As a creative, I am always flirting with new ideas. Constantly developing new projects, whether that be painting, writing, research, or learning new skills. Yet I cannot shake that I am a philosopher and a deep contemplator of morality. No matter how many times I try to spin the narrative of my current circumstances the quote from Dr. King Jr. pierces through me like a bullet. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.". I don't want to be difficult; I need to be difficult. For in times of increased violence, the lines between right and wrong become also become increasingly obscure. I cannot accept what is happening to me passively. 

I want to express my deepest love & gratitude to those who have gone to extreme lengths to help me pierce the veil of my current circumstances. I can even assure you when I fight back it's is in the spirit of protecting the generation of even those who are oppressing me's children. 

My circumstances are increasingly particular. So I am going to take a chance. The projects and things I have done are part of a much larger project. A project that I am devastated to not bring to fruition. But now that I have created demand I must restrict the supply until I am adequately compensated for the work I have done. So that you guys get tastes of the larger symphony I am conducting I will be uploading the drafts of the beginning to some of the stories I have in mind. 

This was never a pursuit driven by the desire for wealth. But the reality of it is these stories take time. The literal act of writing, contemplation, seeking inspiration, and research. I actually have been rushing to apply pressure. I want to hold the quality of my work to a higher standard and that is going to look like paying for team members to help me edit and format. So, with no further ado, the beginning of an anonymous story I have in store for you all. 

 

Copyright 2024 D.Hernandez All Rights reserved.

This piece of writing belongs to D. Hernandez and D.Hernandez alone. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

 

If On A Summer's Morning A Traveler

2

 

 

Strung out on my options I did the one thing I didn't wanna do. I leaned into the destiny prescribed to me since my boyhood. I was going to take over the family business. I tried joining the military, twice, it never worked out. I tried going to community college, twice. Both times I failed out. Third times the charm bebe, awkwardly winks.

I did this for four years. Then on and off throughout college. I've got plenty of stories from this time and I will tell them when the unfolding gets there. 

It's just important to note that this time happened. It happened in a way that was formative. It's where my passion for change and books began.

I mention this time because it was a time where a kid could not have been more lonely. Or at least that's what I thought at the time. Life has a remarkable way of showing me that when I think I can't get lonelier, I get lonelier. When I think things can't get worse, they get worse. 

Any ways, in this time of solitude I fell in love. In my eyes, she was too good for me. She was beautiful and funny. How I ended up with her was beyond what I could conceive. Again, I'll tell that story, but we ain't on that crease, we are on this one. Our love exploded and I was only upset with how little control I had. 

We were here, then we were there, then we were everywhere, and then we were nowhere. Cabin fever kicked in and in a few months I was living alone in Syracuse, NY. Again, another crease, but we ain't there yet. 

I was living for about two months on my own. For the first month, I was coming home from work or school just to sit on the floor. After a few hours, I'd read or watch a movie. If I remember correctly, at the time I believe I was watching My Hero Academia. I have commitment issues, generally speaking, but for animes particularly. Love my dweebs, but I do not have self identify because I have started more than I have finished. 

Something profound happened to me and it thrusted me into an extremely liminal state. A threshold in which I could not discern aspects of my past and my identity, while also making me remarkably curious to the capacity of human consciousness and creativity.

I wasn't an addict per se. I was young and out of options. I had no friends and no matter how much I increased my meditation practice I could not repeat the experience that I had. So, in my misery I drank. Not because I needed to but because I could and I wanted to. I could stop whenever I wanted. I just never wanted to. 

The typical routine for this nine-month bender was two bottles of Jack on the weeks that I got paid. Four to five bottles of wine on the weeks that I didn't. About an eighth of weed every paycheck. Bong rips and beer were my Buddahood. This experience complimented with strenuous hours of seated meditation, the early stages of redeveloping Juillia Cameron's assigned writing routine, a curiosuly developing vinyl collection, and an impulse Christmas bonus bass guitar purchase had me slowly becoming. But we aren't quite there yet either. 

