it's not like getting wasted--and then the body has to recover, drink water, be still. it's like being in a really good dream--and not, no matter how you try, being able to re-enter that state. i'm awake now, after the weekend whirlwind with the kids. it was a gift being a supported mother--looked after, groceries provided, car paid for, all i had to do was be nice to the nice people and get through it. i couldn't do it anymore, though. i couldn't be nice. i couldn't smile and pretend. i couldn't just let it be. i couldn't stop feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeling all i was finally feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeling for all the ways i was beginning to let myself feel. today, i feel each of the steps we took. i feel the wearing down of the shoes story. i feel the drying up of the cold sore story. i feel the hackles unhackling that rose up when that woman on the bart train told my daughter to put her feet off the seat in the tight lines of her wrinkled mouth--and then, again, when she told the young man eating funyons not to eat on the train--pointed out the signage--rose in defiant exaltation and strode confidently to the tattletale phone at the back of the car and pronounced the "african american" was eating on the train and she wanted to call the bart police. now, i always get riled when i see people exercise white privilege in such a bitchy, cruel, stupidly entitled way. and i get further riled when the creepy person is riding in the same car as i am, taking her well intentioned bullshit out on others in ways she feels totally "right" with doing by the signage littering each car. she called my daughter and i idiots for helping her remember that it was martin's actual birthday yesterday--and today is just the day we celebrate it as a nation--calling attention to the holiday so many songs were written to co-create. leaders were assassinated for speaking truth to power--even when they were the power. something ugly motivates human beings to hide behind the rules--something about cleanliness and purity--something about entitlement--something about some kind of bullshit that rises up inside a person and causes them to get animated all the way to the tattletale phone. this woman was in her sixties, maybe. she had lines dug into her face from pursing her lips. from following the rules. from slamming otherwise unknown others by telling them to follow the same rules that make her so entitled and unhappy and gross. gross. i attempted to engage with her using compassion but it turned to curses by the time i got off the train. zoey, safe to engage after i opened the door for her to, was, in fact, the most eloquent stateswoman i have had the opportunity to witness in quite some time. the woman was successful in bringing the young man to justice and humiliation and the bart police were summoned and we stayed with the young man while he called his mother to tell her he was being arrested for eating funyons on the train and i implored the police officers to recognize the woman is the one with the issues and the young man was simply being a young man. i wrote my e-mail testimony late last night. i thought the shit would shift itself over the dreams of night and the day of time--but i am still here, still processing the energy that encounter visited upon my daughter on the birthday of martin luther king. it is something to get to sit down on the bus when one is tired. it is something else to get to sit in the presence of an embittered, angry old consciousness expressing itself as white woman acting out her inculturated fears and resentments on my child and this young man at the back. because i am a mother of african american men, i am particularly interested in how this "rules" bullshit is inflicted on men of color. zoey talked with me about all the ways things are fucked up. i taught her to curse around me early--so she knew she could. it's the most vulgar of the languages--and the most accurate--and the most precise in its ability to express what is otherwise incomprehensible. perhaps one of the things i am hating in my academic pursuits of late is the hiding of bullshit in big words no one understands. no one--maybe one--maybe one percent of the entire legal and illegal populus in america holds one of these special degrees that hide bullshit in some kind of power over vocabulary. this woman--i wish her all the things she wishes for. i wish them to happen instantly and overwhelmingly such that she can find the satisfaction that can exist among her life with cats (she doesn't have children she remarks, she exclaims she has cats!)!!! i wish her all the wonderful her life can handle--such that she can let a young man eat a funyon without having to tell the train conductor. i am hoping to be able to appear at his hearing, should the matter get that far. i am engaging in my civic responsibility. standing up to interrupt potential gang fights on the bart train a few months back--and imploring the officer called to understand these were just kids being kids. standing up to defend the right to put your feet up when you want to and to eat a funyon when you've got one. and yes, i see the signs. and yes, i like clean public spaces. and yes, i think kids should get to be kids.
i don't know what to do with all this energy i have about people who make rules and write them down and defend the industry of plastic placques--text--calling out "thou shall not"s in such a way that entitled embitterment can still prance the dance of the tattle tale and kids can be intimidated into following the stupid things.
anarcy? is this my avocation? i am not a very interesting anarchist...but i do think this rule making, rule following bullshit is immoral. ohhhhh, but if i am not a very interesting anarchist, i am an even more less interesting moralist.
and still, and so, and on and on it goes...
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