow bag. Inside, crushed beneath discarded textbooks and plastic bins lies a timeline of black history that I bought to assuage my own guilt and my 6th graders daily requests for black history during the month of february.

Nearby, in that same closet, my poster of Frederick Douglas lies pressed beneath heavy dictionaries. He was placed there to smooth out the wrinkles in the poster before the school opened. DuBois lies beneath the same dictionaries. Pressed beneath their weight and the weight of the dust and the darkness and the neglect. There, in a room barricaded off from children by a heavy bookcase, DuBois and Douglas sleep, waiting for me to gather the courage and conviction to invite them in to meet my students.

Strange how easily we become what we scorn.

I place the King essays in my top desk drawer. In the way of everything. So that every time I reach for a pencil or sticky, I see their blank unanswered questions and am reminded of what I am supposed to do.

Been Gone So Long

2007-12-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

It strikes me that I have not posted on this blog in a very long time. I have "plans" to start "posting" again - this time frequently. Writings from me in heavy rotation. Heavy flow.

I think it helps me stay sane and feel connected to people in a strange way. Crazy how being connected to people is getting more and more distant and impersonal as time goes on. Anyways hers a game I like to play:

its called, "You know what movie I want to see...?"

Ok, this is how it is played:

You know what movie I want to see...
The Great Debaters. It looks really good.

Ok. Thats it. Good Game.

Another round?

You know what movie I want to see...
I am legend. It looks really scary (in a good way).

Ok. Good game.

- More riveting games next time.

I love you,
Goodnight.

OPP - On Self Destruction

2007-05-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

OPP: Other People's Poetry

I stole the term from a poet I saw here last year in a show called belly of the beast. Poet, if you are reading this, I ask your permission to use your term. I will use it occasionally here to post up someone else's words that I have come across and find beautiful.

"In these bloody days and frightful nights when an urban warrior can find no face more despicable than his own, no ammunition more deadly than self-hate and no target more deserving of his true aim than his brother, we must wonder how we came so late and lonely to this place"
-Maya Angelou

It's Alright Now

2006-12-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

It is a strange sight - people cheering for the death of a man.
Hugging each other.
Waving to the camera.
Laughing.
Flags and posterboard signs - "Death. Death to Saddam" written in bubble letters with red magicmarkerblood dripping down the long curved slope of the D.

In a week of remembrances - PBS specials on the life of Harold Ford, the Apollo remembers James Brown. Flags draped older coffins and the shoulders of statues, flowers gathered at the feet -

this, the Death of Saddam, should seem normal...run of the mill.

But there is something different.
A greater sense of spectacle perhaps.
The fervor is a celebration - watercooler conversation for tomorrow's slow morning at the office.
"Did you hear? The killed him!" Said with an upward intonation at the end - like "Did you hear? Dolphins beat the Patriots - 35-14. Can you believe it?"
A familiar tone, resounding with the same excitement spoken once before:
"Did you hear? The caught him!! Hiding in a hole somewhere....like a fucking animal. Can you believe it?"

Because, to us, Saddam is not a man. He is a symbol. He is a villainous caricature who we are quite sure he deserves to die, despite our ignorance about what exactly it was that he did.
For his death is not seen as the loss of a life, but rather the victory of good over evil.
We won. Game over. Cut to post game special.

There will be much said about the symbolism. About how the violence is nowhere close to over. About how Bush will tout this as an american victory and serve it up as proof of the righteousness of the war effort in order to assist the public in forgetting that this December has been the bloodiest month of the war yet.

So I will leave those speeches for the protesters, for the poets, for Anderson Cooper, for your moveon.com email newsletter.

What I want to bring attention to is
our thirst.

Our obsession with SEEING death.
Searching YOUTUBE to see if the footage of the hanging is up yet?

The dramatic montage CNN has already put together: The footage of Saddam's statue toppling, fading into Saddam captured - filthy and dishevled - doctors prodding in his mouth like an animal (we love this one), cut to Saddam's indignant outbursts at the trial - his fist waving in the air, cut to Anderson interviewing elated expatriates.

"When are the videos going to be up?"

We need to see it.
And when I say "we" I do not mean the Iraqi citizen or expatriate. I do not mean the man who has had his wife and children killed by Saddam's regime. I mean the everyday American who most likely cannot point to Iraq on a map. I mean the "we" who did not know the name of the man nor the country before 1990.
The we who anxiously awaited the live pay-per-view screening of Timothy Mcveigh's death.

For "We" are obsessed with seeing it for very different reasons.
Not for revenge. But for entertainment.
For affirmation.

