Elaine-Dance Your Way From Mental Slavery

Know that meme “Dance Like No One’s Watching”? Write like no one’s reading. Which they probably aren’t. I’m talking the indie life here (even though it applies to traditional pubbing too). Unless there’s push behind your work the odds are pretty good that at this very moment you’ve eaten more burgers in your life than your books have sold. There are always the fortunate exceptions to this, and huge ups to those. But generally speaking there’s not enough time in the day or you to go around when it comes to knocking on the doors of a world of potential readers. So dance instead. Mentally dance. When someone starts dancing in the middle of the block there’ll suddenly be a thousand eyes on ‘em. That’s you as you write the next book. That’s you for you. Be your dancer, be your audience, and enjoy the movement of your body. Yes you want your books to sell. Until the economic system changes that’s the model we’re working with. But always keep one in the hopper. An idea, a book, a story – something that excites you. If you don’t, dread sets in. Dread and career ennui. The moment you slow down you’re in thrall to some nasty brain ants. Make yourself a moving target to those sumbitches. The You’re No Good ants; The Why Bother ants; the Ants of Extreme Rancor: Automatic Negative Thoughts. You’ll even get some Aunts in there (automatic unnecessary negative thoughts; these are the ones that go round and round and end up absolutely nowhere). Every detrimental thought passes its message on to the other ants until putting yourself down becomes routine. Screw that ant hill. Dance on it. How? No magic. No secret. Just you. Whether you tell yourself this or not, please know that you are a mofo of steel. On more than one occasion you have made the mountain feel safe atop a wild earthquake. Own, as the pope has been known to say, that shit.

Do it. Write. STOP THINKING ABOUT THE END RESULT OF WHAT YOU’RE WRITING AND JUST WRITE. The other stuff? That’s cleaning up after sex. And you’re not going to sit there and tell me you eschew sex because you don’t wanna shower afterward. Don’t go there. Enjoy the nibblies. Stop thinking about the marketing you’ll have to do, or the tweeting or the blogging. That way lies madness. Don’t worry about the end result; that’s in the future. Be here now. Get naked and wiggle things. And keep wiggling. Dance the dance electric. Vertically or horizontally, a dance is a dance. Doesn’t matter if you look like Elaine from Seinfeld doing it, just do it. You never know who might be watching. And if nobody is watching? It still feels bloody damn good in the head as you’re trying dreams on for bed.

Win win, my friend. Win win.

Moolah Rouge

Patreon. Me. Patreon and me. Me with a Patreon page.

You, perhaps, with, say, lint or change you wouldn't mind flipping into the well.

The life of the artiste. Always in the red. Unless you're Joyce Carol Oates. Fat money there. Phat.  I'll leave you alone to consider.

https://www.patreon.com/ZZC?ty=h

Contest of Champions!

THE BROTHERS JETSTREAM: LEVIATHAN is like the one that you want, the droids you were looking for, and Lionel Ritchie singing "Hello" to speed metal. So it makes sense to give some of that back. Head over to the writing homestead (clicky HERE) and get ready to flex your own writing muscles!

Briefly Put

The internet is full of cats, and I don’t mean memes. I mean mofos who want to act aloof and call folks names and bury them with doofy shit and scratch if folks try to clean them a bit. Thing is, folks are not about that brand of noise anymore. Folks are about love and light and beauty, all the good shit that makes a person worth someone’s time. If cats want to lick and lick and cough up their own ass hairs, that’s on them. But let such a mofo whine about why he’s not getting kissed and, hand to Gawd, let the smacking of the taste out of a mofo’s mouth begin.

 Do you know such a cat? Talk to that cat about love with humor, respect, and genuine hope for their well-being. Some will listen, others won’t. Doesn’t matter that you don’t get 100% conversion. Just keep talking.

Peace.

10 Brief & Polite Directives for Most Writers

Not everyone will "get" your work. Move the hell on.

Not everyone will like your work. Move the hell on.

Some will love your work. Move the hell on.

Most will not care about your work, as most will never see your work. Move the hell on.

Eighteen million other people are having the same idea you are having right now. Write the damn thing and move the hell on.

Readers don't give the least interested damn whether you were inspired to write or not. Put the pinafore and petticoat down and move the hell on.

If given the chance to write or have sex, write. This will give the appearance of aloofness, leading to even better reclamation sex. We're kidding. Take your clothes off and stop burning daylight.

