To Feel it All

There are worse things in this world than going unnoticed.  In fact, I have made a home of unnoticed.  My low-key lean-to of inconspicuous.  No there are far worst things than being shielded from the barbs of the social rose.  One particular thorn sticks deeper and drips a green ichor that colors the eyes long before it breaks the skin of it's victim.  This barbed beauty has a name but you will never know it's sound from their lips as they pass you noticed, but unengaged.  The sweet sound of laughter draws you closer but the distance between you and the bud is stubborn.  With much effort you may eventually near the intoxicating mass of merriment but as your head spins you find yourself vacantly detached from the group though you are within reach.  Unnoticed is sometimes an accidental gift while exclusion is always a deliberate slight.  Yes, unnoticed is preferred to excluded.

To sometimes let the cracks crack

Lately I feel that every moment of everyday is spent trying to keep my inner turmoil from forcing its way through my plaster smile of a dam.  A sea of tired, boiling with anger and frothing with worry is constantly smashing against the backside of the smile blocking the man made bottle-neck of a channel.  I can feel the gentle grin degrading into clenched, grinding teeth as each day races on.  Every dam with a forceful flow behind it must have.a vent.  A place where the power of the ocean building can escape.  Theater and writing were always those vents for me.  Responsibility and opinions of others have recently sealed over those vents leaving me with a sea of daily torment behind a quickly deteriorating friendly face.  I will pick and claw and dig and pull at the patches until I can once again remember how to smile again rather than just push my teeth together to hold back the flood.

The Remnants of The Cage

One of the things I remember missing most about working with my theme park family is the smells.  Every morning I was greeted by the smell of coffee, pop tarts in the toaster, maybe a wisp of marshmallow dust from someone's breakfast cereal, antibacterial spray, the familiar blend of roughly a hundred people's specific personal scents as they arrived in the morning.....but 5 days a week.... above all this....above the essence of our morning....above the uncertainty of the day...there was the strong smell of turkey bacon and pancake syrup.  Above the spinning of life's weather-vane was our unwavering Alcurtis.  That smell, for me at least, meant that I would laugh that day.  That I would dance a little harder and enjoy it.  That, at some point, he would look at me in the way that only he had and make me feel uncomfortable on the outside but leave me feeling just a little sexier than before.  That I would most likely be forced to think about where I stand and why I stand there at some point; I would lose the discussion in the end, but I would also have a better understanding of my beliefs.  (These beliefs could range anywhere from religion, to politics, to why we need revivals of musicals, to why we remake movies, to why the sky is blue(which in the end he could prove to you that it is, in fact, not blue))

Yesterday Alcurtis left us.
Yesterday I lost a brother to the ether.
Yesterday I saw hundreds of hearts break simultaneously.
Yesterday we celebrated and we mourned.

Today....  Today people keep asking me if I am okay.  Today people keep asking me if I need anything.  I have been unable to formulate an answer so those texts have gone unanswered.  Until now.

No.  I am not okay.  I am pissed off.  I am angry that Alcurtis felt he had to go through this alone.  I am angry that the "I love you's" and calling him family didn't convey my willingness to take on any burden.  I am angry that he wouldn't swallow his pride along with those pills rather than refusing the whole lot.  I am angry that he put so much weight on Jen for the last year knowing she would honor his wishes and keep whatever she saw or might speculate private.  I am angry he weighed her down even more when the truth came to light and he made her shoulder that secret alone, even shortly.  I am angry because over the past year I have doubted my importance in my inner circle, only to find out that 2/5th of it was literally fighting for a life in secret.  I am angry he placed his Tapestry thread in her hands and made her decide the length.  I am angry that his family mistook the cage he was trapped in for their loved one.  I am angry that he suffered 4 days longer than was necessary because they needed time.  I am angry that I watched people I care about more than most in this world be sideswiped by this surprise, then find hope, then lose hope, and then say goodbye daily.  I am angry that I am angry.

With all of that anger you would think that I wouldn't have room for any other emotions but somehow I do.  I am sad.  Almost unbearably so.  Sad for all the reasons I am angry.  Sad for a hundred more reasons that crop up around me when I linger too long. And happy.  And proud.  Oh so proud.  And grateful.  I have mountains of grateful in me right now.  But what shadows all of that for me at this exact moment?  The cage he left after he broke free of it.  Now I know that it may seem insensitive to call it that but that is what my heart knows it was when I saw it.  He was unable to move it and unable to leave it.

I was only in the room for maybe 15-20 seconds but when I close my eyes...that is what I see and have seen since that moment.  When I stumbled into sleep last night I found myself back in that room looking at the cold, aged, jagged bars that held my brother a short time ago.  I know that image will fade in time but this is about what I am feeling now...and a large part of me is feeling guilt.  I should have spoken up sooner about forcing him to go to a doctor.  I should have voiced my opinion to the family in regards to keeping him in his cage.  I should have told him I loved him more.  I shouldn't have allowed him to hide when I came over.  For those things...I'm sorry Curtie.

