FINDING OUT FOR YOURSELF

Discussing life, love, and the pursuit of what passes for individual happiness, with the girl once know as my B.F.F at work, I talked about my desire to conclude my 'career' as a single man. I was what I called 'stuck' on Tee Jay and was quite content with my run. There weren't too many things that I hadn't experienced in the relationships that I have had with women. What I didn't know was the fulfillment of a continuous, loving relationship that was mutually satisfying for both parties.

Even though whatever relationship I have had was filled with it's ups and downs, I was under the impression that I had left enough on the table that was worth revisiting. Also, I had come to dread what had become the inevitable explaining how I came to have the interests that I do. The cultural stereotyping doesn't end with race differences. The most withering form of it comes from within a culture and I think that the black social network is particularly stifling.

Or so it has been for me. Facing the same kinds of questions and expectations of why I did or didn't like this or why I was or wasn't into that, had become very much an unwanted burden. It seems as though I was on the defensive for being who it is that I am and that it was necessary for me to prove what I wasn't... an 'oreo' or like my sister Jan, a self loathing black person.

There is a lot of irony in my having to prove that I am 'black enough' for other blacks. You don't have to 'want to be white' to self-hate. Putting an ear in the ground, the disposition is there to be heard among the brothers every day. Eating in at McDonald's, you get to see how it plays out even among the 'club members and kool-aid drinkers'. Courtesy, professionalism, efficient service, were missing though it may have been anticipated by the customers inside the restaurant and in the drive-thru.

A Mother and her son were in high spirits for the morning and I enjoyed their interaction. I had wanted to ask if he was her only child, to explain why they relationship was more like best friends than an adversarial relationship. I thought back to my own relationship with my Mom and that it was around this age where it took its turn.

I thought to myself, "I wonder how long that will last for them?" If he were an only child, it could stretch out forever and never end. He could go on and continue to make her proud of him and he keep on with striving to make something of himself. He could go on and go straight to college and get a good job and become a stable young man, eventually finding a wife and starting a family.

What ever it was that he would be, I'd never know. Despite my wishing that I had the kind of relationship with my Mother that made it seem as though we were good friends instead of respectful opposition that we were, I have to find a way to let go of that. It never happened and she has gone on to wherever it you go after death, if there is anywhere to go.

That uncertainty places a premium on the here and now.

A brother around my age, maybe younger by a bit or older, made the comment about why 'our people' were in such a state of fail. We don't seem to grasp the idea of professionalism and working at doing our job regardless of what it was. And I understood where he was coming from at the time. Despite the 'through the motions' politeness, it was grating, the seeming disconnect between the customer and the worker.

While I have decided to make a point of not engaging in this kind of spontaneous conversation, I did speak on why I think that is. He was pressing for time and did not want a drawn out discussion either, but for the most part we saw eye to eye as to why 'we' aren't able to function and how it contrasts with to what we observe in other cultures here in America. Being able to keep the conversation short was important to me. Not that I am unfriendly or anything but I don't want to sound like I am anything to anybody until I am more of what I need to be to myself. What I think and how I see and interpret the world is my own business and there is much for me to do before I start sharing what I know about living in the world.

My main journal was on my mind... and all the whining that I am doing in it. Some of it is due to an organic anxiety and impatience with myself. I am finally going to have one of the great demons in my life struck a critical blow if not slain completely. I wonder if the mail that went ahead of me isn't confirmation of my case being processed and that my appearance next week in court is unneeded. That is how earlier motions were handled for expiedency sake, I imagine. An appearance tying up space on the court docket when all the information is at hand makes my appearance unneed. A thumb up or down process would cover the motions and that would be that.

What would be my next step? Am I really going to manage to act only in my own self interest and do what I need to do just for me? I don't expect anyone to understand and the SFC least of all. Has she really had feelings for me for the past two decades and was unable to act on them because of the fickle fates of life?

Stuff like that remained undiscussed between us and they sit without being broached now. Even as we continue to either talk or text one another daily, yesterday was the closest one of those off limits conversations came to being held between us.

