Dan Stream

My pen and my mouth

Have a strange relationship

I stared across the shimmering scape,

And I could see every peak and every cape.

  And those peaks looked just like mounds of dust,

that would splinter and crumble with one breath's thrust.

  And I wanted to pummel them with my hands.

Feel them fall and flatten like grains of sand.

  But I could only watch as I soared above the land.

Pools stretch the margins of your soft feather bed,

as I count all the syllables of every word said.

Your hair tickles my nose, your arms sprawled across my chest,

as each tear trickles from your chin to your breast.

Your eyelashes flutter and I know it's not long.

Too tired to fight and too afraid to be strong.

I could open every blind and flip every switch.

But I won't move one arm, no matter how much they itch.

Because I'll savor this moment from this day to my last.

The sun's going down and the darkness comes fast.

There was a time when I'd beat my chest and roar,

my mind consumed by my cold dark core.

There was a time when I'd stare your shadow down,

and let my demons drag me to the ground.

But my fury's grown colder with every bout.

My soul has grown older and the fire's gone out.

More scars and bruises I can't afford,

so I'll take a deep breath and I'll sheath my sword.

The sun will shine again and the day will be new.

Your smile still glimmering, your eyes still blue.

And I hope you come find me, I hope that you call.

Through the fresh rains of summer or the cold winds of fall.

But the darkness has come and I don't know for how long.

So I'll lower my banners and stop singing your song.

Because the time has come for you to sleep,

and I'd tear out my eyes before you saw me weep.

I always knew it might come to this,

Come walk with me on this bitter eve

and bring my soul some ease.

Where the streets all run uphill,

and every turn blows into the breeze.

The night is young and yet I long

for a shoulder to rest my head.

As our boots sink into the cold wet frost

on these streets I seldom tread.

Voices in the darkness fill the air,

but I can’t make out their speech.

Lined with trees I couldn’t climb,

and doors I couldn’t breach.

The crowds move in circles,

their perimeters etched in stone.

Their stares make me shiver,

they are present, yet I’m alone.

Thoughts of Walt Whitman fill my head,

looking up at the sky so still.

But there are no stars in New York City,

and silence makes me ill.

I’ve lived this life along the path,

but have no wisdom to impart.

Because this town is full of life,

but I can’t find its heart.

So don’t let go, don’t walk away,

don't leave me here to freeze.

Because these streets all run uphill,

"'I know your kind,' he said. 'What's wrong with you is wrong all the way through.'" - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

Self-betterment - a crutch we use to justify our infinitesimal existence trudging around in circles aboard a great big rock spinning aimlessly through the infinite depths of space and time? Nah, I’m an optimist, although I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t once crossed my mind. But somewhere deep inside, I really do believe the magazine models when they look me in the eyes, telling me that positive steps in the right direction are truly what life is all about. Call me an idealist, call me an existentialist, or maybe, just maybe, call me a man whose circle just hit a right angle. A man who’s reached a point in his life where self-betterment is the only better option.  Cheers to that!

There’s just one issue, or an aggregate of issues, stacked up in defensive formation and ready to blitz at any signal of a change in the play.  Allow me to explain: I smoke cigarettes like it’s 1959, I drink whiskey like it’s 1933 and my own personal investment in the red meat industry has created enough methane gas to take two inches off a polar ice cap. Simply put, when you’re in your late twenties and have spent the last three years of your life focused on your career and sucking as much enjoyment as possible out of the five hours per day when your career is temporarily a non-factor, self-betterment feels much less like one small step and much more like a 360 jig. The question remains: where the fuck do I even start?

A few years back, I was taught a form of Yogic meditation by an ordained monk, which is both really cool and not nearly as cool as it sounds simultaneously, depending on the tenor of the conversation. Orange robes, long beard and a calming yet unnerving presence of spiritual peace emitting from his eyes and slicing rings through the never-ceasing tension in my chest.  It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, not because I was catapulted headfirst into an ocean of everlasting bliss, which is not to say I don’t believe in that sort of thing. It was more like I sat in that room, accompanied by my new long-bearded friend, but alone on top of the world. Every day is the first day of the rest of your life, but seldom comes a day when you briefly peek out at your surroundings, despite being told to close your eyes, and think, “This moment will matter.”