We want to be there, standing in back of the room, watching his heavy feet ascend the gallow steps.
"Saddam, sweetie, Give us one long Look into the camera before the bag is placed over your face."
We will stay, waiting to see the twitching subside.
The silence and the creaking of the wood against the rope's weight.

We will record it on Tivo.
Keep it ONDEMAND
Sit around the dinner table with our children and see the replay on our local news station.
And breath a sigh of relief

Because there is no greater american passtime than watching the spectacle of death
After all, Hangings - whether of innocent black boys or monstrous dictators - have always reminded us of how human we are - how very alive we are.
They Have always assured of the inevitable triumph of the righteous.
Helped us and our children sleep better at night.

Its alright. The monster is dead.
I saw it with my own eyes.
We are all safer now.

Fists in the Air: Living in the Shadow of The Walk Outs

2006-09-13T22:59:00.001-07:00

I cannot remember a picture that has inspired so much pride and shame in me at the same time.

There is what you see:
a student photographed during a protest against police brutality

and then

There is what I see:
a student who has stepped out of a march to POSE for a photo, dying to look legitimate, longing to look like the next Bob Moses, pressing his lips into composed fire - the kind of non-smile that Huey wore in that famous wicker chair picture. I see a little boy wondering 'how would malcolm pose for this', ready to run home as fast as he can to check if the picture made it to facebook, if he is quoted in the paper - if his presence has been documented, affirmed, glorified, elevated in this infant of a movement. I was there. Everyone look at me.

Everyone look at me.

As a generation we live in the shadow of 1968. And the decades on either side.
We are called, and often call ourselves the generation of apathetics. The MTV -AIM generation. Children whose parents once took to the streets. They tell us stories of vietnam - of how they protested against it or fought in it. They have artifacts - pictures of them, looking nothing like the parents that we know now - with youth and passion, with afros and fists in the air. In their drawers and attic chests they have old buttons designed with peace signs and interracial handshakes. SNCC. SCLC. March on Washington. Watts. King. SDS. Mississippi. Montgomery. Freedom Rides. Fire Hoses. Fists. In the air.

Since I was in middle school I have looked at the 60's as the golden age - that to which we were always meant to aspire, that which we were born to replicate, to reenact.

I have always seen us as their thankless children - a generation with no cause, no crisis, and no consensus. Sometimes I think that we have been so pampered that we have forgotten how to stand and speak at all.

At Brown the shadow looms just as long. We watch documentaries about the walkouts, about 68 and 85, about the time that Brown University students of color just like us left their classrooms, we watch them occupy school buildings, see them with microphones making demands, fists in the air.

And we wonder, where are our demands? When will we walkout? What is our cause? How do you make a fist?
And the effect of this is staggering: a generation of students whose understanding of change and revolution is limited to the most superficial and visually captivating aspects of past protests - that which we have read about in civil rights class and watched in documentaries and HBO specials. We at Brown, I dare say, are a generation who only understand the options in front of us in so far as they resemble the actions and protests of those who came before us. An imagination imprisoned by our past. So in thinking about protest we are more concerned with mimicking the past than with creating new forms of resistance.

On Tuesday we marched. We wore black clothes and band aids over the left eye to draw attention to an incident in which a Brown student was assaulted by providence police over the weekend (9/9). It was the grandest moment I have experienced at Brown. As we walked around the campus chanting and waving our flyers "stop the abuse. stop it now" there was this energy, this feeling of new life coursing through us - pushing us forward. We cannot stop, we must go down another street. We must make another round of the green. You could see dancing it in our eyes. A breathless excited uncertainty. Our moment was finally here. We had found our cause - something to stand for.

And yet I was aware that my mind was wondering - away from the goal of raising awareness - away from the anger and focus on what we were demanding from the school - and to the image of what a fist, my fist, looks like when raised into the air. My eyes, scanning frantically for cameras. who is getting this down? I see a camera as we head down the slope to the dining hall and I raise my fist again. Maybe the photographer will catch it. Maybe it will be on the cover of the paper. And my mind moved from my focus on the police and administrators to the delicious idea of standing in front of the group and speaking. When will I get the opportunity to stand up and say something? It is pounding in my head. Come on. I have this killer line that I have been sitting on for two weeks "brown we are watching you." It was the closing and most powerful line that a black student, deemed the spokesperson of the group, said during the 1985 walkouts at Brown. And I want to be the first to say it. Wait for it. Wait for it. God I hope no one says it before me.

The protest ends. Our organizing meeting comes and goes. And, before I know it, I am back in my room looking at a photo of myself posing for the camera and I am disgusted with myself. I am disgusted at how easy my dedication to the movement slipped into being my dedication to good activist-looking pictures of myself. A friend writes on my wall "hey cj, cool pic, you should be the poster boy for the equality movement." And I am sick with the realization that, secretly, that is exactly who I wanted to be.

