The One Day Job

What with the recession that everyone is talking about, I wonder if I will find a job. But I finally land a job putting fliers into doors. This isn't a bad gig in itself, except that it takes a lot of time to hit all of these doors with hundreds of fliers in the space of 5 hours. Also, I would have to find my way to random far-flung suburbs by eight o'clock in the morning. 
This particular morning, I have to be in Gresham. Planning on riding the bus, but, as usual, I haven't given myself enough time to make it, so I bike down Division street at 7:30 in the morning. The lovely morning sun lights my day even though I am really tired. 
When I get to the parking lot where we are supposed to meet, there is a SUV with the hatchback open and stacks of thousands of fliers are neatly stacked. What most surprises me about the group of people who are milling around is that they are mostly hippies. Dreads, beads, goatees and such. The thing about hippies is that they are generally easy going and take it all in stride. I figure that they are probably on the road or crashing somewhere and just making some extra cash so that they can get what they need and not be flat broke. 
The guy who is running operations is a friendly fellow. As we are all getting ready to go back to our neighborhoods, he says to everyone, "okay! Don't double flier doors! don't throw them away, I have people who can find out, I know the garbage men around here, they tell me, I got people in the neighborhoods looking out." It didn't even occur to me to double flier the doors, but I'm sure that some people thought that was a good idea. The people who I rode with into the neighborhood had a minivan, and it looked like they had just finished with their paper-route, based on the stacks of newspapers in those little plastic bags piled up in there. 
So, I am walking around Gresham and putting fliers on doors. The interesting thing about this line of work is that you can really see what people are doing with their houses. An incredible amount of houses had "no trespassing" signs up, some had "keep out" and some had "private property" signs. The houses with these kinds of signs were usually the dumpiest. Like, why would I want to break into your trailer? Some houses were nice and modest, but some nice houses had piles of stuff surrounding the front door. Talk about bad feng shui. I can only imagine what their garages looked like. God, stuff piled up everywhere bums me out.  
When I get back to the parking lot at the end of the day, I still have a giant bundle of fliers that I didn't manage to place on doors. But I have in my backpack. The guy says, "good job, how many did you throw in the trash can, how many did you double flier?" Actually, I say as I pull out the other big stack of un-passed out fliers, I didn't throw any away. He is sort of surprised, and says, "Thanks for being honest." He pays me in cash, about 35 dollars, and I tell him that I think I should concentrate my energy on getting a job instead of making 6 dollars an hour and riding my bike into the suburbs at seven in the morning. But it felt good to actually do some work and have someone hand me some cash instead of feeling like nothing is happening while I email cover letter after cover letter and resume after resume with not so much as even a rejection letter.  

Actions affect thoughts

I figure that people can do whatever they want in their lives. I think of it this way. I can act depressed...but, do I have to? No. I can act any way that I want. I find out that when I act a certain way, I begin to feel the way that I am acting. I acknowledge when I am feeling crummy, and I can go with it, or I can get on with my day. Being bummed out has kept me from doing a lot of things, but it is an obstacle that can be conquered over time. Doing meditation helps me with that endeavor. Through that process, I am detached from the heaviness of my mind and I am reminded of the lightness of being. It also reminds me of what I value, what I need, and where I am going. Finally, it reminds me to stay healthy and present in the moment. 

I have not created this total healthy and harmonious life as of yet, but I can work towards getting there. Every day I take small steps to just living. It has become really cliché to talk about living in the present moment, I know. But, think about being whoever you want to be in any moment. I have a tendency to dredge up past bad experiences when I am facing an issue in a moment, and that lends to a general sense of despair. I realize though, that I can act any way that I want. There is no rule saying that I can't. 

It seems like my mind tries to justify my actions, so, if I am feeling crummy and I would rather not feel this way, I will jump up and down or do something silly-whatever it takes. This is not about denying my feelings, or even being happy. This is about pushing through it, living my life, rather than checking out from the world for a whole winter, or neglecting my friends for months at a time.  