The common thread in the vast multitude of self help blog articles I’ve been reading (two and a half to be exact) seems to be that your first step should be the step that comes most easiest.  Well, what step is easier than no step at all? Just the simple action of twisting my body around from the stomach-down, staring longingly at the wall position into the cross-legged, hands in my lap, meditation position. As two and a half self help blog articles also informed me, good habits are all about routine. So, if my first instinct when I’m feeling stressed, or overworked, or waiting an extra fifteen minutes for the Seamless delivery guy is to inhale six inches of poisonous smoke, then why can’t my first instinct when I’m feeling sad, or anxious, or waiting an extra twenty minutes for the Seamless delivery guy be to sit down, close my eyes, and meditate.

The step-less step was a bit of an exaggeration. As it turns out, when you’re twenty-eight, immediately descending into a lotus pose isn’t quite as easy as during 2nd grade story time.  I began stretching my extremities, five-second pulls, ten times on either side. Deep breaths, good posture, it’s all about routine they say. I sat down in pose, closed my eyes, placed my tongue on the roof of my mouth and began the first step. I can’t reveal too much, as I swore to secrecy about the particulars (again, pretty damn cool), but the first step in meditation is just like the first step in any ambitious and difficult undertaking: letting go.

When you learn meditation, the first thing they tell you is that sometimes you are going to sit down, immediately fall into a transient state of pure cognitive removal, distractions still present but reduced to a whisper in the air. But overwhelmingly more often, you are going to sit down and think about everything there is to think about in the world besides meditation. In my bedroom, on the 3rd floor of my Brooklyn duplex, delicately nestled in between two apartment complexes and flanked by the 4th Avenue subway station and cab-infested 9th street, I had my work cut out for me. The important thing they tell you however, is that sitting down and doing it is almost, if not just as important as sitting down and doing it well. I thought about this as the rush hit me.

My head swerved, my knees tensed, my fingers developed allergies to one another. When was the last time I had a cigarette? When was the last time I had a drink? Did I forget to send that email? What in God’s name is taking this Seamless delivery guy so long? I haven’t called grandma in a while. Is she alright? With every second came new thoughts, new questions, new enlightenments, but with each passing moment of fleeting concentration, I pulled myself back to the center.

Physically, mentally, emotionally I fought, wrestling to keep myself in place. My nose began to itch, and I held my head higher. My iPhone vibrated on my dresser, and I closed my eyes tighter. A door slammed in the distance, and I clenched my fingers more stiffly.  For twenty minutes, I ventured inward, sparring with my sentient mind and battling the sounds of silence. I never left the earth that night, but when I finally made the decision to open my eyes, it wasn’t because I couldn’t keep going. It was because I was done, and as I sat staring at the wall, same as I had been twenty-five minutes prior, a sense of peace came over me like the calm before a storm. Not a storm in the sense of wrath and destruction, but a storm in the sense of change. A rapid shift in my entire sense of being, undergone by brute force.

The jury is still out on what life is all about, but at least a few very wise people have uttered a few different versions of this simple truth: life is about doing what you want to do, and as man who has enjoyed many an adventurous night and many a regretful morning, I’m not here to dispute that. But as someone who goes to sleep every night looking forward to the rush of his first puff of smoke with that steaming mug of morning coffee, life, or at least a better life, is sometimes about doing what you don’t want to do.

Spin, spin, round and round

Soap tsunami coming down

I play tennis, and by that I mean I have an $80 racket, make it out to the courts roughly six times a year, and watch Grand Slam tournaments that have run past the quarterfinals. So, keeping with my perennially unsuccessful and painfully unoriginal New Year’s resolution of losing weight and getting in shape, I decided to go out to the park with my dad and brother on a 40-degree January afternoon and smack some balls around. Self-confidence was running at an all-time high.

The day proceeded on as usual: my brother and I standing on one side of the net, my father on the other; us running up and down the court, awkwardly flailing at easy to return volleys; me maintaining my typical 50% successful shot ratio. Frustrations were slow-roasting, self-loathing was regressing into boredom, and eventually my brother offered up a distraction: an intellectual debate over the canonical status of the Back to the Future trilogy. A worthwhile cause for conversation if ever there was one — the kind of argument that requires precise execution of thought and articulation. The great debate ignited, reducing tennis and the cold January air to white noise, and it was in the midst of all this that something strange happened.

