I
was born in New York City 42 summers ago, the first of three to a very loving
couple from Colombia. My parents never lost sight of where they came from and
who they are, so growing up Colombian alongside Sesame Street and McDonalds
molded, I believe, a better version of me than if I had only been a part of one
culture. I was a good kid growing up, not venturing far from the normal trouble
even good kids get into; not eating my vegetables (well, not eating much at all
was a more frequent issue. Still is.), talking too much in class or making the
other kids laugh, kissing a girl that I liked in the 5th grade
because she took my eraser. Still can’t believe I got into trouble for that. What
made matters worse was that Mr. R made me translate the incident into Spanish for
my mom after school. Although I was conscious I didn’t do a horrible thing, I
was in trouble nevertheless and worried about disappointing my parents. I later
learned that my mom’s odd expression during the translating, whenever I gathered
enough nerve to look up into her face, wasn’t so much displeasure as confusion
as to why I was in trouble for kissing a girl on the cheek. When she told my
dad about it, he gave me a pat on the back along with a happy “That’s my son”.
After all, it wasn’t as if I had tried to kiss Mr. R, and that was clearly a
big relief to both my folks.
•
I
never said a word to her, though, which I’m sure is the only reason I never
became Brad Pitt.
•
In high school I made few friends, but they
were very good friends, and we were part of the first class to graduate from New
York City’s newly formed LaGuardia High School of Arts. Most of my friends
majored in art as I did, but having other friends that took ballet, sang, acted
or played a musical instrument made for a very rich environment. (Although not
part of my acquaintances, in the hallways of my high school I often passed Chaz
(Chastity back then) Bono, Carl Anthony Payne, who played Roach on the Cosby
Show, and Jennifer Aniston. She wasn’t even famous yet, but I had an enormous
crush on Jennifer and would hang out nervously after homeroom was over in order
to “run into her” as that was the same room her French class met in the
following period. I never said a word to her though, which I’m sure is the only
reason I never became Brad Pitt.) By
the time I graduated in 1988, I felt the beginnings of self-possession and had
a good idea of where my strengths, and weaknesses, lay.
Later that same year I attended the Fashion Institute of Technology for two intense years of education in fashion design. Unfortunately for me the experience was much like having had a very high fever; I don’t remember many details, just feeling ill and very uncomfortable most of the time. There were incidences of forceful vomiting as well, I believe. It was a very hard course schedule for me as there was no real segue from basic high school art classes to homework on industrial-speed sewing machines just a few months later. I was there on a nearly full scholarship, so it was paramount that I do well, which for me translated into virtually no socializing - which wasn’t exactly surprising to me as I was still very shy and introverted. I found I had to focus intently and work way harder than my fellow classmates just to maintain a slightly below average standing in most of my classes, and in the end I had sad and somewhat bitter memories of my college experience and virtually no friendships or acquaintances to speak of. I couldn’t want it to end sooner.
Immediately after graduation I needed to both cleanse my mental palette and find a job to start saving money, and within a few weeks I was working as a counselor for a summer day camp just a few blocks away from the apartment building I grew up in, in Washington Heights, a predominantly latin neighborhood in upper Manhattan, New York. It was the perfect tangent to go off into to try and calm my mind, and where I learned that I was far better and quicker to make children laugh than adults, a fact which continues to be curiously true.
In the years that followed I repeatedly found myself going from one short-term design related job to the next. Not because I was a bad employee but because landing a full-time job was difficult as a recent graduate; I had no bankable work experience. And how exactly was I to begin to acquire said experience if no one would be willing to hire me? That question is up there with the one about the chicken and the egg. Most jobs would last about 3 or 4 months, and one day it dawned upon me that this was probably so because companies were required to provide health care packages at about that period of employment. It was preferable (i.e. cheaper)to let me go, and after a few years of that routine it made for an awful, ragged-looking resume that made me cringe to see recruiters and headhunters try to mask their own cringe. My saving grace was my very strong and diversified artistic ability; you name it I probably drew or painted it in about every form of media available. Much to my frustration this grace slowly grew darker and less graceful as I realized that it was almost impossible for headhunters or art directors to properly place or even categorize me because I hadn’t focused in any one particular area of design - I did a pretty good job of spreading myself so thinly across such a large gamut of artistic expression that it was difficult to demonstrate true understanding of any one area, even if I actually understood very well.
