equality

Equality

In light of the Epstein files it seems we’ve redefined, or crystallized, what we meant by “women’s equality”. The glass ceiling, gateways to professions, and pay gaps seem trivial compared to the issue of abuse. I say trivial because woman dealt with this issue since they were girls.

I’ve had plenty of reasons and time to consider this, since before the “Epstein issue. In fact some folks would think I have no right to comment, but the measure of a man is how he faces his failure, and I have plenty.
I remember when I was young hanging out on the corner with dudes ranging in age 13 to 20’s. Girls walked a gauntlet if they had to go to the store or visit friends. Some were experienced and tough enough dudes didn’t mess with them, but I promise you there was a mixture of dudes with bad intentions and young dudes trying to be cool. There was a tradition amongst dudes to see which girls “grew up” over the winter and were fair game. Hell some were even groomed when they were still in their single digits. One sentence reminds me of our ignorance; “she’s gonna be a fox when she grows up”! It’s embarrassing to say that.

Later in life, (at 16 or 17) they had to deal with dating where alcohol, marijuana, or acid were popular recreation drugs. There really was no “recreation” in these substances. They were dating aids for dudes with bad intentions. Dudes would even buy some early version of sexual aids like “Spanish Fly” from magazines in order to get an advantage. Stupid as all this sounds, the Cosby method was a norm during those times. Most girls traveled in couples or gangs and looked out for each other, but there were always victims.

I’m speaking about what women experienced as girls, before they became women. This was relentless. Even when a job opportunity came it often came with silent conditions. Back in the day woman really didn’t work outside the home. So if they were widowed, divorced, or single mother they had to find jobs. So many had to take the good with bad to provide for their families.

I imagine a lifetime of oppression that became a norm, even for some woman. I imagine in the back of their mind while burning bras or boycotting industries was the hope that we would understand what “equality” meant. We didn’t. We were raised on a steady diet of oppression was masculine when it came to women. I certainly didn’t understand. I’m no different than the next Joe. Thankfully year by year strong woman taught stronger woman and today much of what we called dating back then is a crime today.

We’re never too old to grow, or take a second to consider and reconsider. I saw an old friend who was posting on Facebook about the Epstein case and saw the years of struggle in a glimpse. Politics aside, this case means more to a lot of women than we understand. For these reasons I don’t wish for justice, (although I hope it comes about) I hope for understanding at a level that creates an equality where our sex is no longer a leverage and everyone is viewed as a person worthy of the respect humanity deserves.

no one

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No one

What if no one came. What if this divided consciousness became a home. A place of wishes where you dreamt of things others dread just to tread water. A place where drugs can’t even dampen the smell of poverty.

These spaces require more than physical discomfort. A place where psychology becomes rooted in the physical discomfort and you can no longer experience yourself in reality. Maybe it’s the pain without feeling, or maybe it’s the feeling without pain; either way there’s always a hero that never shows up.

This is the place of beginnings. A dark corner of an inward spiral that becomes a cocoon or a casket. Suddenly you realize you’ve spun yourself into a space of confinement without walls. No bars holding you in, not even a CO to tell you what to do. So you sit and stare because it’s all you have left.

Now your savior has no face. An unfamiliar Hail Mary that had no religion. This staggering journey has ended and you can’t even walk away, you can only sit and clean a tiny space in your mind for anything to shine.

There’s nothing to grasp. No anchor to ground your fears. So you sit and stare at your feelings wondering what good they are inside this space, or place. Wherever this is it must be hell.

When all you have is a singular hope and that has become a prayer, that long sigh is where you realize you’ve lost the ability to care. The lie is there is no rocks at the bottom. Just a continual spiral inward that separates you from yourself. So you care less about either of you.

Who are you now. Unaware of the hearts aching for your return. You can’t feel yourself, let alone some loved one who’s become a stranger. You don’t care about how things look or feel. Your too far away lost inside yourself suspended in grief.

