...AND HAVE THE WIND BLOW IT BACK IN YOUR FACE

MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT RACE

The NWA song about the subject of the 'N-word' and why black people identify with the term, used to say it all for me. It really does explain a lot of the feelings that many of the 'desperate youth' of the African-American community felt. Yet even then as it does now, it set uneasy of an acquiescence to the white superiority complex that controls America if not the world.

While I am not an etemologist, I do not believe that you can take away the true meaning of a word by 'claiming it' as many in the African-American community feel can be done. To me it is like expecting to rename handguns and have them kill fewer people. The term and the purpose is one in the same and you can no more seperate them from each other than you can stop the sun from rising in the sky each morning.

It simply cannot be done.

Understanding oppression and how projection works on a subjugated people would prolly help blacks understand why there can be no reclamation project with that word. To be sure, other people have their own self-debasement, but I like to think that it is mainly kept 'in-family' and it is certainly not display with pride or for marketing reasons.

I was in Vegas in the late 90's, working for a promoter for a big fight between two Mexican nationals. It was a BIG to do, and the cats were among the bitterest of rivals. One of the things that they had to '2-Minute Hate' on each other was their backgrounds.

One cat is from Mexico City proper, of educated parents and has a degree himself. The other cat was from the rural areas that surround the capital of Mexico. It was during one of the press conferences that I learned that city cats in Mexico called the rural country cats, 'stupid Indians'. Talk about making a brother HOT!!

Like whatever names the Jews use among themselves with the duality of the 'N-word', or the Catholics, the Irish, the Hispanics, or take your freakin' pick, they do NOT run around outside and PROUDLY use that term for sale. It is like a jedi mind control trick, getting African-Americans to think that they can take away the sole purpose of an ideals existince, and magically change it to mean something totally different, as if they were the Lucky Charms guy and was conjuring something to get away with his Lucky Charms in. It is never going to happen. People, particularly people of color who believe that they are 'taking back' that world, are again setting themselves up for more mental manipulation and victimization.

In fact, even when the song was new, the inclusion of a sample of Don King explaining how no matter how much you do, whether you went to college or not, you are still a ni**er, is an example of why I will never be able to wrap my mind around the idea of 'rehabilitating' that word.

Don King has been verified as an exploiter of his own ethnic group with the sole purpose being to fatten his own coffers. I have already discussed how I thought that he manipulated AA's to drum up support of his misleading a young and vulnerable Mike Tyson. He had already been found guilty of RIGGING BOXING MATCHES and cheating fighters out of their money. Since the majority of these fighters were African-American, why should ANYONE want to align themselves with someone who claims his ethnic group out of conveniece?

Now, I have further truck with the issue of inter-ethnic racisim in the African-American community, but that is maybe for another time. But to all the brothers and sisters who feel that they are 'reclaiming' and taking the power away from that word, you are simply fooling yourselves and I think it is an admission of defeat, that we are not going to be able to overcome its stigma. Just do what you want with the word...

WHY THINK ABOUT THAT, WHEN YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT THIS

Not that my Facebook status updates ofthen have any relevance to how I am doing, not too long ago I did put up several that did actually reflect my mood. A couple of folks caught them and made their concern known and for that I was very appreciative. But it was the abscence of several people who should have had an decided interest who did not ask about or wondered if there was something to the sad, cryptic words that I posted.

Heather over at Soft Skies, posted a list of 'one sentence revalations' that made me take a deep breath and give a long, wearied sigh. She should still be in the 'honeymoon phase' (as opposed to the Campfire Headphase!!) of her marriage and I thought that they were good enough to use as a guide for my own evaluative purposes.

"I need you to understand me." - Perhaps I have not made it clear that I burden myself with the guilt of my own fails in relationships and in my own personal achievements. That is a lot of weight and I will never ask anyone to help me carry it. BUT, I will not let someone add to it.

Yet, I will try to understand why you would find it difficult at first to understand me. There are few cats who walk around and can wear the label of being eclectic without being self-serving. This is where things get tricky and why I have such pronoun trouble. Because if I am going to ask this of you, then I had better be doing the same for you.

"I need you to stop being an a**hole." - I make no bones about it... I am an a-hole, but I think that it is more because of the aforementioned ecleticism that I come across that way, initially. INITIALLY. I am not deliberate in being a jerk deliberately, and certainly not to attract any attention to myself. But being an a**hole goes deeper than that. It could also read as "I need you to stop being selfish."

Sometime I have felt that there is a unconscious 'tit for tat' that goes on in a relationship... maybe it is in the failed ones because the memory that I have is dervived from not only a fail, but a 'abortive' relationship. Whatever the reason, know that you can be an insensitive a**hole as well. "I did not know," couple with a sincere "sorry", goes a long way to healing. No, your long winded justification does NOT speed the process but further aggravates the injury. There is NO OTHER WAY for you to come across outside of being a wormy butthead, trying to rationalize why they are an a**.

