When I was sixteen I had to create a piece of art for my AP Art History class. Below was the explanation I wrote to the piece… It was a massive installation:

When you’re very young, life is a whirlwind of make believe, inventions, pretend, mad scientists, alternate universes, wizards, witches and warlocks, evils that were always defeated, and the inexplicable ability to see a cardboard box as a castle equipped with moats and draw bridges. You get lost. You meander ever so slowly through your own reality. Where parents are always infallible heroes and being an adult is some euphoria of high heels and the capability to boss everyone around. Everything ugly in the world is either invisible or masked by a blissful ignorance. Yet you are dazed by the grown up world. The one you so desperately want to become a part of.

Unfortunately, you get your wish and have to grapple with the consequences of the world as it is. Without fairytales to escape in or naivety to blind you. Suddenly a castle is just a cardboard box. Everybody is full of doubt. They doubt themselves, they doubt you, and they doubt any good in humanity. You get lost again. Only in a different type of world where nobody is infallible and prince charming is just a scheme created by Disney in an attempt to gain profit from the mass production of sleeping beauty Barbie dolls. With this new found understanding of reality, people learn to make themselves invulnerable to the world. They look at things in a bad light. After all if nothing’s on a pedestal then nothing can fall. They are negative and try and blind themselves with words from broken bibles or words from broken men. They hide behind cars and houses and overly priced clothing. They delve into a world where the woman crying in public is too sensitive and the homeless musician strumming on his guitar is dirtying our society.

We fit into a mold and when we see anything that’s different we ask, “Why?” This simple word is covered in so much disdain, emptiness and pain I have grown disgusted by it. Why is she dancing when there isn’t any music? Why is she laughing so obnoxiously? Why is he showing emotion; isn’t he a real man? In response to this word vomit there is only one thing that comes to mind . . . Why the hell not? Why did Eve take the apple? Why not take the apple? Why not be curious? Why not be excited? Why not be crazy? Why not sing? Why not laugh loudly? Why not dance impulsively? Why not strum on your guitar all day if that’s what makes you happy? Why not live? Why not just live? Why not lust? Why not trust? Why not love? Why not believe in witches and warlocks? Why not see the morphing ability of a cardboard box?

This is where our project came from. The difference between youthful compassion and curiosity and elderly materialism and fear. We call the young naïve but are they? Who is naïve? Those who choose to see beauty in unusual places or those who refuse to acknowledge beauty? What war ever came from compassion and curiosity? What genocide ever came from untainted acceptance? But, we are the mature ones? The enlightened ones, the wise ones?

I am not saying life is worth enthusiasm because I don’t really see the world. I have traveled and seen the hell on earth some people have to live. I have lived hell on earth myself. I have seen cruelty. I have been cruel. I understand the potential for evil and hatred in everyone. But where are you if you don’t see the potential for compassion in human beings as well?

Our piece is difficult to explain. It is built up on our own feelings and experiences and splattered with our own beliefs and ethics. We have pictures of people that see the beauty in life and pictures of people who don’t. We have pieces showing the beauty in innocence and the wonders of knowledge. Our newspaper collage acknowledges the horrors of the contemporary world and we have doors that “lead” to places covered in poetry we wrote. Because although it is good to show evident symbolism, sometimes the best way to communicate is through work done solely for yourself instead of work done for someone else. As writers we have learned it makes it strangely more universal.

The installation is largely inspired by Antonio Vidal: One of the most prominent artists in Cuba whose installations are displayed predominately through out the Callejon de Jamel. Mr. Vidal deals with a lot of the social/political issues affecting Cuba and the rest of the world. Mr. Vidal does all of this with extreme creativity and innovation. After losing both his daughter and wife to cancer he is quoted as saying, “I escape reality through my art. If I must move on I will get lost in colors.” This quote is probably the largest inspiration for our theme.

Our clothesline is kind of representative of the country from which we stole ideas. In Cuba there is always dancing laundry on balconies. It is almost their signature. However, it also has thematic meaning. “Hang your Unadulterated Imagination Out to Dry.” Many of the images represent things we leave behind when we enter the adult world and things we gain if we can still keep a childhood air within ourselves. Being infatuated with Peter Pan we stole several ideas from the book. A thimble is a kiss in the most innocent way; hence, the picture of a man and woman kissing surrounded by thimbles. Ballet is one of the most rigid forms of dance. Our project is largely about escaping rigidity. Hence the dancer with abandon in a parking garage. We have pictures of children reading and a little girl playing dress-up. All representative of childhood . . .

It would be easy to say this piece was done to inspire emotion in others or make others think. But it wasn’t. It was a personal challenge to express ourselves, our doubts, our stings, our joys. It was a selfish piece done for nothing but personal gain . . . and if it makes somebody think or enlightens someone . . . hell, why not?

