Andrade Musings

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of being able to travel around the United States for business.

Of course, when time permitted, or if you are skilled enough, when you make time permit, you must take in the beauty of certain cities and areas. Take in the sights, smell the vegetation, have a glass of wine… enjoy.

In Santa Barbara was the most beautiful sight I have seen so far in my life.

The Pacific Ocean.

I had seen it before and was taken by its grandeur as she had a different personality than her more restless sister the Atlantic. But in Santa Barbara, with its warm October air and softly sun-lit landscape, the subtle waters under your feet make you take pause. Here I was worrying about deadlines and meetings just a short time before and then it was all made small by the pacific sight before me. I was a different person after. Things bothered me less, and mattered more.

The Pacific.

She was empowered to create and destroy and had peacefully accepted this burden. And as her advancing and retracting waters cleansed me of my worries, so, too, did she endow me with the understanding that I, too, could accept, control, and remake my gifts and curses. I slept calmly that evening and awoke the next morning renewed and able to tackle my most difficult obstacles.

This was not the first time, however, that I had seen the Pacific. She and I first met in Santa Monica. It was a year prior to being in Santa Barbara and my mind was not ready to be awakened by its power. This time I was assigned to a project in Torrance and was to stay at the Holiday Inn on Colorado Avenue. While not the best hotel, it was right across the street from the beach.

The location was perfect- one block from the Third Street Promenade and a 10 minute ride from Malibu. On night one, I needed for my own personal gain to say that, like Sheryl Crow, I had seen the “sun come up over Santa Monica Boulevard.” It is one thing to wait around for lunch… another to wait for the end of the work day… certainly another to wait all night for the sun to come up.

Notwithstanding the full day of work that was awaiting me after the sunrise; but hey, we are young and impetuous. And on the topic of young and impetuous, I did what I knew would kill some time. I went to a small club named 14 Below and indulged in the Halloween Black and Tan Special… 3 dollars for good beer. The bar was across the street from an Infiniti Dealership and Car wash. As the night grew older, I relished in the stories of the Irish barista who was very skilled at climbing the wall behind the bar to put on a show and mix drinks. He was an acrobat and a barkeep… only in California. I saw several bands play and shared drinks with band members and tossed the name Berklee as if it was some special ID they forgot to check at the door. The people were as interested about the music scene in Boston as I was about the scene in LA. Albeit, after a few too many brews it is safe to say that any scene is interesting or made to be interesting.

At 5 in the morning, I took the cab back to Santa Monica Boulevard. Alcohol, fatigue, ringing ears, a warm bed, a long day at work. All disparate thoughts that were nagging enough to keep me awake. Had I been back home with a similar head full, I would have complained that I was unable to sleep the night before, but I had reason for enduring. Breakfast kept me going. Then there I was. No Sheryl Crow. No guitar. No pen or paper. Only my cell phone. A grim reminder of the day that lay before me. I am happy to say, though, that I was drinking beer in a bar that faces a car wash and on 6:35 am on Tuesday October 24th, 2000, I, Michael Andrade, saw the sun come up over Santa Monica Boulevard.

I can say that nothing quite centers me like listening to Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli.

I listen to every type of music and incorporate most types to every aspect of my life; however, I lend an ear to that Jazz when no one is around.  When I am by myself and need to hit the reset button.  It is as technically good as it is soothing.  It represents a balance and brings me back to normal level.  Everyone should have such a tool.

My friend Ernesto told me a tale once of percentages… and how a month and days are a matter of perception.  I will paraphrase him here and add my own 2… um… percent as it were… but I will add my own harangue about deeds and percentages to follow.

When I was born… a month was SO long because it was all I knew.

When I was 10, a month would go by slowly now that I had developed full cognition… but it was such a great percentage of how old I was.

When I was 16… months would crawl by and the school year would DRAG… because a year and a month were such great percentages of my life.

When I was 20… months began to pick up pace… days would go by and weeks would scream by… months would tick like seconds on the clock sometimes… the percentage of my life that a month was became smaller.

When I was 25… months screamed by… in fact… the time between my 21st birthday and my 25th went by in a flash… a blink… by 25 I had so many memories and so much life in me… that the percentage of my life a month was had most certainly become smaller.

