There is this Shangri-La we hope to live in sans difficulties, sans sorrow with abundant happiness.

While I certainly agree with the Shakespeare quote:

“Nothing is either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”

That doesn’t mean things will be easy or happy for that matter. It doesn’t mean they won’t be either, though.

So where does that leave us?

Life is not for happiness. Nor is it for sorrow. Life is not meant for ease nor for struggle. But life has these things in them and to be present to them when they arise is to be alive and participating fully in the action of life.

In the artist section of Union Square there are a regular cast of characters who show up every day selling their wares. Many scrape a living out of it.

R is the estranged wife of one of these men. I have seen her around and she has said hello before and we have briefly chatted in the past but recently she sat down to talk. She took four wadded up dollar bills and opened them up and then folded them together before she sat down.

I insisted that she didn’t need to pay for anything until I did something. But she insisted.

R has been married to this man, the vendor, for a few years but three years ago she had a stroke which left her not able to work. She has been on disability since and has a small inheritance she uses to stay afloat. R speaks with that sort of a slushy lisp from the stroke and she apologizes for it in a very endearing way. After her stroke her husband started getting upset that she wouldn’t (but obviously couldn’t) do the things around the house any longer – laundry, cleaning, cooking.

He encouraged her to move in with her sister. She did that and he started seeing someone else very quickly.

She is staying married because her husband is a veteran and in three years she will start getting a pension. R says that the whole thing has been painful because all her friends know about this and she always feels embarrassed that she is staying in this relationship for a pension – which she would need but also because she knows how angry it makes her husband that she is going to get his pension. She said that it is very strange for a Jewish girl to have found solace in Jesus but she said that her Judaism and Jesus have together given her much solace.

But she asked me…

“What do you think I should do?”

What do you say? This story is crazy and terrible and R is totally sympathetic. I asked her if she had ever considered connecting with a new circle of friends who didn’t know her husband. Maybe connecting over shared interests?

R said that she hadn’t made new friends in years.

“I have a routine. I talk to who I talk to and I go where I always go.”

And I could feel the grooves that she had worn into the sidewalks from her apartment to her various destinations.

I asked her about movies or a ceramics class or playing an instrument. Something that interested her where she might meet other people. Here I was just listening to this woman. I think that she valued just that alone – the listening, the asking. She smiled in a reminiscent way and said

“Do you know that I have always wanted to be in play? It doesn’t have to big or on Broadway or anything like that. But plays have weird people in them sometimes and I am a weird person.”

I said that I didn’t know of any plays she could be in but I asked her what she thought about taking an acting class and seeing who she met. She might make new friends. She moved from her slumped position to the front of the seat and wondered aloud

“That could be really fun, right?”

I wrote down a few names of acting schools and I told her to do some research before she spent any money and to talk to someone at the school to see their thoughts.

“Should I look on the computer first?”

That seemed like a good idea and then actually visit the schools and find out about an eight week course or something else.

R sweetly thanked me by kissing my hands and left the table with the same words that many arrive in New York saying:

“Maybe I can be an actor.”

This whole talk was beautiful and heartbreaking. As sweet and genuine as R is she is equal parts an odd duck to be sure.  I wonder how she will fare in her search. I felt like I couldn’t do much for R except listen and offer what I could where I could but sometimes that is enough.

The difficulty that R was experiencing wasn’t assuaged by our talk. But just listening to what she had to say and both of us being present to it allowed for a new door to open up that may start to change her day to day experience. It won’t necessarily change her difficult situation but it may allow for her situation not to be the overriding thing in her life.

In permaculture philosophy it is said that if your garden seemingly has too many snails and slugs your problem is not a snail/slug surplus but a duck deficiency (ducks eat snails and slugs).

All too often we try to eliminate the slugs and snails of our day to day lives rather than putting something in place that can keep  the slugs and snails in balance.

Perhaps an acting class might be the duck to R’s snails. What struggles are you simply present for? What might be the duck you would add so that you have just enough snails?

If you think a conversation or a creative approach like this could be of use to you where you are now, please book a session with me today.

