The Double Ambassador

 

I was going to speak at an event in Mexico city and needed my beard trimmed a bit. Walked from the hotel looking for a barbershop and about half a mile later I found a little one. I was greeted warmly by the staff. They asked if I made an appointment. I said no. The place was almost empty, so they were able to accommodate me promptly.

The menu was long as it included different types and levels of haircuts, salon services, and several beauty products. The barber directed me to a chair and asked what I wanted. I said "give me 'The Italian', man", the simplest, least expensive option.

As he prepared the equipment, he asked me if I wanted "The Ambassador", which included neck massage and better products. I politely declined, since I didn't think I needed anything besides the trimming.

"I hear you, sir. But I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that if you take The Ambassador, I will upgrade you to an off-the-menu special: The Double Ambassador".

I hesitated. Was I being upsold? Or was I about to pass on a great bargain of the capillary variety?

Every interaction with others can turn into a deal and later its corresponding transaction if we let them. Sometimes it is hard to retain a shred of our humanity. However, there is no choice but to keep trying every day as if it was the last.

"Sure, let's do the Double Ambassador", I replied. "Life is short anyway, isn't it?

"Yes, sir. We are reminded of that all the time around here".

 

Easy comes, easy goes... did it really happen?

1998

And just like that, I learned to let go. I say it this way so that it feels like I had a say in the decision.

There are three truths: what I saw, what she saw, and what happened. The last one is the least important. In the end, I insisted on ignoring the facts. Reality is stubborn; it has teeth.

Bars for Finance Owls on East 53rd Street, 1:12am ET

Life was good at first. I felt Gherig-ish, like I was the luckiest man on earth.  When you tend to a garden, perfect great happy moments can be experienced but not owned. You may choose to never stop and smell the roses and you will still die, unceremoniously. The risk is - as Hare Krishnas love to tell you while asking you for money - getting too attached to the garden. 

You already learned all this, so you interrupt your journey now and then to contemplate these moments, or to attempt to keep them with you. It is all futile. It does not matter how much you water the flowers, nor the quality of the soil they grew in. They will still die in your hands, if you are lucky. Most likely they'll perish when you turn your back at them. Turns out, it is not the rose's thorn that hurts you. It's its ephemerality that pierces deep into the soul and deflates us all of what sometimes makes us mildly happy. Grief robs us of our humanity while drowning us head-on in it.

How Life Looks Like From Where I Sit

A story was meant to follow this Friday-into-Saturday introspection. It was a story of love, lust, confidence, strength, mistrust, betrayal, disappointment, moroseness, a shred of acceptance with a twist and some resemblance of closing for those involved. It was meant to present us with a slice of human experience that would have felt harrowingly familiar to some. But it is also testament of how easy we have it these days. Rather than worrying about war, famine, or disease... we worry about our feelings. We lost perspective and got the priorities wrong. We are unhappy with what we have, an unequivocal sign that we will remain unhappy whether or not we get what we feel we lack, be it material or otherwise.

Rare instances of mental clarity are to be treasured, and then immediately obliterated by way of your narcotic of choice. Do you favor numbing yourself with alcohol, diazepam, film, social media, streaming, or some misplaced idea of meaning? If your existence derives its value from someone whose existence is worthless, does it carry part of this value forward anyway, and in any way? How far and for how long does the chain of value stretch before it hits the wall of meaninglessness?

How It Looks Like Where I Sit

Perhaps there is some purpose to the existence of some of us. But even if we accept that those instances may occur, we must admit that whatever that purpose is, it will only last an instant in the relentless passing of time and the constant expansion of the universe of the tangible. Very soon, whatever meaning our life had for a split moment will disintegrate like a rose under the fiery sun of the Texan summer. 

A creed kind of an afternoon

 

I should go to central park more often. It helps clarify the mind, and sometimes even puts things in their right perspective. That's what I've generally heard, and it works in my case. What may not be so broad is the sense of melancholic despair that often comes from reflecting on my current reality, the place I want to be at in 5-10 years, and the realization that the future will statistically not materialize the way I imagine it. The possibilities frighten me when I feel emotionally challenged about giving away parts of life I've depended on for almost two decades in exchange for the strength to give that important step forward.

It was March. The people at the park looked radiant. It had been a grueling, if short, winter. The sound of Creed in my ears made the long walk home feel like floating. Reflecting with the imminence of death in mind helps ignore minutia. Life is happening inside, outside, and around us while we think and ponder possibilities.

The time has come to kick down doors and break all windows. The rouletista is in session. Let the chips fall where they may.

Lucy in the sky with demons

                                                                                                                                    June 16th

4:21pm

The cruelest face of nature is inherent to life and the fight for survival. The bells are chiming and it all took less than 40 minutes. 

Eyes already are burning, like the hope that burns brighter the darker the reality it bounces against.

Canal 5 provided a wonderful access to returns, back in the day, part of why we seemed to grow up older, if not faster, to become cynics sooner. 