"I need you to keep holding my hand." - Because if I did not, I would not need you, PERIOD. If you have a problem with it, share it with a friend, a dog, but you freakin' better not with me. Because if you do, then you WILL NOT have to worry about me reaching out for you for anything.

Look, I have diminished, out of the respect for those who have endured more than me, the impact of being my feeling that I was out there on my own after realizing those who said they loved me were behind me... but not exactly. If that is the way that it is, fine. No worries about understanding where I am coming from or for your hurting my feelings, a**hole.

"I need you to know that you have hurt me." - Helps a lot in the way of reconciling misunderstandings. It also means that you realize that you are not the only one with feelings that matter in the relationship. I know that with me, if you were to ask 'Why' I said something that may have hurt you, it provides the opportunity for growth. If your ego and your base emotional needs are such that it demands retribution, well... I am not going to be bothered with asking myself to understand that. (one of these days, after I get organizized, I will post about 'pondering life's complexities' and why I would like to avoid that almost always fruitless activity)

"I need you to realize that this is it." - Many a moon ago, there was an outfit call Muhammad Ali Professional Sports. The cat who was running the thing, Harold Smith, was spending money right and left, on track stars, fight promotions, and branching out to representing atheletes in other sports as well. He had a big fight promotion and the name of the card was 'This Is It', which really fit at the time, with all the big names that were not only fighting, but fighting each other. A fight fan's dream come true.

Unfortunately, Harold was spending embezzled money and for him, that WAS it. But the idea has always stayed in my head that for a dream promotion, that there was never going to be anything like it again and that there was never anything that preceeded it of the same magnitude. This WAS it!!

Not getting too far away from things, there never was a 'This Is It' fight card and I have not seen that collection of big fights even proposed happening on one night since. Sadly, the finality of 'This Is It' rang true in that respect.

When I was getting ready to go to Nebraska, there were a couple of things that opened up the 'worry faucet' and they eventually brought me back to Detroit. As neat as the place feels to me, I still want to live in Omaha. With or without having a relationship with anyone.

Right now, somehow, Nebraska and I have managed to run afoul of each other. I do feel things are being blown out of proportion. What I am sure of, is that I am not doing any of the blowing.

I am not of the mind to smooth some of the edges that have snagged... after all, I am of the profound belief that I do that as S.O.P and for it to be forced upon me by something with which could have been tamped at the beginning... a little understanding, and some consideration for another person maybe being them and not trying to be whatever it is you think...

HONESTLY, THAT IS A GOOD SIGN

Talking about and being willing to explain and defend opinions like the ones I spoke about earlier is actually a sign of health for me. Making sense of the dangling threads of social phenomena, studying the causes and effects of provided information is what I have always done, as long as I have been aware of myself. Going all disinformation at the slightest opportunity is a premium part of the packaging that is ‘Mark Madness’ (a cool sobriquet if I heard of one… a word play of the NCAA’s basketball tournaments ‘March Madness’). Would have really worked well as a boxing nickname, but c’est la vie, say the old folks, you never can tell!

…AND I STILL HAVEN’T BEEN OUT TO GARDEN CITY

Doing what is best is never predicated on doing what is convenient or easy.

A lot of my personal effects are already ahead of me, being stored by Nebraska in Omaha. But as far as being able to live without a few books, assorted papers and a couple of pair of old jeans, and who can’t live without stuff like that?

When I was but a bonnie wee lad delivering the Detroit News (the largest circulation of any evening newspaper in America) reading the small, agate type that often included the results of Premier League results, wondering what it took to play for one of those names of cities in jolly ol’, I also would wonder about running away to SoCal and sneaking across the border to start my boxing career as an underage professional. In high school, I was convinced that I could start out fighting plenty of 4-rounders to build up my experience and survive on my wits, sleeping in my car (a late 60’s metallic blue VW 412 station wagon!), and picking up the language and endearing myself to the locals as ‘their fighter’. I miss those fantasies that maturity and naysayers took away. Between that and going off to Montreal and attending McGill University still nags at me… because those are the only two childhood dreams that I don’t think I took good cuts at.

I’d have rather been pulled over in Missouri, an alert sent out thru police channels looking for a runaway teenage boy heading for the border in an old VW station wagon! Even if I didn’t make it, putting enough of a plan together and to act on that plan would have been good enough. Reading about the legendary fighters who began their careers as poor kids in the barrio, like Ruben Olivares, Bobby Chacon, maybe I would have been able to build a fanatical following in El-Ay like theirs or become a West Coast sensation as a teen as Mike Tyson did when he began boxing professionally.

As far as going to McGill, I took and passed French for three years but it never really took. ROTC and boxing began to cast looming shadows over that and lacking real direction or interest in what was going to happen to me upon graduation, I went ahead and seized on what I thought that I knew.