The mourning doesn’t bring light. It’s a cloud of swirling fear and guilt you hide from. It’s so overwhelming you don’t feel the outside world. Like someone who’s lost their voice your silent scream goes unheard. The only thing visible is your misery. Which you can no longer see.

The depths of despair have no bottom. Not even death brings you back, or takes you away. It just passes the unexplained onto others to ponder with wincing moments of pain. You can’t even become a memory.

I wish it was as easy as ashes swirling in the wind to become an ember that sparks a fire of renewed sense, but it’s not. Lot taught us even the ashes can become a tortured existence. There is no bottom. Life doesn’t stop, it goes on in any form it can take to exist.

There are no answers to the darkness. If you can’t shine a light, create a spark that could be someone’s hope. If you can’t create a spark stir the ashes. Maybe someone else’s last sigh will provide the breath to spark your ember and together, or apart, you can share the light even if it lacks warmth. You left the land of feelings long ago, but you can always imagine, or remember as a place to begin again.

Hats and titles

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I remember when I was the “Gentleman” she met.

Then I spent some time as the “Guy” she was seeing, (or was she).

The only thing I enjoyed more than being a “gentleman” was being a “fiancé”

Then the thought of expectation hit me like a hammer, I’m going to be a “Husband”.

Thoughts flashed through my brain like a slide show gone astray

“husband”, “provider”, “partner”, “ole man”, oh shit, “Father”!

It was not to long into marriage I started just collecting hats.

One for each person I’d become. No one noticed, they just said, “He” loves his hats!

At this point I’m working towards nothing. Retirement looms or shines in the future.

I’m marking the days of my life like tic marks on a refrigerator calendar.

I still have all my hats, but some just hang as a memory to when I was more than I am now. I’ve added the two hats I knew were coming, “Grandfather” and “Retired”.

Did I do this right? Was it all worth it? Where did I disappear to? Why am I relegated to watching other folks sacrifice their lives to a dream never realized.

I need a hobby.

Not like the car and girl I buffed and rode in my late 40’s early 50’s. That cost way too much.

I need a new dream that can come true. I could build things, but building this life was like building my own prison.

They’ve put me out in the garage with the secrets and memories to collect dust while the immaculate sitting room gets maintained like a shrine to something that never quite was.

Maybe I could just walk. I could pretend like it did for decades that I’m going somewhere. Then return to the kitchen through the garage remembering when I was just another memory collecting dust.

No one would notice until the dust on my hats made them sneeze. Then they’d wonder why I gave up my hats for expensive hiking shoes dusted with soil from places they’d never been.

Then the questions would fly like letters on a ‘sesame street’ episode. Finally after 50 years I’m somebody again. Now I’m a “widow”.

I put the tears and memories and hid them behind the secrets and created a meme to sum up my life to date. New beginnings on the winds of times long past.

I’m a “patient” now. Tryin to figure out what I could tell that one lucky relative that still checks on me from time to time that would spare them the regrets of not living a life with meaning outside the labels we live.

I know “deceased” will be the last hat I wear forever. I also know that family, country, or religion carved my life way before I was conceived. Being born a boy, my first outfit, even all those presents under the tree were just props keeping me in character.

My vocation, marriage, and neighborhood were just boundaries keeping me confined and conformed. Now that I’m “deceased” I’ll be free to acknowledge my regrets; and admit my dreams belonged to other folks who needed me to follow this path to death.

The Moment

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The Moment

There’s a moment we all share. It’s eternal like a first step or last breath. It stays on the tip of our tongue with a shudder. And although we walk around the park smiling at the people and sunshine happily; just to the rear left of our brain we sense the moment hiding in the woods.

It’s ever present. Like a shunt in our brain it’s there. Never growing or shrinking, not shining or dull, it’s just there as a reminder that the end of our tongue and tip of our fingers are placed to late.

Taking back one moment in the infinite number of moments in our life seems futile. That one time you wish it was a dream instead of wishing a dream come to life. Is it really the moment we share?