It was some time around my declaration that Doc Brown was one of the most underrated characters in film history that I realized I was involved in a ten-shot, fast-paced, cross-court volley with my dad. “Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “Do you want me to stop?” said my brother. “No, keep talking,” I shouted as I smacked a topspin forehand down the line in Djokovic-esque fashion. My seasoned father was powerless to return it.

The Back to the Future debate raged on for another 10 minutes, morphing into a philosophical discourse on whether the quality of a “threequel” affects the legitimacy of a film franchise (The Godfather?). I won the argument of course, but that’s an article for another day. The important thing is that I played the best tennis of my life that afternoon, slicing my backhands, slamming my forehands, chasing down potential winners like pop ups at Yankee Stadium, all while crowning Marty McFly champion of the Oedipus complex.

Possibly the single most difficult task you could ask of a human being is to perform an action without thinking about it. Thinking is what we do. But just as a cheetah’s ability to run at 60 MPH is curbed by its ability to fry its own insides from overexertion, our cognitive minds provide us with the ability to think ourselves into a bottomless oblivion while performing even the most mundane of tasks. The cheetah, however, finds a balance. Maybe, just maybe, so could I.

I'll start this diatribe off the best way I know how; With a story! I recently had a dispute with a well-known company operating out of New York City. Naming names would undermine the very cause for writing this article, but suffice to say, I had reasons for being angry. Promises were made, services were rendered, and the outcome turned out to be very unfavorable.

One morning, while surveying their social media accounts, similarly to a recent dumpee stalking his ex's Facebook pictures, I noticed something peculiar. In the less than twenty-four hours since last checking their Twitter account (don't judge me), their following had suddenly ballooned from around 3,000 to near 25,000 followers! What could have caused such growth? A viral piece of content? A stellar review? Highly unlikely in this particular case. So, I decided to perform some savvy investigation tactics, namely clicking on their follower list and taking a look. Sure enough, I was greeted immediately by some 22,000 bird's eggs set to pastel backgrounds, sitting innocently, staring daggers through my social soul. StatusPeople, a neat new third party application that identifies fake and inactive accounts, confirmed my suspicions: 98% fake followers! My nemesis was engaging in good old social media foul play, and needless to say, I wanted justice.

A devious smirk came upon my face as I then ventured over to Twitter's "Rules" section and actively searched for affirmation that said company had been actually breaking the official rules of engagement. Sure enough, under the "Spam And Abuse" section, I discovered this: "Using or promoting third-party sites that claim to get you more followers (such as follower trains, sites promising 'more followers fast,' or any other site that offers to automatically add followers to your account);" According to Twitter's rules, any account engaging in such practices could be instantly wiped from existence  without prior notice and with extreme prejudice. There was even a link where I could report such abuse if I happened to organically stumble upon it. My grin widened.

Did I click the link? Yeah, I did, however what I didn't do was follow through with the report, even after spending five minutes filling out the form and doing my best impression of an impartial good samaritan. Why not? Well it may sound cheesy but I do my best in life not to be  a vindictive person. It's an important part of maintaining a positive outlook and I like to think it's brought me some good karma over the years. I was satisfied with my decision, but of course I didn't feel any better about what I had witnessed and the want for resolution continued to smolder. That's when the question came to my mind, the very same philosophical dilemma faced by anyone else who ever had to make the decision between inaction  and vigilance: Why does this fall on me? Why aren't the powers that be making enough of an effort to curb this kind of practice and help those who act ethically? In this case, why isn't Twitter policing itself?

Say that Microsoft decided one day that it might make them look better in the eyes of the public if they fibbed slightly on their quarterly earnings. Assuming the justice system is perfect (it isn't), all of their top executives, accountants, and anyone else even remotely involved in this decision would be in handcuffs within the year, and sitting in white collar prison within two. This is of course a somewhat less than perfect comparison seeing as how corporate earnings affect the entire economy, and Twitter followers are just a bunch of people who like the way you Tweet. However, if I had Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo in the interview chair right now, and I asked him point blank if he thought Twitter followers meant anything, do you think he would say, "Nah dude, it's just some imaginary internet number?" Nope. More than likely, he would go off on a long, redundant tangent about the affect of social media on consumer affairs and personal branding, undoubtedly using the words "influence" and "engage" way more times than neccesary. And you know something? He would be right.

