Philadelphia Black Lives Matter Protest

On my bike ride back from the protest earlier in downtown Philadelphia, I took a brief pause at the intersection of Spring Garden and 2nd street where four national guard members were posted up next to a Humvee.

Still carrying my sign in one hand, “Knowledge is more dangerous than guns”, I said yeo. One of them asked me how I was doing; not a nonchalant, “hey how you doing”, but more like a nervous, I'm the only outcast kid on the playground, please be my friend, “hey, how you doing”. I told him it’s been a long day, but that the protest was peaceful and purposeful and that I just got done listening to Malcolm Jenkins make a speech on systematic racism and inequality. They nodded and said they understood that’s what this is about.

Then I asked how they were feeling. The main guy talking said he was tired too, just had his shift extended three more days and said he’s missing home (somewhere around Eerie) and that it’s in his job description to be here. I told him the protests don’t look like they're stopping anytime soon. I told him that until the city wises up with legislation and funding, that their pockets are going to continue hurting from paying police and outside help to stand around all day, everyday. He acknowledged my point, and before I rode away he said, “Thanks for talking to us. Everybody else just flips us the middle finger and calls us baby killers”. I told him, no worries, and rode off.

Quick backdrop. Two days earlier I rode past the same post and took my phone out to record the men standing there and exclaimed, “THIS IS NOT A DRILL”....I am by no means a saint, but I do try and learn. So what did I learn from my conversation today? That the national guard isn’t here to solely terrorize us, however much myself or anyone else gets the feeling they are. The bigger question is, where does that feeling come from?

Well, there’s no doubt militarization can be intimidating, but I also believe it’s from decades of a dysfunctional policing system where the hierarchy of protections have gone in this order: Property->Laws->People. We NEED to reverse that order. We NEED to end racial profiling and excessive force. It’s also going to include an overhaul of trainings that include bolstered mental health components. Servicemen and women are humans, just like every one of us, so they need the tools to interact and assess accordingly. Maybe most importantly, what we need in this country is accountability. Effective review boards and increased supervision is a disciplinary must. Funding also needs to be re-evaluated, no doubt. That’s what proper police reform will look like.

I’m a big believer that open dialogues are the only way through all this, and that the only way to change the system is to change ourselves in tandem. So, before you start saying all cops are bastards, channel that energy into understanding our system, and continue to march for the cause of changing that, because the “bad cops” are just a symptom of a larger issue.

On The Run

Every few weeks I've been using my spare time at the laundry mat to go on a run. Tonight I decided Id take a literal exercise in perspective to see how far I could carve a way through hell, aka Kensington ave; ground zero to the population I work with and the only horror movie you don't need a netflix account to see.

On these nights I'm typically wearing a beanie, track pants and tonight, my hurling sweatshirt from Ireland. I'm not the most intimidating looking fellow, but I've found in this life when your intentions are strong and pointed, people ether move toward you or away from you based on those intentions.

See exhibit A: about five blocks from the ave. I'm halfway up a block when I sense a group of hispanic homies immediately lock eyes on me, one steps towards the middle of the sidewalk and tilts his chin up. He takes one look at me and steps back. As I stride by one of them mutters, "Oh, hes like a fighter or something." I smile, damn right in my head, and continue to hurdle over what seem like an endless stream of stray cats. Interestingly enough most of them are black. I haven't seen a black cat in a while.

"Pow pow, nugs and nicks" "YO. he said he didn't want the bars" a chorus of soul wrecking invitations all cross my earshot, some of them directed at me. Once I get to the avenue, nobody has enough effort to even notice my existence, except for the police on the corner, probably wondering if my dynamic hamstring stretch on the light post is some kind of secret look out signal.

Forgive, Grow. Kensington Ave. Credit: Tishara Grayson (Tishara Grayson)

As I make my way back down the avenue I start to feel an overwhelming sense of death, transmitted through the nodded out, unconscious users sprawled out on stoops. Some of them have needles in their arms, others are screaming at nothing, and everything. The smell of rotten meat and piss is the only unpleasant sensory experience I find it difficult to block out. When I turn back down the block for the laundry mat I realize the depth of the grid I just added to my mental rolodex, all in just under thirty minutes.

The sad part is, Philadelphia isn't the only city this movie is airing, its happening anywhere people turn a blind eye to the suffering happening all around them, starting with those closest to us. What I've learned in my few short years practicing therapy is that this is a disease of disconnection; a disconnection from spirit, a disconnection from others and a disconnection from self. It doesn't discriminate and it doesn't play favorites.

If you have never struggled with or been addicted to substances, sex, money or food, then you most likely know someone or loved someone who has. I've been upside down before, and the only thing that saved me were the supports I had and my own decision to seek out a greater purpose and meaning from it all.

If you've made it this far, I hope you too are doing something for your personal healing, growth or self care. Share it with the world, you don't know how far it can go.

Summer Summits

Apologies for the cobwebs you may see hanging from this page. It’s been a hot second since this blog has gotten some fresh text, and as I’ve said before, the main reasoning for slumps in posts is mainly due to periods in my life without traveling, as this is what inspires my purest and most enjoyable form of writing.

However, the end of my summer was jam packed with family gatherings, chasing eclipses, mountain peaks, and a lot of good music. I’ve also had the extraordinary privilege to teach poetry and tie dye art, as well as assist in clay arts for eight weeks as an instructor at The Village of Arts and Humanities at my new home in North Philadelphia. That time spent teaching helped prepare my mind for the final few semesters of my a clinical counseling master’s degree.

