Why is it that nobody will tell you the rules, yet they still expect you to know and accept them? For the past five years I have been working at the same place. During this time I have learned a lot. Vigilance has been my guide, and perseverance has been my best friend.

It hasn’t always been easy. I spent a lot of the time tripping over myself, carrying a fear I could not express, surrounded by people who believed that individuality was a product that could be purchased at the local five and dime. Entering into a new culture, you become aware of the relativity of appropriateness, and must be mindful as to the vast array of interpretations of same.

Shortly before starting work, I had spent some time in the psychiatric unit at Queens General Hospital. I had been living with my partner, Scott, for about a year at the time. After a grueling period of him trying to push me to take charge of my life and me fighting a losing battle with my fears and paranoias, he had given me an ultimatum, which I felt unable to live up to. Unable to stay, but equally unable to leave, I did the only thing I could think of to do. I bought a ticket back to London, and on the train ride I took every pill that had been prescribed to me.

One moment I was waiting on the Air Train platform at JFK, and the next I was in the emergency room, flying high as a kite and coughing up coal from the stomach pumps. After what the nurses considered to be a rather psychotic comedown, I was moved over to their looney ward, and put under the care of a rather egomaniacal psychiatrist, Dr. Akhtar and his assistant, Ms. Brooks. With a background working with antipsychotic medications, he had an oddly large number of patients whom he had prescribed those same pills, of which I came close to being one.

Not being the kind to take petty tyranny lightly, I challenged his dictatorial attitude. Unfortunately I was not in much of a position of authority. He told me that he was going to have me committed for a minimum of six months. Scott had to remind me that he was the one in power, and I had to keep my mouth shut lest he find a reason to restrain me and dope me up by force. He informed me that if I had any more outbursts the doctors would have the authority to do so, and that, fair or not, I had to calm down. There are rules to supposed normal behavior, and I had no choice but to abide by them.

I learned what the behavioral tendencies of my supposed “condition” was, and over the next few weeks did my best to behave exactly the opposite. To calm myself down, I would pace up and down my room. The floor was checkered, and I would easily spend hours at a time tracking the exact same footsteps. The repetition was soothing. I also spoke with the resident counselor, and asked her to encourage the nurses to treat the patients with dignity, as I noticed they would look down their noses at those who asked for very simple explanations regarding everyday goings-ons.

Through some good fortune and a few favors, I was moved to Bellevue within a couple of weeks. Another week later I was released, with a prescription of mild anti-depressants. The universe had given me a harsh lesson, and was extremely kind when I faced up to and finally took responsibility for it.

A few months and several therapy sessions later, armed with a fake resume and a renewed determination to succeed, I began working at my new job. For the first week, Scott would hold my hand and walk me to the front of the store. After kissing him goodbye I would breathe deeply, hold my head up high, put my game face on and push my way through those revolving doors.

Of course, here there were all new rules to learn. I was terrified every day that I would mess them up, but I kept on going, believing beyond what I could see immediately in front of me that this was getting me somewhere. I knew that I couldn’t tell anyone what I had been through. How could I?

Beyond that, my brain did not allow me to look into people’s eyes and see their reactions. I needed verbal reinforcement to understand how my words and actions were affecting those around me. But nobody tells you what they think. They just put on airs, and then go and bitch to their friends when you’re not around. This is what we call conventional, civilized norm.

I’ve had that my whole life. Why can’t people ever tell you what they think to your face? Why do we live in a culture where people are so afraid of honesty and sincerity? I had no way of knowing what people really thought, and did not trust my faculties to provide the verification I needed. For the longest time I have felt scared, isolated, and completely alienated. I just wanted a friend.

In my time working here, I have come to realize that we are all a bunch of scared, lonely people. We get so caught up in the rules of life that we do not have the resources to really understand - let alone express - who we are inside. We have learned to fear vulnerability, to see it as a sign of weakness. When it comes to acknowledging and advocating for ourselves in our entirety, we look to previously established conventions. And when there are no conventions to meet specific needs, we marginalize those aspects of our beings. We redefine our expectations according to what we feel is acceptable, and convince ourselves that this is what happiness is made of.

