Frog Prince Angels

This chapter from If U Keep Your I on the Ball was written on March 7 as part of the impromptu novel I wrote about this picture over the course of eleven days.

_____________________

Where You Come From?

 

Where You Going?

-"Venice Queen", Red Hot Chili Peppers

One of the first skills a new human in civilized society learns is to sit in front of a glowing screen which transmits the infinite imagination of humankind into the new mind.  This imagination is a reflection of prior human experience, a manifestation of future possibilities, and a fantastic outlet for making dreams into reality, even if only seen through the lens of a TV.

           Most of this imagination comes from the city of Los Angeles.

            Los Angeles means “The Angels”.

            The City of Angels is in the state of California, which is on the West Coast of the most powerful and influential nation on the ball: The United States of America.  By now it’s fair to say that there aren’t really any true borders anymore, that the world is too interconnected through business and communication that transcends governments.  But if you had to pick one that has their hands in everything, for better or worse, it’s the USA.

                On March 30, 2012, I boarded a plane at Narita Airport outside Tokyo, Japan to return home to my country, the United States of America.  My entry port was the city of Los Angeles, California.  I had spent the second half of my time in Japan carefully saving money so that I could move from New York to California shortly after spending a little time at home, yet I was going to begin the American experience in California anyway.  The first destination was my cousin Mike’s wedding in Austin, Texas, but first I had a layover in LA LA land.

               Los Angeles is the only truly American ambassador on this sign.  As a New Yorker, I will jealously explain this with several excuses.  First, LA is closer to New Zealand, so it just made sense.  Forget that I have a similar sign post picture from the bottom of New Zealand that points to NY.  Second, Los Angeles means “The Angels” and is therefore more poetic than “New Place That’s Already in England”.  Third, there’s “imagination land”.  HOLLYWOOD.  It’s where the movies are made, and thus pretty much the vast majority of everything modern human beings care about.  Being some sort of star or big shot in Hollywood, whichever your path or craft, is the ultimate definition of “making it” in American society.  This isn’t necessarily the same thing as “enlightenment”, as is clearly evident in all the fiascoes on tabloid pages you have to learn about while waiting to buy your food so you can keep living, whether or not you care.  Then again, when you’ve “made it”, so to speak, who wants to be enlightened?  What could be more enlightening than having lots of money, doing whatever you want, and everyone loving you and caring about what you do and gossiping about what you wear?  According to TV, which comes from Hollywood, it’s the ultimate achievement of evolution.  The Oscars celebrate this exalted evolution annually, and they did this on the cutting edge of reality this past Sunday.  The creator of Family Guy sang a song about boobs to start it out.

               There are few people who would declare that they love Los Angeles 100%, even some of the super successful residents who have made their fortunes there.  But I can’t dislike it 100% either, and not just because I’m always declaring that the world is one place and everywhere has a trace of grace.  I love Hollywood because they created movies that entertained, inspired and directed me to wider realms of imagination, adventure and possibility.  It’s also where my favorite television show and educational program, The Simpsons, has always been produced.

               Most importantly, when I was a child, the city of Angels produced a television show called The Muppets, and then several movies with the same puppets.  Growing up, The Muppets were the most educational, fun and enjoyable show that my family watched.  We learned about countless celebrities from their cameo appearances, Beatles songs (“Octopus’s Garden”), and the infinite wisdom of Kermit the Frog.  I make a habit of listening to “Rainbow Connection” at least once a week, even if I have to find it a place in a rock, jazz, hip-hop, blues or classical mix, just so I can remember what’s really important.

                On the way home to America after surviving my year in Japan, I watched the newest Muppet Movie, the first one in over a decade.  It had been out for a long time, but I was in Japan, so I had yet to see it.  The main musical number was written by Brit from Flight of the Conchords, a show about New Zealanders in Brooklyn trying to survive in the city as artists the same year that I moved to Brooklyn: 

Everything is great, everything is grand
I got the whole wide world in the palm of my hand
Everything is perfect, it’s falling into place
I can’t seem to wipe this smile off my face

Life's a happy song
when there’s someone by my side to sing along

When you’re alone life can be a little rough
It makes you feel like you’re 3 feet tall
When it’s just you times can be tough
When there’s no one there to catch your fall

I looked at my arm.  No kidding.

