NYC Sidewalks are Socialist

The socialist part of New York City appears to be its sidewalks.  All other areas are the trophies of what American championship seems to be.  New York City is like a honey pot for the spoils and booty siphoned from the World's economies.  New York City is one of capitalism's trophy cases.  The only part of New York City that has to be completely shared, are its sidewalks.  And New York City is home for so many.  And it is a rallying point for the ambitious, because it is a launchpad for dreams.  And sidewalks are the path that the modern day Conquistadors, Pilgrims, Rockefellers, and so many other invisibles all take to turn their ideas into experiences.   

I am living in the pinnacle of the economic olympics.  I feel apart of a people who are embarrassed that our lives are not inspiring enough in small towns, to such an extent that some rush off to locations that might help the self worth grow, like a New York City.  We have our aspiring people possibly believing they are the next set of conquistadors, but in this era it's the conquering of the cosmos.  Our countries borders magically keep the riches and opportunities conveniently organized in a way that keeps the American citizen uniquely authorized to play this patriotic pastime of Monopoly, except the 2 dimensional board wasn't ever going to be enough for Rich Uncle Pennybags.  I walked the city this summer and felt the paradox of how marvelous it is while also seeing how saddening the way we have disorganized the shared parts of our communities.  The only part that included everyone was the sidewalk.

I think we leave our home towns out of a fear of facing the existential pause we all have, reminding us of how anonymous we are.  The anonymity that is likely a reminder of what was always gonna be there pointing to a paradoxical yearning for the acceptance of home and yet trying to find it over there, in the big city lights.  New York City provides a metaphor for this.  I now recognize New York City as that city that people hope will erase this existential anonymity.  It is now in my eyes the reminder of what was always gonna point me back to the existential pain of being a tiny moment in a large existence.  Likely a destination that can't erase the human tantrum that happens when we don't arrive at a legendary status.  I am not a celebrity and walking anonymously through New York City was a nice reminder of this.  I don't see New York City as a champion's city, I see it as a pilgrimage for the spirits wounded by not having been seen by those closest to them, especially in their hometowns. 

When walking through the streets of New York City the first thing I hold with tension is how every class of people, at some point, has to share the same grimmey sidewalk.  The wealthy have to share the pungient smells, and walk through the same propagandist advertising.  New York is where the classes are forced to share the narrowest of real estates.  Makes me wonder how long before there are toll booths on Park Ave.  I can't be misled, this caste crossroads does not imply any form of sharing, and no such communal caring, a minor consequence of business, spilled out from profit sharing.  As a metaphor for how much the businessman, person, has any use for the socialist playbook, the sidewalk might fit.  I can picture the New Yorker with the suit and tie tolerating the 12 ft or more of concrete running along the streets. Only the lower castes truly depend on sidewalks.  The moguls only need it for the time it takes them to duck into a chauffeured transport swept away to an elite way of life that probably inspires everyone they've just blew by.  The wake left by these champions are communities and citizens that need more than a sidewalk to grow.  

Are these American champions living a life of civility and prosperity?  The sidewalk metaphor fits for now, I can accept and move more into my financial simplicity because I hope to be one who carves out space where sidewalks become more than a segway.  More like a responsibility.  A reason to look around more than pass through. I don't need assholes in a high-rise penthouses, and I know it is critical to learn about the gravity in the stars pulling these men and women towards the sky.

And like the metaphor of a sidewalk, how does one who has no need for a glamorous high rise make people see there are far better ways to be seen?  How does a small city champion, share the wisdom that comes from having more than a sidewalk to share?  I don't need a sidewalk as much as I need people to see their worth in a life where feet touch the soil, better yet bare feet, and not necessarily on a beach, people who are grounded, without paying $15,000 for a Costa Rican retreat.  Grounded in the natural and simple in a humanistic form.  So here are more thoughts from a Chicano mind in New York City.  I respect the hustle and feel a sadness for the disparity.  It felt a lot like sharing a sidewalk is the only way elite American will tolerate the likes of people like me.  And at the same time I can't see myself in the deep sadness that is shared along the New York City sidewalks, that are the doormats to even more painfilled luxury high rise. I cannot live with the pain I feel when watching homeless people disappearing into the nooks and crannies, desperately hanging onto life, surviving on the concrete real estate they can't be removed from because Sidewalks are socialist.  

