Crying Out Loud.

I don't believe in god and never have.

Certainly not the bearded anglo patriarch that's come down to us from Renaissance art. And not the god you find in synagogues or homilies or Hallmark. Or emblazoned on our currency as an entity we're meant to trust, when we trust only currency, and not enough not to choose to make an alternate fake currency so we can launder our original currency.

I don't know who said it, so hand it to me. I'm not sure god exists, but if he, she or it does, they're an under-achiever. 

That is, 'yo, bro. Where you been?'

I just can't get over doing nothing while people slaughter other people. If you're not an under-achiever, I mean. In corporate amerika, it happens every day. But corporate amerika is "where underachievers go to succeed.™"

In any event someone I don't know--a good writer, but a struggling one (if that's not synonymous) just sent me an email. I don't know this guy. I've never spoken to him. But he opened up to me like a transfusion.

And that made me think about god. 

And my almost fifty years in this industry.

It was just before Yom Kippur, and I was fired by the worst agency I had ever worked at, FCB. 

The worst agency by far.

So, naturally I was fired for being "insubordinate." 

When they told me I was insubordinate, I probably answered, "I thought we were supposed to be insubordinate."

In any event, it was just before the Jewish New Year. I felt alone and friendless--as I feel so often. I had no money in the bank. No parents to speak of. No safety net. Worse, I had let my advertising portfolio get old. 

I felt irrelevant.

What's more, I had rent to pay on a decent Upper East Side apartment, and two young daughters in expensive New York City private schools. Without losing my job my margin for financial error was already razor-thin. Losing my job made that margin anorexic-razor-thin.

I wandered lost and lonely as Wordsworth's cloud, and came back to my desk and someone--or god--had left a book on the desk I was in the middle of clearing out.

There was no note, no sign, just this book.

And here, with a prettier, but less legible cover.

My newly old office was just across the street from Grand Central, and I thought about weeping, but being too strong for my own good, I went home and kept myself together.

We keep ourselves together too much.

This morning when I got the email from the writer I don't know, I wrote him back. I can't always write back--I'm already taking care of a lot of people. But for whatever reason, I wrote back to this stranger:

I wrote.

Try crying in a public space.

Really.

Let it pour out of you.

Feel it.

Good will come from that.

And I sent him a cover shot of the book above.

When I finally cried after being fired that time, I was sitting on the broad, bluestone steps leading up to the Central Park reservoir's running track. I sat achey and tired from my six miles, and sweaty and mostly scared.

What would become of me? Was I stupid for running when I should be looking for work? Was I just a big fat failure who couldn't care for himself much less an entire family, and two young girls I was hoping I could give more than was ever given me.

I sat down and wept. 
And wept.

People looked at me like you'd look at a one-winged pigeon or a squirrel who had gotten a foot nabbed by a glue-trap somehow. They looked at me though I tried to notice not them looking, but me weeping.

I don't know how long I sat on those steps. 
I don't know when I decided to pick myself up, tuck in my t-shirt,
stand up straight and walk home.

I don't know when I dried my tears and put on my face.

I don't know what happened to those tears.

I do know they worked.

I do know, it's good sometimes to let yourself weep.
And who cares if the world knows.