Life of Oharu

I've become a fallen old woman, pining away in a Buddhist temple, clawing at salvation:  some cheap, used-up whore.  What's become of the finery, the music, the handsome and generous gentlemen who would fall at my feet?  All is vanity -- my pride is a withered brown leaf skittering along the base of a stone lantern.  If only I'd replaced my beauty with wisdom as I lost the former!  Then again, wise and stupid alike, we are dust in the end.  What would it matter?

Woe is me.  A childhood truncated, parents shamed, no friends, no money, no respect or power.  I am fit for white cloth and a lonely end in a wooden cage.

The minutes tick on.  Oh why won't they finish?

I Got Something To Say...

Ha ha.  Jerri Blank aside, I kind of do.  Several years ago, there were some things going on that I thought were kind of fucked up.  People were attacking their fellow humans in the most disgusting way.  The least powerful had foisted upon them the blame for society's ills.  I listened to some prep school brat on the bus boast about assaulting a woman who's sin as he saw it was a weakness as I did.  I saw the irate, ingrown toenail-looking man so umbraged at that bitch who would hit the pipe rather than face him sober, but who himself could not even look in the mirror.  I saw extralegal sweeps of an impoverished neighborhood that mirrored the Times Square sweeps that left so many denizens stranded in the boroughs.  And when it was my turn to say something, when a woman I met advocated "trimming the fat," I replied, in so many words, fuck that.  A wind was blowing in 2009, and it flouted everything I've known to be human since we painted caves and hunted mammoths, and I, in my own small way, in a moment in time, took my own stand.

I've heard tell:  it's a war out there, we've seen wives beaten and babies neglected, murder, thievery, jankiness.  I've heard the tripe about self-indulgence, about the bitch who just doesn't get it, and being less than dignified answered it with a sarcastic, "Ay, papi.  I thought it was just candy.  I didn't know any better."

When I was homeless and close to death, and didn't have a person I could turn to, they were the ones who helped me out.  That's right:  drug-addled losers, addicts, hookers, homeless people, et alia, saved my life.  No matter how twisted and fucked up some of them were, they showed more compassion and understanding than nurses and doctors and cops who gave me shit for not being who they wanted to be -- though they themselves constantly fail.

To this day, I've got a lot wrong with me.  Then again, I didn't start out perfect, either.  I've got a smart mouth and grew up a little too fast.  I've got chronic health problems and have yet to beat my own issues with addiction.  But I've been shown a lot of love and support, and though that may not see me through, I've gotten it every step of the way, and am deeply grateful.  Every day it is ever present in my mind that my next moment may be my last.  For right now, I'm six feet above, not behind bars, and loved.  I never want that to end.

I guess I just wanted to put this out there, because I don't have a therapist, and I am only now for the first time telling anyone, in my own words, how some of that shit affected me.  Everybody else pisses and moans, whereas I've always tried to be like Smilla Jasperson, who likened complaining to a virus.  But I've got to be honest:  in many ways, I'm a broken man in the wake of all the drama.  But I'm still a man, and no man alive wants to take me on eye to eye.  I've got too much love, too much behind me, and too much to live for.  I cry all the time for how hard I know it is for so many out there, especially for people who never ever got a fair shot.  I cry too, for any self-described enemies, for their failure and hollowness and sheer self-loathing.  Maybe one day I'll cry for myself -- I have in the past.  I just thought I'd mention this stuff.  I know I'm nobody, started that way and will end that way, but once I got to do a thing that I knew was right, a little thing, but it made a big difference for a lot of people.

I want everyone to know I think I've got the gist of a lot of what you said over the years.  Thank you and you're welcome.

Recent Failure

My biggest is that in the last several weeks I've laughed at myself only twice.  At least I've cried several times for all the kindness and love bestowed upon me.  As for anger, I've caught myself getting a little sarcastic or snarky here or there.  Everybody thinks I'm so sweet.  Little do they know...

A Few Clues

A favorite past-time of mine is exploring possible reasons why I still exist.  There are many reasons why I shouldn't -- circumstances similar to those I've experienced have put others in boxes punitive or, more often, sepulchral.  What explains the matrix of decisions made by homo sapiens sapiens, unwittingly and otherwise, that has resulted in my drawing breath and being nominally aware of my surroundings at this very moment?  This is as masturbatory as any other blog, and let's always bear in mind the comedic possibilities of the blow to my vanity instant death would deliver upon my clicking "Publish."  But I digress...

