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Category: life philosophy

Posted
November 6, 2018
Category
life philosophy, miscellaneous
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Manhood

When did the GOP become the party of the alpha male? Somewhere over the last few years the Right found its rugged โ€œGod, guns and countryโ€ swagger while the Left was reduced to a bunch of snowflake socialists more concerned with transgender bathroom preferences than the issues facing the average American. Fair or not, this is the perception. And in this era of fake news and alternative facts, perception trumps reality. Especially in this era.

But I refuse to be sucked in. Iโ€™ve done enough herd-following for one lifetime. Wasted too many years ignoring that small voice inside telling me whatโ€™s right (or muffling it with chemicals). These last 14 years in the joint have been a massive rebuilding project for me. Lots of soul-searching. My father did the best he could for a man who struggled with multiple demons but he died relatively young. The absence of a strong male figure in my life left me wondering what manhood actually looked like. The gang-banger? The knockout artist? The bodybuilder? The lifer playing with his kids in visitation? The Christian on his knees? The Muslim making his salat? The quiet guard pulling shift work? The abusive one going above and beyond? The warden? The governor? President Obama? President Trump?

This is what I have come to believe: A man treats others with the exact amount of respect he demands for himself. He is confident but not arrogant, strong but not oppressive, kind but not soft. His will is iron, just like his word, and he finishes whatever he starts. He doesnโ€™t take things personally… unless they are. Heโ€™s not thin-skinned or combative. He knows what heโ€™s capable of and lets his actions speak. He believes in second chances. He understands how dangerous the extremes are and makes his home in the realm of moderation. He stands up for women and sees his own children in all children. He knows how fortunate he is to have been born on American soil, in American skin, and realizes that he could have just as easily been born in a Guatemalan body. He appreciates the risks that fathers and mothers from impoverished nations face in order to give their families the opportunity of a better life… because he knows he would do the same thing if it came down to it.

Again, this is just my version. You probably have your own. One thing is for sure: neither party has a monopoly on manhood. I have brothers, cousins and friends on both sides of the aisle who embody much of the above. But I donโ€™t see a lot of it in D.C. these days.

Posted
October 30, 2018
Category
life philosophy, miscellaneous
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It becomes who they are

When gangster rappers put out music pumping murder, gang-banging, and dope life, their message is received by legions of adoring fans. The labels claim itโ€™s just entertainment. But many of these people are so easily influenced and have so little going on in their lives that their identity, reality, and worldview get swallowed up in a rap lyric. It becomes who they are. So they carjack and kidnap and murder… And they end up in the bunk next to me with a life sentence.

When Donald Trump hops on stage at campaign rallies spewing divisiveness, preaching fear, and demonizing his political opponents, his message is received by legions of adoring fans. The Republican establishment and FOX News claim itโ€™s just political rhetoric. But many of these people are so easily influenced and have so little going on in their lives that their identity, reality, and worldview get swallowed up in the hate-speak. It becomes who they are. So they troll people on Twitter and drive cars into crowds of protesters and mail pipe bombs to former presidents… And they end up in the bunk next to me with a life sentence.

Posted
July 27, 2018
Category
life philosophy, miscellaneous
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Remembering Amber

When I heard that 18-year-old Amber Robinson was beaten to death by a dude she met at a Rainbow Gathering, the story felt surreal. Oxymoronic. How does one reconcile the savage beating of a teenage girl with an event largely associated with peace and love? I would call it shocking but there is no such thing anymore. Not in this era of school shootings, church shootings, terrorist attacks, celebrity suicides, human trafficking, genital mutilation, and bath salts cannibalism. Each new atrocity is quickly drowned out by the next in the exhaustive 24-hour news cycle. The result is a sort of world-weary numbness.

Crushing? Absolutely. Shocking? Not at all.

I spoke with Amber a while back. My friend Amy was working on adopting her at the time and told me that she was an amazing artist. I offered to pay her to do the revised cover art for my third novel, On the Shoulders of Giants. While I thought the current cover was well drawn, I regretted showing the faces of Izzy and Pharaoh, the storyโ€™s two protagonists. I wanted the reader to have the freedom to see the characters according to his or her own imagination.

