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Real life happens beneath the surface. I wonder how many people slide through life, denying the misconstrued reality beneath the smiling face.

New York has been awesome. I’ve experienced so much in such little time. But, it is not wise for me to stay here anymore. It is kind of like being in a relationship that doesn’t quite fit. (Ah, the irony and the layers, parallels of my experience here.) As many good things that may be there in the relationship, there are those parts that I ignore with hopes that they will disappear. It is the puzzle piece that almost fits, that almost makes the picture perfect, but no matter how hard I pound it simply will not fit. My efforts can not change the fact.

It is time for me to take what I have learned, and go and apply it somewhere else. Hmmm…there are some little fortune cookie type wisdoms that can cause as much damage as good. One of them is this: “Make mistakes, learn from them.”

Yes, do learn from your mistakes, but don’t wait till you make mistakes to learn something. “You will mess up, but get up and keep going.” Yes, we will mess up, and yes, you must get up and keep going. But match the two of those mantras together and one can rationalize just about anything one does. It seems like you get robbed of the knowledge gained from a mistake if you go and make it again. What did you learn?

I’ve learned that I need to live around people with a vision like mine. I can not grow and blossom if the sun is blocked by dense skepticism and negativity around me. Eventually I will wilt. Having learned this, I obligated to take the next step, to surround myself with light.

I hear it is pretty sunny in Arizona.

Brother Pio pulled up at my stoop in an admirable rusted and beat-to-hell early 80’s import. Knowing that St. Francis would be proud, I was proud too. I was confident and smiling as I hopped in the car with the two bald, bearded friars.

We headed east to the Padre Pio Shelter at their South Bronx friary (where the brothers live and work.) Every night sixteen men are brought to the shelter adjoining the friary. You know it isn’t a shelter, it is a home. Everything about the Padre Pio home is super-nice and cozy. It is twice as spacious and clean as my own apartment. So sixteen men–guests–are bused in from a different part of the city. For the next twelve hours, each is given responsibilities for cooking and cleaning. Together, they assure that the home stays clean and welcome for the next night’s guests.

The homeless shelters around the city are hell. The men stand a good chance to get robbed or beaten by other men at the shelter. Gangs control the shelters and everything that goes on inside of them.

We gathered around two long wooden tables for dinner and prayed as a family. There was no ego, no pride at this table. There were a few Franciscan brothers and sixteen homeless men. It startled me…I am so used to dealing with monstrous egos, and now there are all these people that have no reason to be big and act big. Each of those sixteen men knew that I knew they had no home. They live on the streets. (For all they knew, I remembered one of them asleep in the subway station.) The men knew they needed help, and they were humbly accepting it…like a child.

These are grown up little boys.

Earlier I was hanging out with the kids on my street, playing games, popping wheelies, and doing magic tricks. There is one little boy, barely two, named Omar. He is the quietest, sweetest, most huggable kid! Where will he be in thirty years? We have free will, and we have an opportunity to paint our own future. But what becomes of those whose external challenges and internal dispositions shackle them to poverty and a broken home? How does one escape the cycle? I see the generations of brokenness and poverty turning over all around my neighborhood. (All this stuff spinning in my head…I didn’t get enough sleep and I am struggling pulling together all the emotions and thoughts…)

Though I’ve worked in homeless shelters often, I’ve never had my heart tugged quite like last night. These men were grown up little boys: they still long to be loved, held, and rocked to sleep, just like my little friend Omar. It is easy to hug Omar because he is so helpless, innocent, and lovable. These men are not as easy to love; in the back of my head says, “They did this to themselves.” Does that make them any less worthy of being loved? No. Perhaps they are more worthy of love. Every day these men deal with the sneers and cringe of others as they rattle their paper cup, hoping for a few coins. Many people deny their existence, and stroll on the sidewalk, Gucci bags tucked under their arm.

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I am at a loss. I can not package these thoughts in words; I am in disarray. I will simply close with the words of Mother Teresa, whose entire life was dedicated to serving the poor. She is my hero, and I wish I could be more like her.

