Failed Pipe Bomb Attack in NYC
A Creative Process
(1 minute read):
It’s 4am in Harlem. I stand up from my desk, toss my bathrobe on the bed, and begin pacing the room, naked, like a hunted beast. For the past three hours I’ve been taking fifteen minute naps on my desk in hopes of feeling a second wind, but to no avail. I have to move or else I’ll wake up in the morning with trembling regret. The only way I’ll be able to cope with tomorrow’s exhaustion is if I finish this now. Hank, my faithful and flatulent bulldog, wakes up and follows me throughout the room thinking we’re about to play. My face aches from the lying on the wood.
For hours, each time the alarm would go off, I would set it again and try to relax, feeling the gentle warmth from the lamplight, listening to my breath, hearing the building’s whirring heating system, and the distant voices and far-off knocks of the neighborhood. Fifteen more minutes, that’s it. As I would fall asleep I’d remember being sixteen years old in a high school parking lot at 6am and sitting against a lamppost thinking the same thing: fifteen more minutes before I run, before the labored breath, before eating pain. Then I’m twenty years old in a library passing out in a chair in the 24/7 room surrounded by coffee cups and candy wrappers: fifteen more minutes. Then I’m twenty-four lying beneath a desk in Virginia as the rain beats against the windows, watching the streaming droplets as my vision fades, surrounded by crumpled balls of paper and piles of books: fifteen more minutes. How much of my life has been spent in fatigue and yearning for respite? How long will my body, this finite machine, this pumping mechanism of cells, sweat, and blood, keep ticking with a pulse?
And I always think: is all the work worth the price? Is all the doubt and sacrifice and ruthless concentration carving something inside of me that will someday create success? For the sake of the path, I have to believe it will.
The honeymoon happiness of the previous month is gone. A month ago my room was a paradise and now it is a cage. I want more.
My greatest fear next to giant insects is that I’m not improving. I fear that my life is a pendulum where I swing back and forth between petty failures and self-indulgent successes, never rising. There are a thousand projects swirling in my agitated brain. I must limit myself or become lost.
Like so many times before, I pause while moving and ruminating and realize I’m now fully awake. My darting thoughts have settled. I look at my desk and at Hank snoring near the bookcase, the two anchors of my life, and the path becomes clear. I retrieve my bathrobe, put it on, and open a window. The cold air is refreshing. The night is still. I sit at my desk and begin.
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The Doe Fund and Recidivism
Project for my Video 1 Class. I have a long way to go:
The Importance of Failure
“The Importance of Failure”
Co-authored piece published in The Freeman Magazine then re-published in FEE (Foundation for Economic Freedom) October 26th, 2011. Presented at APEE (Association of Private Enterprise Education) in spring of 2012 at “Best of the Freeman” panel.
4 minute read
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Bed-Stuy and Quick Evic
“Bed-Stuy provides fertile ground for eviction company Quick Evic”
1.5 minute read
Published in amNewYork on November 27, 2017
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The Woman With Purple Hair
1 minute read. Exercise for my memoir writing class:
I’m sitting on a stone bench in the Staten Island Ferry Terminal next to a woman with purple hair. We’re both drinking beer and waiting for the boat.
“I’m serious, Sylvia, about working as soon as I arrive at my place,” I say. “You can stay over, but I’ll be writing.”
“Fine,” Sylvia says. “I won’t bother you.” Sylvia and I met through Tinder a week ago. She drove two hours from New Jersey to a bar near my apartment. After the bar, while walking back to my apartment, she confessed that she had been abused by her father, kicked out of her house, and was staying with friends. The next morning, while I was making breakfast, she also confessed that she desperately needed a job. An employee at my bar had recently quit and we needed a cashier for The Beer Corner, so I offered her the position. I knew this was dangerous and would likely crash and burn, but Sylvia was struggling.
“Why do you have to work tonight?” Sylvia asks me while on the boat.
“An editor is interested in one of my stories. I have until midnight to revise and submit again.”
“Oh…”
On the other side we walk a mile along the north shore. It’s a cold, clear night. Sylvia is skinny and doesn’t have a jacket, so I give her mine.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“I don’t mind the cold.”
At my apartment I’m greeted by my bulldog, Hank. I pat him on the back, take off my dress clothes, and don my bathrobe. My studio is bare. There’s a bookshelf, a desk, a chair, a doggie bed, stacks of journals against the wall, and a mattress on the floor.