I told her that I did not want to talk about it... and I didn't, not with her. Why I didn't want to let go of what I am holding onto, is that it is also going to be my salvation. My holding onto this 'whatever' is going to be what I used to climb back into the life that I had at one time hoped for. It is attached to the same things that holds my seething bellicosity towards my sisters, which was again confirmed with Twin B visit with her fiance and daughter in tow.

Some of this is prolly better for a therapy session but failing that... I am bothered with her man resembling so many of my better qualities and how she acted against me at within our relationship. Instead of being my best sister, she became my Judas Iscariot. Because I wouldn't expect to be believed why would I bring it up? Even with it being fairly obvious, she wouldn't want to hear any of it.

And what little he said of himself... he was given a choice of serving in the Army or becoming a statistic in the criminal justice system. Perhaps there was some air inflating that statement but I understood what he meant. I had hoped that the service would do so many things for me and I wasn't able to get the most out of it. But Shorty Mac was and so did the SFC. And that warrants the question, why didn't I get out of the Army as much as I hoped..?

Only the Shadow knows...

THE STOLEN THOUGHTS AND MEMORIES OF THE STAR THIEF

At the end of things the SFC would make the occasional slip regarding 'us'. It was as if she saw a glimpse of a future where we are together. What I know is that I never took the bait. I wanted to leave because fail or no, I wanted to go out and be to myself. I have to live with the frustration of being outstripped by my baby sisters... no shame in that but they have achieved a measure of peace and stability in their lives that should have been a matter of course in mind. That their path to where they are now is so similar to the routes that I set myself upon makes my fall more aggravating.

One of the things that I expect to happen when I am in Nebraska is the resentment to ebb and the envy to subside. I will be where I want to be and with the person that I want to be with, finally.

As I made the transition to Detroit, I took the risky step of sending my belongings ahead of me. This was not unlike a 'commitment cut' that a cosmetologist makes when styling a clients hair. Might as well go thru with it now, because it is a little late to have second thougthts. At the very least I will have to go west and get as much as I can... and that would cause for another great expenditure of capital, money that I don't have.

What gets at me is the money that the SFC spent to bring and keep me in Va., then the money she came up with to send me home. The bags cost more than the actual flight... and adds to my guilt. Which I did not need to grow.

Like I said at the end, I thought she would want to hold me back. I put a comment out there to gauge her reaction... and I could hear the feeling in her voice when she replied. I made sure to avoid that 'what if' conversation with her the last two weeks of my stay.

Not that we didn't ask ourselves and each other about out relationship. We kept coming back, or should I say she kept coming back, to my uncomfortable state in Virginia. I know I was a lump. Could I have tried harder?? Maybe. But I do think the traits that made us great friends hindered us as lovers. I had warned her that I expect to have the kind of relationship with her that we had in Korea. I don't think she understood what I meant by that.

She has a certain 'je ne sais quois' that if I had it, I let it go quite some time ago. But I never worried about it and took pleasure in my ability to plug away and to get through to what I call 'the other side' of things. Figuring that repetitive achievement would eventually become part of my 'quois' (or Quan... we will go with that from her on out).

But it never did. The irony of her oldest boy being able to walk away from an incident that was close to our incident without disaster befalling him was a bit too much irony for me to take. What I wanted more than anything is to have been able to go back in time and stop that foolish young boy that I was twenty odd years ago and tell him not to make that call. And if he still made the call, to not let the little gremlin to accompany him... and since I can't there isn't any other 'what if' to ponder. I know that I didn't.

That is that.

I would always wonder and yearn for the life that I could have had on my own out in Nebraska. That Nebraska is looking forward to my company is the icing on the cake. Though I think that is yet another favourable sign, the most telling thing in my favour is my determination to hold on to my dream.

Though I don't think that I have done anything to require the asking of forgiveness, it still won't hurt. I will get down and ask for benefice, forgiveness and blessings as I move ahead with my life.