“When we touch the sick and needy, we touch the suffering body of Christ.” -Mother Teresa

“What the poor need, even more than food and clothing and shelter (though they need these, too, desperately), is to be wanted. It is the outcast state their poverty imposes upon them that is the more agonizing.”

“Let there be no pride or vanity in the work. The work is God’s work, the poor are God’s poor. Put yourself completely under the influence of Jesus, so that he may think his thoughts in your mind, do his work through your hands, for you will be all-powerful with him who strengthens you.”

“Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting. In the slums we are the light of God’s kindness to the poor. To children, to the poor, to all who suffer and are lonely, give always a happy smile - Give them not only your care, but also your heart.”

“God has created us to love and to be loved, and this is the beginning of prayer–to know that he loves me, that I have been created for greater things.”

My experience at the men’s shelter a couple nights ago has made me think a lot. On the train home tonight I looked around, curious where the others were going, what they were thinking. The train rocked back and forth, people’s heads rested against the metal walls, eyes closed, pretending there weren’t fifty others in the car.

(–Mother Teresa said something like this: Jesus is there, beneath the dirt, the disease, and the ragged clothes.)

I stepped out the subway car and walked towards the stairs. I saw an old man, head shaking uncontrollably. He lifted his nicked wooden cane, unable to hold it still before he placed it down again…as if the cane fought against him. His dark skin was wrinkled and hung low.

My walk to my apartment was quiet and reflective. I was shielded by my headphones, distanced from those I passed on the sidewalk. Having been scammed and taken advantage of, it was difficult to know that I am called to unconditionally love each of those people. It is easy to love your friends, loving your enemy takes an act of God.

I remember a quote by Mother Teresa from when I was young, but it is only now that I can appreciate the wisdom of the words. Perhaps I will read them again in a year and be intrigued all the more.

“People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest person with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest person with the smallest mind. Think big anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack if you help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you might get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.” - Mother Teresa

“What you are going through reminds me of St. Francis. He would retreat into the woods for prayer and quiet time with God.  That’s like when you do your Life Teen talks; you get spiritually charged. Then he would come back into Assisi and people would expect him to still be the playboy. His friends were partying away, banging through the streets and alleys of the town. That’s just like when you come back to New York, and all your crew is in the clubs. He was there, but couldn’t experience like they did…he had experienced something much deeper and real. They continue because they’ve not seen the Light.” (Matt M. shared, after a long talk after a long night in the city.)

I like going to clubs in New York. There is such a concentrated feeling of “cool,” it is really unbelievable. It is unbelievable because it is not real. It is a clubhouse that only lets in an elite few, usually based on your appearance, perceived wealth and power–how well you add to the club. But you know if someone were really that important, that cool, they would be doing something more important and cool: in the studio painting, recording, dancing, acting, writing, etc. They (I) would be making something happen, rather than just be at a place that is happening.

(Am breaking this apart to much? I am a good boy, and have a good time.)

Just like St. Francis brought his “day in the woods” to his “night in Assisi,” I talk freely about my morals and relationship with God everywhere I go. I can’t help it, God is too real to me, and He is especially real when I am surrounded by the unreality of the New York City nightlife.

One goal of this summer was to exhaust the nightlife out of my fascination. Coming from a small town with a limited palette of experiences, I’ve always been fascinated by the bigger and better. I’ve been going to clubs since I was sixteen years old…Athens, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York. Now, I am about to get a real job where people depend on me. I am to that point where the nightlife doesn’t fascinate me anymore.; I am nearly twenty-three now, and it is time to move on.

But since I have another week in New York, I’ll be shakin’ my bon bon every night this week. Uh huh, yeah. (As my buddy Biggy said.)

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–who am I kidding? Where am I going with this journal? I think I tidied it up way before I could be totally honest. In two weeks, I am gonna be at every club in Phoenix/Mesa/Scottsdale. Maybe it is something in my blood. I am not tired of it. Livin’ la vida loca. I bang.