But you don't have to worry about any of that.....
Because there is the painful happy truth....
Alcurtis is free....
And the smell of turkey bacon and pancake syrup just means...breakfast.

To Be a Light In The Dark

To many times in this world we find ourselves utterly swallowed by darkness.  Lost in the void of life that we dwell in during our every day.  We fall into a pattern of toiling to survive but never actually living, every dime we earn being a tuppence exchanged for our lining of silver.  After a while that lining is eaten away and we begin to ebb away at our hope, emptying our cup one drop at a time.  I am here to fill that cup.  I am here to defend hope.  I am here to defend the silver lining.  I am here too ensure the darkness doesn't swallow those around me.  I am here to be an anchor to humanity.  I am here to light the way to living a life rather than just being alive.  I am the light in the dark.

To Be Love's Knight Devoid Of Armor

I fight for love.  I fight for love long after the battle is over.  I analyze the battlefield, littered with the carrion of shredded promises and shrapnel torn dreams and try to make sense of where the tide turned.  I run through the intended strategies over and over again, feeling each blow anew beneath my bare chest with every recollection.  How could this dance have ended with the shedding of so many tears of my heart-blood?  How could the gentle and careful co-mingling of our two individual worlds turn to this?  Why didn't I take action when I noticed that our steps were slightly out of sync, when we stopped meeting one another's eyes, when we began to occasionally let go of our love to check our arsenal?  I try to mend the damage I can see using the sticky side of excuses and a salve of understanding as I have done since this dance began.  I now, however, know that unless another knight comes onto the field with as much want to prevail for our master as I have; then this dance will continue to end as it always has, with a field full of scars.  Scars, that is, until the final dance when they all come together to help guide you to victory together.

To Tell The Story of How Wolverine, Spiderman, The Green Lantern, Superman, and Batman Save My Life Everyday

This is the story of a guy who took a very long time to figure out who he was and what he stood for and how an unlikely team of superheros change his life every day.

When I was a child I always enjoyed superheros.  Most children do I suppose but for me it was a little different I think.  Most people love the fighting, the superpowers(which I am not going to lie were right up there on my list), the ongoing battle between good and evil.  For me it was about the people who became other people for the good of the world around them and how they balanced it all in fantastic ways and in the end it all seemed to come together.  Why did that ring true with me?  Because that's what I did every day, or so I thought.  I thought that me being someone I wasn't was helping everyone around me.  It made my parent's happy, it made God happy, one day it would make a wife and kids happy as I protected all of them from what was behind the mask and the dangers that could come from them knowing.

That's what I saw as a kid but then one day I took off my mask.  Sharing with a select few at first...My Bruce the gargoyle(My person I can tell anything to without fear of judgement), then to a few teammates, and then finally I pulled a full Tony Stark and told the world that I am Iron Man.  From that moment on my love for my childhood heroes evolved to what it has become today.  It is a constant reminder to me of what is important in my life, a reminder I feel that we all need from time to time.  I even decorated my apartment with minimalist superhero art that I commissioned my brother to paint for me on canvas so that I can't forget the lessons they were driving home throughout my entire childhood without me even knowing it.  Here are those lessons along with photos of the paintings my brother did for me and the rooms I decorated around them with the help of my friend Meagan.

First is Wolverine.  The X-men are my first superhero memory of note.  In 1990 I was an 8 year old boy in Ferndale, Florida, which is a tiny town west of Orlando.  The nearest convenience store was in Montverde, which was the next town over, and about once a week my dad and I would stop by there on his way to work at the restaurant he owned.  One morning while we were paying for his gas and my chocolate milk I noticed a small pack of 10 marvel superhero trading cards next to the register.  My dad bought me those cards and that quickly became our tradition.  Every week when we stopped I would get one pack of marvel trading cards.  I don't remember all 10 of the cards that were in that first pack but one of the two that stands out in my memory is wolverine.

I will humor the chance that someone who might stumble across this blog won't know who wolverine is and what he can do, though I find that very unlikely.  Wolverine can handle anything, he is nearly indestructible and if someone does manage to wound him he heals almost instantly.  That is what I take from him, I can handle anything.  At 31 I have already stood with my family through my mother's battle with manic depressive bi-polar disorder with seasonal affective disorder and traits of schizophrenia when in her manic phase, had a major knee surgery resulting in 3 titanium pins holding my kneecap in place, removal of a cancerous cyst from my testicle and the subsequent treatment, coming out to my southern baptist family, falling in love, planning a proposal and then calling it off when I found out that that man was and had been cheating on me for years, moving out of state and away from my comfort zone for a job that turned out to be a joke, moving back into my parent's house to get back on my feet at 31...and I am still here...and I am fine.  Many of those things did wound me but I am healing...and I always will.  I may not heal as quickly as Wolverine, but I will always heal.  In addition to that, a large portion of what the X-men is all about is human rights.  I watched as these good people were persecuted in my favorite cartoons just for being born different.  You can throw whatever interpretation of whatever book you want at me but I will proudly hold up an X-Men comic in one hand and the bible in the other because both say the same thing...love and accept one another regardless of how they might be different from you.