If a thousand copies of your book sell in a day, praise all the gods most high. If a single copy of your book sells in a day, praise all the gods most high.

Vacuums are for floors. A book is not a message in a bottle floating aimlessly. A book is a rock loaded in a slingshot; get your target practice in.

Respect words. They have power. If you are not going to respect words, move the hell on.

Energy = Mic-dropped Squared

Knowledge Lateef... 

is watching the watchers.

The City. Alive. Teeming. Whirling through the unknown cosmos carrying the descendants of heroes, villains, poets, and revolutionaries. Carrying us. A diaspora spread across species, tech forms, and a living, sentient world. This is a special project on many levels. It’s the largest MMO “game” black speculative fiction has seen yet, taking 18 visions and making it one world. Fiction, artwork, music, energy, blended as surely as Parliament merged universal fabrics into funk. 

Welcome to the Future. CyberFunk.

This is a project I was proud to join. This isn’t bubblegum dystopia, these stories are riffs on Earth’s current major chords. Overpopulation. Love. Systemic corruption. Exploration. Hope. Resilience and truth. Identity when the gene pool is a constant swirl of wonder. The City represents stories that actually want to say something to the world in the way that good science fiction should demand it be said: with an eye toward a better life under truthful skies.

But if your first thought is “Blacks as a major presence in space?” – maybe this isn’t the bus you’re looking for. This is The City, not The Burb. Still here? Cool. There’s work to be done. Livin’ just enough for The City won’t do. Knowledge Lateef can’t do it all.

You've got 18 warriors spitting words at you. My contribution is entitled Move, for as we know, funk not only moves it can remove.

Energy equals mic-dropped, squared. 

***

The City anthology will be available as an e-book via Amazon, Barnes and Noble (Nook) and Kobo on September 25th and as a paperback at MVmedia and wherever books are sold by October 15th.  

Ready to wander the streets of The City? Lose your Tell at https://www.facebook.com/groups/cyberfunk/

Reading Rainbows

Not to sound as if this is a bluster, but for me this is a very big deal. I don’t read as much as I used to, which was damn near incessantly. I give a writer the first few sentences and if I can see where said writer is going and exactly how said writer plans to get there, I don’t bother. I’m already a writer; I don’t wanna write somebody else’s book for them, particularly not when I’m trying to sell my own damn stuff. Being this selective, there are very few writers whose name alone guarantees me separating from coin. Let me talk about some folks who are widening that list. I hope to intrigue you. Click every link here and buy something.

Marguerite Reed. Ms. Reed doesn’t write for our better angels. She writes to tell the demons to get their shit together and make sure life, for each one, is worth living. Her debut novel, released this year, is humanist science fiction minus any glittery trappings. If you read sci fi to glean something about us in the here and now—and salud to you if that’s the case—ARCHANGEL is necessary. Not only is it beautifully constructed, intelligently written, and researched to authentication perfection, but it’s emotionally moving as all hell too. It takes themes of pain and healing and transforms them into a grand take on colonialism, militarization of the spirit, ecology (both emotional and environmental), and what it truly means as a human being to be a steward of the wonders we wander. I fell in love with the honesty of this book.

When it comes to the brass tacks of prose itself, all you need to assess is this, then I’ll move on to the next writer, Ms. Patty Templeton.

How to describe one’s first experience of open air, of limitless light? If I say that everything appeared gray, the shuttle, our skin, our clothes, that gives no true impression. This was not the gray of weariness, of defeat. This was the dreaming gray of dawn, the color of the silence before the beloved speaks, the color of the water-filled glass offered to parch long thirst...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

There Is No Lovely End. Isn’t that life? Isn’t that what we run from day after day, that one truth, that one refutation of all our fairy tales? There are times a body needs to cuss. Uttering “Holy fuck” during communion at certain beauties shouldn’t raise an eyebrow. I ran into Ms.Templeton of THERE IS NO LOVELY END by chance. We were on the same panel at a con. I wanted to buy her book because that’s what I do: I support writers who come out from behind their thoughts to say hi. I can’t financially support everybody but when I feel that spark I act on it. Ms. Templeton had that gleeful cool spark. Bio. Read this bio.