Now that I am 28… so much has happened and I am about to embark on so much… that time passes so fast now… the percentage of time a month is in my life is tiny now… and only becomes smaller… till the time passing becomes infinite… or rather… when I die… all my days end where they began… in oblivion… and all my thoughts, energies, love, and life… pass into infinity… where someone at the right time and place will be born… at the time their body intersects with my energy… and a future generation will be able to appreciate my faults and my strengths.

The same it is with deeds.  I am a bad friend, or I think I am, because the percentage of good I have done with people and my life is smaller than when I was younger.  When I was younger I had done SO MUCH good… but now that I am older… I have done so little as time passes me by so fast.  But time is in the eye of the beholder… and my time does not pass as fast as my friends’ time… since the great percentage of my friends are younger than me by at least 2 – 4 years… and one particular savior of mine has the distinction of being my youngest friend clocking in at 20.

Meaning that to me… everything I think I do is good… but objectively… sometimes so much time passes for them before I do something great that they begin to lose faith as our lives begin to move at different paces.

And I have come to take that for granted.  Sometimes, I will do something wrong or allow myself to do something ill-conceived because I assume, I’ll just sleep it off and I’ll get over it… but to my younger friends… it will linger in their heads for some times as time passes slower for them… so before long… it looks like I do one thing good every 6 months… and instead partake in doing terrible things often.

Time has betrayed me… so by erasing myself from their memory for sometime… and let time heal them and allow me to be reborn in their heads… when I come back and assert myself… and take what is mine… and retake my heart… and declare my love for people… and find a good girl that loves me… perception will be my ally… and all people will remember is the new life of good that I have… when I am more aware of time and less apt to be cocky and ruin friendships and hurt people… because if I do not leave… and I continue the way I do… I will become so cocky in my own ability and so ignorant of other’s cares… that I will begin to really be an asshole and do and take things that aren’t mine or I haven’t earned… and that would be the biggest betrayal of my friends… and ultimately…

Me.

I am who I am and know what I am… or at least I used to.

That is why I must go… gotta re-discover that.

Reason stirs within me… it stirs with rhyme… or at least it was a particularly peaceful synergy until lately.  There has begun an imbalance to it all and I need to figure it correctly.

As it stands, I will be going to Myrtle Beach… get a simple plain old job… seems like it may be Sam’s Club selling Cell Phones… actually maybe retail like back in the good-ol’s… granted it is a huge step down from what I do and what I have done… but it is simple… and I want to think about things while doing things simply…

You remember how that used to be?  Gotta pay rent… gotta have cash for dinner… gotta make time for this and that… and NOTHING else.  No dramas, no turbulence, no nothing.  Stillness… a time when things were simple and I could stop and think… when I had a problem, I would handle it and face it head on.

And now?  With so much responsibility and expectation… exhaustion leaves me with little time to heal internally until I melt into some bizarre passionless mess.  And when problems come I put their resolution off till tomorrow… and tomorrow… Friends?  I’ll just talk to them tomorrow… and tomorrow… and so on and so forth… until the sum of all my tomorrows are a year and a half of nameless, faceless, useless people.  People who used to have names and mattered… people who used to have stories and mattered… people who used to love me… and now don’t.

But I am leaving…

Just a quiet little fiction for a little while, until I get my ducks in a row.

So I can sort it all out… so I can bring myself back to center… back to the moment… back to me.

Back to when I used to laugh… back to when I used to play… back when people would say things and it wasn’t mired in double-or-triple entendres… back to when people said what they meant and meant what they said…

There was a time and place when I would point things out and I would ask for things and they came to me.  I got and did what I wanted… and I have been robbed of that identity.

There was a time and place where Andrade was everything he said he was.  Now I am a shadow of that.

A shadow of the life in me… people see glimpses… some have been inspired by it… but it is not all me… it is a shadow of me… a sheer suggestion of me.

Imagine if I had all the potential back in me… imagine if I was the king of what I surveyed now.

Nothing, not job, not evil, nor friend or foe, not life itself would stop me… but I must humble myself.

And here it is… the great humbling of Andrade.

Problem is… when I fully recharge… would my friends recognize me?  Would they be reminded of the former era of glory?  Or would they be put off… for some of them know me and have known me at my peaks and my valleys… but my intention here is to rid myself of the self-doubt.  The burden of being me… and the quest to find and live in no other place… but the highest peak of my life eternal.