He asked me for the answer. I told him I didn’t know the question. He told me to make it up; I told him it wasn’t that simple. He told me that it should be…

He drank coffee. Black. Simple. He chose whichever one didn’t sound foreign. I drink hot chocolate. Whipped cream, nutmeg, peppermint, chili powder or whatever else I can spice it up with. I liked things complicated, he liked things simple.

He told me that “all the world is accounted for…” He said there’s nothing left to discover. “All the light bulbs are lit.” He said, scoffing at me. So I flicked the light switch by his bed and I asked, “All the forbidden fruits have been tasted?” He told me to stop alluding to the bible. He said, “don’t pretend you’re religious.” I said, “I’m spiritual.” He laughed and said, “that’s a trend.”

He always bought new gadgets. He’d set them up while I played in the boxes they came in and wrapped myself in the bubble wrap while I rolled on the floor. He rolled his eyes and I laughed as I amused myself.

He liked to take photographs… He took them of me while I was asleep and at moments when I couldn’t catch him early enough to tell him not to. He only took black and white. “Color complicates things. You’re so distracted you can’t see what’s there.” I told him that things didn’t always have to be so simple. But he insisted they did, so he loaded the film in the camera and stole moments of my soul. He took photos of our good days and made them his focal point when he was trying to forget all the ugly things that framed them.

We liked to sit in the library and read the dirty parts of romance novels to each other, lying on the ground and laughing while librarians hushed us and “intellectuals” had their pre-conceived notions validated in regard to the “obnoxious teenager.” We never really cared… We went on reading about “supple breasts” and pretended it was funny… It was funny but there was something more to it, something we refused to admit… The fact that it excited us…

We liked to talk in circles. Repetition can be nice. It never lets you lose sight of where you came from and on those rare occasions it re-ignites a burnt out fire.

We liked to debate big ideas… I pretended I was a beatnik and he pretended he was an intellectual and we’d sit in The Coffee Bean while diagnosing the problems of the world. “Are we only what we love or only what we hate? Does it have to be one or the other?” I could fill an entire book with unanswerable questions… Or at least the ones that were unanswerable in our minds.

He knew the ambiguities of the governments, the geography of our world. I know the cracks in my ceiling, the geography of the potholes on my walk to work. I prefer ideas to facts, abstracts to concretes…

I told him that I always dreamt in color. He said “well, I dream in black and white.” I told him that was boring… He said it was poetic. We always got in tiffs about simple things. It was the big things that floored us… The things that snuck up behind us on idle afternoons while we were eating his mother’s cookies or watching a movie… The sky always seems to fall when you least expect it to, when the rest of the world is still and existence is lazy and humble. These are the days when people get sick, when people die, when people disappear… These are the days that you end up at hospitals and emergency rooms… These are the only times we were both silent. When everybody else was screaming out, we shut up…

We both loved making fools of ourselves. We preferred it to almost anything. We’d go ice blocking, we’d make scenes in restaurants and stage fights in grocery stores. We spent entire afternoons making prank calls and laughing until we hurt. Luminous laughter that was like convulsions in our stomachs and reminded us why we ever connoted the word living with beautiful. Sometimes we forgot.

We didn’t have “good standing.” Not with most people anyway but it didn’t bother us very much… I suppose it should have but we never gave much credit to other people, never gave any credit to their opinions. We didn’t mean it in a pompous way though I’m sure that’s the only way most people could interpret it.

He accepted the world. He said its foolish not to. I think that’s an awful way of looking at things. “You have the life experience of a fifty year old and the blind faith of a four year old.” I don’t think he intended it as a compliment but I’ve relished that comment every day since. I let it dance in my head when people tell me to “grow up,” or “be serious.” I never liked being serious; I was never any good at it. He, on the other hand, was a master at it. He could charm any adult in any room. He asked me to join in. I told him that the stock market was boring. He told me it was fascinating and that if I ever wanted to be a good writer I’d have to understand the world. I told him that knowing the economics of the world is far from understanding it. Then he ignored me and talked to someone else about the corruption of something else and I stopped listening because I was terribly annoyed.

I remember his first kiss. He told me it was perfect. I reminded him that we promised to kiss each other before we kissed anyone else… I told him it hurt… He told me that the pain wasn’t meant for me. I told him that it was irrelevant. And then he said, “It was with a another guy… When Andy found out he called me a fag.”
I told him that in England a fag means a cigarette… And then we laughed. Because it was one of the moments where you either laugh or cry and he never cried. He hated to cry. He thought it was a sign of weakness. I really don’t mind crying… It’s cleansing… Like liquefying all the ugly of your insides and letting it rain out of your soul… He didn’t believe that people had a soul. He said after a person dies they just rot into the ground. I told him that was the ugliest thing I had ever heard. Because it was, and it caught me off guard.