In the early nineties I landed a job with the Gitano jeans corporation as an assistant designer in the womenswear division. The years spent there would turn out to be the richest in terms of work relationships and the one that even back then I was conscious I would always chase or hope to repeat in the future. We were a group of about a dozen designers and assistants that saw each other’s faces far more often than our own families’, but perhaps due to some fantastic planetary alignment we got along incredibly well and perhaps even better than some actual families. These working relationships in time grew into genuine friendships and to this day we remain in contact and have the same chemistry and bond forged in an office so long ago on 38th street and Broadway. But once again, the day arrived that we had to say goodbye, and I found myself bouncing from one brief period of employment to the next.
As the years continued to flow by, I began to loose my overall confidence as well as the desire to push my art. I began to focus on infrequent pieces that I might only show to family and close friends. I was faced with the very real-world decision to take any job because as a married man with a newborn baby girl, I needed to help bring in income. Any income. This was a far greater blow to my ego and self-esteem than it should have been or could ever have imagined to be, and in retrospect I believe this period of my life was marked by a mild form of depression. I felt that the wonderful talent God had infused me with was wasted, that I had somehow missed the window that would have, should have provided my family a “better” life. That the family and friends that had seen any of my art was as big an audience as I would ever get.
That along with my
loved ones, I had let myself down.
Perhaps no other
lesson in my life has taught me how powerful our thoughts are, and how easy it
is to believe the negative ones. The positive thoughts may be just as strong,
but the maintenance involved in prolonging them is where the difference lies, I
believe. At the gym, it’s just so much easier to put those heavy weights down
than to do one more rep with them, and even harder to push for one more rep
after that. Thinking positively is similar yet harder but only because it isn’t
a physical weight in your hands – it’s a philosophical one on your shoulders.
•
He
was way worse than Cancer Bitch (an
unholy septuagenarian I once worked for so latin
soap-opera evil she smoked 3 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day in her
office, maliciously unconcerned for the safety or comfort of others.
Or for the sprinkler system.
•
Although it took a long time, in addition to a veritable bottomless well of love, support and understanding from my wife Sofia, I slowly pulled up from my nosedive and began flying a more level flight. We were living in Brooklyn, NY at the time, and I managed to get a job at a Linens and Things on Coney Island. I got a heavy dosage of dealing with awful and wonderful Brooklynites, malfunctioning cash registers, little Russian ladies dead-serious about coupon redemption, and working through the night for re-stocking duty. I left that job to work as a packaging designer for a company also in Brooklyn. It was run with an iron yarmulke by whom is without a doubt the absolute worst individual I ever had the displeasure to work for. He was way worse than Cancer Bitch (an unholy septuagenarian I once worked for so latin soap-opera evil she smoked 3 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day in her office, maliciously unconcerned for the safety or comfort of others. Or for the sprinkler system. The smell she did detest? That of microwave popcorn popping. Go figure.) This guy was a cigar chomping, foul smelling (I mean besides the cigar), cell phone flinging, tantrum-and-spit throwing little monster of a man whose idea of working harder involved trying to pay for lunch so that I could continue to work at my desk uninterruptedly within a warehouse with no windows. The only good thing that came from that job (because at this point I had fully embraced finding the good within the bad, no matter how deeply buried or how long it took) was the friendship I forged with my friend of the Lubavich order. The company was almost completely composed of Hassidic Jews, and this made for a very different experience for me to say the least. I learned a lot about their culture, and mostly because my buddy there was extremely open and willing to answer any question I had, and was just a good guy to be around. Really, beside the paycheck he was the only positive about that job. That and quitting; I left on a Friday because the next day I would be boarding a plane for a completely new gig in the Bahamas. I would have given that nasty troll of a man a piece of my mind while I informed him that I was up and leaving, but the fact that his paranoia holed him up in an office that you needed to be buzzed into and out of stayed my tongue. How embarrassing to bid him “Good DAY sir!” after an awesomely dramatic and lengthy farewell speech, spin around and storm towards the door… then just stand there awkwardly until he decided to buzz me out… Not cool. Instead I simply informed him that I was very unhappy working there and that it was my last day. His faint smirk made me think he had wanted me to leave anyway, probably for as long as I had wanted to leave myself. I turned around and headed for the door… then just stood there awkwardly until he decided to buzz me out…