To look into the eyes of Destiny and Serendipity and say… “Look at me!  Look AT ME!  Look what I have become!  You put me down, you put me off, you laid obstacles for me and I overcame them… you made me a monster, a bitter self-loathing, apathetic monster and I took all your lessons and life and feelings and tears and fears and pains and sufferings and molded them… crushed them… mixed them… stirred them… and from this bitter monster… I became a man!  A good man.  A compassionate man.   A loving man.  A lover.  A teacher.  A student.  A friend… the one all my friends deserve!”

Perhaps my friends would not, in fact, recognize me… perhaps they would be frightened at the searing potential… and the limitless life.

Sum Deus Meus et Solus Deus Me Potest Iudicare:

I am my only God and that God alone shall judge me

When I was working in the hub… I was meek and shy… I dressed in not odd clothing but I definitely wasn’t sharp Andrade as I try to be… more like warm-ups and kicks Andrade with black or maroon colored hair… I was quite the guitarist and artist… ahh… the old days.

Jillian was the hot sales rep.  She always came over to talk to me in my far off cube… I was a system engineer then… but instead of hanging with support like everyone else… I was put in a cube off in the frontier.

But everyday, she would come in, bring me a coffee or her toy from her happy meal… she liked me… something about me reminded me of her, I would come to find out… but not specifically.

One day, an opportunity for an assistant opened up and I asked to be transferred… I remember… it took much for me to get up the confidence to ask.

I was granted it.

As her assistant, we traveled so long and far… all around the country at one point.

I remember she smelled good all the time… even after long days.  She would look tired and worn sometimes as if haunted by some demons I would never know… but she always, through the worst, have a smile for me… and she confided in me.

She was older than me… by 4 years.

She dressed well, too.  She was a chick, but dressed in nice suits and wore shirts that were nice and like a dude, she would wear these silver elliptical cufflinks.  She was so proud and hot… I thought she was invincible.

Through our travels, spending so much time together, we would spend time together out of work at home.

Boston… it was so gorgeous.  I remember crashing at her house to go to work the next day… we would take the train in… and she would buy me booze and we would stay up for hours and talk… I got her smoking again… but she gave me a certain gift… a taste for vino.

After awhile, I realized I saw her with friends and such… but never with a dude… she never had a boyfriend… she didn’t trust them… she looked like she had been killed inside by some pain I would never know.

We rocked out… I was on the cusp of my 21st birthday… and we celebrated each day until I turned 21… so much… that when I did… I just had no energy to go out… but I did.

After a bit… her influence… made me change my dress… I took the color out of my hair… I slowly tried to emulate her style… but not fast… my friends at work and home… I didn’t want them to be all like, dude you’re changing for a chick… guys and their pride.

Not without noticing, I began to act more and more like her… I began to assert myself… I began to be funny… not because I wasn’t… but she showed me confidence… she was allowing Andrade… to be Andrade.

That is another gift of hers… it was under her aegis… that I began to refer to myself as Andrade.  But I was awkward… I looked different… I dressed different… but I didn’t feel comfortable yet looking like a poster boy for Structure… which later became Express which she shopped at Exclusively.

An ironic twist I never shared with anyone until now.

After a few more ticks of basically living with the girl and working with the girl… she began to become distant… which coincided with my finally coming into my own… and becoming this gorgeous man I am today.

Everyday… I would see her do as she did… cufflinks… or silver watch… last two things she would wear… one or the other not both…

But always looked sharp… I was with her when she’d get like 2 hours sleep… and somehow… she would always look good.

I always asked her if I could ever be her boyfriend… she told me… she was impressed with me… but she was looking for a man friend… we laughed… I appreciated her honesty.

She had quite the temper… it made her formidable at meetings and no one could say no to her… she was inspiring.

One day… I hear through the grape vine… that she had put in her two weeks.

I asked her what she had done.

She explained to me that her brother had passed.  And she had to go take care of her family now… the money she made the money she saved… it was not for her… she had to be the family’s strength.

I didn’t understand… but she knew herself so well, what the hell could I say?

I had become so prominent as her assistant… and not realized how great I had become at my job… that I was approached to be her replacement.

Think of it… 21… my own office… my own assistant… my own expense budget… I made it… I was everything I wanted to be then… I didn’t have to work for money… it just came to me… I had become that gregarious… I had become her.

And now she was leaving.