How I fill my life with better actions and mindsets

It is about self love. bell hooks emphasizes that to love others is an action, and this applies to loving oneself.  These actions start small and build on each other, like building blocks. There are the fundamental building blocks, this is building the body and the mind, and this affects your overall phenomenal field. Taking care of yourself, eating well, getting enough sleep, exercise, and avoiding toxins. These are the fundamentals, you build the rest of the steps of self love on this. 

What results is that you become aware of who you are, your energy, your relationship with yourself, with others, with the world. It is about action, patience with the process, and trusting yourself and others. 

Why is this such a big mystery? Many are never taught any of these things. Then they turn to all of those books and videos out there that offer some sort of "secret knowledge." These ad campaigns makes it look all esoteric and mysterious, and this is what generates money. I have come across information that is not true at all, in fact, it is harmful. For example, some books tell you to not do anything at all except imagine what you want to happen. Sometimes that works, but more often it doesn't. This information is unethical because it tells people that it is a universal law that you don't have to put any effort into making something happen. This media says that you just have to think about it and it will happen. In reality, you have to think about it to create a plan of action and then you have to take those steps to make things happen. You have to live your life. If you know what you want, and you take the steps, you'll make it happen. This reminds me of this culture's obsession with getting things with out putting any effort into it. We want it as easy as a two minute montage set to an upbeat 80s pop song. 

When I get these crummy thoughts, I question my ego. I realize that this is only thoughts in my head, this is not representative of my external reality. I begin to wonder-what is real? Do I choose to waste my energy on negative thoughts?  I want to live and love without the past pressing on my present moment.

I want to live this life, not where I feel that I have to retreat back into this cave, this alone place, but rather I want to see the beauty and value in the present moment, no matter where I am. In living. I do this by putting my life together to be, to exist. I would like to live and flow with the world, creative flow of living in the present moment and always doing the things that I want to do, and accepting the moments when I am not doing the things I want to be doing. 

This is the work of attention. it is a process, not an event. People are always waiting for some event to happen, like enlightenment, then they think that their life is going to change after that, but it doesn't happen that way.  