The second card I remember from that first pack was Spider-man who has always been my favorite superhero.

You can probably guess what good ol' Spidey reminds me of....responsibility.  "With great power comes great responsibility."  It is true, the more power you have the more responsible you have to be.  The thing is power can be interpreted many different ways.  In my eyes we are all infinitely powerful.  What we do now matters, what we don't do matters.  I have a younger brother, younger cousins, children who see me perform, children I have mentored in the past...all of them have looked to me as an example at one time or another and many of them will again in the future.  My community, the theater community, looks to me to play roles because they know that I will do the job and I will put everything I have into doing so.  I have a responsibility to the man I am going to be tomorrow to be the best man I can be today.  I may not be able to stick to walls or have superhuman strength but I can mold the future.

Next is The Green Lantern.  I wasn't introduced to the The Green Lantern until a little later in my Superhero education but I think he came along when he needed to, as most superheros do.  The Green Lantern is another duel meaning for me.  First I will tell you what The Green Lantern can do and more importantly HOW he does what he does.  The Green Lantern is a normal man that was chosen to be part of The Green Lantern Corps by a power ring when it's previous owner died.  He uses this power ring to form constructs from pure will power.  He can literally will anything he can think of into reality.  I think we are all capable of this without the aid of a power ring, it just takes us a little more time and effort.  That is one of the two things The Green Lantern taught me.  The other is that, just like the ring chose Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and Kyle Rayner because it knew he could handle it, life chooses us for what we can handle.

Now for The Man of Steel, Superman.  As we all know, Superman, or Kal El, is an alien and was sent to Earth by his parents to save him from the destruction of their planet.  A young farming couple from Kansas found him and raised him up as their own.  He grew up as Clark Kent and saved the world as Superman.  He hid from the world behind a pair of glasses, an every man personality, and haircut to protect those he cared about and to try to have what everyone wants...a "normal" life.  This one is a little more complex I guess cause this one is about how I don't have to hide ANYTHING about myself to have that life.  I live in a time where we are finally starting to see people for people and not for who they fall in love with, what color their skin is, who they pray to or don't pray to, and what is or isn't in their pants.  I know we have a LONG way to go..but we are closer than we have ever been and getting closer every day.  So this painting reminds me to just be me cause I live in a world where I can.

Last but not least is Batman.  Now I know there are a lot of things I could take from Batman.  I know he fights along side super powered people having no powers of his own.  Everything he can do he can do because he worked hard and trained and designed gadgets or paid to have them designed.  I know...but what I take from Batman is not to let my life be fueled by revenge.  I moved into this apartment and commissioned these paintings after I broke up with my first real love.  For two years I gave him everything I was and found out that he was cheating on me the whole time.  I could let revenge fuel my want to succeed.  I could say, "I'm going to be amazing so that he can look back and see what he screwed up.".  But that is not what I am going to do..because no matter what...revenge will only leave you empty in the end.  I would much rather say, "I'm going to be amazing because I am capable of amazing." and hope that he goes on, finds what he needed in someone special, and does the same.  This painting is the first thing I see when I come into my home every day because let's face it...there are things that make us angry every day...and when I get home I sometimes need a reminder to let go of whatever it is and be the hero that these guys taught me to be.

So there it is...why these specific heroes mean so much to me and how they save me every day.  So yell at your kids for "wasting time on comic books" if you want...but there are important lessons buried in those pages.  I, for one, will be encouraging my kids to meet as many heroes as they possibly can.  I mean, if you have never met a hero, how will you ever recognize that you are one?

The Moment of Almost

The only thing worse than knowing, is almost knowing.  Feeling every whir and click and whistle as your brain weighs out the data before you.  Replaying every relevant moment and filtering out the excuses you provided or accepted and the rose coloring your heart cast over the facts.  Knowing that any second the unrefutable truth will blaze into existence, exposing every dark corner that Fear and Doubt may call their home and revealing the twine that Hope has used to hold things together when they should have fallen apart.  Knowing that, once bathed in the harsh light of truth, your world is robbed of its limitless possibilities and you will be forced to see it for what it was.  Either a sturdy structure built on a stable foundation or a lean too placed against a wall of inflexible granite.  The moment if almost knowing if your heart is breaking or overflowing.  The moment of almost knowing if you were in love with one another or if you were just in love.  The moment of almost knowing if your future is full of anniversaries, inside jokes, and comfortable silences or if it will be littered with awkward first dates, terrible first kisses, and nervous talking.  The moment of almost knowing if forever was as long as you thought it was.  That moment of almost knowing that almost was never going to be enough.