Reconsider

Come back with me if you will, to what seems just about a lifetime ago. It's early October, 2010, and we are looking to introduce our after school programs to this East Camden high school population with a bang.

We have no choice in the matter. It is the first time that my organization has ever been in Camden, though they have countless school sites throughout Philadelphia, and even Trenton and Chester. It's my first time, too. This is my first time officially managing a staff and having a salaried kind of professional job...and we're asking to basically dive head first into this hostile, unforgiving environment and try and create something positive, constructive, and deeply engrained into the school's culture. So I, filled with an intensely potent composite of idealism, optimism, and only what I can describe as that Holy Ghost fire, assist with the implementation of our introduction into the school.

What we basically did was find the best dancers we could hire at price, held an assembly, told all of the students they sucked and challenged them to battle our dance crew. Bold, right? Not only did we do it in an assembly packed with these ballsy adolescents, but we also invaded their lunch periods as well, setting up speakers at the corner of the cafeteria and inciting another impromptu dance battle in a circle of eager onlookers.



And you know what? It worked. We were passing out program applications by the stack-full. Pretty soon, we were ready to start one of what would be many after school programs: Hip Hop Dance.

Flash forward to March of 2011. The crew has gone through phases of waxing and waning as far as attendance goes, yet Hip Hop Dance is still undeniably one of our strongest programs. It contains our core group of kids--those that were with us from those shaky and uncertain beginning times when I would wake up every morning with a fervent, white-knuckled prayer to just make it through the day. Actually, now that I think about it, I still pray like that. I guess that's how you know when you're doing things in God's strength: fleeting are the moments when I feel like I've got my job down pat.

Needless to say, we (me, my program assistant, the kids, and the instructor Blaze) all had been through a lot since the start of the program. We've seen kids come and go, weathered a long winter on the grey streets of Camden, and had our fair share of disappointments like shows being cancelled. We even endured the heartache of having one of our members slain in the streets one chilly night, shot twice as he was running away after refusing to relinquish his personal items to some random thug, turning it into a robbery gone bad...but more on that in another blog, at another time.

Yeah, Hip Hop Dance is one of those stalwarts in my program. It already has a history, a legacy, even its very own nostalgic feeling when we reminisce on "the good ole days" of Hip Hop Dance program.

I say "good ole days" because you see, dealings turned sour at some point with our original dance instructor. After nearly 6 months leading the program, which is almost an eternity to these kids out here, he decided to part ways. Of course, we replaced him...twice. But there's hardly been a week that's gone by without one of our oldest participants, our original students, asking about him. At the time, I chalked it up to a lot of our kids having issues with both abandonment as well as the deep emotional scarring left when someone close to you is abruptly ripped out of your life--say, by an untimely death, but our kids were highly upset when he left. One cried, others cursed and were irate, still others stared blankly at either the floor or off in some distant place. I thought these were supposed to be tough, inner city high school kids! Something about him not being there changed the dynamic for good. It's like, we all started this thing together, but because of one reason or another, we wouldn't be able to finish it together. We...lacked closure.

That's why it was so hard when about 9:30 tonight I got a call from one of my kids, one of my original Hip Hop Dance kids. I've grown really close to him over the past year, and I've really been trying my best to invest in his talent as a dancer, encouraging him to develop his skills.

"Hello?" He sounded almost at the brink of tears on the other end of the phone. I could tell that he had been in deep thought prior to calling me. He gave his little speech as if he had rehearsed it a thousand times in his head before dialing--it came out quick, and slightly shaky. "Chase," he mumbled, "I know that this is probably impossible, and I know I ask this all the time, but hear me out."

"I'm listening."

"Could you please try and get Blaze back maybe once or twice before the school year is over? I really want to see him before he goes off to college."

Now, this student isn't exactly Simon Birch, and would hardly tug on your heartstrings if you met him on a normal day. In fact, he has a mouth that would make a trucker blush. But I have to admit, even when he curses, he really is a lovable kid. So I made a choice...and I'm still undecided about the morality of it.

Though business dealings went south, though I haven't spoken to him in months, though my heart has been thoroughly hardened towards him at times, I contacted Blaze. I let him know what an enormous influence he had been on that particular student's dancing, how much he meant to that student as a mentor. And then, I invited him to our final Hip Hop Dance performance of the school year. I don't know if he'll show, or even text me back, and I don't know if I would've done better just to keep my mouth shut, from a best practices business perspective. What I do know is that the sincerity and quaking emotion I heard in that student's (usually confident) voice really changed my perspective. I couldn't muster up the strength to give him yet another "adult" answer that ends with "you'll understand when you're older."I made a different choice. I sent that text message.

And now I'm waiting for my phone to ring.