From Brooklyn to the Bahamas
Several years ago I had a freelance gig in Manhattan’s Lord and Taylor (with the purchase of a fragrance for Mother’s day you would get a greeting card created on the spot by yours truly). I overheard the manager argue with a glass engraver over the phone who apparently was not going to show. Seeing how disappointed she was, I thought to myself, “How hard can glass engraving be?” (Never mind it was something I’d never tried before. See? My confidence had come back). I offered my services and she happily agreed to hire me for those events as well. The first event was so disastrous that after the third chipped perfume bottle that manager whispered to me “Did you bring your card making supplies? Maybe we’ll stick to that”. We did for the rest of that day, but I refused to give up, got the correct equipment and kept practicing. I gained enough skill that this same manager eventually recommended me to another manager over at Bloomingdales, and within a period of 3 years I had gained enough of a reputation to work major holidays and special promotional events at most of the high-end retail stores in the 5 boroughs. And it had all started as an apparent “fluke”.
One rainy Father’s Day event, I was happily engraving away at Saks Fifth Ave. when I became aware that a couple who had been quietly walking around my table had been doing so for a few minutes. I figured they were being polite in not wanting to disturb me, but were eager to either get a better look at my work or ask a question. Once they had a chance to see the bottle in their hands, they informed me that they were the owners of a Miami-based, perfume distribution company for the Caribbean area. They were so impressed with my work and thought that the promotional event was such a good idea, they asked me if I would be willing to do the same for them…in the
I think maybe God
likes perfume, and She digs my handwriting too.
So here I am, a proud work-from-home dad literally presenting the totality of my artistic abilities to the world. It’s a staggering thought in both directions; anyone can now criticize, constructively or otherwise, my work to their hearts content. Not only that, I’m opening myself up to let them tell me so. Interestingly, I don’t see much negative in this, primarily because I realize I’m finally old enough to fully understanding my past and use that knowledge to balance my future. Not that I’ve got life figured out, I mean that I understand that things come only when you are truly ready, which a lot of the time seems to be irrelevant of when you think you are ready.
•
In
reference to earning our black belts, our Tae Kwon Do instructor Master Lee said
to us “You’ve learned the alphabet. Now you can learn to put words together”.
•
If my art is disliked,
the impact if any is minimal at best because I do not and cannot create for
everyone. I create because it’s in me and I have to release it and make room
for the next idea, to clear space for the next inspiration. I wasn’t strong
enough to have that attitude at any other point in my life, and I’m strong
enough now. Our bodies grow less limber as we get older, our minds less sharp,
but our spirits aren’t anything that the passage of time or a lack of calcium
can actually ever affect if we don’t choose this to be true. Yet it’s only now that I feel I
really understand all the good and the positive that my parents tried to
instill in me. It’s only now that I see how sometimes it’s the smaller motions
that garner the larger effects in life. It’s only now that it’s easier to
differentiate between the things I can and cannot change. It could only be now;
now is when I’m experienced enough to internalize the lessons. In reference to
earning our black belts, our Tae Kwon Do instructor Master Lee said to us
“You’ve learned the alphabet. Now you can learn to put words together”. Like
so many other areas in life, as difficult and momentous as earning a black belt
can be, once we earn it we realize we’ve only just reached the bottom rung;
there’s a whole lot more ladder above us, with more ladders to go after that
than we have life to climb them all. It takes so much time, so much patience,
so much dedication to earn and then harvest the fruits of life.
And it’s so worth it.
But enough about
me…
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