One day, without warning, I got to work, and her boss comes to me and is like… kid, today is that day.

You are the new sales rep for POS systems… I always joked it meant Piece of… but it meant Point of Sale.

I was in.

But my mentor… my love… I never told her that… I thought she was too good to hear that from some dumb ass kid… my bad… perhaps I wasn’t as confident yet as I thought… was gone.

I saw her two days prior and she looked SO relaxed and so poignant… she was strong… and this situation had made her weak… but free.

She didn’t have to be what people expected of her anymore… she was just gonna be a good daughter, a good sister, and a good housewife someday… that’s how they do in South Carolina… the Palmetto State.

There I was… free of things… I was the boss… I was the…

I walk into my office… and it still smelled of her.  Soon… it would smell of me.

But right on my laptop… was a post-it note… “Look in the closet.”

I open the closet… new suit… new shirts… 3… and a note that said go to the window.

5th floor… 30 Winter St… Boston… Downtown Crossing… looking out my window… to a brick wall… but the sun was warm… and right at the sill… a box.

I open the box…

“To my defacto boyfriend…  I will always love and remember you,
J”

Jillian… she left me her cuff links… and three shirts to wear them with.

Slowly… quietly… and subtly… I knew who I had to be… I was… Andrade.

It is coincidence that my sis lives in SC… but there is more reason to the rhyme that leads me there.

I heard she became a shop owner… a boutique owner… taking over her brother’s shop in SC.

I haven’t seen her since… and I don’t mean to just butt in to her life… I probably won’t go to find her… that was a different life she led when I knew her… but if it brought her salvation…

Perhaps that state will bring it for me, too.

And perhaps I will find again… what has been missing for sometime…

The real Andrade.  The one my friends like to love.

Then again… maybe I’ll come back all dressed in black with long hair, some color in it, and a clean shave… and find that it took me all this time… to come full circle.

Dude… I frigen locked myself out of my house.  I was sitting right there outside… taking trash out… and left all the doors open.

I swung out the bunch of doors running out with bags like it was an endurance race.  Then a gust of wind swoops in… and I see it happen.

All the doors slammed at once from the pressure.

I’m like, dude.  No frigen way.

So there it is.

I’m like running up and down my yard trying to figure out how the hell I am gonna get back in.

I run up my deck and am like, no frigen way.

Then I see it… I see my window up in my room… and I see the screen is propped out… and the window is unlocked.

I know it… I leave it unlocked.

Ladder.

I run back down and grab the ladder right by my basement door.

I run up the deck again… prop up the ladder… just makes it.

Now I am stepping up cautiously.

Step, creak, step, creak… and I feel it… the wind pick up.

Now the windows at my living room and the bedroom are at the same place, but separated by one story.

This long one as it were.

As I am stepping up, the wind picks up.  There it is… the shift.  I feel the ladder inch to the left… now to my immediate left… is nothing… air… no deck, no nothing… just me and a ginormous hospital bill.

I get up to the window.

Now I have to perform work… I gotta remove the screen… hold it or drop it… open the window… climb in.

Wind blowing… cold… hands shivering… screen floppy… window is open.

I begin to climb in when I feel the worse thing ever… the ladder gives and falls…

Now I am half in my house… my window open… I’m half in… and trying for leverage… my legs are dangling.

I get myself in… I roll into my room and now I fall into the space in between the bed and the wall and window.

So I am flexed like a V in between the space since when I fell in… I curved in.

Sucks.

I straighten out… but not before the BIGGEST burst of laughter ever… I was like, dude… I wish my friends could see me now.

But the laughter results in me cramping up in my human V.

I fall out of the V and straighten out.

I close the window… I go downstairs.

But this is how smart your luscious friend Andrade is…

He instead of unlocking doors… proceeds to finish taking out his trash… talk about one track mind.

As I am taking the last bag out… SLAM.

Doors slam again… same situation… I’m such an idiot.

But this time when I run down to the deck stairs… I realize… I frigen got the ladder… FROM RIGHT NEXT TO THE BASEMENT DOOR, ya follow?

I try the door… UNLOCKED.

I almost killed myself taking out trash and breaking into my house when all I had to do was twist and push the door knob and door… open.

I’m such an fool.

I read these somewhere once… and they rang true then as they do today…

Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words.
Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions.
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for you character becomes your destiny.

