So one day the Shovel Expert steps up off of the asphalt in a town where he had once been suspended from school at 14, homeless at 15, purged of the high school roll call at 16, and jailed at 17—and into a car and driving a bunch of his junk to the big Apple. To New York University, itself. NYU. To a school so selective and expensive he never imagined it anywhere in his future; to mingle with students often either well-heeled, or world-traveled, and all with dreams taller than the World Trade Center. It was 1998, and our favorite laborer-artist was off to live in New York City, finally. A dream he had nurtured for years while living only an hour or so North, in the woods of New York State.

It was only possible because after almost 30 years of work, my mother the Hippie had gone from pregnant teen married to her Mexican boyfriend (inspired to propose at the suggestion of my grandfather's shotgun) to an accomplished nurse with a line of credit. She took out a loan for me, and with my 4.0 GPA I had earned at the community college (along with my hand-delivered creative portfolio and transcript) I was off.

NYU was a strange universe. I was a bit of an anomaly there, as I was not only a transfer student (and so a bit older than some of my peers) but also came from a very different way of dealing with the world. I hate to cast generalizations, because there were some in the group who, no doubt, could escape them (and the truth is, I can't know them all well enough to judge them) but while not all were rich, most were, compared to me and my family. Or looked it.

I didn't tell you the story about when I brought my creative portfolio to the school. It's a good story, but I don't want to get too sidetracked. It's easy for me to begin telling the "empowered individual" tale when I talk on this one, because I decided against all odds to go to NYU, and everyone at the school was telling me I couldn't, it was too late, my GED records were due yesterday, no more applications were being accepted, blah, blah. But I did not listen, and I drove to Albany to get a copy of that GED I earned (along with a community college degree) and the next day I drove in the other direction to NYC to hand-deliver them to the school, parked on a wrong street, didn't care, ditched the vehicle (ended up with a ticket that cost me $95, eventually) didn't know the city, jogged to the right office finally. The guards let me up the stairs and past a whole room of waiting students. I didn't check my walk, I didn't look around, and they didn't stop me from going up to the room I needed. I didn't find out why until the next stop, where the teacher asked me if I wanted her to sign for my creative portfolio, when I left it in her hands. You see, she thought I was a delivery person. Not an applying student. It's how I dressed, my tattoos (some that I put into my arms with sewing needles, you see), how I've lived. She was embarrassed when she saw the look on my face and realized that it was my work I was leaving with her, stuttered some stuff.

But it was not just money differences that set me apart from many students. The fact that I had been taught much of my socialization skills by a poor brawler from the Bronx (my legaladopted father), for example, was only highlighted by being amongst so many who were from affluent suburbia or upper-middle crust suburbia, or London, or from rich lawyer parents in Manhattan. We just came at things differently.

One philosophical difference that stood out once or twice was that I have been taught that intent behind symbols matters. And as such, hostile intent shown = hostility demonstrated. Whether it be words or body or any other form of hostility brought to bear. I have learned that they are one and the same. I was not taught this with words, of course. My LegalWhiteFather was not really into words so much.

I commented on a post this morning. Someone was decrying the UNHRC's resolution banning the mocking of religion, a decision that most of us read as warding off the ridiculing of Islam. The poster was a good patriotic American, lambasting the attempt to curtail our Free Speech in the name of sensitive Religious types. And as usual, my response feels, to me, complex. Because I agree that I don't want to be told how to talk. If you only knew me...I am big time into speaking my mind. Even read this series from the start, and that becomes clear, if you believe my account of my own life. Rest assured that I have absorbed the American notions of Free Speech and the rights of the Individual as well as any person in this country could, and I have acted on those ideas and taken consequences for them various times. Further, I feel imbued, beyond any nationalist indoctrinations, with the right to speak my mind.

But there are ideals, and then there is a world of practicality. I suppose that was the main thrust of my reply to that post.