The post Snail Surplus? Might be Duck Deficiency: On being present to difficulties. Sometimes I just listen. appeared first on Stillman Says.

But I didn’t ask. How can you really?

She came up with a friend who just stood and watched our interaction the whole time.

She introduced her name as R and asked

“How do I keep my brain sharp?”

I asked her if she was worried about her brain function – I wasn’t trying to be ignorant of her likely condition – I was just asking, you never know what an intention might be.

She replied that it was simply something she was concerned about. And that was fair enough. Prying isn’t required.

Starting off we chatted about how we are literate, pattern seeking creatures here in the west. We tend to find ways of doing things well and repeat those sequences. That approach essentially creates grooves in the brain – or neural pathways if you want to be fancy about it.

The brain is quite plastic and so to keep the brain supple and in top shape it is important to break patterns and recruit other parts of the brain to do the jobs at hand.

Here is a laundry list of what came out with her as she sat there – interested and engaged:

• Do the things normally done with her right hand  with her left.
• When walking to common locations to take alternate routes.
• Find the key to the front door of your home by touch and then open the door with closed eyes.
• See things you don’t normally see – museums, locations, people etc
• Get all multiple senses stimulated at the same time.
• Smell things and try to guess what they are.
• Write the alphabet on your hand with your tongue.

Basically radically break up the schedules and patterns of your life and do fun things that challenge you in lots of ways. She appreciated all this and smiled at the funness and silliness of some of the suggestions.

But I offered one other exercise that we could try in person together.

And she said she was game to try.

We have tremendous processing power in our brains but we often focus it through our language processing parts. But we can actually process quite a lot conversationally through other means. Gibberish conversations can be quite fun but we are going to have a conversation with numbers.

This is an improv game where the two players (though it could be more) have a conversation using sequential numbers instead of words until an agreed upon end number 7, 17, 48, 103 or whatever. So the first person says “1” and the second says “2” and next line from the first person is “3”.

Then the conversation goes on. But the trick is to imbue your number with emotional context, with gesture, with meaning. If done correctly everyone knows exactly what is happening despite the lack of words that convey any meaning. For a brain trying to keep sharp it is a dream – processing numerous things at the same time, disassociating words from meaning and reapplying them elsewhere, working outside the lingual network.

After describing the game and saying that we were going to have a conversation to 20 she planted into her seat.

I stood up from my chair and took a good look at her.

She had suddenly gone from relaxed to a little demure. Her legs tightened together and she looked over her left shoulder with the faintest hint of coyness. From that I took my cue.

I reached out my right hand onto her thin black shearling coat and leaned into her with a Lotharic, slightly pleading…

One.

She adjusted herself and looked right at me with a playfully prudish…

Two

Slightly rebuffed, I backed off but upped the desiring intensity trying a new tact, a new rationale…

Three

She quickly retorted, cutting me off but still leaving the door open by smiling and showing how she liked the pursuit…

Four

That open door was all I needed and I softened, sweetened and moved my arm around her and spoke a gentle

Five

While pianoing her arm down to the inside of her wrist.

R got bashful but turned the corner and started to be convinced by my longing feeling into our moment.

Six

My pleading was now teasing and promising all sorts of things as I hushed.

Seven

R smiled and said

I don’t think that we need to go all the way to 20.

Hot!

We both laughed and R’s companion smiled broadly.

It was brilliant and fun. We both knew who we were, what was happening and we were shockingly in the present with each other. There we were – young lovers on a porch late at night trying to come up with reasons to stay up and fool around and the girl happy to be convinced and not trying very hard to ignore the affections of her young lover.

R thanked me for every thing and R’s companion said “Very good Matthew. Very good indeed.”

She put money into my jar and took a card as did her companion.

But there was one more thing.

As R stood up she looked at me with the beginnings of tears in her eyes. Moved, she spoke,

“I have not been looked at like you just looked at me for years. To be wanted like that and hungered for. Pursued! Suddenly I feel really so very beautiful. I didn’t even know how much I missed it or wanted it. But now that I have it it’s even more than beautiful, I feel light and tingly and very much myself!”