The argument over whether or not social media is important is over. It is, and as social media platforms grow, more and more consumers are making their decisions through online reputation and digital social proof. So, why should said nemesis organization be allowed to dupe potential customers into thinking that its services are worthy of attracting 25,000 Twitter followers when they are actually only worthy of 3,000? I can't remember a job interview over the last two years where I wasn't directly asked to provide my Twitter information. Granted, I do work in social media, but why should I, with my hard earned 550 followers, have to compete with the other candidate who purchased 10,000 on Fiver.com? Why should a writer trying to prove he has cultivated an organic audience have to compete with the fakers, or an artist, or a film-maker? If social media is important, and we know it is, then why aren't the people who rightly use it to make important decisions about where they spend or invest their money being protected?

You all know who I'm voting for today. I haven't shut up about it for the last three months. But I have one thing left to say, and I promise you, it's an argument you haven't heard before.

The truth is that I don't think Mitt Romney would be the worst thing to ever happen to this country. To be honest with you, I don't think much at all would happen under a Romney regime. But that's exactly the point. With time comes progress, innovation, and evolution, or at least that's what is supposed to come. But here's the thing about conservatives, and when I say conservatives, I don't meant republicans, because republicans are extinct. The conservatives take their name from the root word "conserve," which the dictionary describes as holding a constant. In essence, their role is to prevent change by any means necessary, and this is exactly why they have been on the wrong side of every, I repeat, EVERY great moment in United States history.

They fought against factory regulations, child labor laws, minimum wage, and weekends! They fought to keep black people enslaved during the civil war. They fought to install Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise those same black people once they were given freedom. They fought against civil rights. They fought against women's suffrage. They jailed hundreds of innocents during the McCarthy witch hunts. They even opposed the American Revolution! Literally every single ugly chapter of American history was endorsed by and paid for by conservatives.

So, why should we as Americans think their efforts to maintain a status quo are suddenly in the right now? Do you sit around thinking of clever ways to not learn anything new every year of your life, or not meet anyone new, or not add anything to your resume? Of course not. Things are supposed to change, they're supposed to get better, smarter, more efficient. And that is why I'm voting for Barack Obama.

Barack Obama repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell, one of the most disgusting concepts ever created by our government (and this is a government that forced a country to go to civil war over whether or not black people were human beings or farm animals). He took one giant step towards a healthcare system that puts the needs of its people over the profit margins of insurance companies. Know this, we are the only industrialized country in the world that forces our citizens to pay the kind of insurance premiums and healthcare costs that we pay. I know you think we have superior care as a result, but the truth is that we still don't rank #1 in life-expectancy, infant mortality, or really any other statistic that matters. He ended the Iraq war, a shameless bloodbath that would have only gone on longer under a McCain-Palin regime. He created a stimulus package and single-handedly saved the American auto industry, creating/preserving thousands of jobs. He even became the first president to take a positive stance on marriage equality.

Barack Obama doesn't want to "conserve." Barack Obama wants to make this country better. But more importantly, he wants to see this country take on the future. I know you are concerned about jobs and economy, and I know you are sick of hearing about Obama inheriting Bush's mess. That's fine, because any economist worth his weight in Yen says this recession was 30 years in the making. 30 Years! So why did things seem so great under Reagan, and Bush Sr, and Clinton? Well, that's why they call it a bubble; bigger, bigger, still bigger, POP! No president could have cleaned up 30 years worth shit in 4 years, and certainly not with half of congress pledging to block his every action. But that's beside the point. The point is the fact that this recession didn't become a depression is the greatest accomplishment you can attribute to Obama. This economy was in free-fall when he took office, and while it hasn't gone too far back up, it certainly could have gone a lot further down with the wrong man in The Oval Office.

Whoever said not to burn bridges, Never watched one crumble in flames.