One of the great experiences I had between witnessing the full solar eclipse with family in South Carolina, touring through Asheville, NC and a stopover at LocKn music festival in Virginia was summiting the highest peak East of the Mississippi; Mt. Mitchell, located in Black Mountain National Forest in North Carolina. With a full load on my back it took me just over four hours on the climb up, and just over half that on the way down, stopping to setup camp on the descend.

The summit of Mt. Mitchell was quite the paradox, because while some like myself were just arriving from a day long hike, others had opted to drive up to the parking lot that sits at the top of the mountain. While they took pictures and ate concession stand food, I sprawled out on one of the flat spots to catch my breath and take off my hiking shoes. I stayed up there for about an hour, just enough time to take in a three hundred and sixty-degree view of the sunset across the Great Smokey and Appalachian Mountains.

At the top I thought about all the different people at the top of that mountain, how we all came from different walks of life, but managed to meet at this one moment. Some may have taken the easy route, some of us the harder, potentially more fulfilling route. Whatever the path, we all have the opportunity to experience the great awe of what nature has provided us, and we realize this is an innate pursuance, to explore the beauty that surrounds us.

The one thing about being on the road and being away from technology, the news and masses of people is you see yourself and everything for what it is, without some blurry political lens or amped up coworker trying to convince you one way or another. You get to view your own life from a literal distance, and this often is the best way to see clearly. If your able to successfully separate yourself from devices and other attachments back home you may realize you can still be happy without them, and that truly, you lack nothing to do so.

How I made 45 Euros With Colored Pencils

When I was sketching in the backyard garden at a coffee house in Copenhagen this summer I never thought I’d be selling that same drawing weeks later in order to fund personal finances. I didn’t think that about any of my sketches that summer, but funny enough I ended up selling almost everyone of them for some quick euro during the last two weeks of my summer trip, which ended in Galway, Ireland.

So how did I find myself desperate enough that I resorted to selling my personal collection of sketched boats, buildings and landscapes? Well, prior to my landing in Galway I spent two months circumnavigating mainland Europe from the West (Paris) all the way across to Istanbul in the far East.

Thank goodness for cheap hostels in Eastern Europe and my good Turkish arkadas (friend) who let me stay at her flat for what seemed like weeks. That, and eating frugally, surfing random couches and hitching rides had me saving as much money as I could, but for a kid making the bulk of his money as a server, there wasn’t much to begin with. The beauty of travel is you can always make it work, sometimes you just have to cut corners, off your passport, in order to make a fire in the woods.

Got some help on the hitch

Back to Galway. On the streets of this Irish town brimming with creativity, consciousness and culture, everybody seems to do what they enjoy because it makes them happy. They live simply and they live comfortably. This made selling my artwork, literally on the street, much more accepted and even popular to some.

When I went out that first day I chose a spot on the main street (appropriately titled ‘shop street’) that I had been scouting a few days before, which no one seemed to occupy. One reason it remained vacant was most likely because it was just before the entrance of vendor’s row, an alley stretch where sellers with legit booths pay to have a place.

This was a tricky spot, because those vendors closest would ask me to take my business elsewhere. Luckily for me it only involved moving my blanket a few inches to the right to allow passer-byers to walk by comfortably. It didn’t feel right to move completely when hundreds of other sellers stake their ground on that same street daily. I just happened to be the one closest in proximity to their disconcert. In places like Galway, negotiating with the locals is just as important as having notable art work to sell.

Out of the ten or so completed sketches I had from earlier in the trip I used six or seven to display for sale on my blanket. It also just so happened Galway had three or four different print shops downtown so it was very affordable and accessible to make prints for those sketches. They also came out pretty awesome looking.

Besides just the potential money profit, there was much I learned and benefitted from while selling my work including making new friends, gaining worldly knowledge about people and places and witnessing a whole host of entertaining street performers including musicians, magicians, jugglers and balloon artists (shout out Alber!).

Aboard the gypsy train with flat mate Dylan

One trick I liked to pull was pretending to be an outside observer looking at my art. When I would find someone stopping to look I would walk up next to them and say, “Hmm, what do you think?”

Everyone seems to be just a little more honest when they don’t think they’re talking to the artist themselves. My funniest interaction came from an Irish lady. She stopped to take in my art and I began the conversation, pointing to my art, “Hmm, so what do you think?”

Lady, “Eh, looks like shit if you ask me.”

Me, “Yeah. Rubbish ain’t it?

Lady, “Looks like a child drew those sketches.”

Me, “Like someone just gave a box of crayons to a six-year-old huh.”

Lady, “I wonder what  they were thinking.”

Me, “Well, probably just trying to make some extra cash. I’m pretty broke these days.”

Lady, “huh. What? You drew these?”

Me, “Yes.”

Lady, “Oh my lord. I’m, so, sorry laddie.”

Me, “No, no thanks for your input.”

Lady, “Well, it’s just...”

Me, “Really, it’s ok.”

Lady, “Well, bye now.”

Me, “Bye.”

Not everyone was blown away by my stuff, but many still liked it. On my last count I sold seven different sketches, ranging from 3 to 7 euros a piece over the two weeks I was out selling. I probably went out every other day for those two weeks, for two hours at a time, sometimes sharing my space with a Spanish friend who was selling her macramé bracelets. 

Turns out, almost every buyer I sold to was American, except for an Irish man, who was living in New York City. My profession may not be an artist, but it's certainly a hobby, and the fact that I not only made new friends, but was able to get at least a slice of Napoli pizza each day made it all worth it.

The Spot