I love BLUE… I could swim and bathe and love in blue.  I would wrap myself in blue and hold a girl in blue.  I would steal blue and keep it for myself.  Then when I was done rubbing blue all over me, I would give blue back to world as Andrade-Azure. And everyone would understand why I love blue and all shades and hues and intimations and interesting anecdotes and shear suggestions of blue.

I adore RED.  I would take blue and red and make pieces and play red and blue games; I would take red and marry red and have children of blue.  I would mediate fights and arguments of red and blue.  I would preside and officiate a marriage of Red and Blue and with my blessings the world would glow and the sun would set in purple and violet.  I would tend to the violets in every garden of the world and far into Hades and off into Elysium if it meant that from the violets, I would extrapolate subtle doses of Red and Blue.  If red were a girl I would ask her to marry me.  We would love and be loved.  We would be the envy of all the world and in their reverence; we would bask in the shadow of blue that would protect us from all things lost to color.  And for all those not in color, we would bring them hope.

For Red and Blue and Me makes three, and the three of us would save the world from itself.  Red to my right… Blue to my left… and the middle a pale disfigured form of me whose energy was wasted and life bereft of love and life and needs and wants and pains and fears and dreams and regrets and there between Blue and Red through their glory I appear beautiful and youthful and vigorous and childish and I am the personification of fun and humor and the like… I would be Loki… the god of mischief… and Bacchus… the god of Wine… and my wine would flow as in the Spanish word Vino-Tinto… or Colored Wine… for the Wine I drink is Red and the skies in my life are blue and the definitions of my world no one can understand unless we strive to dream in colors and love.

And then when the life is over… I myself would be a color… and ‘round the world people would open their boxes of Crayolas and find a new one… a new stick of colored wax… named Andrade-Azure… they would find that indeed I did give blue back but made it more potent… and they would find that everything they drew and painted in it… could never be seen by those who don’t love as much as me… and all those people despite what dreams may come when we are all united by all the dreams and energies and forces and physics and sciences and arts and manifestations of life… could never be seen by those who don’t love as much as me and all they would be colored as would be…

Unamused.

Music plays a large part in the opus that is my life.

I studied for two years at Berklee College of Music in Boston as a Music Education and Music Therapy student. The topics I studied had a strange effect on my personal definition of music. While I do know other students and alumni who prefer roles as performers, music has become more and more internalized in my life.

I find myself playing less when people are around and finding that sweet spot in the middle of the night when I am saturated with the days events and the nights laments and playing for the most important critic in my life: me.

What?  “Start your day off” story?

Okay.

It is now 10-ish as I start this little excursion.  ER is on… And I am calm… but an hour earlier… during my Grey’s Anatomy… and right after my Smallville Season Premier…

It was on.

I was thinking… damn… I missed Gilmore Girls season premier… How could I have let that happen?  I watch more TV than anyone I know… it is a delightful fantasy… a pleasant fiction… and while I am well read… TV is an amphetamine… and I subscribe to the 8-ball package with my dollar bill rolled up and ready to go.

Man it is chilly… Brisk… My hat is cocked to the side… my sunglasses are still on… there is a cold Heineken right next to me… a beer?  Why am I drinking beer?  I almost ALWAYS drink wine… something must be wrong… ashtray is empty… smokes on the ready… this battle is about to begin.

Then I feel it… is someone looking at me?

Now I always joke that I am latently schizophrenic… I suffer from certain degrees of paranoia, anxiety, and I most definitely talk to myself… sometimes it freaks my friends out.  I have a severe fantasy mind and an over active imagination… I often have full conversations with myself with no one around… and 99% of the time, I resolve my own problems because I just pace my house and talk it out and answer as if I had heard the other person talking… craziness… but it happens often and sometimes, when someone says to me that I was gracious or patient or I figured things out and I was mature and adult and I am wise or I am a whole slew of other adjectives strewn over some skeleton of praise… chances are, before I spoke them… I was having one of those freaky episodes where I spent 2 hours pacing, talking to myself, everything silent… but I had this imaginary conversation with everyone involved where I resolved the issue and knew EXACTLY what they were gonna say… so when I get to the convo in person… I know the answers… this may seem normal to some… perhaps it is the way you handle things… but if I were videotaped… I can throw away a whole day on pacing and talking to myself and talking to other people and you would say who is he talking to… because that’s what I am doing… I am acting the whole thing out… in the first person… because my field of vision is completely transformed into the scenario I am in… and sometimes… I cannot break out.