So the picture is at once a testament to the incredible strength and energy we had in making our presence known on campus that day, and yet still an uglier and much subtler testament to how all-consuming power is.

And I wonder if anyone else among the crowd felt that same feeling. We say that this campaign against police brutality is a movement that belongs to all of us, and that leadership is not important. Yet I feel that deep down, the feelings in some of us belie that conviction. Deep down there is the hunger for power, the desire to posses the mike, to be in the spotlight, to stand in front of a crowd, to be on the cover of the paper. A good friend put it so well tonight by saying "its all about power, everyone that day wanted be the one to say 'brown we are watching you'"

It is almost irresistible. It is like getting to put on a costume - turning ourselves into the black and white pictures of struggle that we have admired for so long. A chance to play Malcolm or Assatta for a day. Here we are trying to stand for something, learning to stand together. And though no one acknowledges it out loud there is an unspoken question that begs an answer: who will stand in front?

Who will get the mike?
Who is in the spot light?
Who runs the meeting?
When the paper asks for a quote, who speaks?

Leadership. Leadership. Leadership.

For those of you friends who are reading this and are currently involved in the movement, I apologize if I am at all projecting my own insecurities and fucked up thoughts on to you.
I mean it only as a word of caution: we are all in danger.

By virtue of being in this struggle we are in danger of having our imaginations cut short. My friend calls it the limit horizon - the limit of our imagination. We are in danger of putting our energy into something that ultimately amounts to nothing more than mimicry, an attempt to reenact the past.

As soon as people found out about the police assault they began demanding "Walkout!!"
I recently spoke with a freshman who put it this way: "just because a walk out was good for them in 68, doesn't mean that it is what we should do now"
Perhaps there is a better way that has yet to be imagined. And isn't that what we owe history, to imagine the unimaginable - to come up with alternatives that our parents never thought of?

Lastly we are in danger of this movement becoming fractured by an internal struggle for power. We need to keep our eyes on our objectives - a community in providence and at Brown free of racist violence and targeting. Find a way where everyone feels like they are a part of it. It is ego that will kill us. It is ego that killed SNCC and countless other student movements. Broke them down the middle, turned grassroots coalitions into cults of warring personalities. That is why history is so easily summerizable in these fucked up dualisms: King versus X, Dubois versus Washington.

And our enemies know this all too well. From the beginning I have believed that the secret to our own oppression has been the strategy of divide and conquer that has been used against us. Up until now I have thought of that division as coming exclusively from our own internal prejudices and from external coercive forces. It is now, looking at this picture, that I realize a major structuring element of our own division is ego.

Where are we going?

2006-08-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

Here I am. A badly taken photo of the best moment of my day. Here I am. In the back seat of taxi, an open window, slipping through the chicago summer night. It is moments like these, alone, at night, often in taxis, head out the window - probably because I, like the rest of my generation, have come to value moments based on the degree to which they resemble sentimental movie tropes (he drives away, turning back to look one last time, through the taxi's rear window, at the girl, at the life he is leaving behind. Coldplay, in the background, steadily building to a crescendo. Close-up on airplane tickets in hand. Cue solitary tear running down cheek. Fade to black.) - that I really appreciate youth.

21 has brought with it more than I expected. Sure, there is the ability to go to bars - a chance to hit up Wriggleyville, trying not spill your drink while dodging in-between balding 30-something "let-me-tell-you-how-much-I-make" men (all wearing the same striped clubbing shirt from H&M or Express for men) and women who are way too old to dress like sorority girls who,amids grinding with each other, yell into each other's ears "Oh my god. I love Kanye!!" Oh yes, 21 has brought much more than this, riveting as it is.

With 21 has come a real sense of "I am a person now." My identity feels like more than "my parents child." You know what I mean? All of a sudden home, as wonderful as it is, feels a little awkward - like some jeans that after so many washes get a little too tight in the crotch. And you are left saying to "yourself, how did this happen? Can I still wear these? I will. And now my balls are hurting. Maybe I'll just unzip the top and wear a belt. Ah...my balls..."
You think to yourself, "damn I am technically an adult now. why am I still borrowing money and not cooking my own dinner?"

And with it, comes an incredible excitement - a feeling that sleeps somewhere in the bottom of your stomach and bubbles up at odd moments. In cars at night on highways. On trains at 8:50am as you find yourself lost in mass of starbucks-sipping, Motorolla RAZR wielding working folks (cyborgs, I believe).

I have a life.
This is MY life.
And I get to shape it how I want.
(The man with the comb-over sitting next to you looks over, thinking you are reciting to yourself your own personal lets-get ready-for-the-day pumpup mantra and nods in recognition - he has a mantra too).