I really liked the idea of Amber doing the cover because she was a foster kid, just like Izzy. I envisioned a simple image: a syringe and a pen crossed like the letter X.

She read the novel and sketched a concept. But it wasnโ€™t what I asked for โ€ฆ it was a million times better. This highly creative kid saw straight through to the soul of the story and drew an angel impaled on a syringe.

When I heard she was murdered, I dug through my old photographs and found her sketch. Amy had written this on the back:

โ€œI really hope they let you keep this. Sheโ€™s sketching it on canvas. I snuck in and took a picture of it for you. I think she started to do the needle/pen image as requested but she got lost in this metaphor of her family. I know it will mean something to you.โ€

Hell yeah it meant something. She nailed it. The perfect cover. Then I lost touch with Amy, a new book came out, a few great-nieces and great-nephews were born and like most foster kids, Amber was forgotten.

Until Amy informed me that she was murdered.

So now Iโ€™m back to wanting that cover changed. And it will happen. Another artist will take her sketch and fashion it into the cover Iโ€™ve always wanted. Amber will be given credit for her idea on the copyright page, Iโ€™ll revise the acknowledgements to mention her name, and maybe add her to the dedication. โ€œFor the forgotten, the lost, the state raised and Amber Robinson.โ€

But sheโ€™ll never know how brilliant I thought she was because I didnโ€™t tell her when I had the chance.

Say it loud.

 

 

Posted
July 19, 2018
Category
life philosophy, writing
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1 Response

‘Decide what to be and go be it’

I recently read that the hands of a human embryo begin as webbed, spade-like flippers until cell death sculpts individual little fingers.

Nature is a master sculptor.

Another master sculptor, Michelangelo, was once asked how he had created his masterpiece, David. His answer: โ€œI looked at the stone and removed all that was not David.โ€

Writers do this, too. We pull details from the infinite and organize them in linear form to tell a story. Even the worldโ€™s oldest bestseller gives a nod to the creative process when, in chapter one, the Divine Architect fashions earth from the โ€œformless and void.โ€

There is a powerful lyric from the Avett Brothers โ€œHead full of doubt/Road full of promise,โ€ a song introduced to me by my friend Sheena when I was still struggling to transcend the straitjacket of my criminal past and evolve into something more. Itโ€™s this: โ€œDecide what to be and go be it.โ€

Simple yet powerful. Thatโ€™s whatโ€™s up. As much as we try to convince ourselves that we are fixed and stagnant, that this is just the way we are, the way weโ€™re wired; the truth is we are really the waveform in particle physics existing in a state of pure potential, primordial sludge, unwritten music, blank sheets of paper, unchiseled stone, works-in-progress tricked into believing we are finished products. It is our mission โ€” and our inheritance as offspring of the Original Creator โ€” to go forward and create our best selves.

In the timeless words of James Allen, โ€œThe oak sleeps in the acorn.โ€

Posted
July 13, 2018
Category
interconnectedness, life philosophy, miscellaneous, writing
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1 Response

A spectacular life

I have never watched Parts Unknown, never eaten at New Yorkโ€™s Brasserie Les Halles, never read Kitchen Confidential, yet Iโ€™m a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain. I first heard of him on NPRโ€™s Fresh Air. When Terry Gross introduced him as a chef, I reached for my radio to change the station.

โ€œAnthony Bourdain, welcome to Fresh Airโ€ฆโ€

I know the foodie movement is a thing out there in the real world, but here in the land of starch-grenades and watered-down pudding, the culinary craze never caught fire. I had better things to do than waste Duracell juice on some Yankee pontificating on the subtle art of five-star cuisine.

Then he began to speak โ€ฆ and I knew I wasnโ€™t going anywhere.

Dude was a natural-born storyteller. For the length of the interview, I was transported from my tiny prison cell in the Florida Panhandle to a bustling New York City kitchen, to a raft in the Mekong Delta, through jungles, across deserts, over mountains and beyond. To some of the most remote locations on the globe. To parts unknown.