I am no longer content to even attempt to abide by these rules. Call me what you will, I have made a choice to pursue a life imbued by the qualities I wish to see in others. It has been a long, lonely road, but I wouldn’t change any of it. Courage in the face of fear; compassion; sincerity; integrity. These are my rules. Convention be damned.

Anyone who tells you that they are responsible solely for themselves and their own are only fooling themselves. Just look at the orphaned kids in Brazil, forced by circumstances beyond their control to live in the sewers, taking any opportunities and/or abuses they deem necessary for survival. Look at the women across the world, believing themselves to be of less value than their male counterparts, or struggling to find their autonomy in a society that deprives them of such things.

We are not simply isolated entities, floating around this pool of consciousnesses, occasionally bumping into each other and seeking out in others what we supposedly lack in ourselves or giving what we have in surplus in the name of good charity. We are parts of a greater machine, one that transcends time and mortality. Ours is the burden yet unfulfilled by those that came before us. The calling from our deepest selves to meet this challenge is one that we must meet, lest those who endure past us find themselves in our ancestors’ rut, just as we do now.

I first came to this strange, foreign land a troubled child. I left this land, strange yet not so foreign anymore, still a troubled child. But some interesting things happened in between. The journey to Scotland from California entailed a long road trip through the south of the States, via Arizona and New Mexico, and finally to Texas, where my mom was born. I got to meet my mom’s relatives for the first time, and got to see what her roots consisted of. She was a small town gal in her youth, obviously way too big for the boot sizes immediately available to her. When she was old enough to move out, she left to make her mark on the planet (no pun intended).

Seeing where she came from, I am now able to reflect both on how far she had come, and equally on how much further she had to go. It was ironic that our next stop was to Scotland, the land of my family’s namesake. The Leslie clan has its own tartan, we even have our own castle. I say castle, but the truth is it was more of a big mansion next to a big peat bog. In fact, the name of the land was “The Bogs of Leslie”. Just the thought of this place continues to bring tears of joy and pride to my eyes.

What was also strange was that her maiden name was Mitchell, a traditional English name. It makes me think of the bitter struggle between the English and the Scottish, an epic struggle of force versus malleability, acquiescence versus pride, freedom versus oppression. My middle name was inherited from my mother’s maiden name, and my first name is derived from the Roman god of war. In a way, it was fated that this fierce battle should be carried out inside me for all these years.

Here in Scotland, it was no longer simply about my relationship with my family. This epic, ageless struggle was being lived out all around me. The Scottish people are indeed an odd sort, both very proud of where they are from and suffering in the aftermath of their forebears’ inability to reconcile their differences with those who had encroached on their land.

Scotland has a big oil reserve off the coast, in the North Sea. There are companies from all over the world who have rigs stationed there. Despite the fact that this oil was on their land, they got to see very little of it. The town of Aberdeen, where the oil companies were based, was enjoying a period of economic abundance. However, the bulk of the funding was going to foreign investors and was being shipped away from the territory, so Scotland in general got to see very little of it, save the little portions that trickled over from the UK. Scotland simply did not have the infrastructure to capitalize on their own resources.

Moreover, their other commodities, being coal mining and fishing, were suffering greatly in the wake of such imbalance. Countless environmental laws and pacts made between the oil companies and their Norwegian neighbors were being violated regularly, as I bore witness, and the fishing villages were suffering from overfishing as well as the decline of ecological stability.

The Scottish also had the tenacity to overindulge in all things unhealthy. From their poor diet to their uncompromising love for the drink, their lives seemed out of balance, their grip on their own power seemingly spiraling out of their reach. They did get their own devolved parliament during my time in Edinburgh, for the first time in their history since the invasion of England, and I was very glad to be part of that history.

Steps in the right direction, but there was much more to go, as remains. As was within myself, reflected by the world around me, I saw disparate attempts at attaining autonomy by those imprisoned by invisible chains, tying them to failures wrought long before their time. In their unknown torment, I saw blind self-destruction masquerading as progress.