One of the examples I sometimes use when I have this discussion is of a day I was riding the F line when a fight broke out because one man was scopin' out another vato's girl. Guy number one stared long enough and The Boyfriend asked him what he was lookin' at. Staring Guy deigned not to apologize or admit fault. Staring Guy gets suddenly punched real hard in the side of the head and the train car instantly develops a huge pocket of empty space around the two contenders. We know that, now, fists will decide the outcome of this disagreement on boundaries. Did anyone interrupt this fight? No. Did the laws of America change? No. But there is a practicality in human nature that laws will not control.

I was taught by the State (through the School system, perhaps) that violence is illegal. But I was taught earlier than that by my LegalWhiteFather the practical truth. And I was taught by much of the world that sometimes fists will decide the outcome of such conflicts. Because sometimes a gaze, a sublimated action, or words came at you like weapons. And then what?

If you stare at a girl for a long time in a leering manner, you are threatening her. It doesn't necessarily matter that you have not touched her. Your gaze prefaces and communicates your will and intent. And while I think that punching someone for staring at my girlfriend/wife is not something I would do in any situation I can readily conceive of, I do believe I can overlook the lines that some people want to pretend divide the "civilized" from the "uncivilized" in certain situations. Because "civilized," "proper," or "legal" allusions are often means of controlling others' in a very calculated fashion—not really a judgment that makes the speaker superior or entitled in any way, as is always the claim or implication. Someone shoots a bevy of poison-tipped words your way, and then immediately after that, levies social pressure on you so they can avoid a natural consequence of their bringing hostility upon someone else? Is that Just? Is that Truth? No. That is trickery and violence. I would recognize the spirit, not the dressing of a Thing. The Essence, as I often mention, and not the Symbol.

What I learned in my childhood was that a word that is intended to (and does) hurt someone's feelings is equal to a blow that hurts someone's body. This type of attitude and approach does away with people who try to sleaze out of hostile intent. Or when someone claims that their words (which may have torn deep wounds in your heart) are fair game at any volume or proximity, but you are forbidden to lay a fingernail on them. I repeat: This philosophy places a considerable weight upon intent. Just as US law does...though perhaps in a separate manner. I am not necessarily saying this is Truth, or inarguable. Just a law that operates in certain people's interactions. And what I learned growing up. Pretty simple. If you don't want to fight with your body, you don't open your mouth to hurt someone—or otherwise demonstrate your intent to do so.

Some of the NYU-types I met maybe grew up with more finessing, with more smokescreen. Some expected to game you. They conned themselves. Often being the sons of admen or lawyers, these peeps sometimes felt they could work a contract on your own ass.

The look on the face when someone realizes that what they had thought was an inflexible Truth was, after all, merely their chosen way of seeing things (a view perhaps not appealing to you at the moment, for example) is of infinite and unnameable worth. The lesson they take away—that they ought not throw their words around as if people with different viewpoints or feelings or who may suffer from hearing those words do not matter—is one that can benefit many other people, should they accept it.

One day I was in a senior level class and some fella was making a murmur-decibel running commentary behind me. Two girls were giggling at everything he said, so I think he was getting really hot over himself. I don't really think it was about the people and things he was commenting on anymore. I think—to give him the benefit of the doubt—he was just working to keep up a funny flow for these two chicks. But his impromptu standup routine eventually came to rest on me. I was actually pretty into my classes when possible, and this day, was trying to actually attend it. It was one of those small "amphitheater" classrooms, and I was talking to the Prof about a piece of film we had just screened, I think it was about one of my last film projects and the prof was a righteous French vato and as I am speaking, I hear this cat behind me snarking on what I'm saying all mumblejumble like, like a bad whisper-echo in my left ear. One that is mocking me. What do you do? Feel angry? Have a little woolly burr-ball grow in your belly? Take on their poison, smooth it out for an hour, make up phrases to sooth yourself?

