Finding Some Way to Un-clutch (Blog #523)

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This morning, after going to bed at 1:00 and sleeping for three short hours, I woke up at 4:00 and–I’m not kidding–got ready for the day, since Mom was scheduled to have surgery at the ungodly hour of 7:00 (AM). “Be there at 5:00,” they said, so we were–me, Dad, and of course Mom–who’s wanted this surgery since January when she had her double mastectomy and the doctor left “excess skin.” Obviously, it’s personal (and I’m my mom’s son), but she said things just haven’t “looked right,” and the doctor today was going to fix them. And I get that, the need to go back and clean things up, the need to have everything just so. But must we do these things so frickin’ early in the morning?!

The only consolation was the fact that Mom’s doctor was smoking hot.

But I digress.

The surgery itself went well, and everything–registration, prep, surgery, recovery–only took four hours, during which time Dad and I grabbed breakfast (and saw a full rainbow), read, and harassed the other people in the waiting room. Well, Dad did the harrassing. “Have you read that magazine?” he asked a complete stranger. “MY SON HERE wrote an article in it!” Not surprised by my father’s behavior, I looked up from my book to the lady before me and tried to manage a smile.

“Hi,” I said.

After leaving the hospital, Mom, Dad, and I ran a couple errands and came back home, and I went straight back to bed until one this afternoon. Then I went to a used book store, since–I thought–that would be a good thing to do on a Friday. However, I discovered upon arriving at the bookstore that today is, in fact, NOT Friday, but rather Tuesday (and the bookstore ISN’T open on Tuesdays). I swear, I felt so turned around and confused. How could I not know what day it was? That being said, I haven’t had a regular schedule in a while, we just came off a holiday weekend, and I WAS up EXTREMELY early this morning.

Already frustrated, I decided to use the rest of the afternoon doing everything I didn’t want to do but needed to do, things like requesting some of my personal medical records (from the car accident I was in last year) and paying my property taxes and other bills. Just get it all over with, I told myself.

Recently I wrote about the parking ticket I got when I visited San Francisco and the protest I filed in reply. Well, I got the city’s response today, and they didn’t buy it. “Screw you,” they said in not so many words. Well, to be fair, they said, “You should have known to turn your wheels when parking on a hill. That’s a thing. So pay up.” Anyway, again–in an effort to get something unpleasant over with–I paid the ticket today too. (The City of San Francisco conveniently takes payments online.) But still–I’ve been thinking a lot about it, since it really is drag. Part of life, maybe, but a drag nonetheless. $69 down the drain because I made an honest mistake.

But here’s the thing–a lot of shit things happen in life. Maybe you’re happy when you’re a small child. You’re happy for no reason, really. And then your mom gets sick, your house burns down, the neighbor kid’s an asshole, your dad goes to prison, you’re in a car wreck (or two), and–I don’t know–you fall in love with Satan. (I’m just pulling stuff out of the air here.) But you know, this is life. We accumulate baggage. And yeah, sometimes it’s big baggage; sometimes it’s little baggage, little things that get under your skin that you inevitably gripe about–things like living with your parents, not feeling well or not having a job, or the fact that you got a parking ticket.

Again, these are just random examples.

In my experience, somewhere along the way–because of the shit we go through and the shit we hang onto–we lose a certain amount of our childlike happiness. In exchange, we get our irritations, complaints, and things to bitch about. We get to “be right.” This is the ATTRACTIVE thing about baggage; it’s part of why we clutch tightly to it. We get to think or say, “Can you believe what those assholes did to me?” and “Fuck them AND the horse they rode in on.”

Like anyone rides in on horses anymore. But here’s my point–as much as baggage is kind of fun–as much as being upset about a parking ticket gives me something to blog and bitch about–baggage is baggage is baggage. In other words, baggage–big or small–is by definition heavy and weighs a person down. This is why, having protested and lost, I immediately paid the parking ticket this afternoon. I’m TIRED of CARRYING that issue or problem around. I was just fine before it showed up and DON’T want to carry that problem into tomorrow. Honestly, I don’t want to carry ANY of my past into my future.

The past is too heavy to carry around.

The past, after all, is simply too heavy to carry around. This is why Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead.” He wasn’t being unfeeling; he was being practical. It’s over. Let it go, Nancy. Forgive. (And if that doesn’t work, forgive again). Forgiveness–I don’t use that word very often on this blog, but I’ve used ever other word or combination of words that mean the same thing–letting go, patience, self-acceptance. Forgiveness is what I mean when I say that I get the need to go back and clean things up, to get everything just so. That’s what I’m doing here on this blog, after all–cleaning things up and forgiving the past, finding SOME WAY to look at all the shit and baggage in my life and NOT hang onto it, finding SOME WAY to un-clutch and start tomorrow lighter and more childlike, more free.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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You can be more discriminating.