Patty Templeton is roughly 25 apples tall and 11,000 cups of coffee into her life. She wears red sequins and stomping boots while writing, then hits up back-alley dance bars and honky tonks. Her stories are full of ghosts, freaks, fools, underdogs, blue collar heroes, and never giving up, even when life is giving you shit. She won the first-ever Naked Girls Reading Literary Honors Award and has been a runner –up for the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Award. There Is No Lovely End is her first novel.

This is where I cuss.  Sweet fuck in the rock. This book is sharp. It is smart. It is macabre, and damned if it ain’t wise. Not a character in the book walks a straight path, and not a situation or word is misplaced or wasted. I didn’t know hide nor hair of Patty Templeton before that con. Now, anything she writes, I’m there. She respects the word. She knows the word is a tool not a brick. And by damn you can tell she enjoys what she’s doing. That’s so key. Every artist in the world who puts their joy in what they’re gifting us shines with a particular light.

I will not gush overmuch on her but will instead share with you this snippet of her book whilst highly, highly, recommending you get some.

After a lengthy time, wherein the sun abandoned the sky and the moon strolled out, Graham decided to kill himself in front of Hester Garlan. He was not guaranteed to haunt her, but from what the Uncommon History said, he had a generous chance, so long as his last moments were of fervid yearning arrowed at existing by her side.

On the sixth day, Graham Johnson knocked on Hester’s door.

Hester had decided to kill Graham Johnson when next she saw him...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Mr. DaVaun Sanders. It’s hard to talk about Mr. Sanders’ work without giving away spoilers. The stories are intricate, full of characters who cross and re-cross paths, and ever expansive. I’ll have to be brief, but in no way diminishing. There’s joy (of which he has) and then there’s fun, and my gods does this man like to have fun. A good adventure has to take place in an interesting world. It needs sympathetic characters. It needs heart. And it needs to be daring enough to take chances. THE SEEDBEARING PRINCE (parts one through three) world-builds like you wouldn’t believe, and the surety of voice grows with each book. These adventures flip race, flip gender, and upend expectations, especially for younger readers. I’m saving my copies for my Wee Nephew for when he’s older because the way this world is going he’ll need some coolness. This book is full of monsters, escapes, and enough jumping to make Spider-Man tired. Sanders presents his world-building without showing you the bricks; lays out the hero’s journey without retreading thousands of previous steps; imparts enough of a sense of community that the sense of danger seems all the more real.

To wit:

“Hello, Brother Blayle. I won’t be surprised when ridgecats sneak into Evensong, as good as it smells here.” Dayn’s mouth watered so freely he thought his cheeks might start to sweat. The butcher took a good look at him, then sliced a liberal chunk from a roasting goat and skewered it. He slathered it with his family’s sauce, known throughout the district, and offered the morsel to Dayn.

“Oh, the ridgecats are here,” Blayle said. “They just put dresses on over their fur. Good Evensong to you, lad.”