More For Probative Value Than Anything

FROM THE FIRST OF FEBRUARY, TWENTY-TEN (LEFT IN A JOURNAL SOMEWHERE AS A 'COMMENT')


The static. That is what life has become for me. And my friend Nebraska could verify my use of words like 'static' and 'noise' to describe how I feel my way through my life. Words like 'environment' and 'atmosphere' also have layered meanings as well as the word 'context'.

That is what stood out in this entry. Man, it is true... the first sentence has to set the hook for the reader.

The loneliness of habits and the resonance of the empty spaces in my soul... I was only last night explaining to my SFC that I remember the debate between me and an older cousin about the spinnings of the world.

"The world is moving at a certain speed, a terminal velocity. You will either have to move with it or be left behind. You will need help to keep up with it because no man is an island."

This he said to a teenager who was paranoid from the experience of having people trample through his soul. It created a fissure small enough to let insecurity, indecision, and all the other 'in' things from way out come into what would pass for my reality.

Hindsight says I should have effected repair to the crack. Wondering about things like the Visitors and their concerns that will linger in my mind like the decaying isotope of radioactive material was not worth the brief enternity that they spent in my life.

The friends I know... are they really friends? I don't know if I know them well enough to even call them friends. They have their own darkness, as does many of us who live on this sphere, looking and waiting for the opportunity to emerge from their mouths.

As the tendrils swirl around me, envloping me with their words and porcelain promises, I feel less connected to who I am. And if there is anything corrupted, it is the link that I have with the enternal source of everything.

I am here. You (they) are so far away.

The blind spot... from where you don't expect and did not prepare for. And all this time, I had considered myself immune to... I don't know if it is a toxin or not. Right now I tremble, filling with doubts.

"The static doesn't dwell only in you," I tell myself. That brings little comfort, and no peace or solace. And I tell this only to myself, because it isn't comiseration that I am looking for.

THE PAST IS A DEAD ANIMAL

A (or is it THE) reason that I don't like feeling pity for myself is that I look at it as a sign of disrespect to the life that I did have and of those who have had to do with less and accomplished more. I hadn't ever asked, or hardly ever asked, 'why me?', you know what I am saying? I mean, why did I have to get picked on and why did I have to be on the outside of social groups and float around. 'The area between cliques is where I dare', I would say in an effort to make light of what I was going through. It would have been nice to be on the 'ins' of something.

Sorry if you are looking for specific 'incidents', but sometimes my memory is heretical to itself, you know? I do remember what I FELT and that is more than enough. I recall the stings and the barbs growing up of being pushed around and eventually out of the loop. Don't ever recall missing or questioning why it had to be that way. Back then I didn't get deep with that stuff like Jacques Cousteau. I made a choice that it was the way that it was for a reason and I figured I would find out later why, if I needed to know. Put on my Smiths and Cure records and let them melancholy me to sleep...

For a long time I have found clever and pithy sayings to keep me moving forward through all the trying times that I have faced. But right now, I am running out of them... not so much as running out, but getting worn out having to find the resolve to push myself forward yet again.

Lately, the need to ask 'what if's' has popped in and around my head over time. Hey, I am human too. Comes with the territory. For the most part, I've thought about it and moved on... when it came to 'getting over things', I have gotten over them.

Right now, the memory of what once was and could have been is almost too much for me to bear. More that the memory of what the past FELT LIKE is. And all those possiblities... where did it all go?

I think back to seeing that kid I from Carolina, only now he was the contender and had done the very things that I talked with him about, and how he offered me a job as a sparring partner. The reason that I didn't take that job was less about ego and more about the feeling that I had cheated myself out of being 'him'. To watch him 'be me' was too 'Eddie Kane' for me (you know the scene in the movie 'The Five Heartbeats', where he asks Flash, 'How does it feel to be me?') and I couldn't take the job. 'Being cool' with the boss would have been too much like the sycophant to me. Not to mention the resentment.