And she placed both her hands on my cheeks and slowly kissed me. It was lip to lip, mouth to mouth. There was no danger of turning into a full makeout session but our lips touched fully enough so that that beautiful slight spread happens so that you sense the space and wetness behind.

I have been lucky to have had many kisses in my life but this one ranks way up there for authenticity and suprise. I was touched by it and by R very very much.

R’s companion was walking by the opposite direction perhaps an hour later or so and we chatted more. He stayed and watched another interaction I had and we have been chatting since. Ends up that he is a psychotherapist and he appreciated my method.

Often at the table we can find things we didn’t even know we were looking for that might even be more important than the thing that brought you to the table in the first place.

Freud said that it is the repressed erotic spirit in humankind that allows us to create civilization…but there is a price to pay for that.

Hopefully R became a bit uncivilized.

Maybe we all need just that.

The post I don’t think we need to go all the way to 20 appeared first on Stillman Says.

And things we don’t like we usually try to avoid. On one level this makes sense.

If you don’t like spinach, you avoid it.

If you don’t like your crazy racist aunt, you avoid her.

You don’t like the idea of dying so we do things that will hasten the arrival of death.

Of course the Nietzchean creed of “that which does not kill you makes you stronger” comes into effect…but really wouldn’t you rather just roll the dice and not do that thing which is an obstacle and see how it turns out? How much stronger will you be for eating spinach if it makes you gag?

And so this is the way of the world. Avoid the obstacles and if we can’t avoid them – fight them.

This gives us the War on Drugs or the War on Terror or the War on Cancer…or anything really. We seek to avoid and vilify our perceived obstacles.

None of this was in my mind when S came to my table and asked

Do you have children?

I don’t but I didn’t feel that would be an impediment to offering her something creative to whatever her situation was. She hadn’t said anything yet but she looked like she was going to say something. And then it came. Almost in one big breath. All at once.

S, replace the silverware your children normally use for dinner with clean garden shovels and shiny new pitchforks. And when they sit down to dinner seeing a regular plate of food with garden tools next to it they will obviously look at you like you have lost it. But you can just gently and calmly say ‘Boys, I realize that I have made dinner a really stressful place for you and I am sorry. If you want to eat your food really fast and in gigantic bites it shouldn’t be such a big deal to me and I have decided that I want to help you with that. Eat as fast as you want.’

Oh my God. This will totally work. I don’t need to fight my children. That is insane and wonderful. I want to go to a garden store. Now.

The post Lean into and heighten your obstacle appeared first on Stillman Says.

**********

I have been very fortunate to have been involved with the Upright Citizens Brigade since they first arrived in New York City from Chicago in 1996. I stumbled into their first show in New York by accident in the Winter of 1996 during Christmas Break in my senior year of college and was blown away by them and when I graduated in May 1996 I looked them up and signed up for classes before I even graduated. I’ll be forever grateful to Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh and Matt Besser for all they taught me in the three years they were my only teachers about comedy and improvisation – and I took classes constantly, concurrently, devotedly. They opened a vision for the world and to being on an improv stage to me that is still opening 17/18 years later.

Hey, did you know that I wrote a book about this?

**********

S has been a professional comedian for 12 years. We had a nice chat about New York City comedy – people we knew and liked. We did bits with each other – as comedy people do.

**********

There are innumerable things I have learned from performing and studying improvisational comedy but one thing is to play until you find the first unusual thing and then explore that. If that unusual thing is true, then what else is true? Then to look closely what a scene needs and only add that. Once you find all these things you can heighten a scene in remarkable ways. Another thing my improv teachers taught is that the only important thing in a scene is to tell the truth from the perspective of the character you are playing. Don’t try to be funny, just be truthful to that reality. There is truth in comedy and conversely there is comedy in truth if expressed in the right way.

**********

So S and I brainstorm a bit together on solutions for her which was actually really fun but nothing was clicking. She then mentioned that her mother was really sick and that was another thing that wasn’t helping her feel funny. S quipped

This is something else I can blame my mother for – her cancer is ruining my comedy career.

The delivery was just right and we both laughed. This was the unusual thing to pursue. It suddenly struck me absolutely clearly what S could do – Stand Up Tragedy.