STILL, AS WAY LEADS ON TO WAY

Would be super neat to get a job part time at Fairlane, maybe at the Star Theatre or in one of the hotels around there, whether it is working in the laundry or running room service, would matter much to me. I’d even wash dishes if there was an opening in that department. Neat, defined, boundaries between work, home and school and I don’t know if I could ask for more. It could happen.

A lot of what goes on with me is hard for me to define. ‘Temporal displacement’ is the words that come to mind when I am ‘out and about’, locally. Sometimes I ‘know’ where I am at without actually ‘knowing’ where I am going. Or you could flip flop it, doesn’t matter. What ends up happening is I keep pressing on until something recognizable pops into view or the awareness clears and I know where it is I am heading and keep on going.

The dizziness (vertigo) means I will never be able to drive again (among other ‘can’t do things) and I had gotten pretty good at balancing myself on my bike, but since I haven't be riding as much as I had, I wonder if I will be 'back where I started', where lil' Mook would tell me 'be careful' whenever I went out with Trixie! That I can ride my bike is good enough for me, because given my level of fitness I can ride until I remember where I am at and get to where I am going. Not only that, I feel that learning a ‘new’ place is a benefit for me as I think that it causes a different region to ‘light up’ in my head. That makes the new region an area that I can access in lieu of the parts of my brain that doesn’t light. Or so I like to believe.

Am I having am second thoughts? Hmm, I don’t know what ‘second thoughts’ are, so I don’t feel that is what I am doing. Though I am not a ‘Tim Taylor’, I do know that you need to ‘measure twice, and cut once’.

Even if I haven’t followed that rule all of the time.

DRAMAMINE

I have taken to including music in my entries more regularly now than I think I have in the past. A lot of it is to add to the readers experience, listening to stuff that maybe some aren't familiar with or hopefully creating a bridge to which we connect and identify with one another. For instance when I put up the video of the Talking Heads not too long ago, I know a couple of cats 'n kittens mentioning how much they enjoy the stylings of the Talking Heads.

One of their songs is another touchstone song for me and one of the comments mentioned that it had significance for them as well. I think that the enternal struggle of the imagine middle class male is aptly portrayed in the video and the song 'Once In A Lifetime'. It is my second most favorite song and it still sends tremors through my body when I hear it.



I still remember looking forward to being strung out with mortgage payments, college loans, and trying to pay for dancing lessons that don't seem to be taking and schlepping around in a dreaded mini-van while some Johnny Football player is driving around in his Dad's ZX and complaining that he didn't get the new Mustang he was hoping for.

Anyone else remember the movie 'Falling Down' with Michael Douglas? He was clearly a man who would not take it anymore. I wonder how different his frustrations with the world at large is different from any of the Tea Baggers or any of the voiceless urban cats, who are wondering when someone is going to speak for them. The other day there looked to be hundreds of people at branch of the Michigan Employment Agency, to apply for a new supplier to Chysler. They had only 150 positions available and I ran into people who were thinking that they were applying for Chrysler. The desperation on some of the faces of the folks made my heart hurt.

Another reason that I have been including more videos is there is an epic sadness dogging me and I haven't quite been able to shake it. The lure of the 'Great American Southwest' for me has been that it is a place you could disappear in and the isolation isn't relative, but real.







I think that I would like a 'weekend pass' or something where I can forget some of what I am experiencing. Sometimes I don't think I am moving forward at all, even when I know that I have done all that I can do at this time. The impatience of finally being in my own space and being able to not sit around naked (because I think that is weird, even though I know folks do enjoy being able to be in their birthday suit... as much as I dig mine, I still can't bring myself to walk around 'nekkid' in my own space!) and bake cookies and not be reminded of... things... and people.



The better times, maybe the best of my times have seemed to be when I was alone and in pursuit of my space, the volume of life that I am supposed to occupy and measure.



Since my daughter hasn't released her phone number to me, I will keep my infernal Facebook profile on. I have had one special someone ask if I was doing alright... and I think that the answer right now is that I am not. Not that my blues are any 'bluesier' than anyone else's, it is the interminable wait as things wind their way through the system and then the stupid finances of getting from here and getting to Omaha and settled.



I mentioned Nixxie sent me pictures of our girl... in the conversation that we had that day, she asked what will I be doing this summer... KT is free ... if I was in Nebraska then we could go halfsies on plane fare...

Haven't shared a picture of her out here before... but she is such a beautiful girl. Lexxie still haven't got around to sending me our pictures, but once she does, I may post it too. She looks like her Mom in this shot but she really DOES favor me.

Maybe I will get to the question that my nephew asked me the other day... that has been lingering on my mind too.

And if anyone actually reads down this far, they should give themselves a pat on the back and consider this their humanitarian deed for the month..!