I like that his books aren’t trying to re-invent the wheel. I love that his books, with their brown-skinned protagonists and thorough knowledge of sci fi fantasy conventions, are spinning the wheel on a new axis.

~~~

Three authors you may or may not be familiar with; three, if not, you might want to show some love. The brain needs. Reading feeds.

As to neurons, stay lit, my friends.

Contest Joy

I'm digging the fun and ingenuity of the Chronicles line (and the fact that I have a story in the Alternate History Chronicles: Alt History 101 is pudding for my pop).

So while you're on Amazon ordering your copy of
THE BROTHERS JETSTREAM: LEVIATHAN (*coughWHICHI'MSUREYOUR'REDOINGcough*)
check out this contest. Good stuff abounding!

Gotta read 'em all!

THE FUTURE CHRONICLES

~Fresh voices and award-winning authors

~Original speculative fiction short stories     ~#1 anthology on Amazon with every release

Like the storied SF collections of the past, The Future Chronicles brings you themed anthologies on the topics you love: Robots, Telepaths, Aliens, Artificial Intelligence, Dragons, Zombies... and more on the way. Each collection combines fresh new voices in spec fic with established, best-selling authors. Award-winning curator Samuel Peralta's vision has created a series like no other.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER TO WIN (via Rafflecopter)

Pod People

You will find me, Milo Jetstream, and the crew of the Semper Fi deep in your ears HERE. Podcast goodness. Roundtable Podcast goodness.

Get you some.

(NOTE: There might be entreaties to buy this book. That is not a bad thing.)

Mind the Burbles

I know this is splitting semantics but if you identify as somebody’s ally…what are you actually doing? Because that’s an odd thing to come out of an adult mouth. And it’s usually positioned as “I’m an ally,” not “I’m your ally.” Or there’s even “I want to be a good ally.” Kind of implicit, innit? Phrasing matters. Tweaks work. But even “I’m your ally” burbles my gut because, no matter what, it feels like it brings variations on a theme:

Ally is another way of othering.

Ally is a way to compartmentalize a “them.”

Ally is balming to the user.

Ally is way over-used.

I am no one’s ally. I am their friend, brother, human. They fight no wars when they are with me. This doesn’t mean there are no wars to fight. That’s called waking up every morning for the majority of us. That doesn’t mean folks don’t need help. Folks do. Folks need it and appreciate it. But “ally” feels too much like being in the “missionary” position. Folks have been screwed by that quite enough. It’s not that ally-ship’s intention is not a good one, just that its footing comes from soft ground. For me it’s like saying, “I’m an MRA,” or “Those guys are SJWs.” Idiotic on both counts. Certain things shouldn’t come from a grown person’s mouth. If you’re going to stand with me, YOU stand with ME. No special badge required. I will stand with YOU. That’s how it works. Somehow, though, we landed in a time of infantile regression. All things are triggers. There are PoCs everywhere (not people, just those letters strewn everywhere; weird). And if anyone ever uses “PC” around me to cover their own dismissive idiocy I will slap a nut.

Maybe this is the half-formed rant of a guy who doesn’t “get” the current zeitgeist. I like getting deep in certain things; the zeitgeist isn’t one. Don’t want to fight Twitter wars. Have no interest in internet suffer porn. I don’t want to “other” anyone outside of speaking truth. I don’t even see the Klan as other. I see them stupid as fuck, but not “other.”

“Other” is where troublesome shit comes into play. It’s where all the troublesome shit comes from. We know we have a different mental loop when we think of someone as the other and not simply diverse or unique. We know this. Ally automatically elevates you because only someone weaker needs an ally. All our centuries of war have us thinking like that. I love differences when they’re wonderful and non-toxic. But when I start to think of “me” diametric to “them” I get uneasy. The burbles, man. Spider-sense of the soul.

Mind the burbles.

The naming of things is important. Be helpful. Do helpful things. But for everyone’s sake, don’t strap on the Flightsuit Of Ally and be George W. Bush. We already had George Bush.

Once was damn enough.

Just be you, broheems and sistreens. You are wonderful in what you do. You know that when “We Are the Champions” plays there ain’t a person of good heart within a hundred feet of you won’t stand and march the progressive march. Don’t concern yourself thinking any of my words posit damned if you do, damned if you don’t. They don’t. And fuck me if they do. I am not one you need to feel you need to justify yourself to. I end sentences with prepositions! Fuck me sideways and take me to a fancy dinner. Maybe I’ll finally learn which forks are supposed to be mine, right or left?

However, the more I see this word bandied about, the more I feel I should stock up on Pepto Bismol.

And that shit is foul.

In The Guest Room

I'm on my best behavior over at Dave Robison's house. Check out my essay on science fiction literature's past by way of its problematic present and highly promising future. The place? The Vex Mosaic~!

Don't Be Carl. Joy Whizzes. While Carl Waits.

I don't know who made that pic, but it's the internet so somebody out there has pics with what I'm sure is a hilarious caption of me in a thong selling hotdogs. It all balances out.