Without breaking my speech (cuz I'm talking in class to the Prof) I turn my head smoothly to look the tiptoeing heckler dead in his surprised eye and add "..and if YOU want to step outside, we can do that right now" which choked off his commentary and made the Prof stutter once or twice, but that's what I'd learned to do. I'm not actually that brave. I will sometimes shake for a long time after these incidents. But I do not think about it. I feel attacked and I rise up back at it. That's what I learned. I wasn't doing it to "bluff" or "intimidate" or "be a badass," see. I did it because what I learned was that this person was crossing a line. And my choice to allow that might be, to you, the enlightened thing to do. Perhaps that is what you lived, and thus what you learned. But you would be a fool to assume that is what everyone else has also lived. Even if it is the more "enlightened" way. We are animals, here, too. Not just thinkers carrying lamps.

My friend, a friend in that class, later tried to talk me away from such actions but I had to tell him that I was there to bring reality to this fool. That there is a law that exists no matter how well bred a fucker's been nor what amount of cash he carries: disrespect has a cost. I've learned that sneaky shit still crosses the line, and power expressed at your expense is power taken from you. As I often say, the man who taught me these things was a serious cat, and this is how he lived. In front of my eyes. I imagine it was very tiring. I imagine it was damn exhausting for him. I realize now how much of my earlier life was based on these types of ideas. I get tired just thinking about it.

Later, I would realize this is a law held to by many of those who lived in the same place and way that my LegalWhiteFather did when he first learned these rules. In the street, in the projects, among the poor of New York City.

If you are traveling outside of the affluent and very pale heart of Manhattan and end up somehow in lower Brooklyn, or the Bronx, or hell, you can find places in any boro where there are people who don't gloss over understood disrespect with social conditioning. I'll give you one hint if you don't already know. Be polite. Perhaps be what you may think of as "overpolite." Apologize and say Excuse Me even if you don't think the person in front of you or walking past you noticed that you bumped them. Because they did notice, you see. And to people who have already had much taken from them, or many hurts leveled on them—even in disguised forms—self-respect is one of the few things they possess of real worth. Most will defend it fiercely.

Many times in this series (as is the point of it), I allude to both the power of words as well as the power that they lack. And during my time at NYU is where, finally, I began to understand the power that words can steal from you. It wasn't NYU itself, it wasn't even the city. It was just that it was time for me to begin learning this. And a good thing. Because at this point, I was about as cocky as you could imagine a high school dropout who just got himself into NYU against all odds to be.

Life is endlessly fascinating. I find it utterly fascinating that when it was time for me to learn these things, I hooked up with a girl who was both quite intelligent, who had a lot to say, but was not extremely verbal. She was far more tactile, and visual in her communications. At the same time, I began studying film...and the first films you make are silent, of course. This is so you can learn how to communicate visually. Later comes dialogue. When you are ready.

Because I had been, as most of us are, raised in a world where we generally consider words the root of our "dialogue." They may not, in actuality, contribute the most to our conversations or our comprehension, but they are what we look at and think of when we talk of "conversation." It is the symbols we call words. As I have written in earlier installments in this series, I first met some disenchantment with the power of words at about 14 or 15 or 16 (oh, weren't all those years disenchanting?) when I realized I could not answer or even form my deepest queries with words.

Now, here I was, about 15 years later, learning a bit more about this. About how these tools, these powers, could fail me, and in what situations, and exactly how. Perhaps not dramatic to a person who has never become awestruck with the power of language in the first place. But for me, this was far too deep an experience for me to relate now in a few paragraphs, or even a few pages. This process could be a full chapter or more in a book. It had a lot to do with the entire beast of Storytelling/Filmmaking, and was revealed to me as I took up my acting classes, and was learning to express what was inside of me...or taking screenwriting courses and learning about writing subtext in characters. Later, in directing subtext in actors. Or calling upon my own subtext in any of these activities.