The kids are allright

I think that many kids that I know are wondering what they are going to do now that they are expanding their identity beyond being a punk rocker. So many people are in their early twenties in this scene. People are still looking for their identity. They find this idea and that idea, and they discard an idea and they see something that they don’t identify with and they reject it wholeheartedly. But, these people are going to go some crazy changes in their belief systems through the years. This is what I hear from so many people who are in their late twenties. They often talk about the radical changes in their lives and beliefs that they have made. Even adopting things that they would have wholeheartedly rejected at one point before. I really want to say to people that even though they feel that they may remain static in their beliefs and activities, I think that I am pretty sure they won’t. The important thing is though, that we be aware of how our thoughts and activities affect our lives.
One friend said to me, “I would feel pretty badly if at the age of 40 all I had to show for myself was my awesome record collection.” The big question seems to be, “how do I hold on to my ideas and also do something really awesome with my life?” Some people wonder if they have to let go of punk to do this. I have to ask, well, what the hell is punk any way? It really all comes down to an aesthetic thing. Music and clothes. It is one of those multi-faceted things because people tack onto their identities this image and apply this element to whatever else that they enjoy doing. For example, right off the top of your head, think of how many different lifestyles fit under the umbrella term “punk.” There are punks who don’t get fucked up, called straightedge, there are punks who do get fucked up and they are proud of it, they are the drunk punks, there are peace punks, with the offshoot of crusty punks, the list goes on. The problem is that punk kids have a tendency to make this aesthetic thing more important than it really is, as if the fate of the world or their own future was dependent on whether they wore all black or not. Really, if you really want to live according to your ideals, that is totally possible, it is all about being flexible in your life though.You may not always look like a punk, but you know who you are and what you want to do with yourself.
People still have this energy and passion, and now they have more knowledge about how they can make it happen. I don’t call myself a punk anymore, but I do like to say that I have a peace punk sensibility. Because I did the things that punks do, I know these people who called themselves punks. I like to joke that my friends and I are “self-improvement punks” because as a group, we are dedicated to being more present and living with more integrity…but we dumpster dive! I was pretty happy the other day because I dumpstered a self help book. I suppose that you could say that we are about being really resourceful and inquisitive. These are admirable qualities, why would anyone feel like they would have to give that up?
As far as my life is concerned, I feel that I have more congruence between my ideals and my actions now than when I was mired in this “punk” identity. Back then, I was just going through some motions…wear this patch, eat this food, go to this protest, while working in a casino, slingin’ ice cream to tourists…In the early 2000s everyone was really exited because they thought that radicalism would sweep the nation after the success of the “Battle in Seattle” and we would really make a revolution happen-and soon! Then Crimethink came on the scene with the book, Days of War, nights of Love. People felt that working with the system was a big mistake, and that we all should drop out of society in order to be truly radical, anything less would be selling out to the boring, dead, and empty bourgeois society. Upon looking at the book these days, I realize that it is just a someone’s perceptions of society that at times, encourages people to live authentic lives, but still creates the old “Us vs. Them” mentality at other times. It says that working within the system is what they want you to do. Who is this they? It really is all of us.
It really is just some more theories or myths to think about. It is a contribution to the conversation, and one can take what is useful and discard what isn’t. Ironically, after going to school for years, I finally fully grasp the concepts put forth in the book, which is full of theories and ideas borrowed from the field of communication, psychology, and new age self help books. I was amazed by the fact that all of my textbooks from my classes had the original theories that were hinted at in Days of War, Nights of Love!
After 9-11 and the start of the war in Iraq, people again felt that we could really make something happen. But after a couple of years, I realized that ideas ebb and flow, and that mainly through the conquest of nations have lifestyles changed so quickly. I realized that what I can contribute to make this change happen was to be a part of an expanding flood of people who are raising consciousness. I do this through living my life, sharing my ideas, by making videos, and also by learning how we humans communicate with each other and ourselves, and by becoming media literate, with the intention of helping others to help themselves decipher the messages that they encounter everyday. Although at times I have felt that it would be better to just do away with the whole corrupt system, I realize that engaging with it would be a more useful option. Some people form co-ops and collectives, other people like to write books, start bands, or practice civil disobedience. All of these things have value.
What I have been encountering and what I hope to continue to encounter, is that a lot of those radical kids, right now, are really going through the process of growing up, of taking all of their ideas that they have had and beginning to live it, to make it happen in their own ways. Many people I know have started to follow their passions, and are generally a group of people who are thoughtful, ever curious about the world, knowledgeable, full of love and acceptance, accessible, and a general joy to be friends with. We are the movers and shakers.