By eliminating her goal of being funny and doing the opposite of funny she could actually be free to be funny.

This sort of oblique approach can actually move you in remarkable ways. For example when you go from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean via the Panama Canal you will find yourself approximately 75 miles further East than where you entered it. In the short term you actually go backwards – yet it is still the fastest way to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific by ship. This is totally counterintuitive but has broad application – short term backwardness actually can move you forward in stunning ways.

Though we don’t see each other very often (sadly, since I love him and his wife so much) one of my old improv friends Ari Voukydis, a few years ago, became interested in exploring tragedy improvisationally.

He directed a great run of a show called “Harsh” that never tried to be funny while it explored very dark subjects but often was hilarious because the scenes were so real and so truthful that laughter emerged. It is said that comedy emerges from pain and I think there is much truth to this. I was fortunate to be in a class that Ari gave exploring the same subject again which gave birth to a short lived (but really good in my opinion) improv tragedy group called Bedtime Stories for Kidnapped Children that Ari coached. The women in that class and that group inspired me and I saw some of the best acting on a stage that I have ever been a part of. Some of the sickest and saddest stuff that fearlessly went there and regularly was brilliantly funny because it was true.

**********

If S stood for Stella – she suddenly got her groove back. The idea of not trying to get people to laugh was totally freeing and from there her powers of observation could explore tragedy. She instantly got the connection and said that material was coming to her right then and there. I told her some other recollections of tragic scenes that BS4KC did and we both clapped and laughed with glee as she started telling me some outlines of her sad and miserable stories.

So Ari, Ari, Christina, Megan, Crystal, Jessica, and CeCe – you changed a comedians life. She said so. But you all still inspire me too. Thanks!

**********

So where does this leave you, the reader?

We seek happiness and satisfaction and all sorts of good things. So we point ourselves in that direction and go for them – don’t spare the horses. But we may end up actually taking the long route. Like the Panama Canal there may be an inner short cut we can all take that from a micro-perspective appears to go backwards. I encourage you to have the courage to look at the opposite of your goals and see if they are worth pursuing.

Let’s choose a very simple example to explore so we don’t get the wrong idea.

You want to train to run a marathon. At first blush your thought might be “the opposite of training to run a marathon is sitting on the couch eating Twinkies.” Well, maybe. But S didn’t acquiesce to stopping writing, she opened up to stop trying to be funny. She was just as willing to write. So the opposite of training for a marathon might be running simply for pleasure for all the same time on all the days you were planning to run an 80 mile week. Or sprinting short distances instead of running long ones.

S got back to me and said that her new material was killing because she wasn’t driving towards punchlines and she was just deeply expressing her philosophy about the tragic things she was seeing in the world through her wry sensibilities.

I would love to hear what some of your goals are and speculate what their opposites might be and how that might open a new direction for you.

The post Chase Tragedy: Do the opposite of your goals appeared first on Stillman Says.

**********

There is nothing simple about the country of Somalia on the eastern Horn of Africa. It achieved  independence from Britain and Italy in 1960 and because of its important strategic location near the mouth of the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia a proxy war was fought there between the USSR and the United States during the Cold War. The Red Sea (and the Suez Canal at the north end of it) is where much of the shipping of the world travels through and certainly much of the oil that travels by tanker. Because of this valuable location the country was flooded with weapons for thirty years to change the flow of commerce and determine regional influence. Both nations disrupted the economy and the politics there for two generations to say nothing of the English and Italians before them.

**********

A young man named S walked up to my table and chairs and after briefly chatting asked me one of the most unusual questions I have been asked at the table.

“What would you do about the pirate situation off the coast of Somalia?”

If you don’t know there is a serious problem with Somali pirates off the eastern coast of Africa hijacking boats and causing all sorts of problems. But it isn’t as simple as that.

I am no stranger to weird questions at the table but at least the strangest among those looking for a creative approach to something usually have a relationship to the problem.

S wasn’t Somali. He had never been an investor who had a boat hijacked.

He had no connection to Somalia.

Or hijacking.

Or pirates.

Anything except for having read about it and felt like it was important.