For you cannot act honestly nor understand a character's subtext...unless you are aware of your own. You cannot even grok how subtext lives and informs all dialogue and even body language without first coming to examine your own. And this may be no small discovery! Because our subtext is not always found in what we say. In fact, it is usually not found in what we say. But it is our actual inner conversation, the one that would do us well to recognize. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the further a person is from knowing the content and agenda of their own subtext, the less honestly and successfully they are living (I do not allude to wealth or material goods when I say "successfully" here). But here is, of course, my tendency to take a personal lesson and universalize it; a complex truism dressed up as a simple truth.

Soon began the working of magic upon me through the seemingly mundane experience of Going to Film School. What I thought was tutelage regarding a practical curriculum was actually a journey deep into my own mind and heart. And many of the lessons I took away are not noted on either my transcript nor my degree. But they still inform so much of what I do. Because I found real learning in the lessons I undertook. Because I chose to see and use them that way.

SHA-SHA AND I had some amazing times in those magical days of Film School. It was not all discerning subtext and arguing with officials over shooting permits or checking the gate for broken bits of film. It was also costume and playacting and discovery. It was sensual sublimation and freedom of personality and festivity and artistic expression. I remember our parties on the 29th floor, looking out over the South Street Seaport and the East River through my huge plate glass windows. The disco music, the techno music, the 70s music, the all-night film-a-thons, the makeup, the scripts or better yet, the improv moments. The freaky and wonderful people we discovered ourselves to be, the freedom of a university atmosphere, the uninitiated meeting the unexplored, the new sights, the big lights, the hot spark of creativity, the new streets, the wild clubs, the experimental and musical and fantastical film that was our own lives. So many days and nights marked as giddy blurs, like magenta and gold and green exclamation points smearing sideways. An inexorable feeling of hope...the plans, the notion that we were bound for glory, the Hope, the next wave of Film Artists, the new Elite. Woody's old school, Oliver Stone's old school, Scorcese's old school...the list goes on. Internships at the Daily Show. Editing for Spike Lee. Lectures by huge guests like Scorcese, Clinton, or Gore. Bumping elbows with big shots. The dreams that come with such a school, the ones they feed you right in class. The competition. The ugly, ugly competition. The fear that your peer would make a connection you'd overlook. The envy that sat in your belly when they got an award, the undisguised race for power and fame.The magical feeling of making film in the Big Apple.

It is always dangerous to sum up another person, or what their experience is or was. So keep in mind that Sha-Sha's take on this story might contradict mine in a few or many parts, and I cannot claim to see the whole picture. But since this is my story, I will tell it as only I can.

I spent three years with the girl I met in film school, and in that time was friend, mentor, subject, muse, actor, lover, co-writer, cameraman, and perhaps more to her. Our lives intertwined with film, and so did our art, and so did our roles in each others' films. It was quite a time, and that relationship brought me many days that I will always hold close.

In our time together, we met many challenges to our relationship. One of them was this complex cluster of language and expression and verbal matters as tied to self-confidence and personal power...as I feel language always is, to varying degrees.

Sha-Sha was a 22-year old Irish American girl from the Silicon Valley area of California. For your mental rolodex, consider her a thin, very smart, "pretty-in-an-unconventional-way," thoughtful, quiet, "weird," artistic type. She was not rich, but lived in that area out of circumstances having to do with her parents buying the house before the Silicon boom, she told me (more than once). She was definitely "upper middle class" by my judgment. I mean, this is my own understanding I am applying. To tell you the truth, I'm not completely sure how that all breaks down anyway. What the hell is Upper Middle Class, anyway? Well, she wasn't poor, that's for sure. Her home didn't look like mine ever had. It's true that it would not have been accurate or fair to call her family "rich." But they were definitely comfortable...especially to my eyes. Beautiful neighborhood, nice home furnishings, video games, new clothes, everyone with their own bedrooms, waterbeds, game room, multiple working vehicles, daughter at NYU (although Sha-sha was very independent with her money)....you get the picture. Successful in the American system so far.

I was seven years older than Sha-Sha. In some ways, I was much more experienced. And in some other ways, she was more experienced than me. In some ways, I was more accomplished than her. And in other ways, she was more accomplished than me. In the end, I'm sure we made quite an interesting couple.