Media and emotional freedom

We are a country based on a big lie, and a lot of little lies. I think of advertising, something that communication majors go into, and sales, and I think to myself that these are the types of things that make people move away from their essence, and from knowing who they truly are. The message is really the massage, in the way that it manipulates people so much that people can barely decipher the difference between manufactured desires and true ones, and this affects people’s lives in huge ways. I see how it has affected me in my life. It has gotten me all freaked out on needing to find a good job and make a lot of money. This is how people become stressed out because they feel inadequate in some way.
I think about how commercials have snagged me into their trap. For example, I watched a Levi’s commercial with a good looking guy. I saw that guy with those hot jeans and I want to be with him or to be him. this is exactly what the commercial has intended. So usually what follows is that I am looking for ways to recreate this feeling, to recreate this situation in my own life. People who have a definite sense of self and know what they want don’t feel compelled to have some name brand jeans to feel good or to find a relationship. These commercials rely on people being insecure or being socially awkward in order to sell their product. In the world that exists inside of the commercial, it is the jeans that give people the confidence to walk down the street and smile, or if it isn't jeans, it's the soda, or whatever other product.
The nature of the TV shows and songs also contribute to this awkwardness and lack of social skills. Usually the media shows a pretty inaccurate version of how people meet and form relationship, or otherwise, it is glossed over, making it look easy. Worse yet, it can give people some pretty harmful ideas about how to go about forming relationships. This is where the product placement comes in. It becomes the pants or the food product that makes the good things happen, and people like to make things happen.
I am not advocating the people go and live like monks; not at all. I want to see people have freedom, and success, and flexibility in their lives. To be free from feeling like they have to have a product in order to find love, in order to feel good about themselves. I am calling for people to live their life as art, finding the magic in life and miracles, the complexity, the elegance in the simplicity, and to honor the beauty in everything.
I want to say that people are sometimes crazy and sometimes sane, and that nobody is a lost cause, but it is about getting through the layers of shit and manipulation, it is never too late. It is about communities and support networks. We know that we can build big cities and make millions and start ice cream franchises, or people can sell e-books on how to make millions, and this is what our culture promotes. It all becomes our story.
This is a culture worth having, as opposed to this commercial one. When I was a kid, my mom would sing the “Frito bandito” song to us. When we don’t have a culture, we turn to the next biggest influence on us-advertising. This is the culture that we know, in moves into the area of our lives that may have been previously filled with cultural activity.

My dad the drug dealer

My dad is a drug dealer, and my mom is a Jehovah’s witness. Our family has a moral geography, God is in heaven , and soon, the end of this wicked world will be here, and we are going to go to “paradise on earth” as long as we are good. Sometimes I suspect that my mom has joined a religion because she does not have to do any work, or even think for herself. She has put her life and fate into the hands of someone else. All I have to say, though, is that I thank god for cable tv everyday. Our family tries to get dad to do the right thing. We keep forgiving him for all of the rotten things that he does, and when we catch him in a non aggressive moment, we try to talk sense into him. I wonder if it would be any better if my dad was sober, he ruins everything in my life.

This morning, my mom took my sisters and I out to do some door to door preaching work with some women from the congregation. We were on the way to the neighborhood that we would be preaching in when my mom begins to talk about controlling my little sister at the church meetings. Sister Margaret, an old woman in the car, gives some advice; she says, “ carry a wooden spoon in your book bag, and when the child begins to fidget, take that child out and spank the ornery-ness out of her.” My mom said “I don’t think that I should spank the kids at the meetings.” Sister Margaret continues“ you don’t want your child to become wicked, it will be hard, but your child will thank you once she makes it to paradise on earth” But my mom looks grim and apprehensive about doing such a thing. She has seen other parents take their children outside, screaming and crying, begging their parents to stop, did she want to deal with that?

As we reach the neighborhood, we break up into groups. I am with my mom and sister. My mom has her presentation memorized; going door to door and talking to strangers is something that she doesn’t like to do. At door number one, a man answers and she starts with her presentation ” Hi, how are you this morning? I’m here today because, as you may notice, there are a lot of problems in the world.” The man quickly slams the door in her face. “Separating the sheep from the goats,” she says when that sort of thing happens. Then we went to the second door, which is easy enough, there is a nice older woman who takes the magazines right away, smiling at me and my sister.

In the afternoon, we come in the front door to see dad is smoking crack at the kitchen stove; he is using a burner to heat up his glass pipe. He ignores us so we ignore him. Grandma, who lives in the same bedroom with me and my two sisters, walks down the hall with her walker, I can hear the sound of the walker legs tapping the floor. When she reaches the front room, She says to my dad “why don’t you be a mensch and take care of your family right?” Then she goes back to the room, settling into the bed, which is surrounded by posters that my sister put up of the New Kids, Janet Jackson, and other pictures from Tiger Beat magazine. Our house has three bedrooms, but my dad turned one bedroom into his den, where he makes his drug deals.