Then it got toward the end when they were trying to meet their goal, and they made everyone happy and amazed them with their persistence, but they still didn’t win (sorry, you should have seen it by this point if you cared about Muppets).  It was really sad to watch Kermit admit defeat to all of his Muppet friends, and say that it had all been a waste of time.  It was even sadder for me because I felt like a failure. 

I didn’t go to Tokyo after their worst disaster since World War II because I liked Ninja Turtles and Super Mario ten years ago.  I went there because I thought it was a map to love!  And not in the spiritual sense that the sphere is a map to love that is everywhere.  I wanted real love, tangible love.  I wanted to find my soul bride.  I’d gone to India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, China, Egypt, Germany, Ireland, through the southern United States in a tent and on strangers’ couches traveling by bus and by thumb, to Mexico, and then all the way to Japan… 

It was not easy to persist with the Japan plan after the earthquake.  EVERYBODY I knew told me to cancel the trip, and not just for a month, but forever since it was nothing but a nuclear wasteland in everyone's mind where I lived.  I had spent seven weeks trying to stop my friends and family from filling me with their fears, even if it was out of genuine concern for my well-being, and logical concern at that.  But I knew it was something I had to go through, as much as the idea of an earthquake or an aftershock seriously unsettled me.  I’d never experienced either before.

And I still hadn’t found a partner.  I’d met many amazing women along the way, and while in Japan I dated a little, and probably could have married someone if I wanted to.  I would have dated a lot more if I wasn’t so terrified at being trapped in a foreign country forever, having met several gaijin who had suffered that fate through unexpected pregnancies.  After all, I'd been the most free I'd ever been in my life, and returning with more new "reality adjustment" to sort through for stories than ever before.  Not to mention I'd never taught before.  This isn't to say there was no romance, kissing or sex.  I mostly held myself back and focused on work most of the time.  Even so, I’d ultimately come home empty handed without the soul mate wife I had been so sure I was going to find.  Single.  Alone in the universe.  Damn it.  All of my close friends knew what I was hoping to find, although I knew that's not necessarily something you can force by going to another country unless that's really as much of a criterion as you have for making a life partner commitment. 

I was also missing the great Sakura festival for the second year in a row.  I’d originally planned to go during the peak of the cherry blossoms blooming in April 2011, but been delayed by the crisis situation caused by the earthquake/tsunami, and now here I was leaving just before the beautiful buds began to bloom.   

Back in 2010, between Asian and American journeys, I’d been riding somewhere with my dad in his car, probably to Home Depot or something like that.  He was listening to National Public Radio as usual, and they began a piece with, “The Taj Mahal!”

And I thought, “I went there.”

“The Pyramids!”

“…yes!”  (Oh yes...)

“The Cherry Blossom Festivals in Japan!”

“Wait…what?”  Supposedly they were one of the three top wonders in the world. 

And here I was, having gone through all this trouble to live here for a year, and I’d just missed it on the way in and was just missing it on the way out too.  I didn’t have a choice, because my cousin was getting married, and I couldn’t miss that to stay longer.  I’d known him longer than anyone outside my immediate family.

My focus returned to the movie, where Kermit walked outside to see crowds of fans cheering for all of them.  The money didn’t matter.  They’d given the world something new and made people happy.  Better yet, thanks to the “of course everything works out” philosophy of happy movies, they ended up getting their money soon anyway.