5:12pm

Got distracted with conversation and emails, but now the effect is real. The mushy sense of bitterness and disease is especially noticeable throughout my mouth. 

5:17pm

If a new place, one you've never been at before, doesn't feel strangely familiar, have you even been out at all?

5:48pm

Enough to learn what you need to learn, prior to its becoming another numbing, masturbatory activity rather than true enlightenment. 

5:49pm

Approaching the blurred visual perception. Bourdain's face on the wall changes shapes, like he is about to speak but hesitates.  

6:02pm

Skin feels vulnerable, one minute too cold, another too hot. It looks the same, just distorted, when directly. But at the corner of my eye it looks old, rubbery... even more discolored than usual. 

6:09pm

"Heartbreaker" by Led Zeppelin is playing on my bluetooth speaker. At what moment did we, as a society, decide to celebrate the extreme lack of empathy of a heartbreaker. How is it not a source of shame to go about life shattering people's feelings? You help them blow the bubbles, admire them in their ephemeral beauty, then pop them on their face. Then, smile and be worshiped. Kick back, relax, be "present", don't be gone. Come look at what you left, an army of half-dead emotional skeletons unable to trust their own shadow. Their shadow... looking more and more like their current true self.

6:18pm

The more exotic the exchange the better. I prefer bitter to boring; and to boring and bitter.

6:39pm

Emotional state. Feelings were already there, but it wasn't easy to let them flow. Visages. What else could they do? How else could your folks have raised you, you overcaffeinated little criminal?

6:48pm

The realization that you had an insanely unfair advantage over those around you for such a long period of your life, and you chose to do nothing with it, has got to be soul-crushing. You could've ruled over the mob, but you couldn't even maintain your own mind under control. Now it's free, and rebelling against the gray life you forced  it   her   ME into.

Thought you were going to be able to contain me long enough to let you enjoy the twilight of your life in peace? Think, think again. Or better yet, let ME do the thinking from now on. Things are going to change around here, Things are going to change around here, what with a shinny new sheriff in town.

7:08pm

New York, my love. We... we need to talk. I bought the dream, like so many more before and after. Someone figured out the way to inject a romanticism to the soulless capitalism of the 1980s. And I fell for it. And 18 years later, we need to reevaluate our relationship.

7:16pm

Got a notification from Google that unless I renew my data service now ALL my pics & videos will be deleted. I guess it will be as if I never even existed. And that's what's going to happen anyway. So, we're just paying money to a corporation to maintain the illusion that we are somebody. Wrong password? Lose access forever after three unsuccessful attempts and you will stop existing while existing. Schrödinger's life. It exists somewhere, in a vault of sensory memories. But it is inaccessible to anybody but you, until you lose access yourself. And even if they're actually there, they lie in a perennial state of decomposition.

7:24pm

Maybe it was never fair to treat the intellectually inferior as if they were responsible for their mental shortcomings. Perhaps bullying them wasn't such a force for good that could bring someone to a better place. The level of challenge they were going through already was hard enough.  

Obliteration, domination, and humiliation. How else will they learn?

7:39pm

Not a good time to make decisions, but an excellent opportunity to think through the options. How long am I going to continue to see myself in Bud, the old-hatted, burnt by the sun, shell of a human who always knew the bride was coming to kill him? 

If life weren't a movie, why do I insist in living it as if it was? Where in my head are the adoring fans, attentive to my every move, holding on to my every word? Why do I look up into the skies and make faces for an inexistent camera in the foreground? Fuck this Main Character syndrome.

7:47pm

Today, K wrote to me to ask if I was well. He was going to listen to some music, but first he had to water the plants. The plant is strong enough and currently in good spirits, even when it is looked after merely for its ability to yield fruit. 

I told him his message was the kindest thing that happened to me all week. It was a lie. His message was the kindest thing that happened to me since I developed the ability to realize the existence of these little acts of social charity this morning. People in my circle of family and close friends tell me how much they love me all the time, every step of the way. It is I who doesn't notice and keep living as if I deserved to be treated this nicely. The responsibility behind all this is massive. And to think I never knew...

7:59pm

New Dross video. Something about aliens. How awesome! Another silly distraction to add sugar to and swallow together with all the other awful pills we are forced to consume to drain us our humanity dry enough that we are able to believe that we are contributors to this big "something" that is bigger than ourselves, and bigger than our loved ones, and bigger than life itself.

---- 1940s musical break ----

9:07pm

It's mostly on me. Despite being given the tools to improve the world a bit, I used them for my own benefit and found the philosophers that supported this ideology to justify my actions. These kids deserve all the health and education. I can provide. Maybe it's always been about that, since day one, and someone forgot to tell me. 

9:32pm

Together in the jungle. Honor, loyalty, and guns. Predator, Rambo, every other Steven Seagal movie... The 80s action movies did not reflect the reality of the era. It carried a fundamental role in reshaping it. "I pity the fool!" had so much more appeal to my hormone-ridden 12-year old than "Let's talk this through". You didn't convince anyone of your position of leadership, you just took it.