I often lament that I haven’t any dreams… more that I cannot remember them… everyone dreams… and I remember only a handful of nightmares… but that is because even right now… I am dreaming… and I am talking out what I am writing… in the event you didn’t notice… many of my writings have a conversational feel to them… and I have no regard for proper quote punctuation… because it is all streaming media out of my psyche… and everyone in my life needs to feed.

Did I sink you into a serious moment?  Hold a tick… I’ll win it back.

Then I feel it… is someone looking at me?

I felt watched… my paranoia began to spin… my anxiety rising… my surroundings zooming out while I zoomed in… Jason Voorhees style… -ch-, -ch-, -ch, -ah-, -ah, -ah-.

Then I felt it… someone or something was watching me.

I began to move about my house checking and re-checking rooms… bathroom… up the stairs… down the stairs… double-checking under my desk… I was literally about to have an episode.

But I sat down… on the couch… quiet… cocked my hat to the side… made sure things were in order to my left… ashtray… smokes to the left of it… lighter to the left of that… and phone to the left of that… same order… all the time.

Beer to my right on the little table… all quiet.  TV going… all was well… until…

I spied out of my periph… the eyes.

I looked toward my sundeck door… open as I like it… sometimes clear through the winter… I LOVE cold.

But there was my nemesis… an enemy… an opponent… and it was ready to launch on a crusade… but not on my watch.

It begins to move into the house… I am terrified… but unrelenting… I stare at it… it is staring at me… I am frozen with fear… and so is it… because as it moves into the house… it continues to look at me… never losing eye contact… he was good… I was better… but weak… for I never moved once during our little showdown.

This thing thought it was gonna just stroll into my home?  I was invaded, violated, and about to be conquered… by my fear.

Baby… such a baby… I mean, it could not have been a full adult… it was… a young squirrel.  I then reminded myself that I was no zoologist and barely a humanist as it were… I enjoy my self-destruction and this misery loves company… but not a damn squirrel… are they rodents?  I don’t care… I am PETRIFIED of rodents… I turn into a pile of muck… and have even called people to come help me if I encounter one… so small… and yet Andrade for all his grandeur and bravado… is rendered helpless with gripping fear… by this small… thing.

It scurries past into the house… I remain sitting… I SWEAR I could not move… I didn’t want to give chase… I know me… if it enters a room… It will take me ages to enter and I become loathsome of that room… what if I scared it into running upstairs?  What if it went into my room?  I would not be able to enter that room out of fear that I would see it or it would get me in my sleep… damn… that little thing is good.

I hear it enter the bathroom… right by the front door… if I could just MOVE, I could go to the door open it and chase it out… Simple plan… but now my schizophrenia has been raised… I am having a little talking to myself fantasy moment [trust me… this story… I’m talking it out on my couch like I am narrating my life in real time] and I am gripped with fear… all I see is Yellow… my entire vision is gripped with a yellow filter… green… then yellow… then green… then… am I tripping?

I have to overcome myself… I’m beginning to lose it.

If I do nothing and the little dude wins… My house is tainted… if I act… I have to look at its ugly eyes… what in Andrade’s name is one to do?

Act… this whole week has been about action and doing things… do I face my little nemesis?

Yes.

Close the sundeck door.  Done.

Move my stuff to the dinner table so that it doesn’t get tainted with the little bugger’s funk.  Done.

Close the basement door… damn… I can hear it in  the bathroom… clicking and ticking and shicking and other onomatopoeia ending in –ing but sound-ing like some-th-ing scratch-ing on the floor-ing… with its little claws in a room I may never go in barefoot again… damn… it ruined my room-visiting experience.

I open the front door… and I wait… I realize, this thing ain’t gonna make a move with me here… it is as terrified of me as I am of it… damn… rational Andrade… finally… he was gone for a bit… but I am thinking straight… the fear had the opposite effect… it brought clarity… no more yellows and greens… no more evil squirrel… just problem… and solution.

I step to my dinner table but keep an eye on the front door… just sip the beer… have a smoke… everything will be right as rain in… a… few… minu-…

It stops… right at the front door… and the son of a bitch, looks back at me… and it just freezes… it is staring at me… is that thing mocking me?