What am I going to be? Not, just my job, but what kind of man am I going to be? What is to become of all this - of all this preparation? When am I going to fall in love? Maybe she is the one sitting 2 seats down, by the window, lost in a book... When is this life going to begin?

What a crazy time this is. Total potential. Total unknown. Like that moment before ski racers explode out of the starting gate. Muscles tensed. The camera pans slowly to show a single bead of sweat dripping from the brow.

At times I am so overcome by this feeling, that I just begin chuckling to myself.
(And the man with the comb-over sitting next to me looks over, thinking that I am losing my mind, nods in recognition and gives a mysterious little wink signaling 'I too am crazy..shhh...')

My dad reminds me how short youth is. He tells me that he was too worried about getting to the next thing, about becoming a Grown Up that he missed a lot of what youth is supposed to be about. "Its about the journey, ceej," he says to me. "Don't get impatient. Don't focus so narrowly on the destination that you lose sight of the scenery that is careening past the window."

As I climb the stairs to my room, he is calling after me, in a half-whisper as not to wake my sleeping brother "Drink it in." Like a delicious thing you taste, take it in your mouth, savor it, and shut down all other senses - divert the rest of the energy in your body to focusing on that taste - pull everything you can from it. Because soon it will be gone.

"Savor it"

The words stay in my head.

This badly taken photo is of us - hurtling through the night towards whatever we will become. Towards everything we have planned for. Towards everything we haven't. Me, with my elbow hanging half-out of the open window. Eyes closed, mouth agape - trying to taste the summer night. Heavy and sweet. Holding it on the back of my tongue, as we slip quietly along, beneath the orange fluorescent street lamps and the towering shadows of a glittering chicago skyline.

Stevie Wisdom #1: boys don't dress like Kitties

2006-07-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

For all of you, who, for some reason, don't know yet, I have a 7-year-old brother, named Stevie. He is my world, my fucking life. No joke. When people offhandedly ask on facebook "hows your life," I'm like "he's good, he's learning to tie his shoes." Since he is seven now, and apparently into all sorts of big boy shit like multiplication and baseball he has requested that me and my family start calling him "Stephen." This name, he believes to be more sophisticated, more worthy of a boy (pardon me, young man) who is transitioning out of velcro shoes and rolling around town on a two wheeler (no training wheels...thats right bitches.) Anyways, "Stephen" will occasionally drop some knowledge on me, out of nowhere, like from the sky, like from some place deep inside his little boy pockets hidden among pennies and crumpled up fruit by the foot rappers - and these observations will either rock my world, make me poop my pants in laughter (only a little poop), or a strange combination of the two. Today's gem of 7-year old wisdom goes like this:

We were sitting in the dinning room, thumbing through a the Oak Park news letter - this is what we do in our spare time - you know one of those, "old lady williams will be having a yard sale sunday; the skating rink will be offering free lessons this thursday through saturday; lets hear it for the Oak Park tigers for winning 5th place in the west suburban little league extravaganza" kind of home town newsletters. Pointing to a picture of a precious little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, dressed up like a kitten, i aks my brother "is that a picture of you?"

He punches me in the arm. And then returns to sipping cran-grape juice from a straw. (He is stronger than he looks)

"What" I ask, "That wasn't you?, turn back to the page, lemme see"

"Boo!!" he yells - he has stopped sipping now and has a ring of purple around his mouth - (he calls me Boo, not becuase we are or have ever dated but because when he was a baby, my parents, wanting to take full advantage of his incredible baby sponge-like language acquisition abilities, had my polish speaking aunt teach him a whole bunch of words in polish. On of these words was Broodah, polish for brother. Because babies have small mouths poorly suited for pronouncing r sounds, this word came out "Boo..." And it stuck. I hope it continues to stick until we are both old old men incapable of making few other intelligible sounds than this. Sometimes he'll address me as CJ, and I will pretend like I have no idea who he is talking to"

- "Boo!!" he is still half yelling (he gets furious when he feels as if he is being seen as effeminate or baby-like)
"Thats a girl!!"

"No way" I say, "how can you tell?"

"Boys don't dress up like kitties" - He says it with conviction - like it is one of the few things in this world that he KNOWS in his heart to be ture.

"Come on, what about on halloween"

"Boo," he is now serious and speaks slowly like he is explaining to me where babies come from "All my friends are boys."
He pauses to let the comment sink in. "None of them have ever dressed up like a kitty"

"Huh," I say, "I guess you are right." And I am picturing a group of boys dressed in their holloween best. A boy with a fake axe in his head, stawberry blood and latex brains coming out of the side. Another boy dressed like a power ranger. 5 different spider men. And among them a boy dressed like a precious little kitten. What an ass kicking costume that would be. The boy who dresses like a kitten would be the envy of all the other boys, I am sure of it - a god even.