We’d go to art museums. He’d look at Rothko for hours and I would look at all the unknowns in the modern art section… We were both repulsed by each other’s tastes and yet we identified with art in the same way. We both thought we could escape in it, we wanted to be painted into it and live out our lives in acrylic.

He liked to call himself a man. I liked to remind him he was still a boy.

He read while I wrote and then he read what I wrote while I read his face for a reaction; some hint of approval or disapproval. Most of the time he laughed and told me that it wasn’t very good… But there were times when he’d look up and say, “beautiful.” Most times the word, “beautiful,” annoys me. It’s so ambiguous that it doesn’t really mean anything. Most times I say, “Beautiful is watered-down.” But I liked it when he said it. Because I knew what he meant, or at least I thought I did.

I always judge books by their covers. “If they can’t even come up with a good illustration how is the book supposed to be any good?” He told me to stop being “bitchy.” I told him to stop being so endearing.

I told him that my grandfather could always guess when the light at the intersection would turn green… He told me “anyone can do that, they just have to look at the other lights.” I told him that my grandfather could do this with his eyes closed. It was a lie but I desperately needed to prove him wrong.

There are flags on the construction cranes. It’s the first thing that catches me as I walk along Church Street with my back towards the graveyard. I inch closer to ground zero and I am suddenly bombarded by men with thick Russian accents who are trying to make a sale. “Pictures, pictures!” Screams one man.

“I give you better price!” Yells his competitor.

They’re waving their product around so much that it’s hard to get a look. I finally make out the pictures; it’s of the buildings, burning. Aerial shots and shots from high buildings. Shots of it crashing. Shots before and shots after.

A family carrying FAO Schwartz shopping bags and two men in darks suits with bright ties are walking by, clutching their starbucks cups and blowing streams of cigarette smoke into the first day of fall. There’s a homeless man with a dirty beard leaning against the fence and he’s playing amazing grace on the pipe. There’s a poster behind him, it reads in big block letters, “THE SAME PIPER FEATURED IN FAIRENHYPE 9/11.” Another man’s poster is telling me that 9/11 was “year one of the new world.”

I walk towards the fence to get a better view. The fence is tall with barbed wire whirled around the top and people pressing their faces against it. People are everywhere, trying to get the best view. There isn’t much of anything to look at.

Conspiracy theorists with matching blue t-shirts start screaming as they pace through the open spaces, telling everyone to ask for answers, telling everyone to demand them. Two women with New York City sweatshirts stare at them in petrified disgust.

I move away from this, retreating to the staircase. The stairs lead to another open space, it’s closer to the site. The only thing separating us from ground zero is a thin wall of checkered steel. I peer through it on to the construction, or the rebuilding as it has been called; it seems more like some eerie desecration. The workers move dirt and debris from one pile to the next under a large sign that reads “Here Lie Our Heroes.” Some stranger next to me is crying and everyone is whispering about her, fixing their eyes on her as they pass, the way people do with a car wreck on the freeway.

I decide to follow a couple walking by. They start towards yet another stairway. It leads to some sort of transport. They swipe their cards and disappear. This level is enclosed and far emptier; I’m nearly alone, except for the Hudson newsstand, three homeless men and four ticket machines. On the wall behind the tickets machines is an oddly shaped mosaic. The Plaque under it reads “Saetta Iridescente,” that’s Italian for “Iridescent Thunderbolt.” The plaque goes on to tell me about how some town in some place sent this piece of art somewhere else but I’m not really paying attention, I skip down to the most prophetic line, “overcome moments of horror.”

I look around to see what else is here and there is a blue wall that screams temporary. It’s covering up something that will be or already was. All I can see peaking out from the left end is large letters that spell “The city is thronged” and I know those words. They are the first line of the second paragraph in ‘Doings of Gotham’ by Edgar Allan Poe.

I decide that I’m bored and start back up the staircases. Once at the street level, I move towards the fence. I watch three construction workers wearing their hard hats and wandering through rubble… They arrive at a dumpster where they begin to pull food out of their McDonalds bags and cigarettes out of their pockets. They light and chew and smoke and swallow while leaning against the dumpster.

“Excuse me?” Says a man with a Polaroid camera in tow. “Will you take our picture?” He asks. He has a fanny pack cinched to his waist and a subway map clenched in his hand. He hides brown eyes behind round sunglasses. I take the camera from his hand and look into the viewfinder as the man, his wife, and four kids line up against the fence, they smile and wait for me to press the shutter.