... Public ...

... or not to be Public ...

A reader took umbrage (good scrabble word!) at my description of Mookie in an previous entry.  I felt their comment to me did not account for my CLEARLY STATED preference for fuller, Reubeneque women.  Along with being corrected (which actually I know that men and women metabolism work differently) despite my disclaimers, I thought to myself, maybe I should just make this a private journal.  So I sat down and thought about it ...

WHY IS THAT?!?

In a time in the world where we can get across the oceans in a matter of hours instead of months and talk to people in the most remote spots in the world, we are connected less and less to each other.  Not only that, we are less invested in our own communities much less with someone across the country.  Like my flaws, I am not too proud to admit to being lonely.  Even when things were going smoothly, I was lonely.

No matter how much I could like the provencial town that I am in, it isn't my hometown.  That's Detroit.  It isn't the place that I thought I found myself, that is North Carolina.  So what is a cat to do?

Still, not good enough to keep an actual diary out in the internet, I reckon.  Well yes it is Virginia, if you ARE hoping to make an actual connection with someone who shares some of the same anxieties and are dealing with some of the same issues as you are.  Perhaps they reconize in you something in themselves, and THEY need to know how to handle it.  And just maybe, maybe you may find a friend out in the rough and tumble backwaters of cyberspace.  You may make a connection with someone and find that totally wonderful person you can share your life with, as a good friend, or maybe ... just maybe ...

... after all, someone wins the Mega Millions don't they?

We used to talk to each other.  I still do.  Yesterday coming from my appointment, I had a great conversation with a girl about the music of Phillip Glass.  Came to find out that she knows the group Adult.com, a Detroit act who I happen to have a CD by.  We ended up chatting about local politics and the Detroit rap scene!  Great conversation with a girl I am likely never to see, but if I did, we have something positive to build on.

There was this young cat, I ran into over the summer who seemed to be everywhere I would be on the bus lines.  We had a mentor-like kind of relationship.  He was trying to fight the city fight that most young black men face.  I would cheer him as he spoke of the programs he was in, and what he hope to do in them.  I think he finally did an Americorp tour.  No matter what, he won't be able to say that no one didn't try to talk him into doing the right thing.

So tell me, why don't we know each other better?  Forgive me, those who know the Bible, but I have always thought the line, "Am I not my brother's keeper?", was a statement to make sure we are involved with our brothers ... and sisters ... we are ALL family ... One race ... HUMAN.

... and that's when everything changed ...

Though I prefer saying quirky and eecentric, I was weird and nerdish as a kid.  I know, because that is what other kids TOLD ME I was.  But even before my Aunt got me to finally acknowledge that I did look like something other than the meat loaf in jr. high lunchrooms across America.  I liked being smart, and a smart a**!  Some of the most thrilling times of my life, were the two minutes it took me to run the field to the foot bridge back to my house!

Being the oldest boy in a family of 5, no father or male in the home, with girls under me and a brother who is straight away gay, I didn't get to run from THEIR fights.  You could chase me, but when you picked on a sib, it was about knuckling up!  Had no other choice, I am the BIG BROTHER, and they didn't know about me being a nerd or an outcast. 

KNOW YOUR BARBARIANS

I cropped that from a Gary Larson panel.  When my sibs wanted candy, they didn't walk around the bullies, they walked straight down the street, right thru them.  Made for interesting candy trips.  That was when I began to practice what I now call 'Knowing Your Barbarians'.

This is something I can trust implicitly.  I know when to 'get ready and set' and when it is 'go time'.  Bet that.  But because I came from being picked on, thatpersonal 'spider sense' also has never left.  See, I have always understood what Kenny Rogers was talking about when he said, "You gotta know when to hold 'em ..."  Again, bet that.

What were you talking about again ..?

Why is this thing public?  Oh yeah, I truly believe that we don't engage each other in the public salons anymore.  We are connected and at once disconnected all at the same time.  Hiding behind walls of ignorance, indifference and soci -economics, we sit some of us, alone.

So here you go ... those brave few who want to be able to look and know that 'Hey, my blues ain't as bad as his', or '... maybe if I told my cousin, they could get out of their mess like this blogging cat'.  There is no self-aggrandizment here(ooh, that was a good word!)

It simply is what it is.

Read and curse me and think I am a heel.  Read and weep at my lack of knowledge, or pray that I find my way back to grace.  But know this, we are ALL in this together ... when I was a soldier, I knew I was representing EVERYONE ... if I was asked, I would have to do the things that other weren't going to do. 

Finally, I prolly won't be on for awhile ... I have a 'get back into it' kind of evening, which means I may be undergoing some dramatic kind of change.  But I will be back ...

... and the final statement as to why I am public ... because communicating with people keeps me sane.  SO THERE ..!