FILLER ISSUE

TACTICAL

With all my self-consideration I neglected to mention that my sister who is in the Army is currently at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in training to be a Drill Sergeant!!  She got through to her twin, the sister that I walked down the aisle (either divorce or getting one... for sure they are separated and she is... je ne sais quoi) who messaged me up and passed her number on for me to call her.

I was very excited to hear her news.  I remember how her marriage stumbled around in the early years and I gave her consul, to build her resolve and to guide her through to better choices.  To her credit, she seems to have taken much of my advice and put it to work, though saying that may be a bit much.  But were I to talk about what I told her and where she is at in her life now, you would prolly see where I influenced her in some of her choices.

Whether or not she told her twin her news, I did not ask.  I could only imagine that she wanted to share her good news with me because she KNEW how happy I would be for her.  After we caught up and she told me how she and her husband plan to open a restaurant (maybe in the Emerald City) now that he is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef after her retirement, and she is nearing completion on her BA in Business Administration, I thought briefly of the grudges we’ve held against one another in adulthood and how we have fallen out of contact.  Then I wished that our Mother was here on the plane to share in her achievements.  And that is why I wondered if she told her twin or not about her achievement.

Because it was kind of surreptitious the way that she got through to me, I wondered if she SPECIFICALLY wanted me to know.  While I am sure that her sisters would feign happiness for her, she KNEW that I would be genuinely happy for her and proud as well.  Since she doesn’t have a Mother to have that super-mega parental pride for her, I guess it came down to me... and that is what I feel for her.  Whether or not she kept the advice I gave her close in her thoughts or not, I am happy for her and her family.  

BUT SINCE HER LIFE DOES REFLECT THE “WHAT IF” TO MY ADVICE BEING RIGHT FOR HER...

Who was there at the world’s beginning?  Who will be there at its end??  Ken posted a quote that mostly is given to Plato that I have always measured people by... “Be kind.  For everyone you meet is facing a hard battle.”  Being in my “life of solitude”, I don’t often come across the shared miseries of the aimless or self-centered.  Nearly everyone who I am acquainted with here in town is either striving to “be”, achieving and growing, or there and more than maintaining, to their best life (and yes, this does include ‘braska and Princess... I am humbled to be among their intimate company).  I have yet to encounter the pathologies that I found in both “the provincial town” and the Motor, which is why in spite of my affections for both towns (and Tee Jay... don’t forget her as well) that I had to leave.

I am not going to bash my hometown... my desire to be “from” Detroit is more innate than anything else, though the motivation to find a place that is not as purposely formidable than my hometown is readily understandable.  Opportunity is choked in Michigan, and that it is now a right-to-work state saddens me deeply.  From where the idea of a middle class one sprang, led by Henry Ford, who believed in paying men a decent wage for their toils, to the beginning of the “Wal-Martization” of the pay scale, Michigan has in my mind been the scale-tipper in the regression of wages.  It will be several generations, IF EVER, there will be a middle class as people in my age group and older knew it.  *sigh*Hopefully there will be a Morpheus to prophecy the necessary coming of Neo, that is, if there will ever be a free society again...

So I am in Omaha.  Having mentioned that I have created policy to allow for a possible relationship beyond the one that I had set myself on the path for, I will be “open for love” as it were, but still as discriminating and circumspect as ever.  One of the reasons is for the incredible vibe that I got from the people from the very start to this leg of my life’s race.  This is a place where people work hard and by all appearances lives hard by the “good community” creed.  Families live here, couples are free to walk starry-eyed in the public squares, and while there is a measure of foreboding here at night, it is still a far cry from something like Southeast DC!!

I don’t know how much more “social” I plan to be... one of the reasons that I wonder is that given the “trajectory of my orbit” in the Big O, I will likely go out with more White women than African-American women, should I get active when I am out.  It would not be out of preference for Euro-American women or anything like that, but in the 2-plus years I have been here I have not made the acquaintance of many in my own ethnic group.  And the lines that separate people are pretty clear and I don’t live on “our side” of town.

There are some AA’s who would say that I should make more of an effort to find love with a sister, and at one time in my life I would have agreed with them.  Sister girl’s are very put upon by the brothers, and there is an unmistakable debt that brothers collectively owe them.  Yet the social dynamic in America has incontrovertibly changed from what it once was a decade ago even, and we have gone from miscegenation to same-sex marriage in this country during my lifetime, and here in Omaha, those boundaries that still do exist are thinned to the point of transparency.  Besides, as an “apex predator”, I will hunt where the prey is plentiful...

Ooh... I shouldn’t have put it quite like that... I am done with contributing to the objectification of women, certainly on an intellectual, conscious level.  What I meant to say is that my approach is such that I vibe those who find me attractive and gauge their interest as I am comparing them to the “mental daguerreotype” of what I like in a potential partner.  I cannot help WHO I attract as neither can I change what I am attracted to!  Although there have been exceptions in the persons of Nixxie and the SFC, I like what I like..!

SPEAKING OF NIXXIE...
Talked to her this week.  Sometimes we have nice, friendly conversations, back to when we first met.  Not that they are notable, as we have almost always gotten along, but this one was more on the level of closeness like the conversations where we crossed over from “friends” to “lovers” (FYI- this brother is so not into the “with benefits” tag), and I sort of wondered what was her deal?  Not that my radar registered a “bogey” or anything, but I do know when a person is lonely.  And if this is my own ego rambling on, then as soon as someone starts to talk and call me as their friend on a regular basis...

Anywho, we chatted and I let her know that my share of KT’s prom dress will be in the mail this Friday.  No, I did not share with her the current flux in my relationship with the Princess (if I did, you think she had jokes BEFORE about me and my “big girl” affections..!) but still, she was very engaging.  I wondered, as I often do about her, if we could have raised the same KT had we stayed together... then, reality smacks me upside the head twice, for the two girls whose Mom’s were nearly the death of me!!  And even still, I wonder...