Despite the diametrically polar trajectories of our lives, it became clear as I listened that Mr. Bourdain was a kindred spirit. This seems strange to say about a guy whoโ€™s eaten lamb nuts, wart hog rectum, and raw seal eyeball (especially considering that my soft ass wonโ€™t even eat an onion). Maybe it was his early struggles with hard drugs. Or the fact that he made more than his share of horrible choices as a younger man. If nothing else, we most definitely shared in the transformative power of the written word. For him, it meant a springboard to fortune and fame; for me, an identity other than career criminal. By the end of the interview, I was a fan.

When I saw his picture for the first time earlier this year in a Menโ€™s Health magazine, he looked exactly as Iโ€™d imagined โ€” tall (six-foot-four), tattoos, head full of gray hair, and a craggy, lined, lived-in face. The article was about him taking up Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Check out this quote: โ€œLook, Iโ€™m 61 years old. I have limited expectations of how Iโ€™ll do, but every once in a while, I get to feel the will to live drain out of a 22-year-old wrestler.โ€

Hell yeah.

Back to Fresh Air. Iโ€™ve listened to well over a thousand Terry Gross interviews during this prison bid. Musicians, rappers, actors, writers, athletes, activists, comedians, politicians, news correspondents, and other interesting people from all walks of life. Strange that my all-time favorite would be a celebrity chef. But it is. So I was pumped when NPR rebroadcast it a few weeks ago. I settled back on my bunk with a cup of coffee, ready to spend an hour with old friendsโ€ฆ until they cut to break and Dave Davies explained that they were re-airing the interview because Anthony Bourdain had been found unresponsive in a Paris hotel room that morning, his death ruled a suicide. Just as I had been introduced to his life via Fresh Air, I was now being informed of his departure through the same program. Talk about full circle.

Mr. Bourdain was obviously a seeker, same as all of us. He overturned stones through art, food, travel, chemicals, relationships, and even jiu-jitsu along the journey. But what exactly was he seeking? What are any of us seeking? Meaning. Gratification. Connectivity. Belonging. That unnamed and ever-beckoning โ€œit.โ€

I know many will judge him strictly on the nature of his passing. But the span of a human life is much too complex to be defined by a single instance. Though his suicide was heartbreaking, it was still a single instance, the final instance of a pretty spectacular life.

I continue to be inspired by him.

Posted
March 23, 2018
Category
extremes, life philosophy, My Story, the middle way / moderation, writing
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1 Response

Christopher vs. Malcolm

Thirteen years ago today a skinny, strung-out, zombified version of me staggered into a Circle K with a stolen pistol demanding Newports, Optimos, and all the cash in the register. An hour later, police K-9s found me hiding in a field off 9 Mile Road. The dog bites were bad enough to require stitches. The next morning, I was released from the hospital and booked into the now-condemned central booking and detention unit of the Escambia County jail. I remember scouring the floor for pieces of crack and scanning the ceilings for a place to hang myself. Good times. And there was reason to believe things weren’t going to get much better.

Friends faded, the Feds indicted me, the state was pushing for life imprisonment. I ended up getting 379 months. I was 31 years old at the time. This sentence meant it would be another 31 years before I breathed free air again. Sorta like a life sentence with a little daylightโ€ฆ if I made it that far. Once in prison, I immediately reverted to my old patternsโ€”getting high, gambling, and living unconsciously.

There is a Bob Seger lyric from Against the Wind that I have always loved. “The years rolled slowly past. I found myself alone. Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends. Found myself further and further from my homeโ€ฆ” Soundtrack of my life. Things were getting consistently worse.

Then in 2009, in the midst of a nine-month stint in solitary confinement, it occurred to me what a colossal mess I’d made of my life. And by occurred, I mean it fell on me like an imploding building. I was 35 years old with no home, no property, no career, no pension, no children, no freedom, no future, and no legacy except for the lengthy criminal record that dated back to my 13th birthday. I had to do something to turn the momentum. Quitting dope was a good start but it wasn’t enough. I needed to rebuild myself. This is where the books come from. A few years, four novels, and one miraculous Supreme Court ruling later, my entire life has changed. Saved by the craft.

