I’m so excited for you Kendall and the great adventures ahead. Congratulations and thanks for letting me be a part of your senior year.

And this was his first photo shoot. Nice work, Gray.

It’s difficult to give resolute definition when most things are in a constant state of transition, and we rarely understand the things we’ve already defined as well as we think we do. Despite this innate difficulty associated with accurate defining, most of us are well rehearsed at placing specific mental tags, especially upon people. Personal pride is, as is often times the case, the culprit. For labeling a person on first glance takes a good deal of subtle arrogance, and so, to refuse to label and thus ignore our pride, is an extremely challenging practice most try to avoid. The point we commonly ignore is that as new intricacies are revealed, we who label must now admit we were wrong and reexamine the accuracy of what we thought was true. This is a painful reality, but, despite the pain, we scarcely commit terrific effort to garnering enough courage to cease our labeling ways and avoid killing our capacity to relate.

The process of labeling people stems from our love of categories, of streamlining every day processes, even our relationships. And not that all categorizing is bad, but, when it comes to people, our perceptions are inadequate at best. We see categorizing others and their ideas as an efficient way to align ourselves with those we want or need to align ourselves with and to discourage alignment with the rest. These alignments are almost always based upon our initial reactions to shallow, interpersonal interpretations or physical data collected on the whim. In truth, most of us are lazy when it comes to understanding people, even those we seemingly care about the most.

The practice of labeling is based not just upon our love of categories but upon our reflex to assume, as well. And, as we all know, assumptions directly limit the potential of those we label by stymieing the interactions and relationships we have with them. To make assumptions about another is to essentially wall them in to certain groups, which, once categorically cemented, are nearly impossible to break free of. Cultures, businesses, organizations and families mature and profit when labeling is done away with and everyone is openly accepted, listened to, and held accountable, when assumptive based decisions are no longer the status-quo. The surface indicators we use most often to define others are usually the most tempting, as well as the quickest to manipulate and manufacture. However, easily discoverable, easily adjustable, personality patterns fall short of revealing truth. In reality, it takes hard work to break through the barriers these indicators put up, as well as a lot of practice, communication, and time well spent learning the genuine character of the person we hope to befriend, hire or simply get to know.

Becoming a man, I think, is like becoming a writer. One must be patient, attentive to form and medium, hard working, always perfecting, and, most importantly, forever editing. Becoming a man takes practice.

A boy becomes a man at 18, some say so. Others say it’s much earlier than that, perhaps aligned with certain ritual or rite of passage, an unpredictable event handled with such care and agility, a man he must certainly now be. And still others say manhood is reached much later, reaped at an undefinable time after sifting through and planting the experiential seeds of many years spent living.

Some say we are men by the hair on our chests, the hair on our faces, the gray strands falling from our heads like twigs breaking free in the wind, men by the pheromones coursing from our pores, the testosterone blazing through our poppy veins. Different and the same, bound as brothers, divided as competitors, they say our ambition, drive, our disheveled innards spewing forth at the slightest need for show, our fight, our willingness to confront, to battle, to believe in something better than our current state, to conquer, to hurt and be hurt, to struggle and overcome, to strive for and achieve, that these qualities make us men. Some say we are defined by the shoes on our feet, the suits on our shoulders, the bourbon in our glasses, the cigars pinched between our teeth, the pride rooting our posture. Or that a man’s hands distinguish him from boyhood, calloused, how they hold a child, hold dirt, a pen, swing an ax, shovel snow, plant a garden, care for a screaming child, hook a squirming worm, calm fears, wipe away tears, embrace, paint, turn a wrench, create. They say a man’s voice: fiery, rough as concrete to knees, smooth as confidence, soft as grace, strong, smelling of cultured bacteria and freshly cut grass, can take a threat to the grave or coax a newborn from the womb. A man is, perhaps beyond all else, responsible. For his family, spouse, friends, community, body, mind, he is responsible. He is highly cognizant of the potential decedents birthed out of his every move, decision, word, yet he moves, decides and speaks with boldness and integrity, never worried beyond repair. A man breathes heavy and hard, looks life straight in the eye, shakes its hand and never looks away. He is threatened, intimidated by no one, distressed yet sturdy, weakened yet standing, battered, scarred, damaged yet continuously moving to higher ground. A man speaks the truth without hesitation. A man is aware of his weakness yet refuses to indulge. He is stone with heart, ocean with support, ground with give, sky with character. A man knows the world by site and sound, through global expedition or the eyes of his neighbor. He is thirsty for wisdom, a constant learner of men who were before, a reader and creator of great stories, triumphs and descents, a writer of his own bloody narrative.

He is becoming a doer, a believer. Apathetic, overly cautious he is not. A risk, changer and conundrum he is. He is a keeper of the land, a caretaker of the brokenhearted, an inspiration to those who ponder retreat, whose knees shake amidst the dark. A man cares little for the opinions of others, wastes little time thinking of himself. He hates, loves that which he hates, loves because it is who he is, not because someone told him so. He is a producer and a servant, peace and turmoil, avenger and forgiven, planner and chaotic, known and absolutely wild.

He is man. God help those who wait for us to be so.

