I read about it before I ever saw it, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, it came to be to me as in a surprise, unimagined majesty now being absorbed into my brain through both of my wide-open eyes on the bus, it was silent but the wind swinging along a little, big deep desert, indescribable... my own two eyes
I woke up there, in the back of a bus, asleep after two days of driving non-stop, on my sixth solid hour konked out, we pulled up and I woke up when the bus stopped, walked down the bus to the door, looking down as I made my way through others sleeping around here and there, Mickey the Kid was sitting in the driver seat and I opened the door to go out to take a leak, first I was looking down, the stairs down the well to the door, pulling the handle and then I looked up and saw the Grand Canyon, from the North Rim where The Kid knew how to get to, and there it was, amazing, stunningly silent, the wind was hot already at 8 am and there it was.
There we were, but I felt like much of the earth and me were included right then, on the same place... in there, I felt right, good to be there I looked into the Grand Canyon, silence, just a little wind, and there, The Canyon was right in front of me, I could have jumped in we were so close to the edge. I do not know how long I stood there looking out that door, I forgot I had to piss for at least five minutes.
So, television still has the utter ability to mesmerize me if I am interested and I had the same kind of experience last night watching a four-part, 4 hours of it, series made by people that are not white, don't want to be white, and have a lifetime experience in America being not white, and if you are white like me, think you know what's what, watch this series, I am anti-racist, you read what I say you know I am, anti-racist denotes action, I will do the right thing and I know what that is....but I am white. If I wasn't I would never have gotten away with all I have. No shit. The bumps Ihit were all easier because of my skin, I look right. I looked right in court.
See, when I was a kid, as fucked up as that was for everyone concerned with my childhood, I was never told by anyone anytime that I was better than anyone else at all, period. Until my father's side of my family got ahold of me and told me I was Irish, I just thought I was a kid. My first babysitter, my mom had to work and my brother and sister were in school, so I had a babysitter. She was Chinese or Japanese, Asian, her name was Harriet and I loved her, I really liked her. She would help me read when I was like maybe 3, on her lap she'd read to me and spell the words.
My sister married a black man, Dell, and he came up to see me in the joint before he took off with my sister and niece for Thailand, he was a cultural anthropologist and they had to go there for two years, I couldn't go, I had to stay in jail. That sure wasn't on him, he didn't like it one bit. He had really had to watch his ass up there in Gold Country, Northern California wasn't known for its racial disparity then or now, then even more so, but he came up to tell me they were going. By himself. My brother never came up there. My mother a couple of times, once a month for a while, I got packages from here and there for a while but they stopped, so did letters from anyone but my mother, then, her too. But I was with all kinds of kids inside, we were not segregated at all. It wasn't a thing. Yet. I know it became one, but I wasn't there then. YA is kids, really.
That's what time is, you don't have anything but time left by then, no one knows you outside anymore, they stop coming. I went back to my mother's house on a furlough once. I didn't like it there anymore, I wanted to beat the shit out of a kid that had done some really bad shit to another kid and killed a cat, all in front of me when I was maybe 5 or 6?....well never mind what he did, I had dreams about it so I figured if I straightened him out the whole neighborhood would know how bad I was and Alvarez expected a report.
Alvarez and I planned the attack before I went down there, I pulled it off, and beat the kid up, but gently for some reason, I didn't kick him when he fell anyway. I didn't tell Bobby about that. I didn't trust anyone there anymore, I wanted to but I knew they didn't like me, I was a bad kid, crazy, and now I was dangerous as a motherfucker too. They knew that after I beat the shit out of the kid and they knew I didn't care anymore what they said or thought. I went there to get that kid. I wanted to go home, but where I was was not home anymore. I was really confused at this point. Bobby expected me to report success and then we would commence planning on how to get control of the place. We had entered a new stage of existence, we were ready to "tip-up"....become the prison gang,...like, " give me that, fuckin' right now motherfucker, now!!." I was no good as a bully but I gave it a shot.
I wanted to go home where people that liked me were, back in prison. Institutionalized at 10. Willing to commit anything to get anything I wanted, now it was my job. I am still a regular, it is OK with me, too. I am alive and well for it. All cleaned up, too. I know the last time I stole something and the last time I shot any dope, the last fight and I like that they were the last, I am holding onto that.
How about that.
Culturally, the culture of America and my complicated love affair with patriotism, honor for a place, a really cool and totally fucked up place...
The same people, doing anything they can to help the people of Northern Ireland, Spare change constantly for the Jimmy Fund, Boston's ongoing muscular dystrophy fund, a constant on sales counters all over Boston and the area. The Irish Catholics living under constant military occupation, almost always martial law, get away from England, donate to the church, every tavern, bar on the street in Southie had a jar for the lads, you know? Did it all go in? Do you want to steal from the IRA?
I lost love in my insistence that it just doesn't make any sense, the thing they were talking to and about was an immense hustle, I saw the collection plates and understood exactly what they were after, they were criminals too, but really smart ones, and rich too.
Read the bible, here is a good one for you, Twenty Five Dollars, you have to buy it. There will be tests.
Well, they had theirs and I had mine...
I loved Kung Fu, it now occurs to me, after it is pointed out, that show was racist as hell, all of it and Carradine, too. The dude is white and plays a guy who is Asian. It is the same as blackface. That had never even occurred to me, that is a conditioning, programming I would have denied had I not just been shown it.
During Reagan's reign, a friend of mine pronounced the show as our "Church" one evening at his house in Berkeley as we adjusted ourselves to begin praying...hahahaha
So, this is another of those minutes, it grips me how unseeing I can be, have been, I am not in a different skin so I cannot know exactly how it is in there in a different color than what I am... I read "Black Like Me, "but I didn't get anything I can remember out of it, that would be the only instance I can come up with of one changing skin color to find out how un caucasian people experienced their lives., I thought he might be lying.....it didn't feel true...
I feel ok in my skin but I don't like the way some others wear theirs, insisting on the skin color like in, say, "Russel is black" used to be off-limits, you shouldn't say 'black" it's not polite to call "them" that, "they" are just like "us" and this kind of conversation was polite as hell in it's four instances in one sentence, of racist thinking. I didn't know it then, but I do now.
No one is the same as another, the Doppelganger is out there but you never meet it, right?
I hate it when I come up so short like that, my chump jacket gets tighter, and my ego begins to suffer.
A suffering ego is alright but mine feels all uncomfortable and stretched out once recognized. The show, "Everything is Going to be All White," is fucking great. I am going to watch it again.
I was out here running around, running my mouth, and I only half get it. I am going to help if I am permitted but the ego must go on slow down, protect the jewels but do it in close, stay tight but look for new shit. I am not black. No one owes me shit. But we do owe for reparations or whatever we call it, let the people vote on it, and make a package that helps and is fair for all of us.
No one here now was here then, but it is not over, in ways it is worse, in others it is way better than it was, listen to that, I just dropped that one like an original, but it shows me, I still have some in me. Whiteness, privilege, no ticket instead of a bullet in the back. It comes so naturally to a white guy like me, it doesn't show, someone else has to show it to you. That's it, I was shown this morning how far I have to go still, so that's good. Another level, another route..
since I get better in increments
I'll just keep on incrementing along.
No comments:
Post a Comment