And stevie has noticed me smirking to myself.

"What?" he asks suspiciously

"Oh nothing, I say"

I know the exactly what costume I am gonna get him next Halloween.

It is going to be fucking hilarious....

Nigger in a Suit (Part2)

2006-07-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

The Story:

I work in an office. I have my own cubicle. Every day I put on a shirt and slacks and ride the train into downtown chicago (the loop) along with a hoard of unhappy-looking men and women: suit-and-tie-pinstripe-skirt-white-ipod-earphone-wearing-starbucks-sipping-blackberry-wielding type of folks. My office building has a straight shot marble hallway from the glass door to the brass elevator. Every day I ride up that elevator to the 13th floor where I work: making copies and phone calls and fiddling with ungodly excell spreadsheets for a charter school nonprofit.

Tonight I am working late. I plan on working on a memo until maybe 10 or 11pm. So I take a break from my computer to join my good friend Jon (visiting from out of town) for a bite to eat. I come back at about 8 to find the inner door to building locked. So I am standing in the "breezeway" as some call it - the awkwardly small space between the street and the door to the marble hallway. I often see UPS men here, cart half in the door, balancing packages precariously on thier hips while they search the glass-encased directory to find the offices they are looking for. And of course, of fucking course, because I am an intern at this 13th floor office, i do not have a key to the building.

So I am waiting there, pressing my face up to the glass like a little puppy (buy me please?). You can see through this glass door all the way down the hallway to elevators. And I am waiting. Someone please come and see my little puppy face and open this damn door. And I have been there maybe 3 minutes when finally the elevator doors open and an old white lady (maybe 60) steps out into the hallway.

She is in going home mode, checking to make sure she has not left anything up in the office, patting her pockets for keys. And then she looks up and sees me. Sees me standing there - no longer looking like a puppy really, but simply calmly standing in the breezeway.

And all of a sudden we are on the discovery channel. She stops in her tracks, in mid-pocket-key-pat. Like a gazelle when it realizes that it is surrounded by lions. Like they say deers do as you speed toward them on the highway (i have never seen it actually happen). And I am wondering the whole time, what the hell is she looking at? But, deep down, I know. I know exactly what she sees through that glass. You know every time, but pray that you are being irrational, that maybe she is wondering if it is raining out or wondering if she has left her inhaler up at her cubicle. And then she begins to back up - carefully - like you do when you come across the path of a skunk. No sudden movements. And she disappears around the corner. Only I know, just as well as she does, that there is nothing around that corner but an unmanned security desk (security goes home at 7) and a well potted orchid (for color). There is no other exit back around that corner. This is the only way out. And I am trying not to believe what is happening. Please please be blowing things out of proportion. And then I see her poking her head out to see if I am still there. She is hiding.

And so give a polite knock. "Hello, Im locked out."

And after a few minutes she comes back into the hallway. Hands at her sides, just staring at me. Like if she stares hard enough the stare will push me out of the doors and back onto the street. And I am confused as to whether this is a shoot out or not. All we need is a big clock tower and people watching from behind barrels and saloon doors. And finally she decides to walk toward me. And when I continue to stand there, she finally draws, "No No" she yells. It explodes from her. I didn't think she spoke. She is shaking her head "you can't come in." "I work in this building", I exclaim, "I was locked out". "Where is your ID." I have no fucking idea what she is talking about. No one in the building has company ID's. "I work at the illinois network of charter schools, suite 1300...please" "No way" And I see how terrified she is of me. She doesn't know where to look, what to say - she's frozen. And that terror somehow turns the glass of the door into a mirror. I am looking at her. And she is looking at me. But as I look through the glass at her, reflected onto the glass is another image - I see myself through her eyes - the dark terrifying rapist behind the glass. Just waiting for her to open the door so I tear her to bits. Rip off her clothes. Sort through her wallet (taking everything of value - to later use to purchase crack) and find the addresses of her family. I see the beast she sees - waiting to take everything that she holds dear.

"Do you have work here?" I ask. "Yes, on the third floor." "Where is YOUR ID?" I say. And she is silent.

And I want so badly to put on the show for her. To put her at ease by using my best ivy league accent. Look at these clothes I am wearing for godsake! Rapists don't wear these clothes. I want to press my Brown University Student ID (I am carrying two in my back pocket) and tell her everything about my office and how I belong there. I want to prove it. But I know even that - even if I could convince her to let me in - it would be by convincing her that I am one of the good ones. I am not one of those. I am not from the street. 'I know you think my people are violent, but look at this card, I am one of the good ones, the nice ones, i have proof' Look at my pressed shirt and 100 dollar shoes. I am no gangster. I am no nigger. Let me soft shoe for you. Let blacken my face in burnt cork so that the brilliance of my smile is highlighted. Look how gentle I am. Look at these clothes damnit. Dont see the blackness beneath, see the kahaki's and be impressed by how well they are ironed. Please' mam.' See me. See me.

