Posts Tagged ‘life’

Tonight’s drunken ramble

My work tonight overlapped with my dinner, which means my two whiskey sours overlapped with a couple of glasses of Garnacha rosé. After making my minimum target word count this evening on the manuscript of Star Trek: Seekers #1, I scribbled this mess on Facebook. Now I re-post it here for your reading enjoyment.

***

Forgive me, folks, I’m a few drinks into my evening.

For some reason, I was just reflecting on the ignorant, sheltered youth I was 26 years ago when I first moved to New York City to attend NYU film school.

When I first came to NYC, I was the product of a blue-collar, western-Massachusetts upbringing. I was more conservative than one would expect of a “Tax-a-chusetts” native. Though I didn’t realize it back then, at the time I was a homophobe, and a misogynist, and a chauvinist, and a giant fucking asshole. (I can already hear a few of you: “Was?” Shaddup.)

Fortunately, I made friends of smart people with good souls. People like Glenn Hauman, and Carol Pinchefsky, and Jeff Willens, and many others, who, through their better examples, saved me from the worst parts of myself and showed me a better way to live. They showed me the man I could be, if I was willing to work at it.

In the years that followed, living in New York City became the best teacher of tolerance (and, later, acceptance) that one could hope for. I made friends with people of many different beliefs and ideologies, different ethnicities, sexualities, gender identities, and philosophies. I learned that no matter how different people might seem from myself at first, in the end, they weren’t that different.

We all want to lead lives of purpose. Do work we believe in. Love people and be loved, and not be judged for it. Share ideas and reconsider our own notions without being called flip-floppers or hypocrites. We all want to be treated fairly, and be able to trust our friends, and be trusted in return. We want to be remembered.

We are all human. We all deserve to be loved and respected. None of us should have to explain ourselves, as long as we live in ways that respect one another’s privacy, sovereignty, and dignity.

I’ve learned to love all manner of people as my brothers and sisters. The only thing I can’t learn to accept is hate. Blind hate, no matter the excuse, is a critical failure of the human potential.

In the end, I think we should weigh our lives not by our financial worth or worldly successes, but in the measure of love and respect we share with those whose lives exist beside ours, and whose lives will follow ours.

I still fail sometines. I know I need to do better. I will try. I hope you’ll all help me, and not give up on me when I fuck up.

I am a work in progress. Thanks for sticking around while I work out the bugs.

That’s all for tonight. I think I’ll go watch old TV shows on Netflix now.

***

You’re welcome. You may now talk amongst yourselves.

 

A hard couple of days, months, years, lives

Sometimes things happen in life that, if you saw them in a movie, you'd throw your refreshments at the screen.

Several years ago, a friend of mine from high school died of a heroin overdose, and his funeral, by coincidence, fell on my 30th birthday. At the time — this was in the days before 40 was the new 30 and charcoal was the new black — it seemed so cliché that on a day which in popular culture was meant to symbolize the end of youth and the irreversible plunge into adulthood, I was burying a boyhood friend. Had I written such a scene from my imagination, I would have thrown it away as utterly unbelievable.

But there it was, happening to me.

A few months ago, David Honigsberg, a dear friend of mine who was also my rabbi and the co-officiant of my wedding to Kara just a few years earlier, died of a sudden massive heart attack. He was only 48 years old and had appeared to be the very picture of enviable health. His absence continues to feel, by turns, unreal to me and then like a deep wound. But by horrid chance, his funeral fell on the day of my wife's birthday (thankfully not her 30th), so that gruesome coincidence is now something that we have in common.

Again, if I was scripting my life, I would have uncapped a red pen at that point and gone to work.

Yesterday, in the early hours of the morning while much of New York City slumbered, a sweet and talented young woman named Sandra Jimenez passed away of cancer. Only a few hours earlier, my friend and hermano Randy had married her in a private bedside service, a final testament to the heroic love and devotion he showed as he supported her months-long fight against this swift and tragic illness. His faith in her, his love for her, and his hope for a remission never faltered. If you want to know what courage looks like, this is it.

Would it be believable if you saw it in a movie? Who gives a shit? That's not the point. It's life. That's the point.