So I was talking to my wife about art and creativity, and how that whole thing of the tortured artist (be it writer, painter, singer, musician, dancer, etc) just won’t go the unwashed hell away. And she brought up an excellent point. “People get too wrapped up in it, in themselves; they forget about it supposedly being a joy to create. I often wonder if it’s a defense mechanism. ‘I can only be good at this if I make it more complicated and uncomfortable to deal with. If it’s easy I can’t be that good, can I?’”

 And that’s when that that thunderclap boomed. That was the Charlie Brown “THAT’S IT!” moment. I have always maintained that the choice between holding hands while walking beneath trees or holding a pen while scribbling out a story was no choice at all. Dappled sunlight, broheems, for the win.

There’s no need to wrestle God in the desert. God is like, bro, chill, I brought Funyuns. Have fun with whatever you feel like creating. Enjoy the act even when the act bogs down and gets difficult. Enjoyment doesn’t mean you become a shining Brony 24/7. Enjoy it and know that it is not you. It’s what you do. “You” are the soul packed in a meatbag that’s about to smile in the eyes of someone under the setting sun.  

Wife ended with this: “I always strive to simplify and streamline my life. Nothing should ever be that hard. I can’t understand people who dramatize and complicate everything. Just accept and be grateful, that’s when you have peace and joy.”

You get to write, paint, sing, compose, move. And if you’re lucky you get to kiss. Wrap that up and score it as a win, Bubbles.

Six Short Graybles

Anybody who's watched Adventure Time knows that a grayble is a little story meant to heighten introspection and clarity. Thus:

As the GOP gets into full batshit mode for the presidential campaign, here are 6 Short Graybles to Reassure Politicians and Their Support Base That Gays Are Not the Issue:

1) Worried that they’ll locust all the available mates away from you? Overpopulation took care of that.

2) Worried they might try to seduce you? You’re not that attractive.

3) Sanctity of your marriage? Chill. “The homosexuals” make just as bad decisions as you. Divorce lawyers will not want for work.

4) You secretly want them to find you attractive but, so far, none have? It’s because you’re an asshole. A big one. And for you that counts as irony.

5) They’ll turn your kids gay? In the same fashion that you were turned heterosexual watching Bugs Bunny in a dress and later you fapped furiously to that memory, so too is the implicit gay agenda as effective at influencing the sexuality of unwary children everywhere.

6) Public displays of affection are between a person and their dog and that’s it! Now that, my friend, is something therapy might be able to help you with.

I Have Good Feelings About Me

...how often does that roll through your head? Not bloody often enough. Change that. Change it now. Unless you're a cold, mean, psychopath who enjoys the suffering of others. Do not feel good about that.

That is all.

The Checklist O’ Diversity

Because it’s not so much fight the power as it is fight the weakness (since the inability to see others as people is not a strength) here is the Fuck-That checklist for creators, beginning thusly:

If the only time you describe a skin color is for the ‘ethnic’ types, fuck that.

If the Black dude dies, fuck that.

If the woman is put in sexual peril because, you know, wimmin, fuck that.

If there’s even a tiny fart’s whiff of “Diversity is so haaaaaaaard, ermagherd!” Everybody: we will, we will... fuck that.

If you use the words “almond eyes” or chocolate anything we will slap the fuck-that into you and out the other side.

If the only time dialect is used is for those colorful, saucy types, Webster fuck-that.

If everybody but the hero/heroine is PoC-marked, you are the dude trying to perform Hindi alphabet cunnilingus. You are trying too hard. Fuck that.

I swear to Gawd that if your Destined White Child gets counseled by Morgan Freeman on something even so tiny as what color shirt to put on, not only should that be fucked with all due haste, it should be followed by Piss Off, Wank of Doom, and Really Bruh.

If for any reason your White character lands in a region where she’s never ever seen a lava Wyrm but after she puts on a pair of the local jeans she’s the best Wyrm rider ever lived in that realm, even if this is clearly G-rated, YA fuck-that.

If your gay male character is there only as comic relief, fuck that.

If your wheelchair-bound character is there only to show how brave she/he is for having the courage not to roll themselves off a cliff, fuck that.

Addendum to the homosexual agenda: If your gay/bi/tri/abacus male characters don’t have sex with dudes but your gay/bi/tri/abacus female characters get to hear that boom-chikka-wow-wow music drowning out their girl conversation, please do fuck that.

May I remind you that if the Black dude dies, fuck not only that but you.

(see answer code below) Is your trans character only there to be:
(a) crazy; (b) edgy; (c) dangerous?

-a- Fuck that. –b- Fuck that. –c- Fuck that.

If your book starts with the White teen having the Luke Skywalker Stare Into The Sunlit Horizon O’ Destiny scene, fuck that plus the droids you’re looking for. We know what’s coming and, as former owners of the Millennium Falcon, we are not amused.