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You Know, a Guy Could Take This (Blog #505)

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Twenty days ago, while I was in San Francisco for a dance event, I received a ticket (from a meter maid!) for parking on a steep hill and NOT turning my wheels toward the curb. Talk about a serious drag. I didn’t know a person was supposed to do this. Anyway, when I talked to a friend of mine who’s a policeman in San Francisco, they said, “Might I suggest a good old-fashioned protest?” Well, sure enough, there’s a website listed on the back of a ticket, in case someone wants to put up a fuss. So, in light of the fact that the ticket is sixty-nine frickin’ dollars, that’s exactly what I did this morning.

I resisted.

Unfortunately, I was limited to 1,000 characters, so I couldn’t be as “flowery” as I wanted to be with my words. Still, here’s what I said:

Hello. My name is Marcus Coker, and I recently visited SF for the first time (in order to attend a swing dance event). The event housed me with a local, on 14th Avenue. Of course, parking was a challenge, but I “finally” found a spot after 45 minutes of circling the neighborhood. You can imagine my relief. There was a sign about not parking on certain street-cleaning days, but otherwise–I thought–I was good. (Phew.) Alas, when I went to check on my vehicle the next day (a friend who is a policeman said vehicle break-ins were common in SF), I’d received a $69 dollar ticket for “parking on grades,” a term that I had to Google and means I didn’t turn my wheels toward the curb. Ugh. This really put a damper on my weekend, especially since I had no idea about your city’s policy. After all, it wasn’t posted, and, being from the flatlands of the south, I never park on hills. As I immediately corrected the problem, I ask that you forgive this incident. Please have mercy. Regards, Marcus

Then, when the website asked if I had any supporting documents, I uploaded this PDF: SF_ParkingProtest

So we’ll see what happens. At the very least, I figure I’ve bought myself some more time. This morning when I saw the ticket in my to-do pile, I freaked out. First, either the protest or the payment is due tomorrow, and that triggered my “not enough time” response. Second, the fact that this is an “authority issue,” made my butt pucker. But then I thought, You can do this, Marcus, and sat down and got to work. In no time, I was simply doing my thing–writing. Plus, I was trying to have a good time. So much of my past has been filled with my being nervous, afraid, and terrified about things that really amount to nothing. A parking ticket. A meter maid. But–regardless of how it turns out–this protest was actually fun for me.

So that’s something.

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for my friend and local artist Ralph Irwin. I wrote about Ralph in detail here (in my most highly read article), so I won’t go into great detail about him here. However, I was reminded yesterday what a profound impact one person can have on another. Honestly, although I worked two doors down from him when I had my dance studio, I didn’t spend that much time with Ralph. We only had a handful of heart-to-hearts. That being said, they were enough. Ralph left his mark on me.

One of the things that was mentioned at the memorial service was that Ralph would often take some odd, discarded object, hold it up to the light, squint, and say, “You know, a guy could take this and–.” Then Ralph would proceed into a barrage of wild ideas and creative possibilities. This was my experience with him. Once he told me, “Some people might look at a rusty old door and think of it as trash. But an artist would look at it and see possibility, something you could paint or hang on a wall or use for something else entirely.”

Possibility. If nothing else, Ralph taught me that there’s an infinite number of ways to see the world. What’s more, there’s an infinite number of ways to make your world more beautiful. But it all starts with how you see things. Do you look at the objects and people in your life–do you look at yourself–as trash? Or do you see something beautiful there? Personally, I think Ralph saw people the way he saw objects–full of potential. At least that’s how I think he saw me. I’m not sure he ever said it directly, but he took time to help me flesh out ideas and show me new ways of looking at things. He encouraged me (and I know he did this for countless others).

Of course, it’s no small thing to be encouraged.

There was something said yesterday about how Ralph felt like he didn’t get enough done. The man was teeming with creative ideas and projects, and although many of them were completed during his seventy-six years on earth, many of them were not. I get this–I love completion. But as an artist and creative, I think this is a good “problem” to have–to wake up every day with a million ideas, to see possibility everywhere you look, to not get locked into one way of seeing a situation. This is where I see progress in my own life. Five years ago I would have gotten a traffic ticket, and it would have been “awful” from start to finish. But whereas facts are facts–I got a parking ticket–I can choose how I look at the facts. I can paint them up and put a frame around them that I like and that’s fun for me. I can choose how I respond.

I can hold my problems up to The Light.

I can squint my eyes.

I can see the world differently.

Yes–

It’s more beautiful now.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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There’s no such thing as a small action. There’s no such thing as small progress.

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