My sister and I always have a sense of disappointment when returning home. The house that we live in is small and dumpy, with a slight smell of fermenting bread, my mom calls it a crackerjack box. There is a wood burning stove in the kitchen that is made out of a 50 gallon drum with legs attached, the stove pipe pops out of the side wall. My dad has stacked some cinderblocks around the stove and has painted them bright red with spray paint. Everything is brown. When I complain about everything being brown, my grandma tells me to respect my parents, because if I don’t, when I grow up, everything in my house is going to be brown too. Plants hang from the ceiling in macramé holders. All of the furniture is worn out, like the couch my dad picked up off of a curb while he was visiting my aunt who lives in the projects. He had seen a couple arguing over it, one wanted to throw it out, the other wanted to keep it. The dad jumped in, saying “I’ll take it!” and brought it home. After he puts it in the living room, he acts so proud of it, like it is the nicest thing we’ve ever owned. Personally, I think that the nicest thing we own is the TV, it has remote control.

I have changed from my dress clothes into my regular clothes, and I am sitting in our backyard where there are three junk cars, piles of tires, pieces of equipment, and a garden where my dad grows his weed to sell. Our dog, Cyndi Lauper, is dragging her butt across the ground. I feel that she is a reflection of our family. She wants to break free like any dog wants to, also like we do. Last week, while someone was knocking on the door, she ran her snout through the front window in a frenzy, cutting herself in the process. My dad replaced the window with a piece of plywood. As a dog, she has a sense self defeat and has a broken heart. If a dog can feel that way, Cyndi Lauper does. She spends days feeling worthless, at least she looks that way. The dog has low self esteem. She’s unsure of what to do with herself, a self conscious pit bull. When she notices me looking at her and laughing, she looks at me as if to say, what are you looking at? She has her moments of freedom though, when she manages to escape by jumping over the fence at night. Her favorite thing to do is to tip over garbage cans in the neighborhood. When she finds a good smelling bag of garbage, she drags it home, manages to pull it over the fence. Once she is in the backyard, she tears every bit of trash into shreds. On the mornings after, before going to school, my dad sends me out to pick up the trash. My dad built a dog pen to keep her in, making the walls higher and higher with pieces of plywood attached to the fence, but that only caused her to howl all night, keeping the neighbors awake. Eventually we just had to allow her to get out, and hope that she would not be caught by the pound.

On mondays at school, there is a D.A.R.E. officer who talks to the kids about drugs and the D.A.R.E. philosophy, leadership skills, and social responsibility. The D.A.R.E. officer is encouraging us to avoid negative influences that lead to drug abuse.All I have to say is that I am never going to tell the police about my parents.

My older sister is trying to be a normal teenager, which entails having a social life, and being popular. She hangs out with friends and goes to the mall. She loves the hot music mixes on the radio and new kids on the block. She is tired of taping the music with a tape recorder held up to the speaker, so our dad gave us his old stereo but only with one speaker, saying that we don’t know how to take care of things so we don’t deserve to have stereo sound. My sister is also trying to be good by practicing our religion. When my mom doesn’t want to go to one of the church meetings, my sister says, “what? you don’t want to go? Armageddon could come tomorrow, and you won’t make it!” She feels that our family life is so weird and she is embarrassed about it. She is upset because she doesn’t have the things that other kids have, but not because we can’t afford them but because our dad spends all of the money on drugs and gambling.

We have food stamps and our parents always send me and my sister to the 7 Eleven to buy a gallon of milk and a newspaper for the tv guide. We always argue about whose turn it is to buy because we always have to use food stamps. This time, it is my turn, so when I go to pay, I throw the wadded up food stamp on the counter. The cashier frowns at me, asking me, “what the hell is this?” “Yeah” my sister adds, “he can’t read your mind.” So, quickly I flatten the food stamp out. The cashier takes it wordlessly, unsmiling. After that, we argue all the way home.

