Author Archives: oinsketta

What Can You Do?

ImageMe?  I can sit behind a keyboard and just about pound out a Beatles tune, or one of these.  I can think about going outside all day until dusk descends, then, going out in the fading light, I don’t need sunscreen for the cancer hotspot on my nose.   I can brood for long periods of time and I can dream, can’t I?   I had a dream once that I was dreaming of a dream I once dreamt, though I don’t recall that one very well.

My mother, I observed myself and am reminded by Sekhnet from time to time (by way of comparison to me), was in a low grade depression much of her life.  She went to work punctually, did her job with great intelligence, cleaned the house, cooked dinner every night, hosted the occasional guests with good cheer, had a good sense of humor, was quite competent in everything she did, laughed and cried often, regularly went to the opera, was an enthusiastic reader, etc.  But at bottom she was the little girl from the Bronx standing at a great buffet without plate or fork watching everyone else lick their lips and talk about how delicious the food is.

Sekhnet claims I am pretty much the same way, though I don’t go to work punctually, do my job with great intelligence, clean the house, or like opera.  I also don’t see a great feast around me where everyone is loving their food.  If this is a great feast, it is not one that most people are enjoying that much, by the looks of it.  If distracted, anxious rats running on treadmills in terror of death is a great feast, this one here is one of the greatest ever.

Still, what can you do?  You know what they say about opinions and blahgs being like assholes.  It becomes clear, in a moment of clarity like this, that someone like me is merely tapdancing on a treadmill when he writes something like this.  It would be nice if I could get that feeling of a job well done from a bit of preening here on this free soapbox, if it made me feel as good as the fashion designer who publicizes her latest triumph here, or the minor award winner who crows a bit here, or the young novelist who interacts with readers here, you know.  But what can you do?  Some days it’s a triumph to step out of the damp underwear, get into the shower and emerge clean and ready for the dusk.

I Don’t Know

I don’t know if I’ll keep posting things here.  I stumbled on this site the other night trying to download a plug-in so I could see the videotaped interviews of people Manning Marable interviewed for his remarkable and shattering recent biography of Malcolm X:  A Life of Reinvention.  http://mxp.manningmarable.com/

I never succeeded in downloading the plug-in but I was assured by copywriters for WordPress that I could set up a free blahg in a matter of seconds.  It was true.

So, while Manning Marable died literally two days before the book that was his life’s work for decades was published, I was alive and punching in names for this exercise in vanity after learning that some clever, early-to-the-party bastard had grabbed the name “blahg”.  

I don’t mean to sound peevish, living in this moment in time when literally any idiot can wax philosophical over them internets, but I probably am peeved.   I have hard work to do, and I need a bit of luck.   Thomas Jefferson noted that his luck was multiplied many times over by his constant hard work.   I wonder, listlessly, if he really worked harder than most of his 300 slaves on the inherited plantation where the master worked so hard improving his luck, and the cause of human freedom.  It is beyond doubt that his luck was much better than their’s.

Marable’s biography of Malcolm X really shook me up.  I have been aware in recent years of time growing short to become the change I want to see in the world.  The world’s time may be short too.   Malcolm X, with no credentials but intelligence,  talent and a burning need, turned himself into a dynamic agent for change, electrifying packed crowds on the street and at Ivy League schools.  

Tragically, he also entangled himself with murderous fanatics whose self-hatred was never quite alchemized as it was purported to be by the self-worshipping idiot pseudo-scientist who ran the lab.   Reading voraciously and running ahead in a rage to change the things that enrage, perhaps not the most effective way to move ahead, but there is inspiration to be taken from his tragedy too, and less and less time to waste.  

Posting things here among the artists, marketing and branding specialists, curators and so on, reminds me of Thomas Jefferson’s passionate correspondence with a woman named Maria Cosway.   In the end she wrote him off as a bastard and a tease (although Wikipedia contradicts my memory, saying they corresponded until Jefferson’s death and each kept the others’ letters until after death) .  A long one about the debate between The Heart and The Head strikes me in particular, the self-involved fretting of an eloquent, preening, sphinxlike narcissist.  Not that he wasn’t capable of taking what he needed in the real world, ask the beautiful, almost white looking teenager the age of his daughter, a young woman he owned who would bear him six children over the years.

I don’t know.  Just writing to say that.   Next to these words, beside handy semiotic icons,  are Write a Post, Post a Quote, Post a Naked Picture of your Mother.

A bad teacher

(Malcolm had been E. Lansing’s Mason Jr. High School class president the previous year, with top grades).

An English teacher, Richard Kaminska, sharply discouraged him from becoming a lawyer. ”You’ve got to be realistic about being a nigger,” Kaminska advised him.  “A lawyer, that’s no realistic goal for a nigger… Why don’t you plan on carpentry?”  Malcolm’s grades plummeted and his truculence increased.  Within several months, he found himself expelled.

Manning Marable,  Malcolm X:  A Life of Reinvention p.38

the actual quote

In C-Town the other night

Walking into the C-town on Broadway a few hours ago a woman is screaming in Spanish as she lurches past me, following close behind is store manager Primo, dead-ringer for Gamal Nasser, screaming back at her in Spanish.   As I pass them entering the store a guy from central casting, a round faced, bearded troll who’d be welcome in any production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, catches my eye and says “that’s my doctor.”
 
I raise my eyebrows and he says “she’s my psychiatrist.”
 
I raise my brows a bit higher, nod and he says “she’s nuts.  She’s completely nuts.”
 
“She does seem pretty irate,” I say agreeably.
 
“I said “nuts”!   Do you know what nuts means?”
 
I figured it was a rhetorical squawk, so I went over to pick out a red cabbage.  I passed the guy later and he eyed me with unwelcome, mad familiarity.
 
The checkout girl was A___ from the bank up the street, evidently moonlighting to pay down a credit card debt or something.  Her desk is still there at the bank, with her name plate on it.  Making conversation I told her what the customer had said about the screaming nut.  She smiled and told me that the screaming shrink had tried to steal a bottle of olive oil.  She wondered if the troll was somehow in on it with her.  It seemed unlikely.
 
I wonder if he’ll mention the incident at his next session.