**********

Somalia, despite being a poor nation, is a country rich in natural resources. It has the longest coastline of any country in Africa so much of its economy, such that it is, relies on the sea. It also has untapped oil reserves but the colonial powers that dominated the country for the last 250 years have crippled the country and the IMF did particular damage in the late 80’s. When the country was pushed towards ruin by Western interests in 1989/1990 and in 1991 the government collapsed three things happened

1. poverty soared in the country.
2. nuclear waste started to be dumped in Somali harbors and marshes by unmarked ships and people started getting sick and dying up and down the coast.
3. unmarked trawlers started heavily fishing the coast illegally and suddenly the coastal subsistence lifestyle was no longer possible.

A confluence of forces gave Somalis little choice but to try to protect their shores from toxic dumping and from food being stolen. They started becoming pirates and using all the spare weapons sitting around the country they started taking hostages, halting boats, getting some money and stopping the dumping and the fishing. Of course some reveled and prospered in the crime but the majority are just doing their best to get by at all.

**********

I tried with S to clarify the question because while I could theoretically give a creative approach to this problem, it wasn’t very practical to S. But he persisted with his query. So I obliged by suggesting that we role play not having a clue of where we were going. He plays a pirate and I play a hostage negotiator. We never went into the history of Somalia or what actually brought the pirates into existence…we just talked.

Negotiator
So Mister Pirate, what is it that you want?

Pirate
Money

N
For what?

P
Houses, cars, and girls.

N
And what do you want those for?

P
So I can feel powerful.

N
And why do you want to feel powerful?

P
So people wont fuck with me. So my dad wont fuck with me.

this is clearly not about pirates anymore

N
So once your dad wont fuck with you , then what?

P
Then I’ll be happy.

N
So you want to be happy?

P
Yes.

N
Ok, has there ever been a time when you didn’t have cars and houses and girls and your dad fucked with you that you have been happy?

P
Hell yes.

N
What allowed you to be happy then?

P
My faith.

N
Say more on that.

P
Job in the Bible is my hero. He had everything, lost it and took all that suffering and wouldn’t curse God and then was rewarded one hundred times over.

N
So you want to be more like Job?

P
Yeah, if I was more like Job I would stop being a pirate and realize that I can be happy right now.

This dialogue took perhaps two minutes and then stopped. S had gone from clever questioner to suddenly exposing something he hadn’t known he was looking for. He was shocked that his seemingly casual interest in Somali pirates was intimately connected to his own well being.

He wasn’t being glib when he said that this was ” a pretty good solution to the pirate problem.”

**********

We all seek happiness, to be sure. The nation of Somalia has much to work out but Somalia is a metaphor. Somalia is just like us and the pirates are part of ourselves. Like Somalia we each have a rich heritage, tremendous wealth, an open door on rich thoroughfares and have also been beset by difficulties from within and without. In being beset we put up defenses. We send out pirates to protect us from the sieges that we experience in our lives – criticism, judgement, stress and the like.

These inner pirates have a job to do – protect us from the outside world. But there comes a point that they have forgotten their original rationale for being pirates – to simply be happy. They get stuck in the role of pirating and hence lose connection with the original goal.

There is a place for defending ourselves from the world. There is a place for throwing up pirates. But there must come a time for us to call them back and, like Job, and like S, give our selves an opportunity to stop the struggle and be happy now.

Perhaps this is a tall order but seeing that we are habitually struggling may open up a new door on our struggle.

It did for S. What war have you  been fighting for so long that you forgot what you were fighting for? Can you cease that to tap into your wealth?

The post Like it or not, you are a Somali pirate appeared first on Stillman Says.

That is what a small sign says on my table in Union Square in New York. The bigger sign reads “Creative Approaches To What you Have Been Thinking About.” What that means exactly is mysterious. People pay in varying amounts. People pay in non-currency like hugs, art, chopsticks and candy. People don’t pay.

Take what you need…that is where the mystery resides.

I have had a number of people who have pseudo-stalked the table greedily eyeing the money jar waiting for an opportunity to see how they might get the relatively few dollars that happen to be in the jar when they come by. It isn’t a regular occurrence but it does happen.