Bondability - a synthesis before a condition

  

I feel the categorization by styles found in Attachment Theory is restricting the theory's opportunity to heal.  I am beginning to shape my Bondability perspective because it addresses this duality.  I believe the principles underlying attachment are birthed of the colonial and categorical mindsets that taught us to emphasize the definitive versus paradox.  Paradoxical thinking points to the polar tensions I feel exist between the four styles of attachment.  These polar tensions describe most of nature's important synthesizing processes.  Attachment Theory is used like musicians who see the math in music where as Bondability is the awareness that everyone is a musician.  I am trying to emphasize that seeing the math is important but unnecessary.  How do you tell a musician to ignore the math and tell the child to see the patterns.  Bondability is trying to do this in one sentence.  This is the hope for Bondability. The chemists reached this point when seeing Hardy's paradox.  We have so many counter-intuitive insights and while working with families I found that teaching Attachment as 4 possible styles did an injustice to the dynamicism that neuroscientists were revealing. 

The observation is that all of these styles exist in most people just under different stressors.   I found it hard to teach clients the value of seeing everything in a non-binary way.  I found that parents wanted the sheet music.  I couldn't express how their child was not a song to be learned, but a rhythm, at times a clanging, and yet a sound that was adapting and adjusting to the tempos around them but with a beat that was ingrained in them at conception.  This broke me and still makes me cry.  Some in the industry call it burn out.  I don't I call it awareness for the abusive task of doing a job with the unsharpened tools.  Americans or Spaniards want sheet music when the sounds are in our movements.  Better yet our awareness.  I could not teach this paradox very well working through the model of attachment because the tools it provided me didn't help people accept there isn't an answer, only an encounter.  How do you teach that a behavior is not treatable, the culmination of events and experiences that lead up to the observable event are transcendable. Parents need the steps to change the behavior and I cannot help them understand that the encounter will be the only medicine, so make it a loving one because you don't know how many more loving encounters will be necessary to see a change in the next similar behavior.  The gift of the encounter is how it landed on our history and immediately resolving it to be meaningful in the now is the talent God might have given the Angels.  How do you teach this?  

This is putting paradox to use. The disservice is often times seeing this contradiction as dysfunction, or worse cognitive dissonance.  How can discipline be seen as chaos?  Well that is what love can feel like to an abused child.  Love invites vulnerability and vulnerability is most animals understanding of defenselessness, ultimately becoming the potential for demise.  

I can't overlook the criticality of the science behind the concept of attachment.  Dan Siegle, puts this physiology into a dense yet palatable way.  Neuro scientist are giving us the tid bits of research that teach that the brain isn't compartmental more a well orchestrated nebulous mass distributing energy.  We share our pain in the same fashion we share a smile.  Each being too intense to keep to ourselves.  This is what Bondability tries to highlight.

Bondability Continued

Attachment Theory Misconception Relationship Spectrum

Empire of 22nd Kind

    Sitting at a bar name Lucky Jacks, my mind is on vacation, I am in New York City, the lower eastside to be exact.  This trip is full of emotions around the evolution of my parenting.  I will no longer be parenting children and I will now be parenting adults.  This trip is loaded for me.  I brought my daughter to help her settle in for her first week of a dance program.  The big apple is where this famous dance school brings young adult dancers with bright dreams, cultivating their skills.  In my eyes, they are aspiring spirits believing that New York City is where all the greats go to learn. 

 I wonder how much value this experience will provide for my daughter.  How much it will draw her out of what she understands as home.  The process reminds me of the same hope I had while attending baseball camps.  I can remember how I'd think this camp or coach could provide me the chance I needed to make a statement. Looking back I see that it turned into another thousand dollar contribution to University of Arizona's baseball program.  I appreciate being able to see New York in a practical way.  I no longer see the way my daughter appears to see.  The dogmatic romance around this icon of gangsters of the economic kind.  I lost my aspiration and replaced it with stewardship.  I see she still has an aspiring vision for it and what it can do for her.  I have evolved to worry that New York is what it attracts, hoards of seduced adolescent hearts caching in on free market liberties, with all except a tiny slice depositing more money into their reservoir of capital.

This is New York City, so many young minds gravitating to this icon.  The infrastructure changes slowly and these legal and illegal immigrants stir its economics by contributing their admiration and possibly romance for the big city life.  The interesting part of New York is how so many people bring their newness and vibrancy to add their uniqueness in micro doses, making it not so much what they thought it was going to be, but in many ways contaminating it with what they hoped it would be.  New York isn't a destination or checkbox.  It is a complex participation in a living pinnacle.  It might be the consequence of their wonderment about finding themselves over their, instead of believing their greatness is always at hand.  I don't want to be cliché to call New York a Mecca for arts, but it is surely a vacuum for the existential need to be seen.  There is a paradigm of polarities, driving and fueling the city's economics, culture, and maturation.  There is maturation and I can recognize the tragedy behind the romance.  What makes New York newer might be the economic luster.  What makes New York an empire might be its cultural pollution.