Unless your princess is a guy who has made it very clear that is how he wishes to be addressed, do fuck that as the focus character of all future stories.

If you are “not sure” how to write "People of Color" (yes, I fluggin’ hate that. Message for the world: EVERYBODY HAS A COLOR. White people don’t come born with Romulan cloaking tech lodged up their kumquats rendering them clear and invisible), I will Bernie Mac-slap the Fuck-That into you so you can see how fookin’ ridiculous you sound. Turning someone you see every Thursday in the checkout line at the local Monsanto Mart into “The Other” is just as bad as calling out a racial slur. What do we say to the God of Turning People into “Others”? Fuck that.

Does your PoC-mark die so that Biff Muscles (others too but mainly Biff) can live? And then Biff gets so dude-fired he Does The Thing with 40 ninjas hanging off him with his mighty dick a swingline for Sue to get to safety and Sue’s like, “No! We are not closing the door! He’ll be here!” and Biff gets there but Sue sees in his half-formed dude tear that Bubba (his best good friend) didn’t make it—OK, we’re gonna fuck ALL that and start fresh in the morning.

Seriously. Seriously. If “diversity” means showing how those simpler folks have so much to teach the gods, finger fuck that till it gets frustrated enough to walk away.

If your manuscript is the Irony-board of Diversity whereby, get this, the White guy thinks he’s the hero but it’s actually the ethnic dude, scrap that. Fuck that. “Big Trouble in Little China” already did it better.

And if you EVAH use “The Help” as the title of your book – What’s that you say? Been done? Oh, fook that. *drops mic, throws Godzilla-hornet middle finger, slides into the water to chill*

(If there are any missed tired tropes it’s only because my pressure was starting to go up. Godzilla-hornet.)

Writerss: Do you know how to write characters? OK. All those people you need 12 variations on the word “caramel” for? DO THAT!

Where To Find Yes In Today's World

Do this without thinking about it. Say “yes.” Say it out loud. Breathe it, make love to it. It will make love to you. Tell your body you love it out loud. It’s not a dictatorship, you in that shell, it’s a symbiosis. Your body has needs and wants you to acknowledge them. Say yes like the last prayer before the final burst of your solar system’s star, its light spreading so wide and bright you’ve no fear of any type of burn. Say yes to your life more often than you do because, Gods bless it, the corollary of “no” is a silent and adept lover capable of making you groan even when there’s not a single sound. Say it as though there are dreams to be picked up from the cleaners; no one but yourself wants to marry you and that’s cool as hell; you thought you were wrong but found out you had been right all along. You just have to say it out loud and mean it from that place in your spirit that knows you better than you think it does. Once or twice or maybe a hundred times a day. I like to do it in the morning or when I’ve forgotten that all things are beautiful when made beautiful. Say it not as vocabulary but as invocation. Don’t bother adding anything behind it. Additional words just get in the way. This just needs to be you in your voice saying one thing:

Yes.

Ferguson, MO Grand Jury Nov 24 2014

We can have video from a hovering news chopper of a gang of police beating a man to the ground. We can have video of a gang of police choking a man to death. We can have video of police killing people for holding toy guns in a store that sells toy guns. We can have video of police officers abusing their authority every day of the week.

We can have candlelight vigils. We can have spiritual marches and protests. We can scream in the face of injustice…but all injustice does is get bored and goes to play somewhere else.

We will take away injustice’s playgrounds. We will take away its toys. There will be no more state-condoned executions of unarmed black boys.

Time Has Come Today

My query is this: what time do you go to bed, and why? Is it to save energies you might have used today for work tomorrow? Did you stop writing because tomorrow there's a meeting? Pencils down because tomorrow's inbox is sure to be a bear? Are you soaping your hands, and especially getting the clay from beneath your nails, because you'll likely be shaking hands with some guy tomorrow who will forget you the moment you're not immediately useful? I'm wondering because I'm sensing there's a lot of energy loss out there. I'm sensing worry. Worry that time is finite and perhaps giving in and giving up, as a whole, isn't entirely defeatist. I'm sensing that on your part. My part. Ours. I'm sensing that the thunderbolts you could have thrown are powering tedious bits of dross, but lord knows I hope I'm wrong.

There's no such thing as the non-creative mind.

Sleep well, Glorious Revolutionaries, on your own private terms.

Rage

Ferguson, Missouri, 2014

I’m not going to pretend to understand racism. It’s a disease. An affliction of the mind. Self-curable. Nor will I accept that anyone with any appreciable training in peace keeping—and let’s call it that instead of “law enforcement,” a terminology which includes the very brutish word “force”—needs to shoot someone whose arms are in the surrender position six times in order to subdue them. 