A coffee house, Indianapolis, window seat, computer on table, alone; white, porcelain mug steaming just in front of my lingering right hand. The coffee is decent; mine is black, purified, smells slightly of Iquitos, of the Amazon River basin, of jungle rain pooling on makeshift soccer fields, of small villages and children jumping from trees, of tropical humidity painting dots of perspiration on the back of my neck. Henry Miller on my lap, Tropic of Cancer, page after page of banned literature never to be matched. Don’t read it. But if you do, read for the three pages describing Matisse and the three praising Whitman. The rest is a portrait, a deeply bruised portrait of societal truth laced with the reality of sexual exploitation, the trappings of normalcy, of disfigured relationships and the lusts of men, the turmoil they–we–accept as intimacy, as pleasure, as business, as life. For the love of Paris, for the love of literature, for the mind of Miller and his capacity to distribute the thoughts of men, crumbs of a sinking soul in its sad brilliance and grotesque, misshapen reality, read the book. Otherwise, if you read for anything else, Miller will destroy your preconceptions and fantasies with actualities and debrief, reconfigure your war time experiences to submissive fairy tales with gruesomely delightful, necessarily scary intricacies of man’s greatest distractions. The American courts banned the book as obscene, but Cancer is not obscene, it’s not pornographic, you will not be aroused; no, Cancer is the reality of many, of Miller, of Paris, of the world, and most of the time most people can’t handle the reality of most of the world they live in. Miller unveils the facade, steps through the curtain, the cover-up, then details the ruthless discoveries found there.

I read because I’m an addict; addicted to words, sentences, paragraphs, the feel of inky, oily paper between my finger tips, the quiet turn of pages, the flow of chapters, the disruption of interjected, irresponsible protagonists, the recollection of story and dreams as they unfold in front of my hazy eyes, the breaks between frames creating wonder as to their existence.

A man in a gray suit, a tightly woven suit that reminds me of factory fresh carpet, turns around and says with a glance out the window, “It’s raining again.” And he picks up his espresso, pulls it up tightly around his pink bottom lip, buckles it in place, and sips softly of its black contents. He’s done this before. Customers enter, customers leave, a few enjoy their time, most hate the majority of their experience or are indifferent to it. What’s the difference? Baristas shuffle, trade places behind the counter, mix sweet drinks, ruin decent coffee with syrups and frothy calories. Students laugh in the distance, a blond haired girl touches the hand of the boy across from her, eyes begging him, taunting him for repose, for response, for affection, for passion, for grasp. Rain drops scatter about the window, run from pane to pane, seek cover as if they run from the very clouds that created them. The world outside is blurry, the light on my computer dims, the man in the carpet suit blinks twice, loosens the small cup from his lips and gradually removes himself back to his own table and the dry biscuit to his left.

A young woman passes my table. She’s wet, hair rappelling down the side of her face, coat smothered in rain. A gust of hot humidity and floral scented perfume follow her like dogs chasing meat in mid-August as the belly of the earth strangles the cool of morning till it’s dead on the ground. Her passing lifts the corners of my notebook, ripples my coffee, stiffens my olfactory sensors. Her hair, long like literature, like Judges, like Samson, like Delilah, like every strong man, every capable man, softened and overcome by lust and the reality of his declining steadfastness, his residual incapacity to maintain his own will and please God simultaneously. That prostitute, that scapegoat for pride, destroyed him, cut his hair, took his manhood. Then God shut the door, cut the cord, put a block on the trust fund. Samson’s bulging power, his throttling testosterone; then the world had her way with him and he became her toy. Yet in spite of all his escapades God still made use of Samson, still let his hair grow back, still had his vengeance just like he’d planned from the start, from before his conception. Samson, more blind, arrogant rogue than righteous ruler, recognized God at all the right times. And God seemed okay with it, made a lot of Samson in spite of his utterly moronic tendencies.

Coffee’s cool to the touch, rain subsides, birds sing, traffic flies, horns blare, the music is so loud my ears can’t concentrate, head can’t balance, eyes can’t decide their gaze. Hang head, close eyes, breathe in, breathe out, adjust head forward, open eyes: And the old man’s staring blankly at me, diagnosing me with his eyes. “I’ve been there,” he says. And we stare at each other for another moment, then at a group of runners passing by, then at the sun rounding a cumulus. A barista calls another name, remnants of wet footprints trail off on the tile floor beside me like scattered letters dropping from my fingers. The old man turns, grabs his carpet hat, his nails in need of trimming; he waves slightly as he stands, leaves.

A stack of yellow papers, black ink pen, an hour of escape, an hour of unobservable peace. Six days out of seven I sit down to write and on the seventh I stand and pace and mentally throw things. Six days out of seven my hand spews hypocrisy and bloody, bloated carcass remnants onto shoddy pages of torn out spite framed with hair cut from my own head while I slept, and six days of out seven I burn every sentence I write. But the six days of dross are necessary. For without the six days of lies, of selfish contemplation, of exaggeration, I never arrive at the innards, the charged, the long-haired and powerful, the sweat induced seventh day of blind, feverish pace, the writing of the movements of my movements, enough to grab hold of the pillars of this earth, squeeze a little harder and bring my entire, fabricated kingdom down upon me.