Noise has defined my life. Sometimes the memories have voices forcing me to blurt out an utterance to make them go away. Sometimes their subtle, silent reflections of that moment I couldn’t take back. The walls only last in the moment and disappear in my open mind.

I’ve collected these moments over years. The younger ones either don’t have voices, or hide behind a black sphere of what I assume is protection from the reality of trauma. Others are pictures decorating the space I live. At this point I live with them like the spider web in the corner I ignore for months until I deep clean, but the web returns over time capturing new memories of forgotten moments.

The memories in the sphere of darkness are interesting. They don’t speak, nor do they have form. Just a feint feeling of a larger trauma I know is there, but fail to conjure words or pictures for. It feels as though it’s on the tip of consciousness and on the other side is solution. It seems a forbidden space.

At times it feels as though my world would be forever altered if I made it to the realization. I ask myself how this space could be worse than the memories I can’t take back from the tip of my fingers or utterances; then it occurs that maybe it’s the source of the moments and utterances I can’t take back.

The familiar mantra of, “your grown now, you gotta just move on!” echoes eventually making the whole process seem futile. Am I hiding from myself or something looming larger. I still don’t know.

I sometimes wonder if these moments get resolved in the last breath before death. Some moment of personal accounting where moments are resolved and my spirit rides free of moments. Maybe life is all about moments and striving for a balance.

I’m sort of afraid of the moment those memories on the top of my brain get revealed. And what will I be without those memories I can’t take back or words that will echo in time. Will I find silence or is this part of being human. Even writing this is talking in my head.

Becoming a Story

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Becoming a story

When I become a story will I collect my regrets and exhale them into the universe for others to chip away at the mountains of expectations I had for myself based on what I thought you’d desire of my life?

Will my last thoughts will be clouded by what I could profoundly bestow upon someone else to pass the tradition of expectation along to the next generation of oppressed intellect surprised by emotions, this is why there are no words?

Is there an awakening, or peace, on the other side of life? Maybe death is a new chapter in our story that lives on in the breath of others. Or maybe we are constrained by the thoughts of others. Either way it’s a new existence. A rebirth

So what of the souls that leave this plane of existence alone? No one to pass along parts or pieces of their memories to someone who cares enough to speak their name or ponder a time when memories flowed with blood and laughter taking a moment to bring their story just short of life.

Are these lost souls reunited through the stories of others long gone, or left mourning? Are they rejoiced as characters in the memories or breath of others? Maybe souls can’t be lost. Maybe in the chain of death we’re all linked together and no one truly dies alone. It would seem we are all connected once we have breathed the same air or shared the same thoughts on either side of this world.

I often wonder if that last breath reveals the secrets of life. Or if it’s like birth and the trauma protects us through stages until we’re mature enough to handle being gone? It seems death is as much of an adventure as life.

Surely there’s more than just dust on the other side. It could be a cruel version of Egyptian afterlife where we get a glimpse of life every time we’re remembered or our name is spoken. Maybe that’s it, we’re relegated to a thought or breath in the lives of others. We no longer have an existence outside the hearts still beating that remember us.

Are we our stories? Is that what it comes down to. All those heartbeats and breaths add up to thoughts in the memories of others. Well that maybe the answer. That could be the importance of a life well lived. Maybe a life we’ll lived is a death well received.

The importance of kind thoughts and good deeds; is it that simple? Heaven and hell are really choices and it’s as simple as regret and handing your heart and soul to the idea that we’re all beautiful in some way that will weigh more than our evil nature. Or when we look back, down, or up will we see humanity in a way that releases us from the expectations of living souls.

I’ve accepted the eternal question can only be answered in eternity. I live in the finite phase of life. It’s not a matter of doing things “just in case”. It’s not about a destination, or next life. It’s always been about now and I wish we would be born with the importance of now, instead of yesterday and tomorrow framing our life to the degree we’re often blind to the beauty of a single breath exhaling a beautiful thought in the form of a kind word.

A moment in the life of:

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A moment in the life of:

This fuckin non sense, crazy shit I gotta listen to. Both sides fighter over who can be the executioner pleading the sanctity of reason while Mattel makes snot nosed babies in a rainbow of colors.