I will not accept that a stranglehold is necessary for one officer as several other officers pile on top of a man, choking him to death. New York, New York, 2014.

The George Zimmerman Training Academy of Enforcement and Anger Management seems to be gaining favor among our cities’ local police. We can’t go a day without video, whether it’s old or new, of police violence slapping us in the face. The “heat of the moment” is too often the background noise of these acts. I disagree. The heat of the moment is cursing at the driver that recklessly cut you off; the heat of the moment is throwing “You don’t love me!” in a lover’s face; heat dissipates very quickly. The heat of the moment for a police officer being  a thousand degrees hotter than mundane interactions, they should be given the proper training to deal with that. They shouldn’t be the assholes that flip you the bird while running a red light; shouldn’t be the guy that slaps his kid to stop the child’s crying.

But they too often are. Because they’re us.

An officer of the law shouldn’t be the one telling a reporter, “We’re dealing with 4,000 animals.” That tells us what the heat’s done to him. His mind is everywhere but on what’s in front of him, and the most dangerous thing for a police officer is blind spots.

A state trooper, along the side of a busy freeway, while atop a woman, punched the hell out of her.  Los Angeles, CA, 2014.

Blind spots. Rage. Blind rage.

A worldwide epidemic of rage.

That officer didn't shoot and kill the young man in Ferguson, Missouri simply because the young man was black. He did it because he was (potentially) a small officer in a small town with a failed marriage and friends who were only friends when drinking was involved, in a country that can’t get its shit together to save its life and so forces him to be a small officer in a small town, a white man against the black man no matter how many black friends he can point at, and giving him nowhere to escape but out the barrel of a gun. Death by projection.

Gaza, Palestine, 2014.

Ukraine, 2014.

Honduras, 2014.

Australia, 2014.

England, 2014.

Canada, 2014.

Racism is a social construct predicated on economic disparity. The color of skin means squat. We’re all from Africa. There are no bogus genetics to justify brutish thoughts. There is not one person on this planet that made it here without being human. There is no white race. Ask most Irish if they were “white” when they made it to America’s shores in the early 19^th century, then ask them now. The difference is capital. Money.

We are enraged the world over because no one thinks they have enough.

Money. Whatever form capital takes. Financial capital, emotional capital, religious capital. In order for one group to have enough of one thing, another group has to have too little of everything. Money kicks in our anger receptors like few other things can.

Schools underfunded while billionaire fights for control of shipping lanes. Takes an angry man to accumulate so much. Thousands without water, summertime. Gangs forming at an increasing rate. Detroit, MI, 2014. Takes a ton of rage to wall that out and keep it in.

Rage blinds us to what’s right in front of our faces time and again. Rage. We rage against everything.

Except the palsied monkey grinding the organ for the machine for which we dance.

One Gaze

I’ve never understood the need so many have for violence. Not that I don’t have violent impulses. I do. Frequently.  Like everyone else I unleash wrath in my mind upon the day’s disturbances. I haven’t, nor will I, act on that, as imagining harm and inflicting it are highly different things. Even the thought of clenching my hand into a fist, launching it at speed at someone’s head, and feeling the dreadful impact of my flesh and bone to theirs—the true memory of pain as I know and feel it—knowing how many pain receptors are suddenly exploding to life inside the other person, disgusts me. The first fight I had as a child occurred as older relatives watched while, simultaneously, I wondered why they didn’t put a stop to it. Even at eight I knew fighting was primitive and I wanted no part of it. It was ludicrous. There I was, playing with my cousins, when the neighborhood jackass decided he wanted attention. I called the adults out and told them he was bothering us. They came on the porch and told me I had to deal with him. I was the kid who needed libraries and books and time to think; I needed sunlight to lie in under tables; I needed the world to make sense, and in order to make sense adults were to keep harm from others, especially children. That seemed so foundational as to be unshakeable.

So when I told the bully to go away and he didn’t, I was at a loss. I looked to the adults, and it took two seconds for the ugliest realization I’ve had to become clear: they wanted me to fight. “Deal with him” had nothing to do with appealing to his sense of reason or compassion. I was not to allow him the dignity of human consideration. I had to hit him. Hit him hard. While the family watched.

He threw the first punch. Didn’t connect. Eight year-olds push and punch with their eyes closed, even the bullies. After a few seconds of this I thought we were done. I certainly was. I dropped my defenses, turned away…and he punched me in the back, very hard, then ran away. I wanted very much to kill him for imposing his idiocy on my world.