Where we are is a month out from the indescribable. I had just dogged my first bottle of whiskey earlier that week. Whiskey and weed keeps me warm in winter. Suds and sangria is a summer song. It was always winter when you were this kind of alienated. 

I decided to sit on the floor. My futon was cheap and broken from a combo of passing out drunk and fucking. By the end of it all; there was only hate fucking in every square inch of that place as if we were trying to bring the building down. We both fell over when the futon arm broke. 

So I am sitting on the floor and I have this bottle of Tennessee Honey to my left. It's right in front of my amplifier. Just behind me I've got a set of cockroach traps. I forgot to mention that this was also one of my habitual bi-weekly purchases. Booze, microwavable meals, about nine cockroach traps, and a can of raid. The place was infested with cockroaches. I only saw mice in my actual apartment once, but around the building frequently. Unfortunately, the one time I saw a mouse in my apartment, was amidst a very very bad loss of mushroom virginity trip. A different crease. 

So, I am sitting there and I plea with whoever the fuck is listening. I cracked the bottle. It was chilled in the freezer while I was working on it's dead brother. But a misery came over me so immense when I heard that crack. I put that bottle down and slid it with my index finger away from me. My impulse was to kill every cockroach I ever saw, but I had grown fatigued. There were so many in each trap. The soles of all my shoes looked like the bumper of a car after a long road trip. 

So, when this tiny little cockroach cut between me and the bottle, like goddamn Moses parting the red sea of my cheap flooring, I just watched it. Then I broke down. In a voice that nobody could hear I began to beg. For a sign. If someone was listening, then I didn't ask to be born. That my life has been nothing but a build-up of false hope and let-downs. I need mercy. Give me something. 

My eyes began to gloss up. Like ocean of crystal was being suspended by a thin firmament of desperation. The fucker stopped around my knee. Turned around and looked at me. This little cockroach communicated something to me that I wouldn't understand until years later while on a good trip of mushrooms. The message wasn't understood, but it was loud enough to make me slow down. My mouth became ajar. It turned around and kept walking.

I don't know how long I sat on the floor drenched in the scent of cheap candles. My drinking slowed down a bit, but it transitioned. See up until that point I was still a happy go lucky drunk. This is when I became a night owl drunkard stumbling over myself, breaking things, and pissing in the laundry hamper by mistake. 

But instead of everyday. It was every other day. Instead of when I immediately got home it was after I had done my push ups and read a few chapters of my book. Journaled about abstract concepts with no formal knowledge on the subject just exploring the plausible bounds of my limited, but developing reason. 

Yet, on the day of the cockroach, something deep within me changed. My purpose was no longer to identify with certainty the phenomenon of youthful innocence. Nor was it in the pursuit of what I had lost (though this sentiment remained in the backdrop of my inquiry). See I concluded that all I had suffered and loss was a result of my own ignorance. I had lost my innocence because I didn't know what it was when I had it. I pursued presence because I could never identify it while immersed in it. I could not recreate the feeling of the indescribable because I was unsure of what this experience was. If I ever wanted to repeat any of these experiences or speak to cockroaches again I needed to become even more well-read than I already was. At this point in my life there were only three people who had read more than I had. If I was going to be isolated, then I was going to use it to my advantage. 

The intense studying of my isolation became quickly invalidated when four months later Covid began and others were surely using the same break from society to do the same thing. 

After so many years of writing and under so many different pseudonyms, the nuances of identity have become increasingly complex. An issue I place on the emphasis on what healthy masculinity and heteronormativity looks like in our society. In theory, I very much know who I am. In practice, it is everchanging to isolate a sense of self long enough with any degree of certainty. 

Admittedly, I no longer identify with one name that I have gone by. For each one feels like a performance of attributes that very much make me, me. I will from time to time tell people that I am called, Roach. 

Copyright 2024 D.Hernandez All Rights reserved.

This piece of writing belongs to D. Hernandez and D.Hernandez alone. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.