There is a scene in my latest novel, Sticks & Stones, where a skinny, hollow-eyed crackhead walks into a convenience store and pulls a gun on the petrified clerk, a scene very similar to a chapter of my own life. Except in this story, the protagonistโ€”an ex-convictโ€”steps forward to stop the robbery. A monumental struggle ensues. This is bigger than just two men battling it out on the page. This is good versus evil, past versus future, Christopher versus Malcolm.

Spoiler alert: The good guy wins.

Posted
March 16, 2018
Category
interconnectedness, life philosophy
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Synchronicity, King of Coincidence

“Many miles away, something crawls to the surface of a dark Scottish loch.” โ€“ Synchronicity, The Police

Sometimes I fall asleep listening to AM radio. Knocks me right out. A few months ago, I awoke sometime after midnight with the cord wrapped twice around my neck and hanging off the side of my bunk. Coast to Coast was on. The guest was psychotherapist and quantum theorist Mel Schwartz. He was talking about synchronicity. Specifically about the tsunami of 2004, the humanitarian calamity it wrought and how, although it claimed roughly 230,000 human lives, there were surprisingly few animal bodies found in the aftermath. He attributed this to a sixth sense long atrophied in human beings due to lack of use. He went on to say that at the exact same time that he was typing an essay about this phenomenon on the other side of the globe, a bird flew into his room and perched on his chair. Synchronicity.

As I staggered to the bathroom, half-listening, half-asleep, an elusive plot point from my latest novel, Sticks & Stones, suddenly clicked into place. (If you’ve read it, it’s the part about the drone.) Now I was wide awake. It dawned on me that had I not fallen asleep with the radio on, I might have never awoken to receive this pivotal building block of my then-novel-in-progress. The fact that this occurred while the dude on the radio was discussing synchronicity really blew me away.

Coincidences โ€ฆ chance happenings or mystical experiences? I once heard someone refer to them as “God winks.” A 2015 Esquire article divides them into four distinct categories:

โˆž Synchronicity โ€“ Two unrelated events collide in a meaningful way. (See above)

โˆž Seriality โ€“ A series of seemingly unrelated events lead to a noteworthy event. You usually take the bus to work, but you spilled your morning coffee on your shirt, which made you miss the 7:15. You almost called a cab, but decided to try Uber. The driver is attractive. You ask her out. Two years later, you’re married and expecting.

โˆž Simulpathity โ€“ The simultaneous experience of another person’s distress. This one usually happens with twins, life-long couples, and parents with their children.

โˆž Serendipity โ€“ Something unexpected and beneficial arises from being at the right place at the right time. Pfizer researchers testing a drug called Sildenafil as a treatment for angina notice a curious side effect: erections. Eureka! Viagra.

Which is your favorite?

Posted
November 17, 2017
Category
life philosophy, My Story, On My Block
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2 Responses

The opinionated voice in my head

I don’t know about you, but my brain came equipped with a paranoid, self-conscious backseat driver who is constantly bumping his gums about every catastrophic and humiliating potentiality that is mathematically possible in a given situation.

This is probably part of the reason why I continued getting high long after the party was over — silencing the inner noise, separating self from brain chatter. Although sometimes this backfired and the dope was like giving the voice in my head a bullhorn.

But this isn’t another of my anti-drug rants. I don’t even consider myself anti-drug. I just can’t use them. For me, drugs come with the curious side effect of landing in the back of police cars. In fact, I’m currently 11 years into a 30-year sentence for actions resulting from my voracious, insatiable appetite for mind-altering substances. But again, this is not about the drugs. This is about the voice.