Here's what I have to go on:  there is a distinct wash of the feminine to my personal history.  Yes, I suffered the typical slings and arrows with which childhood pelts even the debs and jocks, but I was bullied far, far less than you would expect an egghead faggot to be.  I was generally well-liked.  My school counselor in high school in so many words described me as a bit of social lubrication or the diplomat who kept circumstances from devolving into Lord of the Flies during home room.  I was a peer counselor, for fuck's sake.  I was zeroed in on by anyone who needed a non-judgmental ear.  My peers had no reservations -- whoever said something to me knew they were safe to say anything, no matter how ridiculous, poorly worded, or insane.  Losers weren't losers around me, weirdos were cool, and the popular were somewhat self-conscious and sensitive to my opinion.  I was physically capable of embarrassing bullies to where I needed to do so only a couple of times early on -- the swirlie and the wedgie were known to me only second hand, and from media depictions.  Other boys instinctively refrained from rough-housing with me.  Mostly, though, I was spared fighting for myself.  When Terence made a homophobic crack that probably didn't even have anything to do with me, loutish brute Kevin kicked his ass as though being chivalrous on my behalf.  The only scary enemies I had were the boys who creeped everyone out:  Joey, who had all the makings of a serial rapist, and contemptuously misogynistic monster Frank; we had brief, enlightening run-ins that warned me about them and marked me in their eyes as one valued by the people they loathed.  My hydrochloric acid-dipped scalpel tongue was a secret weapon reserved for adults who abused their authority...and in any ensuing arbitration, the decision was made in my favor.  There's my home life:  I was the lightning rod for violence, drawing it away from my mother and brother.  Ana and I both ran away around the same time in our adolescence, for the same reasons; I was treated by my father in a way that would make sense to any Latina who had a controlling, somewhat abusive, sheltering dad.

It's not a lot to go on, but I'm getting the sense that I'm a bit of a freak of nature, and that I'd not be wracked with such a crisis of understanding had I been a biological female.

Today I find myself as an either tolerated, an unnoticed, or a valued member of a community I don't actively seek to figure out mainly out of respect for the privacy of the individuals who constitute it.  I can be terribly perceptive -- a risky quality in a world ruled mainly by brute stupidity and peppered with elements desirous of power other overs though they are unqualified to wield it.  I'm guessing I've ended up as the naive smart-ass whose circumstances as apparent to unbiased, sharp, independent observers let those observers know what to look out for to so they might optimally care for themselves.  Best I've got.  There's also the possibility that I'm a human shield covering for a lot of people who've earned some punishment or another.  Really, it's all so vague...

It's funny.  This ruminative rambling post today was inspired by a thought:  all across this country there are people who've been laid off and foreclosed upon, and now all of the sudden they're being confronted quite concretely with the demand to justify their very existence.  Pink slips and rapacious banks have told them they and the mouths they have to feed are worthless, and the only option open to them is to Occupy [insert location.]  I felt terrible:  here I am, a formerly homeless mental patient with a debilitatingly high intelligence quotient, severe emotional imbalances, who works part-time as a caregiver and creates art appreciated by some people who are really quite fascinating in their own right.  In other words, I'm somewhat less worthwhile than Kim Kardashian.  I want so desperately to shout at those who're being left to die by the systems designed to serve them that they are not to blame -- no factotum, no young turk has any fucking right to demand they justify their existence.  I think of the t-shirt-and-jeans dude so used to a life in a tract home he lost not long after his job was downsized, and I want to find him and tell him he can crash on my floor as long as he needs.  I want to share my food with the mom who has nowhere to go, despite there being hundreds of empty houses for every homeless person in this land of the free and the brave.  Boys who never really had a chance to properly grow an adult beard have sacrificed their lives in far away countries so I could do any goddamn fucking thing I wanted with my life, and I want to do more than kick up my heels -- I want to share.  I could grandstand under the tenderizing ministrations of a cop's baton at a protest, but that's just another kind of self-indulgence.

I kind of get that I have a place, or at least have been designated as not worth eliminating.  But how do I do more than just occupy it?  How do I really put it to use in a way that serves more than just me?

