AS YOU CAN SEE ...

…  I AM VERY MUCH ALIVE!

GETTING RIGHT INTO IT

I have been dealing with gout for the past 4 ½ months.  This week, the pain and discomfort has subsided into the tenths of degrees, which is why I am able to use my laptop for more than looking at pictures and things!!

One of the things that I have noticed is that I have lost some readers!  I don’t know if the attrition of readers is due to my inactivity or just people deactivating their Blogger account, but it is interesting to me nonetheless.  It was one of the small joys of keeping a public journal when I reached the triple-digit plateau.  With the way that my dashboard has changed, I doubt if I will be able to generate any interest in my journal, and that isn’t so bad.  Measuring from where I began my journey from, the feel of a near-cosmic level of space has been covered, materially and spiritually.  Other than some health concerns, I am good!

Me and my Carolina ladies have been in touch and KT wants to come out west… she volunteered to spend some of her summer with me!  Right now, the plan is to road trip through South Bend, spend a day, then move on to the Motor where she has a granddad, aunts and uncles, and a slew of cousins to meet.  Of course, the cherry on top would be to introduce her to Skye, which would be quite the coup.

Other than scuffling along because of my gout (which traveled from its home of 4 months in my hand to my right ankle, thanks to a fall off my bike..!), there has been little going on in my life.  I did, however, get a few communiques from people that I did not expect.

The SFC called me and that was a very good thing!  I have missed hearing from her dearly, and it was quite the boost to my self-esteem.  She sent me a photo of me and another friend from the Motor (who I have mentioned but have lost her name at the moment), taken with one of the DeBarge’s who were on a morale tour in Korea!!  I hope that we don’t lose touch this time… it would mean a lot to me for us to stay in one another’s life.

Nebraska sent me a couple of emails that when added to all the other complications in our relationship along with the time of said emails… well, did little to advance the state of relations between us.  It was quite mysterious as to what her motivations were, but I shrugged it off as a “one-off” kind of thing, where she had thoughts swirling around and they created a pressure that resulted in her emailing me.  While I was inspired to began to “ponder life’s complexities” by what I think were part of her reasoning, the last phone call that I received really left me gobsmacked.  But first…

I recall being warned about being “another one of those brothers” who date outside of their race.  Being open to all manner of relationships between human beings, I shrugged it off, because my happiness is MY HAPPINESS.  And even if it the warning could be applied and taken under consideration, it would not have mattered because.... IDGAF..!  Not only do I not care what people who still abides by the miscegenation codes of the past, I really thought that my personal fate would keep me from even worrying about being a part of a mixed relationship.  Of course, though I have been to a lot of places, I had not been to Omaha before and the social environment here is one where such relationships seem to flourish.  But the one relationship where I “swirled” in, with Princess, always had issues that I had to keep in consideration. The upshot of this warning being that there were too many single black women in Omaha that would make a great partner for a cat like me.  Or so the Germans would have you believe…

My personal experience with black women in Omaha has been one of frustration.  I haven’t made a big thing out of my observations of the sisters in Omaha, and I am not going to begin now.  But what I will do is note the kind of frustration that I have put up with and let the last phone call of note be the example of the “confustration” that I think exists among the sisters here.

The first woman that I dated after Princess, was a woman with whom not only did we meet cute, but our first date was THE best ever!  Not only was it the best ever, but I don’t think I will EVER go on another first date as special as our first date was.  It was electric from the moment we met each other and until the abrupt end to our set-to, it was an electric relationship.  Or perhaps the Germans simply had me fooled again.

When we were on the phone I was more than civil.  I was surprised, blushing, and a little intrigued by it all.  See, other than Tee Jay, and I cannot stress this enough, I had never even considered trying to see how someone who was a former flame was doing, much less want to re-ignite a flame with them.  So the blushing faded soon enough and I had to ask the question… “Why?  Why did you dump me?”  And her answer..?

I remember being told that I carried myself on the immature side during my 20’s.  But that was an opinion held mainly by great thinkers like my wife, who had a worldview that begin at Telegraph and ended at Woodward (though she lives in Farmington Hills now, if you are from the Motor and of a certain age, you get it).  She saw things in absolutes and if things did not fit her particular understanding, then it must be incorrect, even if I provided evidence to the contrary.  But were a credible and independent third party to come around and validate my view and/or invalidate hers, she would not acknowledge my correctness, but worse, accept her incorrectness in view of that correctness as a lack of understanding or comprehension on her behalf.

Well, anyway… so I am talking with this woman who left me wounded and confused and who is NOW wounding and confusing me.  But rather than think back about what never could have been between us, the lyrics of “Jesus Built My Hot Rod” (borrowed from a movie) seems to accurately paraphrase my emotional state.

        Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true

Jerry lee Lewis was the devil

Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet

All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world

So there was only one thing that I could do

Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long

Whatever it is that I either found, discovered or was born with, is tied to whatever I heard when I first listened to those words.  Maybe it is the same thing that Patrick Swazye’s “Nobody put baby in a corner”, line from the movie “Roadhouse”.  All I know is that those words and the song “Jesus Built My Hot Rod” is what has reliably moved me past emotional calamities such as,

    -My marriage

    -My relationship with Mookie Dee

    -My disappointment with Nebraska

    -Whatever it was with Princess

And a couple of other interludes that ended in the same fashion as this one with the “good black women of Omaha”.  I will have you note that I used the plural pronoun “women” to characterize my dalliances with the fairer sex here in the land of the “Good Life”.  Heck, this entry alone mentions “two” sisters.  So for anyone to think that I have abandoned black women really need to get a grip.

...AND I LIVE BY THE RIVER

Okay, so by now you should get that I no longer give a f*ck about the “this and that” that are a part of talking about relationships.  Not that I cared much before, hence my inflammatory rhetoric directed at African-American women, as well as the paucity of my voicing similar observations about women of other ethnicities.  I mean, I as much as my experience is being recounted here, prior to my living in Omaha white women ignored me on levels not seen since high school.  I did not comment about white women at length before simply because I did not have enough field data to blather about with regards to the paler skinned sisters!

The last call I got during my gout flare did crystallize all that has taken place between me and the black women of Omaha… and even that owes a lot to what might be a general rule in relationships here.  But again, and I cannot stress this enough… I DON’T CARE.  I don’t care about your reason for dumping me… and all questions regarding our past are merely incidental and are only for historical reference and nothing more.

The hypocrisy in the call from the local women are why this entry has meandered so long.  If there were any other reason for either Nebraska or my best first date to call me, I think that they may have deluded themselves into think that maybe they were giving me an opportunity… that they were being genuine and caring.  But whatever the reason they had for their calls, I wonder why they didn’t tell me so when we were more than what we are now?