These fuckin asshats speak as if braided sentences laced with ribbons make them cute. Fuck outta here with your infantile logic. Everyone knows those sentences are nooses for the naive who believe they’ve arrived somewhere safe.

How da fuck we arrived at a place where you can’t speak your truth about all the lies. It ain’t safe over the deep end if you ain’t holdin their ropes attached those rusted chains they’ve had you holding onto for decades, now you sit alone watching tears roll down rusted hands.

Now your just like that drunk bastard that raised us. Tryin to keep some imagined power that we outgrew the last time you slurred some truth and passed out in an overstuffed chair in your underwear. You can’t just be right motherfucker.

Now you can’t even move on, you gotta move out. Get away from all the noise. You care about the air I breathe with a cigarette dangling out of your mouth while you nod off listening to Charlie Manson’s favorite album. Bitch, writing backwards ain’t cute.

It’s so fucked up we didn’t see the real plague. That fuckin epidemic was already here. You were strokin it off everyday. You walk around with it in your brain. You plugged your own self into this shit and there ain’t no shot for that. Now your trapped like Alice.

I see it clearly in good days, clouded on some, tuned out on others. Then I hear some ignorance about some motherfucker who got a green card. Now they’re cured of everything that ailed them. Fuck you, some of us just wanted to get high bitch. You ain’t cured, your pacified, while I’m still inhaling the possibility of going to jail for your justification.

I waited to long to unplug. Now I can’t even watch My favorite team play a game cause these motherfuckers thought somehow bouncing or throwing a ball through college makes them some fuckin superhero. These motherfuckers actually thought striking a pose proved they ain’t moved on. Like this few minutes they spent stirrin shit up made them an OG. Bitch, I’m not impressed you took a minute in your million dollar mansion to remember who you could’ve ended up being before you drove off in your Ferrari to eat a meal that was designed for your metabolism, fuck you. I got a mute button bitch.

Then you got these lyin ass motherfuckers on the other side back pedaling so fast they can’t catch up. And I’m in the middle wondering how the fuck I got here. How did the bully get silenced. That nasty bastard had a purpose. All his pain and anguish molded some tough motherfuckers. He never amounted to much. Just ended up drinkin watered down beer in a garage full of unused lawn toys thinking about dusty playgrounds jerking off to the Al Buddy reruns.

I sit waiting for the second half of my favorite game in my living room. I gotta here these fucksticks argue over who they have a right to kill. Fuck that, it ain’t your business Bitch. Leave them folks alone with their families and futures. If you want to be productive go back to conception. Start the conversation there. Especially if you got boys, them wannabe baby momma’s ain’t scared, and they ain’t killin nothin but your boys ambition.

Shits all convoluted for older folks. Some roll with it, others let it be, and some fight it. I let it go mostly, except when I realized I’m on team Ye and Kyrie. I think these two outsiders sum up a lot of what’s not understood. What they’re spittin is whack in my understanding, but they got a right to see what they want. I don’t believe they have a truth, and certainly they see now about them folks that been holding them up in the air with one hand in their pocket, but leave them be.

All this shit is like a tornado that ain’t formed. Got everyone running around preparing for the worst that can be. They can’t even see the sunshine over their heads, cause their minds are clouded. And this is the rubric. Keep the doubt spinnin.

Keep the winds swirling in every corner of the house so the living room is clouded with doubt. They’ve been swirling the color of dust so long it’s grey and faded. We’ve watched dollars swirl in dust devils for so long we can’t see value. Everything is so blurred we have to identify as something or be nothing reflecting in the static of an old TV set.

I see the past, live in the now, and understand the future is a lie. We’re always now, tomorrow’s fiction until it’s written and yesterday ain’t tied to your pain. Reality is this moment, and that’s as far as it goes. The future is one second away from now, as the past. Our trajectory is not written, except some of us will be here, hopefully together, while others will be remembered.

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