Yes, I'm blegging for wisdom.  Help?

Failings

This month I turn 35.  It occurs to me that I should effect some significant changes in my life.  For one thing, I could be more hard-nosed and hard-hearted.  For another, I should cultivate optimism to the point where I'm deluded enough to believe in the wisdom of planning for the future.  You wouldn't know it from looking at my life -- a roof over my head, food on my plate, no arrest record, no kids, a healthy social life, less debt than your average 35 year-old American -- but I've never really been one to act like I'm expecting a future.  I didn't think much about college in high school, and spent most of my adult life simply placing one foot in front of the other, expecting nothing and hoping for the best.  I'm unambitious, and congenitally incapable of scheming and strategizing -- particularly in those ways that pit me against any one else's interests.  I've had low expectations since childhood, struggle more with not wanting than with a world that won't give me what I am told to think I want, and am keenly aware that, although from others' perspectives I seem to have had it rough, I have it really good.  At my worst, I excel at making it look like I don't have a care in the world.

But I want to trust the sense possessed by achievers; maybe they're on to something.  I should maybe start giving some thought to planning my life in advance, learn to assume I have a future.  Come up with an objective to be achieved within five years and work towards it.  Give myself goals to reach.  Be self-disciplined, rather than self-sabotaging.  Challenge myself.  Of course, once that's done I'll end up a hood ornament or recipient of a stray bullet or something...I may be naive of many facets of reality, but irony is well known to me.

Anyway, I should also take to heart what friends have said:  that I'm entitled, and should start acting like it.

Beware of Artists

"They mix with all classes of society and are therefore the most dangerous." -- McCarthy-era poster.

A Promise Deferred

Let's get over the reality that the Democratic party is centrist and corporatist, and that no president arising therefrom will forward a truly progressive agenda. I've heard from several people that they so loathe Obama they will abstain this election. They are disappointed, disillusioned, and disgusted.

I don't know why these otherwise very grown-up people held close to their breasts such fantastical expectations. Can't we maintain a healthy and warranted sense of cynicism and still make an effort? Although Obama is probably guaranteed re-election, I exhort the abovementioned to lump their broken-heartedness and go through the motions of voting for him again. Let's make this win stick.

People are still mourning Mr. Change's apparently unfulfilled campaign promises and are excoriating his concessions and failures. I myself am rather impressed at how he's kept it together. I think Bush's eyeblink disappearance down the collective memory hole glossed over the tremendous damage that idiot's administration (to use the word kindly) did to America. My assessment is that Obama has earned a passing grade in putting out a myriad fires, staving off disintegration, and preventing tragedy and drama. Yes, there's so much more he could have done, but he, as I expected, failed to overcome the mindset that demands cowering in the face of Republicans' fatuous potshots and childish asides. Democrats, I'm afraid, will always give the opposition too much credit -- they will never stop assuming the other side possesses legitimacy, cogency and relevancy, despite conservatives' wholesale unwillingness to touch base with the real world at all. The result: our infrastructure languishes, Social Security remains imperiled, the economy continues to teeter, and America is only momentarily secure against its own self-destructive excesses. But that's no reason to get passive aggressive and hand the reins over to people whose biggest issues are darker fellow humans and Planned Parenthood.

If I may make a re-election campaign promise on behalf of a president with whom I've been pretty much okay: Expect Obama as a lame duck to throw caution to the wind and truly implement a constellation of policies we can count on to preserve America for at least a couple more decades -- a pretty bold goal when one considers the context of modern human existence as a whole. When I look at the current White House from arm's length I see conservation of energy, an executive that has preserved much of its mandate since 2008 in anticipation of a second term during which it will do its damnedest to revitalize our economy, conserve our resources, take some possibly successful stabs at preventing collapse, and preserving the few civil liberties we haven't lost. Our way of life as Americans is ultimately doomed, but I still see hope in retaining some of it for longer than we have a right to.

I'm not optomistic about humanity's future, but I think the wonkish will be pleasantly surprised during the next four years, and I implore my fellow citizens to hold their noses and go through the motions with me at the polls this year. I'm not saying it will get better, but this is our best shot at preventing it from getting horribly worse very soon.

Gimlet eyes: did we ever think we were doing more than forestalling the inevitable and sticking fingers in dikes? Let's not throw our hands up in surrender prematurely.