When I start to see that play out I explain that they need to do the “creative approaches” part in good faith before the variable payment plan can take effect.

Z was no different. His clothing looked like they were picked from a grab bag and they were pretty dirty and so was he. He approached the table while I was working with someone else and asked about the details of how it worked. After I explained it I confirmed that indeed, in theory, he could take all the money after we talked. I clarified for him that the sign says “take what you need” not “take what you want.”

Z stood and hungrily stared at the jar for 10 or 15 minutes until I finished with the woman I was talking with. Then he sat down and told me his story.

Z lives part time in a homeless shelter and wants some creative ideas for getting a job.

He has “millions of ideas” but never gets very far with trying to get them. He said he was interested in helping people. I asked him about volunteering at other shelters with counselors and other conventional modes of aligning your self with job training. But he was dismissive of them and said

The system wasn’t built to let you get out of it that way. 

I wondered why Z had so little drive to try to make any of these ideas come to fruition. Z was just venting and I was just listening mostly. It felt like a bit of a therapy inspired punt but I wondered what would come from it –

What was your favorite fairytale or story as a kid?

Z closed his eyes and recalled and then softly and smilingly said

Aw, man, Jack and the Beanstalk

I asked Z if he wanted things to just magically appear in his life – to just throw out the beans of his ideas and they would just be huge in the morning. And as if that was the most obvious thing to say to him Z said

Yeah, that is exactly what I want.

It’s an interesting wish.

So I asked him if money wasn’t an issue what would he really like to be doing. Now up to this point I was taking Z seriously and Z had relaxed a bit and was having a conversation not for the chance at the money but to have the conversation. I only note that because Z’s answer shows how much he had let down his guard and was willing to open up.

Z’s dream job?

I know it sounds crazy but my real dream? To make and sell origami on the street. I know how to make one kind of dragon. But it’s messy. I want to make that dragon better and learn how to make some other shit out of paper.

I was stunned. This was so specific. So unexpected and so honest. And oddly I had a connection to the world of origami. In my youth my younger brother was deeply immersed in the origami universe and hung with and learned from true origami luminaries. I always admired high-end origami and really loved the facility and intelligence my brother applied to his pieces. I will always remember what Akira Yoshizawa said about my brother’s skill upon seeing a ram head that my brother folded:

You breathe life into the paper

For a number of years I volunteered and worked at the Origami-USA conventions. While others folded I dragged chairs around and made coffee and got to know the organizers a bit. These were great people who did anything for someone who loved to fold paper.

All this came back to me in the moment Z mentioned his dream – Michael, Jan, Alice, Jerome, Robert, Tony, Marc and Daniel. I told him that I couldn’t guarantee a job that would work but if he wanted to do origami better and find people who would support him to go to the Origami USA organization on the Upper West Side. I said to him that if he went there with a sincere desire to learn and volunteer that they would likely meet him more than half way. I gave him a name and told him that I trusted him.

Z was stunned – someone had met his dream and offered a clear door to it. It wasn’t a beanstalk but it was pretty good. Z said he would do it but he asked if he could take a dollar to do laundry because he really needed to do it.

I said he could and he took a crumpled dollar bill.

Z thanked me and we shook hands. That was worth a dollar to me.

The post Homeless Dreams of Dragons appeared first on Stillman Says.

It is very graphic.
It involves criminal activity, violence and coarse sexual language.

While I personally wasn’t offended during the occurrence, to recount the story it must be told. If you might be offended by such things I suggest you wait until the next update. This is a unique interaction to be sure.

A man came up to the table with a thin mustache, dark sunglasses and crazy braided hair that stuck out in every direction. He had a distinct long scar that ran from near his eye, down his cheek and running down diagonally down his throat. He never sat down and wouldn’t tell me his name.

He spoke in that curious and grandiloquent blaxploritorical style…

I would like a creative approach to not be murdered.

This was unusual and and asked if he was concerned about getting murdered.

At all moments in time I am in danger of having my enemies try to slay me.