Before we can truly move forward in our lives, we must first re-examine the foundations of our present conditions. Although assumptions are necessary, we must be aware of them and willing to change them when it is clear they do not serve their intended purpose. We have what our ancestors do not, and that is the gift of the present. Their wisdom can be our blessing, however we must not allow their blindness to become our own.

We have a responsibility to those who came before us, whether we choose to act on it or not. Our fate is inextricably tied to theirs. By calling upon the past, we can take control of our present, and free our future from those chains. They can never take our freedom, we just need to understand what it means to claim it for ourselves.

My stomach aches. It has ached like this for the past 20 years. That’s a long time to hold on to pain. It began in this place known as California. I lost sight of something important back then, and I am determined to get it back. What was it? My right to dream. My stomach aches because it has been missing this important part ever since I came to live in this hell hole in the middle of the desert. This was where my father was taken from me.

I was always a child who marched to the beat of his own drum. Some called me crazy. By drawing analogous comparisons based on their standards, I’m not inclined to disagree. Although I have to say, if that was the best that sanity could come up with, I’m grateful for the side of the fence I landed on.

I had just moved to California after having lived with my dad for a year. After a lot of pressure from my mom’s lawyers, combined with a financial strain that was not assuaged by the burden of a child in the house, my dad finally succumbed to the pressure of his situation and sent me out to the desert to stay with the rest of my family.

Cast out to live with people that could not understand me and were preordained to hold that misunderstanding against me, I found my own world as separate from them. I found logic that was my own, and rationality became my biggest nemesis. Rage building up inside of me, I acted out against those who would claim to be my loved ones. Among my various torrents of violence were throwing a metal bat at Vicky, the maid. I once also throw a pair of scissors at Kevin, hitting him just above his eyes. My mom got the worst of it, though, as nightly I would attack her with violent outbursts and dirty words that a son should never say to his mother.

Over the years, love, anger, desperation, manipulation, competition and solitude became enmeshed into one single explosive mass. Nowhere to run, I felt as though I was trapped in a prison of ticky tacky, one which everyone took to be some ideal, like a lamb to the slaughter on the promise of salvation. my only means of escape were the trampoline, in which I could practice taking off into the sky, and the pool, in which I could dive below the surface and drown out all the senseless noise above water. Ironic that, just as conventional laws of physics dictate that we must come back down in flight, so we must obey our bodies’ buoyancy when it compels us to rise to the surface. For all my conjuration, I lacked the power to keep myself above or below for long.

Meanwhile at school, I was being taught about the limits of life in this rotting capitalist world. The phonies around me were telling me how it was, and nobody was complaining. I was happy to live in my own world where I could be anybody or anything I chose to be. The problem with this idea, of course, is that I wasn’t an isolated system. Nobody is. Everybody had their own ideas of who I was, or rather of who THEY were and hence me by association. And I could not feel my father near me, to tell me they were wrong.

That was when the sickness started. Coccidioidomycosis, also known as Valley Fever, is a fungal infection caused by the inhalation of spores in the air. It causes severe flu-like symptoms, which can last for weeks at a time. There is no known cure for it, and the symptoms can become chronic in certain cases. Ever since, I have had chronic congestion, as well as chronic fatigue. Looking back, it all makes perfect sense. I could not breathe in those conditions, and simply wanted to fall asleep and never wake up.

After a couple of years, my dad was given the opportunity to get a job in California. As an engineer himself, he was able to find a job fairly easily, and wanted to be close to us. I was very happy to have him nearby, and for a while it seemed like a dream. I even had the foolhardy notion that we might be a family again. Hmm.

After a while, my mom got an offer for a transfer to Scotland. Within six months of some rather colorful experiences, she took the brothers and made the bold move out, leaving me with my dad again.