One of the ways in which there was a contrast between us was the ability to be verbal in public. To speak your mind readily. To engage a crowd or one person in conversation. These matters of speaking up and out were a current course of challenge for her. (I'm betting anything by now she is on to other challenges, being a very determined and able person.) She was uncomfortable in many public situations, and acted it. She was normally quiet, anyway. Often, she would wear a small smile that really stood in for a nervous expression, or even a look of disgust. She would often giggle a bit at things you said, or while replying to you. In time I learned that those giggles or small laughs were often her laughing at someone. But you'd never hear it that way until you knew her well. She was unobtrusive.

At home, I'd hear all her thoughts that she was having in those conversations I had observed, and wonder how many people out there had such a wealth of thinking and observations going on that nobody hears about at the time. You see, this was the opposite of me, who (too often) puts every single card on the table because I prefer to speak up about what goes through my mind and heart. I can barely help it. It has taken many years for me to be able to hold back anything at all. Sha-sha was the girl who says so little you forget she is there and reveal yourself completely. Meanwhile, she is photographing you or taking notes on what you are saying.

So you see, we had two powers at play. Mine was the power of direct speech and a strong voice. Mine was the power of the person who speaks up right away and makes it clear what his boundaries are and what will not be tolerated. Mine was, perhaps, the power of Tae Kwon Do, Karate, or Kung Fu; of hard strikes and direct blocks. She saw the evidence of my offense-heavy, shoulder-thick fighting style and envied it.

But hers was the strategy and stance of a defensive fighter, lightly treading and evading. Watching so closely, sizing up her opponent's reach, their favorite attacks, the moments their guard would drop. Biding time. Mine was the power of decisive movement. Of purging myself of angst and fear up front, soothed by immediate action. Hers was the power of patience, of waiting, of acting smartly. Hers was the power of Judo, of turning away at the last moment, or catching your kick because she could anticipate it after watching you throw it enough times. Or at least that is what I took from watching her interact.

And this was when I began to notice her power. For it was not one I had ever considered in my life.

Once upon a time I was walking down a country road. It was a long road, and the rural area had the concentration of population that made it possible to walk past one house at a time, with no other dwellings in sight. At one point in my long trek home, I came to a huge yard that sloped up and away from the road I was walking down. At the top of the slope was a house, and a dog perked up its head as I walked along the road. The large mutt growled as it leapt to its feet and it began tearing ass down the hill toward me. As many dogs are in the country, it was loose. No chain, no fence. Just a snarling dog on blurry feet, a nice stretch of hill, and me at the bottom. What did I do? Well, I looked up the road. Both ways. There was no way I was making it to a safe area before that dog reached me. I knew this, I could see that right away. There was nowhere to go. Panic says run. Fear says run away. But like some vato who thinks he is in a movie, I opened my mouth to yell and charged that dog. I think I had read or heard somewhere that this would work. Some urban-legendy feeling thing I'd probably picked up at a keg party in the woods. But there was nothing else aside from turning and running away. So I gave it a shot. I tore ass right toward that dog, and we were both yelling at the top of our lungs. It was pure lunacy on my part.

Sometimes in our life we can play it like a film, and it works out very badly. This time, it worked out beautifully. Upon seeing my unusual choice of action, the dog came to a quick halt. It did not understand my movement, and rapidly turned around and took off back to the house, leaving one scared, shaking, excited, exultant teenager standing on a empty, dusty back road with a grin pasted on his face. I was fifteen, then.

