well it's new year's
guess it's time for making promises i may or may not keep
taking stock and inventory of my past year and what i have and have not accomplished
and making a plan for the year to come..
i think for tonight
for this new year's eve
for maybe
possibly the first time in my life
i will make the simplest
and yet most difficult promise to myself
i will try to be happy
funny, you may think that's what we all do every day or our life
but think about it
is it?
is it really?
i work hard to put money in the bank so that i can feel safer in this big often lonely city
but feeler safer and all the things one gives up to feel safer, to build a nest egg
to build a fortress against the unknown don't always make one happier
i paint and i write with the hope that one day, these things will make me immortal
but often, far, far too often i don't paint and write for the sheer joy of the creative process.. my good friend debbie, an amazing opera singer shared something with me last night...i asked her what she wanted from her opera career thinking she would say, fame, fortune, a debut at The Metropolitan Opera House...but instead she answered...that she simply wanted to sing and to grow and to fine tune and improve her craft until its peak....she wanted to sing for the sheer joy of singing and perfecting her voice...Debbie knows how to find happiness in her singing..
i have been really down on my self as a writer and a painter simply because i have not achieved mainstream recognition...i have lost sight of the simple wonderful gift of the creative urge..to really find happiness i have to throw away the result of the creative process and stay with the process itself..
all of my friends have pointed out to me that right now is a time in my life when i should be walking around with endless joy
i have survived running away from home at 15
moving to Crown Heights Brooklyn during a high crime era when I was only 16 years old, unskilled, broke and alone and surviving and perhaps in some ways excelling..and yet now...a little more than two decades later..i don't roll in pride and joy and accomplishment...i feel only how tired all that surviving has made me...i feel like a war veteran...in some ways...
La Cubana and I went away to Washington for a few nice days...but our return to NYC was terrible for reasons I won't go into...and so I have dwelled only on our unpleasant return..In other words, I don't think about the flight, I think about the crash...
Life throws us so many painful things: death, disapointment, loss
how can we ever expect to survive these things, if we don't at least try to find happiness when we can?
so my New Year's resolution is to try to be happy
to search for the large and the tiny things that give me joy and try to experience them..to open my heart to new things and not dwell so much on the old
to reduce the complex bag of crap the world throws at me to two lists:
what's really important in the scheme of things
and what is not
and to be strong enough
and willing enough
and brave enough
to walk away from something if it means that my happiness must be forfeit to keep it
i want to be happy
simple
total
impossible
and possible
i simply want to smile