I ask my mom what it was like when I was born, she says that she had hoped that having children in the house would cause our dad to settle down, possibly; but by the time that my little sister was born, things hadn’t changed. My mother had taken an interest in natural medicine and had my sister at home with me and my family and half of the neighbors on the block watching. I remember that my dad had been in his den snorting lines of coke. Then he came into the room and she, in a rare moment of assertiveness, as she was pushing out the baby, yelled at him, “You have been doing coke haven’t you? Get out of here! You don’t deserve to witness the miracle of life!”

Tonight, mom and dad are going to a bar because my dad is going to enter a beard contest. They hop into our family car, which is a van with the top taken off. It is a flat bed with a windshield and framework welded on it with 2 by 4’s attached. There is a back seat that my sister and I sit in. Whenever we go anywhere as a family, my mom holds the baby in the front seat with out wearing a seat belt, because there isn’t one. The only thing holding them in is a metal bar that crosses the hole where the door used to be. The wind is always blowing on us as my mom looks out across the wide dusty streets with the mountains beyond. She smooths down my little sister’s hair and says, poor baby.

So they go to the bar which is a cowboy rough guy bar. In the contest, the first prize is a rifle, the second prize, a knife. Dad doesn’t win the contest but now he has it in his mind that he wants a gun. This worries my mom. When they get home, my mom says “ why do they got to have weapons as prizes? They could at least have a VCR .” She hates weapons, fake ones too. Last year, she made me return the antique cap gun that the neighbors gave me.

The other week, while my dad was coked out, my sister decided to have a talk with him about how he is destroying our family. She says, “look at you, the way that you are talking right now. I am going to tape record this and when you aren’t messed up, we are going to play this back to you and you can see how you are.” After that, she tells me that I am the man of the house because I am the only male in the family who is actively involved in our religion. So, I must accept responsibility. But, I don’t know how to be a man. If my dad is not the man of the house then he must be the owner of us, because, that is what he says: “I own you, do the dishes.” Or when my mom stands in the kitchen eating a candy bar while facing the wall, trying to conceal it, he says, “I own that candy bar, give me a bite.”

My sister looks at me and says to my mom, “poor boy, he has no positive male role models in his life.” This causes me to say to her, “find someone to teach me how to become a man.” As it is, I only have women who tell me not to be like my dad. I figure that I had better not grow up, because all men are victimizers. I ask my mom why she doesn’t divorce him. She says that our religion forbids it, unless my dad commits adultery.

I see things, like boys with their dads hanging out and camping and spending quality time together, all men can’t be losers, right? My dad doesn’t do any of that with me. I don’t have any close friends either. The boys in the church and in school think that I am weird. One Sister in the church told me that I was like a vegetable. In my weekly bible study, Sister Ortiz tells me that I should not get too close to the non believing friends that I have at school because they are wicked, and when the end comes, they are going to die in Armageddon and the birds will peck the eyes out of their skulls. Whenever the class has a holiday party I have to leave early, missing out on all of the activity. So I walk home alone early, or sit in the school office.

So, I have this question, how do I live? The options are not looking good at the moment, but a neighbor woman tells me, ”you are so worried about what to do with yourself; but look, you are young, you will learn to live your life well because you are thinking about it. That is something that I think that maybe your dad never did.” I think that I believe her.

Do you like to party?

"You guys like to party?" -That all depends on what you mean by "party." That question has always mystified me because I never know what someone means by "party" and I have usually been afraid to ask. 

When someone asks me that who is missing teeth, sitting at the bus stop with a bottle in a brown bag, I think that their version of "to party" might be a little rougher and a little more "hearty" than how I like to party.

I always thought that party could include lots of things, like going camping, climbing a mountain with a group of people...a protest...these are all forms of parties, talking philosophy, thats a party, making dinner, thats a dinner party. Life is a party. Or, as Auntie Mame said, "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

Making music is a party, doing yoga, while not a party has been much more fun than many, many parties that I have been to. So, yes, I like to party.