Tuesday, August 10, 2010

ONE OF THESE DAYS I'M GONNA GET MYSELF ORGANIZIZED

AND NOW I SEE CLEARLY...

Well, I shouldn’t make a screeding post right after I post for the ‘100 Word Challenge’! Don’t know if that made some folk shy away from the story or not, but what I can say is that they did not come from the same place!! They don’t have any relationship to each other, though I hope that this entry makes some headway in either creating a better understanding of what I had hoped to say or give an understanding of what it is that I am going through right now.

This is one of the worst cases of the ‘whatevers’ that I have had to deal with by myself in quite a long time. Going in depth about why I think that may be would be to walk a fine line between making an excuse and avoiding responsibility for my words and making a legitimate case with evidence that may come back and be held against me in other ways, later. So I would rather take the confusion and all the feedback from ‘now’ and not put something out there that I may have to account for ‘later’.

Since I am what I am, I can only speak with any degree of personal certainty about my experiences as a black man and as a specific model, the Mark Johnson exclusive (the one and only, if there is another then he’s a phony!!). One of the reasons that it may have seemed harsh and angry is that I have wearied of all the sanctity that surrounds certain institutions. Whenever you offer a critique or a disagreement from the groupthink, you become a pariah.

A lot of those things I was not conscious of at my beginning like some of the media culture stereotypes. I did not intend on making a statement with my preferences and to this day I am not trying to be difficult for the sake of being different. One of the things about my speech that made it so inflamed was that I am going to be 43 on the 8th of next month. I am agog that someone in my peer group still thinks like the way that set me off. I was not trying to assess blame as much as I was wondering (quite angrily) why people are like that, still? Not that certain things should be forgotten but some of the thinking about people and their likes and dislikes as well as their WHY of living should never go beyond a surface level of discussion. Anything further becomes accusatory and I am so like ‘spit it out’. I was taught that if it was not something you were willing to call or say to your Mom, you should not go there at all.

Even with all those words, it was all a metaphor for something else that I will not be going into at this time, if ever.

WHO SHOT THE SHOT THAT CAUGHT THE COP THAT CHOPPED THE COP AND MADE HIM DROP?

In sports, I think, you take empirical data and form and objective plan that is dependent on subjective analysis of projected performance during a specific sphere of time/space. Or thereabouts. Why else would there be an industry that exists almost solely to create ‘measurables’ or metrics on which millions if not billions of dollars ride upon?

Since sometimes my anger spills over and I am a boxer, I worry a lot about my use of visions of beating someone up as filters for how I see episodes in my life. Two words fuel my reason for this—Travis Bickle.

My Mom was cool enough to take me to see ‘Taxi Driver’ even though she kept reminding me that it ‘wasn’t going to be what I thought it was’. It wasn’t, she had THAT much right!! But what it was left a mark on me. Perhaps that is why my introspection often has me trying to check what makes me upset or even apologizing for it, because while we all have the potential for reason to give way in our minds and have our grip on reality loosen if not give clear away, a few of us may be closer than we would like to believe.

In junior high, I thought of Travis in the same way I thought of other figures, like Dante & Virgil who were on a long walk, and Gregor Samza who was victimized by something beyond comprehension. A few weeks ago I thought I had come up with my new objective -- I would study objectivist theory and existentialism and perhaps write some papers that took those philosophies and fit them in with what is occurring in the world. What I do know is that it would be a part of any fiction that I would write.

That was another thing that my long rant reminded me … that I do not have anyone to debate or speak with about more, ah, what is the word I am looking for..? Abstract?? Yeah, that will work…my more abstract thoughts and ideas. Sometimes I used to think that if my ex-wife had been able to get over herself that we could have grown intellectually as well as in matrimony, because she was not as dumb as she believed herself (which is something I could not say about Mookie Dee) to be. Her own inner demons never would allow for her to believe she could move past where she was and be as brilliant as she could have been, or as I maybe alone, saw her.

IF ONE HAD EYES WHICH COULD SEE, FLOATING ALONG A WARM, SUMMER’S BREEZE

Though I am confident (bordering on cocky, some have said… another thing that ‘some’ people were wrong about!) it does feel good when I get a comment that says good things about me or that I have cheered them in my email. And the same goes for most of the folks that leave comments as well as simply read and scratch their head!

But there is one thing that I am puzzled by… who is it that comes here and visits from Annadale,Va?

2 comments:

Ken Riches said...

Wish we lived closer so we could talk the abstract.

Sarcastic Bastard said...

Your Mom sounds like quite a lady.

Love,

SB