I immediately thought of all the great people I loved who I was about to see again for the first time in a long time, and how they'd always loved me no matter what I'd tried to accomplish, or how I used whatever skills and experiences I've been given to show to and share with the world.   I started tearing up… and even a few drops made their way down my shirt.  Not crying, just a little touched by all of it.  Luckily no one was sitting next to me.  I hadn’t done that since the Japanese earthquake, and I hadn’t really cried in about three years.  And then I started thinking about that last time I’d cried and I felt even more alone in the universe…

---------------------------------------------------------

2009, before I started all of the journeys.  Romantic success, then fiasco. 

Summary:  Long distance relationship with girl goes really well, then really badly after miscommunication, hesitation, impatience and all of that.  I made this crazy visit to Chicago, and had a great time, but wrote this dumb letter, and got totally chewed out for it, and I deserved it, even if it wasn't completely by the books in honesty, and I really gave in too much.  But whatever, it ended.  I learned a lot and I think we both live life well.  From now on I pay more attention and listen more, a skill that has helped me survive around the world.

After getting the biggest ego stomp of my life, I read over the first draft of the letter I had written the girl, and I at least felt good about my own sanity.  It might not have been the move to make, but I had truly said what I wanted to say, even if it sounded stupid or passionate.  Months later a close friend of mine told me about a time where a guy she really liked surprised her by telling her that he was going to visit her, and he told her way ahead of time too, and she admitted to me that she was really mean and "bitchy" and unfair to him because she was so scared that someone liked her that much to go through all of that trouble.  I couldn't believe it coming from her, but it made me feel better about my ability to exist in society.

The next day I rode the Amtrak down to New York City and met my cousin Dan in Hoboken.  My friend Yash had flown out from San Francisco to check out the scene, and we took shifts doing the all night drive down to the temporary "music city miracle" that is Bonnaroo.

We had a good time at the shows, but I was pretty bummed a lot of the time.  My favorite performances were by Phish, Bon Iver, and actually Bruce Springsteen, the Saturday night headliner.  My dad had given me this deluxe CD/DVD version of Born to Run my last semester at college, and I remember listening to it on the Amtrak ride up the Hudson River, January 2006, coming home from my first visit with my great friend Rob down in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Here I was, three years later, back at Bonnaroo, seeing an act that every hipster loathed and almost every true hippie was at the least confused by.  I loved it because it not only synched in with my quickly approaching lifestyle, but it was a connection to my father’s experience growing up.  Not to mention that it was a Christmas gift from him, and he kind of looks like Santa Claus.  At one point a Santa Claus came on stage while they sang, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and then said, “This one is for all the graduates!” and played “Born to Run” and then “Thunder Road.”

Show a little faith

There's magic in the night... 
 

After that we were waiting for the next show to start when I heard a familiar song…

Oh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me

But you won’t let those robots defeat me…

They were playing the whole album on the sound system while waiting for the next act to begin.

And I don’t know how a man decides

what’s right for his own life

It’s all a mystery...

 That song is called “Fight Test”.  It’s about going for a woman even though you have competition instead of playing it cool and hoping she’ll eventually feel like a fool for not picking you herself.  I had to laugh at myself in front of everyone, and couldn’t help relating the irony of my most recent romantic fiasco.  “If only I hadn’t listened to Wayne Coyne, I wouldn’t be miserable now.  Sometimes you have to fight, and sometimes they say, ‘Stop fighting for me.  Go away.’  And you feel stupid." 

Because I’m a man

Not a boy

There are things you can’t avoid

You have to face them

When you’re not prepared to face them

Soon I lost track of my cousin Dan when he was using the bathroom, so I waited by the fountain and watched the crescent moon taunting me with her smile.  “Ha Ha!  You’re alone!"

Do You Realize

that you have the most beautiful face?

Do You Realize

we’re floating in space?

The next morning I somewhat voluntarily got stranded there after my cousin revealed on the drive down that he had been promoted since we’d made the plans, and that he had to be back at work at 8 am on Monday.  The second Phish show finished around midnight on Sunday, a seventeen hour drive away.  I told him to go ahead, not to worry about me, and I would find a way back home.  After all, I was living in a parking lot of hippies.