We lived a relatively easy life for about a year. My dad got a girlfriend and had a steady job, and I continued at school, constantly surrounded by people I fundamentally disagreed with and wishing to be elsewhere, as usual. The fatigue was beginning to set in. It kind of felt like constantly having a bad night’s sleep, the kind where you know you’ll feel better with some good quality sleep. Except that sleep would not come. I imagined myself in a bed surrounded by an impenetrable wall, filled on the inside with a gas that would keep me comatose throughout all of eternity.

My grades dropped, I was forced to leave my classes for gifted students in favor of ones that better suited my ever-increasing disgust for life. And I was still weird, probably scaring off my dad’s girlfriend and other potential suitees along the way. Eventually, my dad’s life there could not support itself anymore, and I was shipped off to Scotland to live with my mom and brothers once again. In retrospect, perhaps I was testing him to see how much of my fucked-upness he could take before finally giving up on me. If so, then the answer was one year.

Shortly after that, I realized my father had been taken from me. Both my mom and my dad took him away, and I feared I would never find him again. Why do people bother having children, when what they really want is a mirror that either does everything they could not, or validates why they couldn’t do it? Was I ever anything more than a Stella Adler’s magical what if gone wrong to them? Why couldn’t have just left me alone with my father to teach me, free from their emotional burdens? Why must their fear-propagated neuroses be mine too?

But that fear is slowly being dispelled, now that I realize I was actually the one who took him away, not them. My father never gave up on me. Instead, he was just waiting, ever patiently, for the moment I would once again choose to believe in him. Dropping signs and hints along the way, he wanted me to find my way to him. He’s watched me fall, pick myself back up and keep going. With the patience of the immortals, he has stuck by me throughout all my fortunes and confusions. I think about all the wisdom I have gained in being on this our earth, during this incarnation’s tiny existence. I think of his eternal presence in my life, and slowly the aching in my stomach is subsiding.

My journey remains to reconnect with my father. Though I may falter and give in to the illusions and fear, He keeps a place in His heart for me. In the vast, endless desert of choice, a strong wind blows. The sand cuts my skin, gathers in my eyes and blinds me. The past is a maze of regrets and selfish choices that threaten to trap me forever in their cyclic stare if I continue to seek what I have already found there. Grant me vision beyond sight, so that I may see you and believe in you again.

In school, you are taught to pay attention to the teacher. You are there to learn, and your teacher has knowledge and insight necessary to your betterment in the classroom. Inside of those four walls is a self-contained analogy for what is to be found outside, a microcosm of a greater reality. Your attention is necessary, for your time there is an investment into your future.

Everything you need to know to pass the course is contained within those one hour segments. Be still, forget what happened before and will continue to exist after, and listen to the magic in the moment. Let your focus remain on the seeds of the now, so they may flourish into a greater comprehension, a more complete you. That is how you pass the course, or at least that is what they would have me believe.

However, knowledge cannot be so contained. The lessons from one class seep into the others, the walls you were so sure of somehow do not seem to carry the same integrity that was promised. I reached for a greater universality in my courses, and found that nothing made the sense or held the great fortune that was promised. My attention kept drifting off into the inconceivable and the inane. I was certain there was a truth there, waiting patiently between the lines, in the professor’s inhalations as she prepared her next statement of fact.

I moved to the borough of London at 19 with Chris, my first boyfriend, shortly after my time in Edinburgh had revealed itself to be yet another pyrital proffer of propaganda. Desperate to escape the torments of my past, I attempted to build a new life for myself. I began working for a temping agency, jumping from one job to the next as a data entry clerk.

All seemed to be stable for a while, and I even convinced myself that I had found my new family with him and his parents. But there were suddenly new lessons that I had not been taught in the classroom. They were guidelines of social behaviors and attitudes that seemed to have proliferated throughout public awareness, and I found myself at a loss as to how to function within these ridiculous parameters, without anyone to ask for help for fear of having my questions laughed at.

Eventually my lifestyle became unsustainable, and I found myself homeless, deserted by my new “family”, and living in a friend’s couch in the centre of the city. My friend, Nica-Rose, was a gorgeous, talented scriptwriter, who was also a street trader. She taught me the ropes, and even helped me get into a youth hostel, after which I was given my own apartment.