“Why doesn’t Hank say hello to me?” asks Sylvia.
“He doesn’t know you yet.” I sit at my desk.
“I didn’t notice these before,” Sylvia lies as she picks up one of my journals. “There must be over a hundred…” She begins to read.
“Don’t read those.”
“Why not?” She laughs. “You’re like a sixteen year-old girl.”
“I know.”
She walks over to the mattress. I don’t remember how much time passes at this point. It could have been five minutes or an hour. But while typing I hear,
“Jack?” I turn and see Sylvia sitting naked on the mattress. She has a strange smile and does an odd stretch. I feel the lust flame, but it fades. I realize that sex, like money, gains an exaggerated importance when you don’t have it. But when it’s there, and you’re not in love, it doesn’t mean much. I sigh and know this isn’t going to be good.
“Sylvia, I told you, I have to finish this.” Her eyes widen.
“Are you fucking serious?”
I should have shut up. Justification in these kinds of situations is futile. “I don’t want to work in restaurants for the rest of my life.”
“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” She starts jerkily putting her clothes back on. “I’m leaving.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not even that good at fucking.” She stands up and pushes the bookshelf over. It hits the floor with a crash. Sylvia walks over and thrusts her middle finger in my face. For some reason I feel like I’m at a high school dance.
“Fuck you.” She kicks over a stack of journals, walks out, and slams the door. I sigh, walk over to the entrance, click the dead-bolt, and pick up the scattered books.
The next day the editor would reject the story. I would never hear from the woman with purple hair again.
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Fun Facts About Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and now has central Asia’s largest economy ($461 billion GDP in 2016). It is the largest landlocked country in the world and is rich in uranium and oil. Bloomberg Innovation Index ranked Kazakhstan in 2017 as the 48th most innovated economy in the world. Kazakhstan moved from 47th to the 32nd place in the 2017 IMD World Competitiveness ranking. In 2001, 47% of the population lived in poverty and in 2013 poverty was measured at 3%. In December of 2015, the Kazakhstan Government approved a new privatization plan for 2016-2020. It’s a large scale privatization program that continues the privatization of 2014 and includes 60 major state-owned companies. Recently, a trade route has been established between Kazakhstan and the United States. The route now makes up 54% of the World’s salt imports and exports by volume (350,000 tonnes per year).
The Guardian describes tourism in Kazakhstan as, “hugely underdeveloped,” despite the attractions of the country’s dramatic mountain, lake and desert landscapes. Factors preventing tourism are high prices and logistical difficulties of travel in this geographically enormous country.
Wasn’t that fun?
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This Hill.
I’ve been here before
This unforgiving ascent
The moment before the burn
I’ve stared up this path
Squinted my eyes
And taken the final breath
I’ve heard these songs
These excuses
These reasons to stop
And go home
I’ve glanced up empty roads
Glanced down at trembling limbs
Felt icy winds cut through clothes
And had tired eyes go dim
I’ve asked myself:
Who is it
You want
To be?
This Thrill. This Gift. This Wild
Moment
Before the
Strain
I’ve been here before
I know what to do
And now I will do this
Once
Again.
Prefontaine, the one running on the hill above and one of my heroes, lived in a trailer while pursuing his running dream.
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Tech-No-Eulogy #2
This fucking phone I connect
To the back of my neck
To feel the Winds of Cutting
Edge and Social Discourse
Gotta stay on the top deck
But the attention span
And periphery are
Becoming a wreck
Gotta keep these fluctuating waves
Of expectations and cravings
In check
Having fantasies of throwing away
Into the ocean of increasing con-tent
This tech
And going off into the land locked
Quiet Dark Backwoods
Becoming an
Old-fashioned
Redneck.
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Just Another Stranger #3
Sunday morning slog
Sweating out a hangover
And grinding through
Last night’s bad decisions
I see an old woman
On a river-side bench
Staring off into the distance
She has a deeply-creased face
Large, crooked glasses
A gray, wispy pony-tail
And layers of faded pink dresses
On her lap is a book
I glimpse the title: Wuthering Heights
And for a moment I wonder
If her soul has been ravaged
By unrequited passion
And sleepless, tortured nights
If she’s thinking of her lost love
And a lifetime of missed chances
As she stares off into the sky
But I’m already choking on my
Next breath and
Running by
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