If you’re thinking “Malcolm is a psycho, he’s got a voice in his head,” that would be the same voice I’m referring to. We’ve all got it. This highly opinionated, ultra-sensitive, threat-assessing, judgment-casting inner narrator who edits the inflow of the world through the senses with various degrees of inflection. Mine happened to be squawking this morning. I’ll explain…

I’ve been wanting to try yoga for a while, ever since I read Bo Lozoff’s We’re All Doing Time. I’ve been incarcerated for most of my life and I grew up hanging from the pull-up and dip bars on rec yards across the state of Florida. These sorts of exercises are a given, as routine as chow and count. There’s a reason why your crackhead nephew gets arrested skinny enough to hide behind a pine tree, and gets out with pecs like Lou Ferrigno. We get buff in here. It’s part of the prison experience.

Yoga has a different draw: flexibility, supple internal organs, reduced stress, increased energy, focus, concentration, peace of mind. At 42 years old, these things seem more important to me now than having massive biceps. So this morning I woke up, brushed my teeth, slammed a bottle of water, and settled into the Corpse pose in the space beside my bunk.

Almost immediately, the voice piped up: “You look weird, man.” I ignored it and climbed to my feet to attempt the sun salutation. The voice was silent for a moment, but by the time I reached downward dog, it was back with a nervous vengeance: “Dude, what the hell? People are staring. They’re gonna think you’re soft or gay or crazy.” The voice was right. Yoga postures aren’t exactly the most prison-friendly exercises. The last thing I wanted was some rapist checking me out while I attempted the plow.

I couldn’t help it. I opened an eye and surveyed the dorm. The guy across the aisle was zoned out on psych meds, another had toothpaste slathered over his face, the old man behind me was in a heated debate with an invisible opponent. No one was paying any attention to what I was doing.

I had to laugh at myself. Why was I sweating appearances when I live in a crazy house? Probably because my paranoid backseat driver convinced me yet again that my reputation, manhood, and very existence depended on it. Here’s hoping your voice is more laid-back than mine.

[This post originally appeared on http://www.malcolmivey.com in June 2016.]

Posted
October 20, 2017
Category
life philosophy, My Story
Comments
2 Responses

Think of yourself as a nation

There is a villain in my second novel, With Arms Unbound, with the unfortunate name of Festus Mulgrew. Heโ€™s a meth cook from central Florida with a pet spider named Junior and a problem making eye contact. Like any decent villain on the page or the screen, Festus wasnโ€™t born bad. There are reasons why he is the way he is. But that doesnโ€™t make him any less dangerous. If anything, his humanity makes him even scarier, or at least more believable.

I canโ€™t do the mustache-twirling bad guy any more than I can do the square-jawed, puppy-saving hero. Iโ€™ve never met anyone like that. My heroes are flawed and my villains have at least a couple of redeeming qualities. Just like in real life.

When sketching the character of Festus โ€œMethlabโ€ Mulgrew, in addition to giving him a backstory rife with abuse and abandonment, I gave him a personal philosophy for survival under harsh conditions. That philosophy is also my own. The difference is that while Festus used it in a negative way, it has helped me to quit drugs, adhere to a strict workout regimen, manage money, develop discipline, be assertive, and focus long enough to write a few books.

If anyone within the sound of this pen is struggling with self-mastery, this may help: Think of yourself as a nation. I am the United Federation of Malcolm Ivey and like any other sovereign country, I am composed of the following:

~ Borders: These are my boundaries. Thou shalt not cross.
~ Allies: My homeboys. Every nation has alliances.
~ Enemies: Other hostile nations. In my world there are many.
~ Military: My defense system. Keep strong and confident through regular exercise and stand ready to protect my borders and allies against any threat.
~ National Debt: The money I owe.
~ GDP: The money I earn.

You can even give yourself a national bird and your own anthem if you want. The point is to take a hard look at all the various agencies that make up your nation and ask yourself if theyโ€™re being run efficiently. We ultimately have the power to mold ourselves into nations with robust economies, plentiful natural resources, and solid foreign relations. We can eliminate our deficits, strengthen our alliances and win our wars. Whether we choose to be a super power or a third world country is entirely up to us.

[This post originally appeared on malcolmivey.com 07/31/14.]

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