I also discovered that my normal mental state was considered a mental illness, so I was able to live on government assistance. All I had to do was show up to the doctor every year, put on a good show for him and convince him that I was a nut job (an effortless task for me), as well as degrade myself every so often at the welfare office, and I was given free accommodation, presumably for the rest of my life.

Of course, what I really wanted was genuine help out of the depressive hole my family had trained me to reside in, and that was nowhere to be found. After having been bounced back and forth in the mental health system for years, I realized that there was very little the country had to offer people in terms of solutions. The real investment, I came to understand, was in the continuation of the sickness and in the mirage of care.

I turned to sex, drugs, crime, and serious self-destruction. I occasionally barricaded myself inside my apartment for months at a time with only my video games to keep me company. I went to karaoke bars, nightclubs, and occasionally had bouts of going to the gym to make myself more presentable so I could compensate for my deficiency in internal value. I sought anything that would keep the pain from returning to my attention. But none of these things could bring me solace. The illness was eating me up inside, and I could not speak a word of it in a language that anyone could understand, if they were even willing to try. I was a pretty, hollow, crumbling shell.

Meanwhile, there was art all around. London is a rich, spectacular city, brimming with history and continually reaching towards reinvention. Its museums were full of inspiration, and I would regularly visit the Thames and walk along the river, simultaneously admiring and scorning Salvador Dali’s offerings to the scenery. The Tower of London was truly a marvel, as were the Royal Family Jewels (hee, hee!). Nica and I would frequently roam the city, getting into all sorts of mischief, selling our wares whilst avoiding the police, and generally ridiculing the insanity of the populace. Needless to say, we never ran out of material on that last one.

I was able to fit in with all kinds of crowds, being at once a gentleman of affluent upbringing, free-spirited hippy and part-time bum. I had an innate capacity to read people, and despite my almost insurmountable social phobias was able to size up situations and react according to perceived expectations; not always, and certainly not perfectly, but every now and again I found my zone. London is a city of strangers, and anonymity was the ally of all who entered its walls.

Eventually I had to leave. My family had invaded my apartment - after having convinced me that it was not really mine anyway - and treated me like I should be grateful for the scraps they offered me in return. My life was going nowhere, and I became too aware of the imminent spiral into decline I would suffer if I continued to delude myself that this was my life. Mustering all the self-esteem I had left and following the lead of my mom, the great rover of the earth, I packed my bags and began my next journey.

So what did I learn from all this? I learned among a great many other things that, while there are some regards in which the classroom model was gravely mistaken, the matter of attention is indeed true. I have sometimes since felt extremely lacking in attention - perhaps a learned behavior of avoidance - but other times I feel like my attention was constantly on that space between the lines. That which is not immediately obvious, or can even seem completely useless, can often be the element which binds all the other pieces together.

I sometimes think about my mom’s death, and I get angry at her for not having been more present behind the wheel. If she had not been lost in her own thoughts and paid more attention to the road, she would not have driven in front of the other car. If the other driver had not been drinking, she would have been more aware and would have reacted more quickly to get out of the way. I cannot say for sure either way.

On the other hand, maybe while my mom drove through the intersection, she was thinking about how lucky she was to have the life she did. Or maybe, in her absent-mindedness, she looked at the side of the road and saw a shrub, and thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Maybe her last thoughts were of that beautiful plant, sitting there, waiting to be appreciated by someone her. Surely, that has to be worth something.

In a world possessed of entitlement, and the proclivity to indulge in excess, it is important to know how to give back. After all, we are a people who have been habitually trained to believe that ours is the greatest cause. Yet all around us are whispers, reminders that we are not the only ones.

While we as human beings do have value, it cannot be measured in any of the tools we have been offered by our supposed teachers. It is not to be found in our bank accounts, our physical appearance, our accumulation of stuff, notoriety or knowledge. No, our value is to be found inside. It is in that which connects our minds to our bodies, that which breathes life into these cells, pulsing in our veins. It is what the vampire feasts on, the knife drains, and restores life to the wounded soldier. And it is our responsibility to offer, not out of vanity but love. For the world needs our sacrifice, and in that spirit I offer mine freely. After all, it’s on loan anyway.

