No Small Victory

Yesterday my job ended and now I am unemployed, thus prompting this note. In truth, I had been waiting to write this note for a long time, never sure that I would ever have the chance to write it.

I came to San Francisco last November with less that three hundred dollars in my pocket. I would try to explain why, but that is a different story. Think what you will, but I will say that money goes quickly when you are not earning an incoming.

My last full time job ended in June, 2011. I arrived back to the USA from the Philippines in October, 2011. After trying to find a full time job without result in Philadelphia, I decided to leave for San Francisco and find a job working in my field, video and television production.

When my car broke down in Rawlins, WY they were not sure they could fix it and I was there for enough days to picture the rest of my life in that cold desolate town. Since then I have slept on couches, in warehouses, in a tent, in a roach motel, a hostel, a mansion, and in my car. There were some days where I barely ate, many more where I could barely sleep. I worked as a substitute teacher, a tutor, a proctor, and picked up a few odd video jobs, but it was never enough to make ends meet. I went to interviews for jobs I was way overqualified for, many pointless networking sessions, and had interviews, like one to be a barista in cafe, where I was rejected due to lack of experience. A skin rash took over my body, made my face swell up like a beat up boxer, covered my groin, and though I recovered in those places, it took applying for charity aid at the ER for me to realize that I no longer had any skin left on the back of my right hand.

There were people in my life that let me down or, more often, never showed up in the first place. There were people who tried to take advantage of me in my weakened state, tried to scam me or tried to use me. And the worst of all, there were people that treated me like there was something wrong with me, like a lesser person, or didn't see me as a person at all. This post is not for them. Nor is it for those that think I am complaining about how bad I have had it. This post is not for those that think I share too much. If this describes you, feel free to stop here.

For me, the rock bottom of the world looks like the dirty McDonald's bathroom where I cleaned myself off after a night in the car. Many others must have attempted this before, causing the management to remove the mirror, so I could no longer see what I looked like. As I drove away, I saw a homeless man under a bridge pushing his shopping cart and I knew deep down in my soul that that man was me.

Or, rather, it would have been me, if it weren't for my friends and family that have helped me along the way. I have wanted for so long to thank you, but I wanted it be when I finally made it to the other side of the abyss. When I finally got a job at a production company in Marin I had thought that I would feel like Will Smith's character at the end of the Pursuit of Happyness where he raises his hands in the air, but the job was only a two month contract. So instead, I just felt more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRNqoqFzTi0&feature=related

Despite my best efforts, my production company, the one I had targeted as the place I wanted to work at above all others, let me go today. Earlier this week I decided that I had to give up on San Francisco, the work was just not here and I would move to LA or NY or wherever else I needed to go in this goddamn world to make my life work, but yesterday my exit interview with the VP of Production and my Supervising Producer sealed it. They had nothing but praise for my ability and my work to a degree that I have seldom experienced in my life. They will be hiring me for another position in a matter of weeks and see a longer future for me with the company.

I have learned many important lessons along the way. The ones that immediately come to mind are as follows:

Accept help: In doing so you allow another person to be the person they desire to be and you do not know where it may lead. None of us make it in life alone.

The less you have, the harder it gets: Though this may seem obvious, it gets harder exponentially.

Have Faith: I have asked myself, if I could just erase this last era of my life and all of the struggle that came with it and just have gotten a job when I arrived, would that have been better? No. The relationships I have formed in struggle have made me a happier person than I was before. More importantly, NO because now I don’t only have more knowledge, I have THE KNOWLEDGE. I know about seeing the unseen. I knew it before, but now I know it better.

As the greatest challenge of my life (thus far) concludes, I would like to take a moment to thank those that helped me make it through. I would not be here without you. I wrote this for you. I wrote it for everyone still struggling in this economic disaster. And I wrote it for me. Because I did it. No small victory.

THANK YOU to all those that helped me along the way.  You know who you are.

Ok, it does feel a little bit like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bklNWWoJyzE

She

From my notes for the script called "Josephine."

She was the one I woke up with everyday.  I fell asleep so quickly because I would see her in my dreams.  I always woke before her so that I could see her sleeping…  watch her chest rise and fall.  Her nostrils widen with her inhaling breath.  In dreaming her head would turn and in mine I would see hers turn.

Love is just a dream.  That dream I saw her dream.  Because while she slept I felt as if part of me was with her.  Once she told me she dreamed of flying to Greenland and landing on an iceberg.  That morning she came into the kitchen wearing only her white satin robe.  The belt undone.  She must have put it on for the feeling of clothes on her shoulders, because she was naked and so unashamed to be with me that she never thought to simply tie the belt.

She whispered the dream to me sleepily over the cup of coffee I poured for her.  The iceberg.  Flying to the very top.  Icebergs are a symbolic representation in dreams.  A subconscious representation of our subconscious.  Icebergs are so strong yet they float.

That morning I had felt cold and lighted headed when I woke up.  I knew I was with her.  That we were so close that I joined her in dreams.  When she left the room part of me would go with her.  When she danced part of me felt alive.

You must understand Jake, the sheer immutability of the human heart.  We are like oaks, covering up the past like growth rings.  The storms, and loves, and heartbreaks in our lives are still there, right below the surface, almost as if you could cut us open to see what we are made of.

Then why did it end?  You could have gone back to her.   She could have gone back to you.

It’s my fault.  I met your grandmother.  We had your father Charles.  You have to understand I was young, not much older than you, when I met her.  It was such a crazy fucked up time when I met Grace, and she was wonderful to me.  She wanted the same things as I wanted.  We had the same dreams.  The same language.  We had Johnson and Nixon.

But now that I am older and my wife has died, my brothers and my friends are gone, all I know is that this one thing remains, this one painful thing that I did not take seriously when I was younger, turned out to be everything that I am. 

As old as I am there are still things I don’t know.  I don’t know what happens when you die, but I know that in me, she is still alive.  She is the only part of me that is still alive.