It has been an eventful day in New York. My roomy Pat is a proud expedition leader through the concrete jungle. Here is the account of the safari he led us on.

We began at 151st street and Convent, walking downtown past all the 100yr old brownstones (the New York mansions.) At 132nd street we pushed East to a Harlem anniversary festival. The whole street was blocked off for several avenues. Food, music, and craft vendors did their business under canopies on the street side. We smiled at each white person walking by, thinking, “what are you doing here?” They smiled back, thinking the same thing. lol

We ventured downtown on Lenox avenue, crossed 125/Martin Luther King and stepped in the historical Lenox Lounge. At night this is the most hoppin’ jazz bar in New York. It was mid afternoon, and there were just a few old people getting in some drinks before their evening around town. Wow…this place has history. The tiled floors, the weathered booths, the black and white photos framed, hanging on the solid walls. To think of the musicians and parties that have gone down in this place. Everyone has partied here: the Mafia, black panthers, jazz masters, and now a couple tourists and some white guys who live in Harlem (that’d be us.)

We ventured up and down 125th, in and out of art galleries, demolition yards, and fruit stands. This is the street where Bill Clinton is supposedly living/working. Everyone and their super talks about it, but no one has seen him. He is a ghetto/urban legend, doing nothing more than instilling a strange sense of pride in people unlike himself, and making rent go up about 10% in a thirty-block radius.

Tired and hungry, we pushed west and downtown towards Columbia University via Riverside Park. There are a couple BEAUTIFUL churches near Columbia. (These are the kind of places that make you want to get married, just so you can pass through the tall wooden doors with your stunning bride, rice sprinkling from the sky.) So we finally made it to Tom’s Restaurant.

Tom’s is famous for two reasons: 1) That song 2) “Seinfeld.” That song was really hot back in the early 90’s on Club MTV and all. On “Seinfeld” it just says “Diner.” The inside is different than from the show, b/c that part is filmed in a studio probably in LA. It was such a good time eating and laughing with Pat, Matt, and Maria. I met Matt a year ago in Rome; I met Pat six months ago in Central Park; I met Maria a few days ago. I’ll be moving out of Pat’s apartment in a couple weeks and into an apartment with Matt in Arizona.

The Thanksgiving-like feast at the diner made us pretty drowsy, so we grabbed some coffee to go and pressed on to Central Park. The park is a tall, skinny rectangle carved out of the middle of Manhattan. We entered the green island on the upper west corner. They say you can live in New York for your whole life, and never see all of Central Park. Just five minutes in, I could’ve been on the Appalachian Trail in the mountains of North Carolina. I couldn’t hear or see the city, just tall trees and bugs. It was dusk, and it felt like I was on a camp out, making my last run through the woods to get firewood for the night.

We stumbled along the dark lake shore to a place that Pat promised was worth the walk. We climbed up the rocks, looked out over the still lake and to the skyscrapers of Midtown. What a great spot, hidden deep in Central Park, hidden deep in Manhattan. The dark of the night quieted everything, us included. The water perfectly reflected the sparkling buildings, disturbed only by the ducks sliding across the surface. So cool.

We made our way out of Central Park, passing under arched rock bridges and along creek sides. We made it to The Dakota, the building where John Lennon lived and was murdered. Matt, a musician, is such a lover of music. You could tell he was moved. Just across the street from The Dakota is a small part of the park called “Strawberry Fields” that John Lennon wrote about.

Tired and hungry again, we bought the “Die Hard: 3″ DVD and headed back up to our apartment. The movie was filmed in New York, and we had a good time watching it, spotting scenes filmed at street corners we stood at earlier today. We indulged in lots of movie junk food and sprawled around our living room. What a day!

Days like today remind me how unique this city is, and how much I am going to miss it. There is culture and excitement around every corner, at every subway stop. My feet hurt.