I wondered who his enemies were. He told me that he leads a gang here in New York and his rivals have been after him for a number of years. He has evaded being killed by numerous means – all traditional ones, ones you might guess or even expect – bullet proof vests, body guards, evasion and the like. But with the economic downturn he said the pressure has ratcheted up because turf and monetary control is more important now.

This was already pretty crazy but the unnamed gang leader was about to take me to Crazytown.

I can’t say this is was familiar ground or that I had any clever stock answers to deal murder avoidance so at this point I just had to tread water until a foot hold showed up. I replied:

I might be able to give you a creative approach to not get murdered, but I need to know the method you are currently using so I don’t repeat yours and so I can get a sense of how you think.

True. It was a bit of a punt but it had to be done. The gang leader burst into a staccato monologue about how the Bible allows for murder and even the New York State Penal Code does as well – in self defense, if you don’t leave the scene. He said that making it self defense was key when you kill someone. He finally stood still enough for me to see what was clearly the knarled whirls of bullet wounds turned into scars on his fore arms.

But Gang Leader then told me that his self defense method, while effective was slow and carried risks. He now launched into his next grand pronouncements about gang life:

The thing about two epic gangs is that when two motherfuckers are always pressing, pressing, pressing all you get is pressure. Heat and friction, know what I’m sayin’? But that just goes back and forth until eternity unless a larger third force comes upon them to change the dynamics of the war fare. So the bigger gang is the biggest gang in this country – the NYPD. They are as much a criminal gang as we are but they operate under with the force of the so-called law

I know what my enemies are nefariously doing and where they do it…so I have no fear to go unto the NYPD and report their asses by revealing their secrets. And right now, as of two days ago, my enemies are in lock up with their hands bound behind them in cuffs out there in Rikers. Arrested and soon tried and found to be most guilty. But my safety is not permanent yet.

Tomorrow I will go and visit my enemies in prison – they on one side of the glass and me with three fine bitches on the other. I’ll ask them how they like prison. And while I be asking them that I’ll be fingering these girls and putting their juices on the glass and making these dark niggas furious with my taunting. Motherfuckas be getting enraged at my madness! Their anger will get them in more trouble in prison.

But when it comes time for their parole hearings in a few months I’ll be sending my mother, my sister, my cousins to the hearing and make sure they say to the Parole Board hearing how they won’t feel safe with these criminals on the street, how they have been threatened before. And my enemies will be thrown back in prison. Buried deeper and deeper in the system so they’ll go to worse prisons where they’ll get raped and cut and hurt. And this cycle will repeat again and again and that is how my enemies will never prevail over me.

WHAT THE HELL?!!!

This is seriously nuts. Just a peek into a world and a state of mind that I just don’t instinctually (or even actually, really) know anything about. It has a logic to it of course. But not a logic I want to live with. But I listened to every word he said. I didn’t flinch or judge. I heard him. I felt his pride in his method and I felt the fear and anxiety that bred his world view as well.

In sitting with all people in Union Square I am discovering that “creative approaches” are often not that wild and crazy wack-a-doo thing but is often really just about pointing attention into a realm where it doesn’t often go and show what might live there.

So I said to Gang Leader:

I think I have a creative approach for you that is different than yours on how to not be murdered.

Gang Leader crossed his arms across his chest and said ‘”Proceed.”

I looked at this man and  he was finally slowing down, stopping his wild gesticulations and meeting me as I told him:

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Gang Leader heard it, took it in, smiled, thought and said:

That is deep man. That is a many layered statement of truth that has many an application.

He paused. He considered it further.

But that won’t work for a man like me, man. I have already turned. I am honest in my own way but not actually honest. I will reflect on that and see if I can live up to that but I don’t think I will be able to. I am not sure I can ever be truly honest and therefore I will always be in conflict with the law. But I thank you for that brother. That shit is real and I don’t think I have ever thought about being such a dishonest nigga.

Pretty honest statement from a dishonest man.

We did the respectful fist pound, he gave me ten bucks and he walked off.

What can you say to someone like this? What would you have done? Regardless of that answer the statement “to live outside the law you  must be honest” is as true for us the non-criminal as it was for him.

The post “How do I keep from getting murdered?” appeared first on Stillman Says.