And I am breaking. Everything inside is falling apart, coming loose. And I can feel something waiting in me, something damning up, waiting to spill. And I am afraid of my own anger - afraid that I am loosing control and will (am) becoming exactly what she wants me to be.

"Have a good day" I say smuggly and storm out and on to the street. Over my shoulder I see that she has entered the breezeway/nigger screening room and is now checking the directory to see if I was telling the truth.

I take a walk and come back 15 minutes later. CJ, lets just get up to the office, forget about this bitch, and get the memo done. And as I am standing in outside, once again looking down the hallway, the elevator doors open. Out steps another white women. Younger, maybe 40, late 30s. She is dressed in pink. She sees me, outside on the street, holding the door and she hesitates. Reverses. And I know where she is going. And I am not going to wait for her to emerge from hiding behind the desk. I am not going to put myself through that again - allow myself to be changed by her. I don't want to deal with any of it. The fucking memo is not worth it. I go home.

My step mother reminds me to see it from her point of view. (I feel like I have done already). "You are a man", she says, "standing outside the office building at 8pm." Its still light out, I want to remind her. "If you worked there you would have had a key." "Im not justifying her," she continues "I'm just saying try to see it from a woman's point of view - you are a strange man waiting outside of a locked building."

And I want to believe her. I want to eat up all that rationality and explanation and think that the color of my skin had nothing to do with it at all. Please be blowing things out of proportion. But I cannot help but think that things would have been different - that the clothes would have been more convincing had there been white skin beneath. If only the man at the door looked more like her son or husband once looked. Trust worthy. Responsible - like he belongs in an office building.

And that, that thought process right there "maybe I am being unreasonable" was why I wanted to write this blog entry. Racist bitch bars black ivy league student from entering own building. Thats been done. Clieche. If you even see it as racist, the most it provokes is a "shit, that sucks."

What is far more interesting, however, is the feeling of being so hurt by something - so affected by something that seems to you to be so obviously racist - and then have to question it, have to think "am I blowing things out of proportion"? That right there speaks to the core of what it is to be a person of color in america. Black especially. We are confined to a role as the madman, the one outrageous one who sees racism everywhere. You know you have thought it before. "I have this black friend, she is way too sensitive about things?" "Why do black people think everything is about oppression." We are the unreasonable ones in the same way that feminists are branded as penis-hating militants. Just as we think in the case of young children and old people with imaginary friends, those who talk about that which we cannot see, must be delusional. After all, if it was real, we would see it right?

Same thing with microracisms. Because it is invisible to you, we are crazy for believing in it. That is the burden of being black or brown or anything not white. Every time our raised hand is skipped by a professor in class, every time someone switches seats on a train, locks their door at an intersection, grasps their purse as we walk by we cannot help but wonder if it if that action has been initiated by the color of our skin. It certainly could be a harmless coincidence. Maybe it is 50% of the time 75% of the time. But our burden, one a white person never has to deal with, is the thought, maybe that wasn't harmless. Our experience has taught us better, has taught us to expect to encounter fear, distrust, and low expectation.

And as I was riding home, having left my office work behind, I thought to myself, how many times has this happened. Ahh fuck it, its not worth it. How many times a day does a non-white person decide to not go into that bar, to not try that shirt on. I think about all the times we try to be less threatening, make ourselves look smaller than we actually are. Thats exactly what we are doing, making ourselves smaller. Never open a backpack in a store. If a waiter brings the credit card back declined do not ask him to run it again; everyone is already looking and has decided who you are. Carry two ID's, just in case. Be smaller. Be quieter. Make them feel at ease. Buy a suit nice enough and black enough for them to forget what color your skin is underneath.

And if anyone ever says, "come on, you are blowing it out of proportion," you better damn sure agree with them. "Yeah, maybe your right..."

Id much rather be crazy, you think, than right.

Nigger in a Suit (part1)

2006-07-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness - and american, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
- W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

I am often asked if I have ever been called a Nigger. My response: "Only once...to my face."

Almost every conversation I have witnessed between black and white people on the subject of race and racism inevitably degenerates into an injunction to the black person to quantify and qualify the existence of racism by recounting all or at least the most violent/ shocking racist encounters he or she has ever experienced. The subtext reads thus: Prove It. Tell me about the time you were called a nigger.