I don’t remember the names of any of my friends from eight years old, but I remember his: Vincent. Violence solidifies things no one wants or needs.

State-level violence? That creates fossils. Bones, hearts and minds of stone that believe killing people going against their day is justified because of certain policy words: retaliation; defense; sovereignty. Policy is as foolish as a group of adults encouraging a child toward a pointless fight. I’m sure they thought they were toughening me up, just as those who send others to kill create excuses for behaving as though damnation is always for others.

I don’t know what I can possibly write that will change a single mind in the Israeli government. Benjamin Netanyahu has dug into the role of embattled righteousness, a hole which governing bodies tend to peer out of only at night, and only at what they want to see. We won’t pretend Israel hasn’t planned to hem Palestine into the tightest, most volatile circumstance they possibly can, because they have. Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Hamas – there are no accidents here, only short-sighted, entrenched hatreds. You cannot be an occupying force demanding and expecting quiescence even as further encroachments are made. You cannot create unyielding barriers and expect the ghetto to garden. Israel has created an untenable situation. We also won’t pretend that, being a superpower compared to Palestine, Israel has not and does not have the capability to end what might as well be known as the world’s Forever War. Israel has the resources to capitulate. Unfortunately for those in Gaza, its refusals to do so are specious. Because the world has become so cartoonish there are never enough self-reflexive moments after any act of terrorism. Even the word “terrorist” is a cartoon, all dread removed from the word, drowned out, instead, by patriotic fervor on the part of the wounded. When I was growing up we heard all about the PLO. This generation gets “Hamas.” Groups that see violence as a means. What would they do if, at some point, someone on both sides of Gaza decided to be the adults who saw no value in fighting, someone on both sides who stepped out of the industry of war—and make no mistake, no large country that has been at war for generations is doing so without a large profit component—and realized there is actually no reason their children need to found buried under tables, under rubble, during the bright light of day when television cameras are at their most active and anguish, pure and vibrant in high definition suffering, races across social media to fuel our days’ ire; right now Israel’s anger is pounding Palestine bloody. The blows are hard, fast, brutal. Netanyahu bathes in what he sees as righteous blood. Violence is never given life without it demanding life in return. The death of the body for one, the death of the spirit for the other.

We don’t need violence. We don’t need to kill to be heard. We don’t need to kill to live. It is my hope that a thousand voices will speak better than I have. It is my hope that nations will tell Israel “Enough!” and that Hamas will realize that death as its only option is an option for utter fools. When I was younger I wrote a poem for my neighborhood. From the title alone you can tell what type of neighborhood it was.

Genocide: A Primer

I

Picture drug houses

Youth no soul

Filthy violent blight

I would pack up my people

And leave them

To prey on themselves

Until only one left standing

I see him

Alone, in the middle of the street

No wind, no sound, but

Still birds waiting in the trees

Only one left standing

I would return to the old frame

And shoot him.

This is what hatred does, whether hatred with good reason or not. It kills from the inside out. A genocide of one. Pain isn’t drowned in the wine of violence. It’s exacerbated. My hope is that aid to Israel will cease, because they don’t need it. But, again, there’s profit in conflict, and the United States has a ton of bullets to sell. My hope, no matter what kind of temporary cease-fire is issued and promptly broken by Hamas, is that the Netanyahu government be properly condemned for atrocities committed out of frustration and anger. Small chance of that, I know. My own country still has its share of ex-presidents (and a current one) with more than enough blood on their hands and nary a sight of justice. My hope is that people who say, “But what about Hamas? What of their killings?” dig a little deeper beneath their emotions to help Israel create a solution rather than martyrs.  A country governed in theory by laws and integrity is different from a cadre of idiotic, angry, desperately illogical men playing the game of hate with a losing hand. Let’s be clear: There is no possible way Hamas can militarily defeat Israel. Hamas’ only endgame will be inciting Israel to obliterate Palestine’s bakers, accountants, students, teething children, construction workers, firefighters, laymen, and anyone else unfortunate enough to walk their days under skies of retribution. Neither side can have fought this long without having become addicted to the wine of violence.

These days people speak blithely of radical this and that. Is it impossible for us to imagine radical peace? Are we going to be so forever addicted to violence that mortar shells serve as our speech? An untenable situation. Very confusing to all of us who think lying under a table in the sun is a beautiful thing.