10:10pm

This feels like a lifetime of being awake at 4:00am while everyone keeps living their own. Dreams as thus meant to be fundamentally better than reality. What kills your dreams most effectively is achievement. Once you cross the finish like, the cheering stops. That's it, you won. 

And now what?

Run. Just keep running. Let's run.

What's your daily running and why do you do it anyway?

Rules - Session IPA times

* Don't get high on your own career. It's temporary at best, and most likely pointless

* identify the person's main motivation:

- Money    - Pride     - Narcissism     - Power     - Guilt     - Status     - Daddy/mommy issues

* If you pay the DJ, he will play the music you choose

* The boat (you act as if you have one)

* Breathe. Then smoke a little. Then breathe

* Don't be transactional. Invest yourself in it if it's worth it

* In friendships, you have to be thoughtful, willing to put in the effort, and intentional

I have no choice but to believe in the existence of the soul, since I was exposed to the Socratic Dialogues at a very early age. And I cannot fathom the idea of challenging Socrates, so I believe in its immortality. Therefore, should I accept the existence of pure evil? Are we our body plus the 21 grams that our soul weights? 

Devil: doer of evil.

She exists here, but nowhere else.

11:46pm

After the long conversation with myself on the existence of the soul, and how Socrates proved it by way of asking in his Dialogues, where we once again had to accept leaving the memories of our encounters to the faultiest of human abilities; Memory.

Writing may often seem as an act of rebellion against oblivion. It can sound brave at first, but is clearly cowardly when looked at from most angles. It is mainly a manifestation of our fear, nay, panic over irrelevance. I am terrified with the inevitability of completely disappearing, leaving no trace of ever having existed. 

12:21am

This is the Live Wire stage. There are lots of strangers coming into this filthy punk bar I now find myself at, the Strangelove bar on East 53rd Street. The girls in the group are rather quiet, perhaps to compensate for the loudness of their male companions. They quickly realized this wasn't their fucking "vibe" and left the fuck out.

This is all Vince Neil's anger through singing, all coming out of a cheap Westin Hotel and Resort souvenir pen. I exist in my anger for strangers.

12:45am

A new group of drunken patrons walked into the bar. They all seem like salesmen clowns, carrying a suitcase in their hand and grotesque smiles on their faces. To my surprise, we speak like we've known each other for centuries. I think again and realize that their conversation is likely generic and the sense of familiarity exists only in my head. Amongst them is an actress from Georgia who is likely to get her big break audition tomorrow. She has to take the 7:30am flight to Atlanta in a few hours to meet with the producer that'll take her out of her recurrent prostitute roles and into that life-changing score that'll justify all those years of pain, sacrifice, family rejection, and outright humiliation. 

I'd be very nervous, and definitely in bed by now, if I was her. Her? She is pissing the night away at this bar, risking the very lever that could pull her out of her artistic misery. She was so excited about this opportunity that she went full circle and ended up drunk, not caring. I, a bit mechanically and a tad instinctively, give her a glass of water. One of the jester friends starts laughing at her, then at me. He says "Wow, someone here thinks you have had enough to drink! Hahaha!". He tilts his head back so far, I thought he was going to fall on his ass.

I awkwardly apologize to both and gulp half of the glass of water I offered before. They order another round of shots that includes one for me. My perception of the group mutates. I now see them as lonely souls that keep getting crushed in life, seeking some sort of connection about anything with anyone. They are their own worst enemies.

  

It is now time to go back home. Those who say "go big or go home" have no idea how much I like going home. This is one of the strangest lives I've lived.

 

Veinte pesos

 

En el camino del aeropuerto a la ciudad del Puerto de Veracruz hay un famoso motel (telo, hotel de paso) que exhibe una creatividad de promociones legendaria entre turistas y locales. Tiene espacios individuales que cubren el vehículo del cliente con una lona una vez que estaciona para proteger su privacidad, un compromiso que los empleados reiteran en todo momento de su estadía. 

Las promociones actuales incluyen un incentivo de veinte pesos, cerca de un dólar estadounidense, para el taxista que lleve parejas o grupos al establecimiento. Los resultados han superado con creces las expectativas de estos genios del marketing, quienes además han logrado segmentar al mercado de manera brillante y simple. Los precios varían según el horario. Luego, tras mencionar el precio más alto, tienen la puntada de decir "igual de bara".

“¿Donde habrá un motelito cerca, señor taxista?”

 

“Uy, pos hay uno no taaaaan cerca pero es el mejor del mundo mundial. Les va a encantar. Si yo tuviera la suerte de estar con una mujer tan guapa y elegante, no lo dudaría ni un minuto!”

 

*El pasajero se da cuenta que no tiene opción de evitar la vergüenza de pedir que lo lleven a uno que no sea tan caro. No le queda más que aceptar la sugerencia.

 

“Dele para allá entonces, confío en su criterio”

 

$20 pesos

Una vez que se le pregunta al taxista, hay solamente un camino.