The way I figure it, we have one of four choices: we can offer it with compassion, with resentment, with expectation of recompense, or we can keep a tight grip on it as we do to the illusion of our ego’s immortality and simply wait for providence to decide for us how best to collect in the end.

I learned much in this regard during my time in Peru, though at first glance it may not seem so. On one hand, I was extremely lucky for the experience. The child of a smart, ambitious and successful engineer, I was privileged to evade my undiluted American education and witness another world, fully equipped with its own ethos and ways of perceiving.

I was blessed with the opportunity to visit Machu Picchu, one of the great mysteries of this earth and a technological marvel. I got to see firsthand the beauty of the Amazon and engaged with its indigenous people, a singular experience that I will not forget. I went to Cuzco - literally meaning “stomach” - and heard a speech, given in Quechua, by one of the priests. I visited ancient ceremonial baths from an empire shrouded in the veils of time. I had servants at my beck and call and lived in fancy homes. And all this before my balls dropped!

With the light, however, there is always darkness, and with these gifts came a price. My mom, living in the shadow of her demons and the disappointment of her parents for not meeting their screwed up criteria, engaged in habitual self-destruction, and we were all brought along for the ride. Unable to reconcile her insecurities, she would jump from one self-induced crisis to another. I would watch her fall apart, sacrificing her dignity and integrity, and then I would watch her send me to child psychologists to find out why I was misbehaving.

As a sensitive child, I was always more aware of what was going on than I had words to explain, or even comprehend completely. Unable to find completion in the waking world, I would enter the realm of dreams to seek solace and understanding. The spirits that surrounded me would speak to me in whispers, and offer me the assurance of joy and peace that could not be found elsewhere.

During this period, my mom had remarried a Peruvian man, primarily to prove that she could provide a stable family environment for my older brother and myself, as was advised by her divorce lawyer. My younger brother was born soon afterward. Being half-Peruvian, he would play a pivotal role in my development. As a child of both worlds, he was seen as one of them; a familiar with inside access into the white world.

Unbeknownst to me, my older brother and myself were to become the objects of much resentment by the Peruvian community, as symbolized by our servants. One time, when my brother was running around the house, he tripped and hurt himself. Upon inquiring about this, my step-father was told by one of the maids that I had pushed him. Without understanding why, I got a beating for my alter-ego’s alleged transgressions. After that, my brother learned that he could blame us any time he wanted for whatever he wanted, and we would get the brunt of it. I don’t blame him though. How could anybody in our positions understand the twisted, ages-old game of racist bigotry we were getting involved in?

At the same time, my step-uncle had decided that he was going to indulge in vulnerable, white child flesh. Quite the delicacy around those parts. The poison that permeated from his hands spread into our family. My mom, aware only as far as her guilt would allow and compensating with her gift of rationalization, declared that it was not nearly as bad as I would make it out to be in subsequent years. Apparently, a chemical imbalance in my head had created out of nowhere this whole range of complexes and disorders. The pain crawling around under my flesh and threatening to tear me and my sanity apart was completely unfounded, the product of an overactive imagination

In the days of the Inca, it was common that children would get sacrificed to satisfy the spirits and ensure the survival of the kingdom. Their blood would provide sustenance to the gods, who would in return offer protection and a bountiful harvest. As I look back at my time, I can’t help but think about those children. Their lives in exchange for that of their empire. In a way, I feel like one of them. It was as though my childhood was sacrificed to the gods, who demanded blood in exchange for the exploitation of their people.

However, that price was not without its restitution. I could have lived my life feeling privileged, unconscious of the pain brought about when we fail to see beyond our physical and cultural differences. What I lost in innocence I got back in soul. I think of those kids whose lives were taken from them, and I can see them now basking in the glory of the sun they gave their lives for. Their young bodies are gone, their blood drained and their worldly duty fulfilled. However, their eternal selves endure, safe and serene, as all children should be.