I walked from car to car checking for Northeast license plates and innocently offering up my sad story, and almost everyone told me they would love to if only they hadn’t packed their vehicles to the brim beforehand.  Then I took a shower to clear my head, walked down the wet stairs, slipped, sliced open my arm on the metal railing, and saw over an inch deep into my own muscle tissue, layers of life I didn’t even know actually existed at the time.  It took seven stitches to heal me and bandage me up, and then send me back out into the crowd to hunt for a ride home again.

I had never felt more like a lonely and miserable failure in all my life.  Not only was I still stewing about being told I completely sucked for the first time after being told I was loved for the first time, but the crowd and atmosphere had completely changed in this magical place where I had had the deepest joyous experiences of my life.  Everyone was younger than I remembered, which made me feel a very old 25, and they were all wearing those completely ridiculous neon hipster glasses that EVERYBODY was wearing to show how artsy and hip they were, just like EVERYBODY else.  They were all so above everything, and every show was merely another channel on the TV to surf.  I'm definitely overreacting, because it was Bonnaroo, with a zillion great bands and activities in the summertime with drugs, art and alcohol abound, so obviously there were plenty of peaceful gazes and supreme smiles.  I learned a very valuable lesson about inner and outer circumstance that day, and which one truly determines your well-being.  Even so, there didn’t seem to be a lot of magic around.

All the southern hippies snorted at my “need ride back to NY” sign.  I guess nobody liked New York.  And all this time I had viewed this hallowed ground as a sanctuary of creative acceptance.  Eventually one guy with a red beard drinking a beer said he could take me to the Nashville airport the next day, and then another guy said he could take me to DC where I could catch a bus.  That was good enough for me, and I entered the festival with hope.  But somehow things didn’t feel right during Snoop Dogg, the most famous gangster rapper alive, born and bred in the city of Angels.  I liked some of his music and admitted that he was a great entertainer, but it just seemed really weird to see all of these white hippies singing along about shooting people and evangelically singing the praises of unbridled egotism.  I was probably just mad about being alone in a crowd with a bloody red bandage on my arm.  I wasn’t even enjoying any special plants at the time, so I’m sure that’s another reason the crowd was so happy while I was so curmudgeon, not that I need special plants to be happy.  But sometimes something, anything, is better than feeling like I was.

But then some guy from Westchester, NY somehow saw my sign, offered me a ride, gave me his number, and I was happy again.  He also gave me a delicious chocolate.  I was only watching Snoop to get close for Phish anyway, and I got ten rows back.  I found myself partying with a graying Phishead named Schmitty and his two lovely hippie girlfriends.  During the intermission I noticed that my friend Russ’s best friend Josh was just ten feet away from me, smiling happily on the other side of a fenced off pathway through the crowd for VIP ticket holders.  During the encore Bruce Springsteen came out to play "Glory Days" with them.  One of the girls was confused, but Schmitty was ecstatic, probably because he was on ecstasy.  I wasn't on ecstasy, but I totally agreed when he said, "Have you ever seen them play this before?"  I shook my head.  The he nodded and said, "EXACTLY," and started dancing his heart out.  Soon after they played the song “Prince Caspian”, which I had never seen them play.  “I float upon the waves”.  I was really, really, really happy that I had stayed.