My childhood offered me more than a few aggressors to whom I chose to stand up to, reject, and ultimately, rebel against. And rebels come with fists in the air, and loud voices. I was all about standing up. I was about nobody taking something from me, pushing me around, hurting me. I had learned to present as such that you understood that I was ready and unafraid to move, to attack, to present arms. It became my instinct to (almost spitefully) turn and charge right into danger, you see; right toward your attack. (CUT TO: The amphitheater confrontation at NYU.) And why had this become my method? To discount all dangers and walk into the fire? Because shrinking from the fire (though often practical) means swallowing your pride. As reasonable, level, calm, thinking and civilized people know, swallowing your pride is often ncessary. This is called being "wise" and "smart" and "practical." But when pride is taken early or only doled out sparingly in a person's young life, self-respect becomes the ultimate prize, instead of "wisdom," "smarts," or "practicality." Self-respect and Pride become valued above bodily health, above peer approval, above any other type of safety. So in situations of threat, my emphasis often became to show the world, the universe, anyone around, that no matter what else is happening, I was not shrinking from it.

Sha-sha had lived a different life than me, thought. She was a different person, had taken a different route. I began to pay attention, especially when I felt that my "power" was putting me at a disadvantage in situations. I would look to her method to see if I had missed something, or could learn something. And I did. One of the things I learned was that when the defense-based fighter refuses to charge in, or continually back up, it may be tempting to think you have the upper hand. Or that they are afraid. Or that you are going to score a point. Until you realize you are winded and they are still bouncing on the balls of their feet. Or that you are overextended and a knee is rushing up on your blind side. I don't compare our "fighting styles" to imply that our time together—or these moments to which I now allude—involved a war with each other. I use these styles to talk mostly about how we each respectively engaged the world.

I couch these lessons in martial arts analogies because I learned the same lessons in TKD. And at no time does learning truly take root like those times when your lessons overlap. And for me, the more Symbols that attach to an Essence, (and thus the more complete the expression of the inner world into the outer) the more I can see, feel, know, communicate a truth.

Sha-sha did not see her power as a power, because it was the only one she had (in terms of the two I have contrasted here). To her, it was a lacking. Perhaps this was because she did not see herself as a "quiet" person, in reality. Even though all others did. This would make her very quietness "ego-dystonic" as they say in the field. A trait that felt out of whack with her positive self-image. She was quite smart, and quite thoughtful, and quite expressive. She knew she deserved more attention, or felt she did. I think she felt stifled by her own fear. I won't do her the disservice of dissecting and exposing her prior relationship as I learned of it, but I would say at least that some of that fear had been aggravated in her by another person.

Being a unique artist, she was somewhat tense about sharing a spotlight. Very competitive. Even with me. I often felt a duty to be understanding of her, as I was older. I felt I understood some of those "coming of age" type struggles, or those "coming into your own" issues. I think it's safe to say that this role sometimes blinded me. It was easy for me to feel superior at those moments. But sometimes, having been through some of those things only caused me to be compassionate. And often, I did act compassionately. Backing off of my anger or frustration because I wanted to give her room. Telling myself what she was going through. Just as those words written in my Baby Book so long ago..."[Nezua] lets Venus knock over all his blocks. He knows she is younger than him. He is very sweet and understanding with her." I felt at times I understood Sha-sha in that same way. I do know how this competitive feeling is, this not wanting to share the spotlight. After all, she was a very talented artist. Just striking out into the world. She knew she had things to say. She wasn't sure how to say them. I would guess she wasn't sure what those things were, yet, either.

Sha-Sha also had no idea how I could be so comfortable talking and joking and bantering with people. Did she think it meant I was at ease in public? Or did she wonder how I acted so—even knowing I was not? I think she did think I was completely at ease, and this was actually one of our sticking points. I had just learned to be social, I told her. It didn't mean I was always interacting on a genuine level; it didn't mean I was always comfortable in those situations. I don't think she understood how this worked. I didn't know how to explain it better...the contrast between how I claim I feel in these situations versus my quick, apparent mastery of the social animal to the outside eye. I think for me, it is just another way of charging a barking dog.

In time, Sha-Sha found my social gregariousness, which seemed to come so easily to me, to be personally affronting. I began to be called names about my verbal quality. Names that were not new to me. But don't imagine she was some cruel person. I'm sure by then I had called her a few names, too. You know how love goes. You begin by marveling at qualities in a person that one day you find particularly and specifically annoying.