Married or pregnant

Married or pregnant, married or pregnant...oh my wow, why is everyone I know either married or pregnant? Correction: there are that lucky few that are either engaged or just had a newborn. But at some point they were pregnant, and at some point they'll be married. So I reiterate--married or pregnant.

And there's me.

You know what it feels like? Avatar. When Avatar first came out, I would sit and observe countless friends, family and acquaintances occupy their Facebook statuses and daily conversations with chatter about this supposedly epic flick. Truth be told, when I first saw the trailer for Avatar, I was just as excited as they were to see it.

But the circumstances of life set in, and before I knew it, I had never found any time to go and see Avatar. I missed it in IMAX, I missed it in the regular theater, I even missed it when it was rereleased in theaters for a short period of time because of bonus material added or something. Something strange was happening. Because I had to constantly put up with all of my friends and other loved ones ranting about Avatar, I think I started to get indignant about it. That's why by the time it came out on DVD, and my parents ordered it On Demand, I decided to pass. I resented Avatar, and all of those who enjoyed it...without me. I even tried sitting through it one time while it was still in the rental window On Demand, but it was too late. Everyone had effectively ruined Avatar for me.

That might seem entirely tangential, but trust me, that explanation is as fitting an allegory for my love life as any. Uh huh, that's right. My love life is like Avatar.

See the thing is, I am trapped on this awful stretch of highway called the twenty-somethings. I've graduated college, I've done that life-changing internship, and I'm (theoretically) doing what I love. So why do I so often feel the urge to take the next exit? I get these urges to bail out, to do something like get a marketing job in New York that pays enough to make life comfortable, or move back to Italy to teach English and reap the tranquility of that snail-paced European lifestyle. Instead, I continue along this road, plastered with billboards of those who are engaged, married, pregnant, or new parents. I still seem to be stuck--and all of these people are ruining Avatar for me.

And I pray about this all the time; "God," I say, "please give me some direction in life. Please guide me to where I need, and You want me to be." But I haven't reached my exit yet. I need to ride this road out through its course before God can lead me down another path. If I take the wrong exit out of haste, I might not end up at the destination He has intended for me. It reminds me of one of my favorite verses growing up. 2 Timothy 4:7 says, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." I just try and imagine how Paul must have felt when writing this at the end of his life. He looked back on a life filled with turmoil and great persecution, yet it was laced with such an overwhelming sense of purpose. Why? Because he fought back when he was assailed, he stayed on course when the terrain became treacherous, and most importantly, he made it out with his faith intact.

So even though I'm slightly embittered by the amount of weddings and baby showers that are going on around me, I have to remember that when I signed up to be a Christian, I was enlisting myself for a greater purpose. Weddings and babies will come in due time. And though I often feel alone in this city, I have to stay focused on the work at hand.

Besides, I haven't reached my exit yet.

Two things I'm not

A hipster or a tourist. Nope, not even in the slightest. You know what I am? An enthusiast and a traveler. And maybe a euphemist in denial, that's a third thing. So when I visit a place like the High Line in NYC, I have to make myself feel better by telling myself that I'm a huge proponent of clever, even eccentric, urban renewal--that's why I'm there. That's why I'll take a 30 minute subway ride from 116th street by myself to mix in with the throngs of, well...hipsters and tourists.

As much as I didn't want to, though, I couldn't help but gawk like a tourist or intellectualize like a hipster as I was walking the High Line, a former elevated railroad line (much like the El in Philly) that was revamped and turned into a park. Yeah...an almost boardwalk-like park stretching from the low teens up and into the 30's. Only in New York, right?

And that's why this last trip to New York, one of dozens upon dozens that I've done in the past, was so significant to me. As I walked along this former eyesore-turned-city-oasis, I couldn't help but feel inspired. I have had a vision for North Philadelphia to be revitalized ever since my last year at Temple University, where I took a class called "The Uptown Theater". It's basically Philly's version of Harlem's Apollo Theater, but the larger study surrounding my Uptown class hinted at what a vibrant, upbeat community North Philly once was.

So I have this semi-qualm. I want to bring about some kind of major change in my hometown, but the more I think about things, I feel as though New York would be the place to learn how to do it--especially with places like the Harlem Children's Zone, which literally went block by block with programs to break the cycle of poverty in uptown Manhattan. Just look at the difference...these apartments are probably something around $1500-$2500/month in rent today:

W 119th Street, Harlem, NYC

But do I want North Philly to undergo the same gentrification that Harlem is being plagued (conscious word choice) by today? Do I want health food stores and smoothie places to drive the rent up and the poor residents out into further displacement? I often wonder if there's some kind of balance that can be struck.

In the meantime, I'm still considering this move to New York. It's something I've been praying on, weighing my options, and kinda just sitting back and watching where God takes me.