And every time one is put to the task of "proving it," it feels as ridiculous and insulting as a man asking a women to prove the existence of sexism by recounting every instance in which her body has been made into an object. How common can violence against women be, really? Why don't you paint a picture for me: tell me about the time you were raped. If you had to count them all up, how many times, roughly would you say it has happened to you? Where, EXACTLY did he touch you? Come on. Just tell me - just dig down into those memories that you hoped to lock away and recite to me details without pain - like telling me what you had for breakfast, or who your first kiss was. Tell me, please, what did he whisper in your ear? Tell me so that I can believe. So that I can maybe empathize for a second and take your word that sexist bullshit and violence against women really does exist in these modern times that we live in. Tell me so that I know you are not blowing things out of proportion.

You (dear reader) have almost certainly been on one or another side of this conversation at some point in your life. For those of you on the inquiring side, that is EXACTLY what it feels like to be on the proving side. But even if we, the provers, (non-white) can dredge up the most horrifying tear wrenching story - the time we saw our father spit on in the subway, every unnecessary encounter with the police, the way our dark skinned parents were thought to be kidnappers when trying to pick our light skinned little brothers up from day care - all that, all the Crash's and Higher Learnings and American History X's that you can fit in to a DVD box set cannot even touch, cannot begin to portray to the micro racisms - the mini encounters that happen day to day and how close you sometimes feel to breaking after a 5 day week.

...if you are still interested in what actually happened today that made me go off on this shit, check out "Nigger in a Suit part 2" - i'm doing it R Kelly Style

get it before its gone

2006-07-02T22:58:00.000-07:00

Wow. A month has passed and look how many letters I have written. It shows just how good I am at writing to people. Nice one, CJ. So I am home now. Back in my parents house - our little suburban street - oak branches hanging over the sidewalk. And as much as I want to say that "being back" feels so jarring and different, I can't help but notice how normal - how ordinary it feels. Its like nothing has changed. My little brother (7 now) still wants to play baseball every free minute he has (more of a mans man than I will ever be), my dad still starts his day at 3pm and ends at 6 am, and my step mom (marj) still sacrifices much desired trips to whole foods because they don't carry that certain brand of fruitsnacks or juices that my brother and dad like. There are so many little things - the sight of soggy cookie crisp in the sink, left in the wake of my brother's early morning dash to summer camp or school; the sounds of creeky floorboards and flushing toilets as my dad shuffles around upstairs in the wee hours of the morning ; the way the tile floor of his bathroom ("office") is always covered in books and prolific scrawlings and scribblings of genius on yellow legal pads; i'll come up to bring him a drink and he'll look up from his writing and, suddenly thumbing through a book at his side, say "hey Ceej I have something I think you should take a look at - so many little things like this that I missed about home. But they are the type of things, so little, so ordinary, that you don't know you missed them until you finally return and are like "oh yeah...i remember this."

I thought it was going to be heartbreaking. I imagined that I would spend weeks in mourning over the fact that I was no longer in cape town. I imagined that I would go back to mundane routines - getting dressed for work, heading into the loop on the L, and somewhere within these routines, most likely on the walk from my house to the L stop, I would fantasize that I was back in Cape Town. I would pick a stretch of the walk - say the sidewalk between here and the end of the block - and close my eyes, imagining the whole time that I was back in mowbray, doing the walk up from bollihope (our real-worldesque house of americans) to the UCT campus - down cecil road and past the fields and around that dusty corner. I imagined that after locking up my house for the night in chicago, I would lean against the door frame to my room and picture I was back in bollihope, in the doorway of Brooklyn's room - "tell me the best part of your day." I imagined that I would turn the boring walk from the adams L stop to my office into that sweetly familiar trek down to rondeboch to checkers because they carried dried mangos and coconut milk. In my head I would fantasize about hearing the minibusses scream by, honking, the caller leaning half out the window "wynberg...wynberg" "caaype tee-yown."

But for some reason none of that has really happened yet. Maybe it just hasn't hit me. Maybe it never will. Its like being at some meaningful event - a memorial service for a recently deceased faculty member at your school, a 911 commemoration and feeling so strongly that, given the moment, you should be crying. But you don't feel it. You don't feel like crying. And the nearest emotion to you is guilt - for not being sensitive enough to cry at a time like this.

The feeling that I do feel is just "blahh" - like waiting for a bus. Nothing spectacular. No extremes. If someone were to ask you how you were feeling at that exact moment, you would, by default, having nothing better to say, respond: "im fine, how are you." Everything is so familiar in fact that it is easy to forget that the last 5 months ever happened. And I would never want to forget something like that. I think it must be a defense mechanism. You move on real quick, get new priorities, box up and store away old memories so you too save yourself the sadness of coming to grips emotionally with something that for all intents and purposes is OVER. Has PASSED. (and therefore) Is PAST.