Of course, afterward, nobody returned my phone calls, or they’d already left without me, and I was stranded again, many miles from home.  But then I remembered the first guy who could take me to the airport, and I found him and the offer was still good.  Of course, his car wouldn’t start at first, and it was 95 degrees in the sun.  I was practically passed out in the back when I saw a sign for “Murfreesboro” and remembered that a family friend had gone to college there.  I made it to the airport, but all of the flights were booked for 24 hours.  As I expected to roll out my sleeping bag in the waiting area, my mom texted to my cell phone’s last ounce of battery that our family friends were visiting their daughter in Murfreesboro, and they would come pick me up and take care of me.  I’d had a lot of drama with their son growing up.  He’d been my first friend, but then he became the first person to punch me in the face.  That was all a long time ago, and we were cool, but it was still interesting to me how his family saved me.  The mother works in operating rooms and inspected my wound to make sure it was clean, and the father drove me back to the airport the next day.  My friend Brad picked me up from the airport in Albany because my parents were out of town, and he got me to the doctor with an hour to spare before the expiration time for an effective tetanus shot.  It had been ten years since my last one, and that’s how long you’re supposed to wait before a booster.  A week later they took out the stitches, and now there’s still a deep scar on my arm.  It was fun to show my friends around the campfire.

I tell people it’s a smile reminding me that I’ll always make it home whenever I’m alone, in danger and confused about the next step.

-----------------------------------------------------

Almost three years of travel later, I found myself on an airplane from Tokyo to Los Angeles, watching the Muppets and rooting for Kermit because he's Kermit and he sings “Rainbow Connection.”  At least he gave it his all.  I looked at my smile scar and remembered just how scared I had been to even go to Japan in the first place.  Yet here I was, still alive, the smile on my arm reminding me that regardless of the treasures I’d sought, at least I hadn’t come to any harm.

What’s more, I was about to return to sing life’s happy song with my two best friends since I began in this world, my cousins Dan and Mike.  For Mike, it would be the most important week of his life.  I would see my parents, aunts and uncles too.  My Uncle Ted would be there.  When I went to India, he was jealous of me going off on my own all alone, and the day I first canceled my ticket to Japan after everyone else told me to give up, he told me not to listen to them, that I'd be fine, and that he'd see me on the news.

After the Texas wedding I would spend a week visiting friends in New York City, and then enjoy some time on my parents’ estate upstate to see more of the wonderful friends who have always sung life’s songs with me, whether in tune or off key, always making me happy.  They were always there for me whenever I got sick of being independent, which I was mostly involved in choosing for myself.  After all, nobody made me do all of that traveling.  There were friendly, fun, adventurous girls I’d gone on dates with and chosen not to pursue further.  If anything, I was more afraid of losing my independence than being alone.

I thought about all of this on the plane as I prepared to touch down in America.  I didn't have any magic beans with me any more.  I'd done that stuff enough to know that the true magic was inside my heart and my mind and anywhere in the world where I chose to find it.  I started chiding myself for my moment of lonely weakness.  I'd been through too much to break down like that.  But at the same time, to quote Butters from South Park, "it made me feel human".  There are many ways to feel human, and as much as we want to be perfect, we must have a balance of experiences to be able to truly feel this love that is real.  I’d actually been incredibly content and joyous for much of my time not only in Japan, but wherever I was when I was on the road.  There were plenty of people to share the love, and I had seriously sought spiritual solitude to achieve balance and appreciate the people I took for granted.

I began to wonder if I'd improved at all at avoiding egotism.  I'd spent three years constantly experiencing the world's immense complexity and mysterious networked multiplicity of mortal manifestations of loving infinity, yet all the stories I had to tell centered around one person: me.

But maybe that was the point.  Maybe I'd gone through all of this for my own understanding and experience, maybe so... but I felt like that accounted for 1% of its purpose in the universal experience, at best.  The rest was for whoever was willing to listen to me get this off my chest.  When I was beaten down and feeling like a clown, I could always look in a book.  I didn't care who the writer was talking about.  In fact, if they were talking about themselves and their own experiences, so much the better, as long as they were honestly examining themselves and passing on clues to guide me around this map of love.  Maybe I could write a book like that someday.  No maybe about it.  I should.  I'd survived, so why not?  Besides, I'd met and listened to hundreds of humans, so at the least I was improving.  Soon my 20s would be over and I'd be less about myself, although still driven to pursue my love of creativity wherever it took me.  Somebody should be able to learn something from all of that...