How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

I don't know -- let's call the Nazis.

Seriously, though:  there are many times over the last six or so years I realized I was *the* problem.  That really sucked, because I've always opted for conciliation over confrontation, and I've never been the one to cause a scene.  I loathe drama, and would never want to be the center of it.  But then, it's never been about me, has it?  That was made abundantly clear by folks in the 'hood where I live, when I asked.  It's about the people causing a scene.  Now, a lot of that noise came from well-intentioned, paranoid tweakers who kept saying, "Yes!  I knew it!"  But still...

The fact remains that for some, I was a problem.

I know who you are because it was I who was the problem, and I know myself quite intimately.

What I've always said is this:  apportioning blame never solves a problem, but defining it often does.

So what kind of problem do I represent?  It's rather simple, and as my neighbors in the Tenderloin averred (granted, they were mostly ignant niggas -- but not all) my meth use was not the problem.  My thoughts were not really the problem.  Okay, so my words and deeds were a little more problematic, but they should have brought more ruin on me than those who chose to set themselves against me, but I digress...

This is the problem I represent, in a paragraph:  I'm a highly intelligent, articulate, good person (by all estimations) who is poor and disenfranchised.  That is very dangerous to some people, and whose to say those very people didn't discover me?  My grandmother was a COINTELPRO subject (who dealt with harassment from the FBI in a far more manly manner than I handled harassment -- I pretty much at my worst did the "hot bitch from the 70s" routine where I shrunk up against the wall, recoiling in my anticipation of "their" killing me.  My grandmother was much more steely against J. Edgar Hoover and the Unamerican Activities people), and I was scouted out by an agency -- soon to be named -- when I was a pre-pubescent high-IQ rebellious fag.  Good getting the drop on me, but where are we know with making me ridiculous or co-opting me?