For all the yellows and greens in the Crayola box that is my head… all I see now is RED.

I step toward it… and it doesn’t move.

I step closer… and it remains fixed on me.

Then it crosses my mind… is Andrade goin’ down because of a frigen squirrel?

But this squirrel must have had an epiphany like I did… perhaps it found its own Heineken and smokes in my bathroom… because I ran at it… and I was standing a foot away… front door open… the wild behind it… the darkness awaiting it… the air inviting it… a whole bunch of other transitive gerunds in its background… and it didn’t move.

A sign?  Was the sum of my fears… the sum of all fears… factored, summed, subtracted, divided, multiplied, raised, lowered, augmented, diminished, and added to a small equal sign that was a 12-inch ruler’s length between us?

Did Squirrel equal Stubborn equal Andrade?

Did my reflexive property mean Andrade equals Stubborn equals Squirrel?

Ergo… transitively… Andrade equals Squirrel?

This little thing… young… looked under-developed… was standing and facing a HUMAN… larger than life… at my worst, I would live longer and play harder and work more tirelessly than this thing… and yet in perspective… so would it… I was no better… apparently, I was afraid of the little squirrel… and yet I overcame that…

So there we were… High Noon… tumbleweed blowing by… guns holstered, finger twitching… who would move first… OK Corral style… and this law man was ready to defend Tombstone.

Because I know what I had to do… I would stomp it and kill it right there… and in a fell swoop, as it were… stomp and kill what it represented… me… my fear… my old life… my new one… life would take life… and I felt righteous.

Or would it dart past me… and in sick torment… spoil other rooms in my house… ruin it for me… it would stomp the one thing that made me a human and it a squirrel… it would return me to my simple sylvanophile psyche… it would stomp my pride… it would stomp my ego… it would face down its fear… and kill my resolve… nature would take nature… and it was righteous.

Andrade becomes Squirrel… Squirrel becomes Andrade… It takes claim of my home… and I run into the darkness and scurry away… and that bastard arrogantly imbibes my alcoholic libation, smokes my smokes, puts on my sunglasses, and lives a better life than I could in the same position… it overcame… and it earned its position.

An eternity passed… and it didn’t move… nor did I… and now was I was just rifled with apparent anthropomorphisms… and it took on a life of its own… Squirrel… equaled… Andrade.

It moved… its tail was in the air!

It was ready… my stomping foot was ready… I would not hesitate… I would ruin its short and pathetic and simple and wasted existence by cancelling its subscription to Time-Life.

And right when we were about to strike… it turned quickly… and ran out the door.

Damn… I have accomplished so much and now I am ready to start a new life… and before I could live my metaphor… my Squirrely metaphor… it ran into the darkness.

Because no matter what I do… beer in hand… smoke in hand… life in hand.

No matter what I do… my equal is out there… ready for another showdown… and I did not win… my goal was to stomp it… and it did not win… its goal was to put me in my place… but it’s out there… in the darkness… always… hunting me… stalking me… finding me… my yellow… my green… my red… my salvation.

Because Squirrel equals Andrade… Andrade equals squirrel… and I am comfortable with that… because every time my fears creep up on me… I know… beer in hand… smoke in hand… and interrupting my Grey’s Anatomy and, in recounting, ruining my ER… I’ll be ready.

Because squirrel equals fear… And Squirrel equals Andrade… and Andrade equals fear… and somewhere out there… there are nouns and pronouns that fear me…

But wherever my fear shows up… I’ll be…

Ready.

To stomp it.

Or did it in fact put me in my place then?  Did it win?  Did my fear win?  Or is it not about winning and losing… but really how I played the game?

It won… fear always does… because fear defines us… Squirrel equals fear… Squirrel equals Andrade… Andrade equals afraid…

Good… because if I feared nothing… and I remained unchecked… then Squirrel equals Enemy… and Andrade equals enemy…

And all the evens being odd and the odds being even… the only thing I have to fear… my greatest phobia… my most formidable foe…

Is me.

Fear plus Enemy… equals…

Self.

And while a great cross-section of my friends are out there shopping for their “self” and waiting for the price to come down or to see if they can buy it in bulk at some warehouse store or see if they can wait out the crowd…

I shopped and bought mine early… first kid on the block to have self…

But I forgot… to do what my mom always told me to do…

Save the receipt.