So what is left is a strange strange feeling of brooding panic. Like the entire 5 month experience in Cape Town is disappearing - evaporating before my very eyes - like in the oh-so-common movie trope of someone (usually just dead) disappearing in front of their loved one - like Patric Swayze fading into "the light" as Demi Moore waves goodbye. Cape Town is giving me that slow wave and, looking up over its shoulder, as if it is being summoned by the beyond, and whispers to me, in that deliciously melodramatic way, "looks like I have to go now..."

So, like something rapidly turning into a ghost I find myself frantically trying to materialize cape town. Trying to bottle the experience up - preserve it for later. From zippers, pants pockets, wallets I am pulling scraps of paper, wrappers, matchbooks - anything I can find loosley related to any memory in capetown. I have this big plan to put them into a scrap book. I have other plans like filling the rest of my cape town journal and printing all my digital pictures, and making this blog incredible. But it just strikes me that all these plans derive from one single silly belief: that the memory of cape town can be preserved - kept from disintegrating by saving little scraps of receipts and ticket stubs and pressing them between plastic pages. In the search for memorabilia it just struck me how silly it was that I was taking these things - that I would normally consider to be trash - and trying so so desperately to assign a meaning to them. Usually the meaning or memory that I staple to the object has very little to do with where and what circumstance the object actually came from.

I am left wondering why we must collect, why me must pin down - how we turn memories into objects because we think that makes them more real - gives them a longer shelf life. We gather the scraps intending to turn them into a scrap book. And more often than not we move on to something new and more pressing before we can finish our pressing. And maybe 4 years later, on your way off to some vacation or far off destination, you pull out an old suitcase - and upon discovering a forgotten pocket - you stumble upon a handful of receipts and business cards that you barley recognize. Things you saved from the trash because you packed them full of memories that now you are grasping - straining as your mind reaches - trying to remember what the hell "Madame Zingara's" was. A restaurant, you think, Maybe you ate there. You wish you had put it in a scrap book. Then you could just read the note and remember.
Funny huh? That what this blog is: an attempt to make a memory into something a little more lasting -a place to put the scraps.

Why the blog...

2006-06-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

If you are reading this then you love me. Either you are a friend, a family member, or a stalker who has perhaps gotten the link off of facebook or from a crumpled up napkin that I left on a table at a diner that you conveniently happened to be attending at the same time as me. Either way, you love me. And chances are if you know me or love me (excluding the stalker), then you know this one simple fact about me: I am bad at keeping in touch. Horrible, in fact. And it is to the detriment of many of my relationships. I reply to emails months after they are sent (if at all), I cannot remember the last time I put a letter in the mail, and I am unfamiliar and insecure with this new confounded technology you call a "phone." If you have ever received a post card from me, I am sure it has reached you weeks after I have returned from the destination, because I placed it in the mail at the airport. Sometimes I will return with a bag of post cards in my carry on luggage, writing them on the seat back tray table in the plane and handing them to my friends weeks after I have returned (always an awkward and unfulfilling experience).

So thats what this blog is about. These postings are my letters to you - conversations and tidbits of my life that will probably never make it into the mail or into a phone call, but are meant for (addressed to) you. It is a common movie trope, and I imagine it is true in real life, to have an old man or woman, when talking to their young curious grandson/neice/nephew/grandaughter/paper boy to pull out an old dusty shoebox or drawer filled with letters. Letters that for some reason (and tragically they are almost always love letters) were never mailed. The experience, both for us watching the movie, and for those living it, is always one that evokes a sigh - half filled with regret, half with sentimental warmth. That metaphorical shoebox is in my head. I am currently in Cape Town South Africa nearing the end of what is supposed to be one of the greatest adventures in my life so far. Everyday I am reminded of friends and family - by little things - songs, events, people I meet, dog poop I step in, attempted muggings, power outages, week-long rain rainstorms that make the sidewalks into rivers. I have thought of 100 different letters I wanted to send - different titles for each one.

This blog experiment is an attempt to get that shoebox out of my head. Its too full. Plus it is an awkward thing to carry around. People in restaurants and at the grocery store are always like "hey, what's with that box on your head" and I'm like "its just some stuff I need to send...mind your own business and finish your meal, sir." Also I always think the cliched image of the old man or woman pulling that box out and going through its contents is unbearably tragic. So i gotta send these now. They are letters to all of you, and just you. Letters for you (in the general sense) and you (in the singular). Im new at this, so bear with me, (as you always have - with that superhuman patience that makes you sigh in exasperation and shake your head and say "ohhh cj/tey") Know that I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I am standing right here. And I wanted to let you know that I thought about you today...