Let the games begin....

In the past couple of years I have either grown wiser or slower with age because I now stop to process the crap in my life a bit easier and with slightly more confidence than five years ago.

This weblog is a result of me stewing for over four years and having a need to talk stuff out so I can understand the world and myself better. Better than what?

Hopefully better than before. You see, I am one of those New York City casualties that no one really talks about. I have not jumped onto the subway tracks or off a bridge, or even stuck my head in an oven because I survived the horror of September 11. I am just one of those people who suffered severely for a while, woke up out of the nightmare and began to move on with everything. I walk around the city just like everyone else, with a vacant look as if nothing happened.

Yet, with doses of Prozac and hours of therapy and moments in meditation relying on the unknown I have been left with no choice but to move on. I have joined the masses and get up every day, get dressed, and go to work with a tepid smile on mia faccia.

Every morning I buy my coffee and the Post and read the every day horrors of life in the big city. I look at people in the subway, in line at Dunkin Donuts, at work ordering lunch and think (how do they do it? they act like nothing ever happened almost four years ago. Has everyone just stored it in a place rarely accessed?

Some I know are so glued to their lifestyle that they cling to their idea of normalcy at any cost. I keep asking myself don’t they know, don’t they feel it? The world is a different place; this city is a different place. It could all go within minutes so be mindful of your actions, and empathetic in your thoughts. That’s the basic gist of my newfound wisdom.

Quiet please, performance starting…

WHERE

Let me set the scene, I live in Brooklyn in a neighborhood that is experiencing the hell of gentrification. Here is where you will find:

Scenario A: Cheap rents bring struggling white professionals without children needing shelter and close access to Manhattan. They keep their used cars registered out of state to avoid high insurance but suffer the zealot parking ticket police whoring themselves for the city so they actually don’t save any money with out of state insurance because the least expensive ticket is $115 and if you collect at least two of them you get towed and must pay $250 in cash to get your car back.

Scenario B: Ethnic professionals yearn for the romance of their parents struggle and find refuge in a neighborhood where English is one of several languages spoken not including Newyurican. They can easily procure grandma’s cannoli or arroz con pollo. The cheap rents keep homeownership a slight possibility upon or before retirement.

Scenario C: The lazy fucks living off the broken system that turns generations into addicted, violent, toxic people. Who barely pay enough rent for the landlord to change a light bulb let alone a toilet or heating system. They steal from their hardworking white neighbors and upon needing their next fix often resort to a 3 am mugging knowing their victim will never call the police.

Scenario D: The younger generations of poor struggling immigrants who reap the benefits of their parents’ sweat equity but in the end become greedy thieves who need to support their addiction. They end up spending all of their parents’ money and investments only to have someone else own the family property.

These are the people in my neighborhood. So when I get to specifics about where I live and whom I karmically brush up against you have even a slight idea of where I am coming from.

WHO
As I have always since my early years of a Montessori-type education I have collected numerous people in my life. Aside from family who you don’t choose to have in your life, but are assigned to, I have enabled an array of characters in my life but I will choose to only mention those with current significance.

I will be telling all, without restraint, and with the utmost decency the Internet allows. I won’t name actual names but those of you who know me will know what I am talking about. Comments are always welcome.

Personal background:
Born and raised in Boston. More specifically the suburbs of Boston and Cambridge MA, Fled the coop at 18 and went to school in New York during the 80’s, enjoyed the Internet boom in the 90’s and living with the hangover from that hangover and the trauma of 9/11.

I started my adulthood as a photographer and film student as my degrees will tell you. But somehow through luck and timing I end up in the IT world for almost 10 years. Currently, I am still not working as a web producer, I am temping in the corporate world and being the good little whore that we all eventually become once we participate in the drudgery of capitalist freedom.

My life has been adventure, would make a great movie, is a roller coaster ride etc etc etc. I started keeping journals when I spent the summer in Providence RI at RISD. My art history assignment was to write down our thoughts about art. I guess that opened Pandora’s box and I started photographing glimpses of my reality while at the same time trying to understand the world through a frustrated, angry, depressed fifteen year old mind.

To my parent’s horror, I did the travel to Europe, stay in school to write about film and photography, surround myself with crazy creative people and hope that everything goes my way and wait for whatever the gods had planned for me.

I did redeem myself by being in the right place at the right time and dove into the sea of the Internet. I rose through the ranks and started to make a decent living playing as hard as I worked. Six years at NYU, time off in Italy, and tons of Internet money makes a great combination of life choices.

So here my dear friends, family, acquaintances, strangers and freaks is they way it is. As I have already mentioned, for the past six months over a year after my most recent breakdown I have moved in and out of the toughest acting role of my life, a freelancer and temp.