And there
was light.
Everything that ever happened,
happened after that.
Somewhere under all that light there is a small town in New Jersey.
Holy Name Hospital.
A name gets handed to you before you've done anything to earn it. The rest of your life is spent deciding what it means.
School, and the family pizzeria.
This is where I learned that a place is really just the people who keep showing up in it.
I was twelve, maybe thirteen.
The clippers hung from the garage door light. One chair underneath it.
That bulb was the only light I had.
I cut anyway.
Garage became a shop.
Shop became a business.
Business became a career.
Twenty years standing behind a chair, learning people.
At twenty-nine, my mind opened.
I'm not going to dress it up. I took LSD, and a door I didn't know was there came open.
Nothing outside of me changed that day. Everything inside of me did.
Every real thing I've built came after that door.
The haircut stopped being the point.
Getting better became the point. Every day. Quietly. On purpose.
I learned how to let go of things without losing them by accident.
Keep them safe.
Keep them protected.
But heard. And seen. And taught how to move through it.
That's the job. That's the whole job.
Thirty-eight, and only just now growing up.
Like a seedling that finally broke the surface.
After everything I've done, I know I'm barely scratching what I've got.
So I build.
I want to make experiences out of the way I see things, so somebody else can stand where I'm standing and feel what I feel.
I want to leave things here that keep working after I'm gone. Two hundred years. Longer, if I can manage it.
Build with meUntil
the end.
Or the beginning.
TJ Balsamo / Miami