Astrologists have been claiming since time immemorial that the clues to our destinies are written in the stars, and that we understand ourselves better by retracing the steps of our existence back to their origins, even back to before we are born. This thing called space and time is an elaborate fabric of moments, much like the strands in a beautiful tapestry.

These moments can seem incomprehensible, or can range from the seemingly inane, to the profane, to the outlandish and uncompromisingly beautiful. As time marches on, the tapestry fleshes itself out. We see patterns emerge, and the incomprehensible begins to challenge us, offering us pieces of a puzzle ever-expanding, ever more mysterious than our everyday minds can fathom. My puzzle begins in the bayou, in the deep south of Louisiana. I was told by my kind and attentive brother that my conception was an accident. I suppose that means that I managed to slip past God’s ever watchful eye to go for another round in this world. Ha ha!

I was born amid the tumult of an ongoing, heated argument between my parents, who by this point had been together for 15 years. Theirs was hardly the idyllic marriage, with a messy divorce shortly to follow, and many years of bitter resentment in the works. At one point, I remember my mom banging down the door to my dad’s house, trying to get in to see us. The door had glass panels, and she cut her hands after shattering one of them. Then, my grandma came out with a shotgun to shoo her off. Donna Reed, eat your heart out.

At three, I left to go to Peru to live with my mom, as was the decision of the court. However, during the pursuant years, I would return to Louisiana to visit my dad, and enjoy some good old creole comfort. There has always been something that brought me back, as if the roots had been firmly dug in. After all, as Swami Paramahansa Yogananda stated in his book, our true path is to be found close to our beginning. He himself had travelled far away from home in search of his true path, only to find it 10 miles from his home town.

Something does indeed stir my souls when I recall with fondness all my memories of my birthplace. There was Mardi Gras, the celebration of excess. There was the beautiful, rich architecture of the French Quarter, not to be found anywhere else. There was the incredible ease with which one could attain a driver’s license, followed by the varied, colorful ways in which one could find oneself in a five-car pileup on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. There was the unmistakeable cajun spices and crawfish.

And there was the thunder. Loud, piercing, all consuming, ethereal cries from the sky. It was God’s way of making sure we knew our place. In our newfound humility we held a space within ourselves for him in return.

In a fleeting, evanescent yet unmistakably visceral moment, your entire existence could be uprooted, shaken to its finest qualities and rearranged in new, unpredictable and rather provocative ways. One single flash from the sky, and all that was holds sway to all that is. All of eternity is expressed in that incandescent glow, for those with minds discerning enough to give their attention.

Another moment, and the thunder comes. Your voice is not your own. You are speaking the ancient language of the earth. No effort is necessary on your part to comprehend, though you may try, for you have spoken this language before you knew what language was. Simply listen and behold with wonder the glory of the untamable voice of the sky.

It speaks to me of struggle, and oppression. It mirrors back to me my life and reminds me of the universality of our mundane plight. My life wasn’t easy. I have suffered much in my short, rather insignificant time on this rather peculiar planet. Why not, look at where I came from. The state of Louisiana is one born out of struggle and oppression, of human beings doing inhumane acts against one another. Of the evils of power when given to those who do not respect it, or themselves for that matter.

But it also speaks of a true beauty that is to be found in the bleakest circumstances. The amazing thing about suffering is that it touches us to our core. It has a way of eliminating, almost by necessity, all that is superfluous in life. It brings us back to ourselves, back to our bodies, and back to the earth. After all, even lightning seeks the earth. It flashes in the sky, and begs to be reunited with the ground below, for without the ground there would be no atmosphere.

And where did our forefathers find their grounding? Though it is only for me to surmise, I would say that it is because they found a voice for their pain. They did it through music, the arts, poetry, and each other’s embrace. They collaborated on making some fine music, and in doing so found their common bond. Their pain was transformed, made into something so beautiful that, for a while, it no longer felt like pain. It was as if a great veil had been lifted, and it revealed itself to be a triumph.