In time, I learned to imitate some of her moves. Because no matter how adept I may think I am at any given endeavor at any time, I have not yet let efficacy or confidence (deserved or otherwise) dull my appetite for further ability or growth. And it became clear to me after a while that Sha-Sha's restraint, stealth and strategy were, indeed, sizable powers.

And so I further developed my "toolbox" or my "arsenal" or my "herb garden," or my "butter tub" or "sludge bucket"...or whatever metaphor works for you. I continued to grow. And really, it was the same lesson that I began learning long ago from many people. Once, I was given some pieces from a best friend Vance. How to listen a bit more closely. To take note. To let the focus drift a bit off of myself, and onto others. To encourage the words of others, and then to take them in, turn them over, learn from them. (I don't mean written. I mean spoken. It is an entirely different matter to ingest words on a page than it is in person. One involves the element of society and all the personalities and dynamics that we bring into play in such settings.) And I learned these things by watching and listening to him, too. Not by being told these were desirable traits. In fact, during many of the times I am learning from people, they have no idea. And often don't even see their traits as strengths.

From my time at NYU, in NYC then, and from Sha-Sha, I gained also, a new dimension to a lesson I had learned while in the counseling/psych curriculum. A next level, a new chapter on active listening. In the first instance, I had taken it on as part of a skill set I then saw myself needing occupationally. In the latter instance, it was again approached because I realized that I had been missing many things with my previous less-nuanced approach to the spoken world, to the world of confrontation and negotiation, the arenas of discussion and persuasion, the areas of dialogue and treaty, of expression and conversation.

And then, finally—I learned how to abandon words. For that was the last lesson I took away from Sha-sha.

Our fights, sadly, had come to occur more and more often as our time wound down. I can't really remember what they were about anymore. I guess when they happened, they were about two people realizing they had invested three years and their entire film school lives and a world of energy and care into each other and each other's projects and there just wasn't enough in the budget for a sequel. Thinking back to those last months, I feel there were so many things she was saying that I didn't hear. I don't feel we could have "worked out together" in the "long run." So this is not a feeling of "if only I had..." Just a place for me to look and see how, at times, someone can be telling me things...and I can somehow not be hearing them at all. And of course, I know there were things I thought I was saying out loud that were not being heard at all.

That last month in our place—or at least the first ten days of it—we were hardly speaking. I was sleeping on the couch. My memories of the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth are each brightly dotted by the bleary white glare of the computer screen that lit up the bare living room walls around me. My sole companion. That last September, we were only biding time. At the end, we were only waiting out the last twenty days of the lease on our beautiful Upper West Side Brownstone apartment when the planes sailed, flew, crashed into the Towers and threw the entire city into confusion and fear. Ash on the streets. The island locked down, bridges and tunnels closed. The world unspooling in front of our eyes and the entire city reeking of burnt and foul matter. You remember this part.

We decided to pretend we were a couple, still, for just 19 more days. The world suddenly seemed too scary to face alone. So I moved off the couch, and we held each other as the country and our love came apart.

FADE IN ON:

INTERIOR. BEDROOM. NIGHT.
SHA-SHA, 25, faces NEZUA, 32, as they stand in front of sliding glass doors that overlook a patio. The sound of SHOUTING from upstairs. The sound of DRILLING from the basement underneath them. The sound of CNN BLARING from offscreen (living room). Both of them have tears drying on their cheeks.

NEZUA takes in a deep breath, and lets it out, shrinking into a slouch against the window. He turns to face the night. His eyes, pinched, stare into the distance. Turns back to SHA-SHA.

SHA-SHA reaches her arm out and touches NEZUA'S shoulder. Shushes him.

She pulls him close to her, and they embrace. CNN BLARES on in the other room. The heat turns on and a gentle HUM can be heard throughout the room.

A HORN in the street.