"Why... why wasn't 'it' me?", I would have been asking of no one in particular. For me, asking that would have meant the would come an answer echoing back in the darkness of my imagination. And I don't like asking the question because I KNOW that I would have liked the answer even less.

There was a review of a couple of books about Ayn Rand in the Post last Sunday... and while I have heard the stuff before about her as a person, like I do reading thru journals, I see pieces of her imperfections and again I wonder... not at her failings but how she was able to achieve despite what she did despite them.

EVER WONDER WHAT IF HE PUSHED THE BOULDER UP A DIFFERENT HILL..?

A cat that I know from my days as a boxer posted something interesting about the time he wasted sulking over someone he broke up with. He mentioned that he almost always got an opportunity to have a 'second chance' with them. So I guess that was time he wasted, wanting for something with them because he would eventually have that chance with whoever.

His use of the block of time struck me... 17 to 35 ... because from that range in MY life, if I didn't do ANYTHING I know that I wasn't worried about someone who I split with. Regular readers know that I feel that way about my life. Messing around in the moldy, yellowed pages of my past never appealed to me.

It took until I was 35 for me to even think twice about wanting someone from a past relationship... and I wanted to find out what the fuss was all about. Yeah, I was still hung over Tee Jay but as much as I pined over her, I couldn't take the plunge and go after her. Why, when I had told myself that she meant the world to me and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her..?

Because I felt as though I 'gave at the office' the first time. I didn't hold back while we were together. And that pretty much covers how I feel about all of my past relationships. Sure, some of the ladies did deserve better from me, but they didn't get it. But since this isn't about them, what do you want me to do?

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 'CONFIRMED' AND 'VERIFIED'

Sometimes, I sit around and I feel broken. I mean I AM broken, for real though. That is physical not in spirit. I am still the 'same kind of stupid' that I was when I left home for the service. The issue I have with all this is, what happened between 'there' and 'here'.

Nebraska has really let it be known to me how she feels. I used to think that she was hiding how she felt about me. If she didn't feel deeply about me, then she held on to how MY feelings made her feel towards the possiblity that we'd be a item. Now, it seems that she cares more about me than I even hoped. She wants to live the rest of her life with me and sharing love with me.

MTXE

THE COMPETITOR IN ME

"I am not going to sit around and hope." That is something that I am familiar with. Having gone out and having to face difficulty in trying to win or get whatever it is that I want is normal.

Though I don't think that I may have had any discernible impact on the SFC life as she did have one on mine. That is why it is hard to stay. I can't help but think that I would have had what it is that I wanted had our paths not crossed. But they did. And I failed myself...

... but why did she have to happen to me? What could I have been? Where would I have gone?

I know that I told her at the beginning of this, when we first begin to talk to one another, that I had left all that in the past. But that was of course, the polite thing to say. For a cat who didn't have the fall back to catch himself, making the correct decision and being a 'first time go', was everything to me.

So now she has again entered my life when I had plotted a course to take me to where I want to go. And I don't want to let go of my hopes, not this time. Going out to Nebraska was a 'go' for so many reasons, that if Nebraska was going to stay to her then stated tack, I'd be comfortable with my decision to live in Omaha and chill.

Wherever the SFC goes from here, it will be to suit her own purposes and designs. I'd have to put whatever it is that I wanted to the side and live through her dreams. Thanks but no thanks. I will keep my dreams and try to live them.

Hmm... I did expect to be in Omaha in May or June of this year, didn't I ..?

DEATHLESS WORDS

IF YOU DON'T CARE, WHY SHOULD I?

"Who was there at the world's beginning?", asks the narration in a comic book about someone who goes off to embrace his destiny in spite of his personal weaknesses.

I like that because it says to me that no one was there but you at the beginning of whatever it is you complain, moan, blame, and it implies that no one but you will be able to get you out of it. Same thing with the cadence, 'Ain't no use in looking down ... there's no discharge on the ground...' Where you are is where you are at, and for real, unless you can get away from it, nothing really matters.

Whether it is something someone is having happen to them 'again', or it makes them wonder when it is going to be 'my turn', I hate when they direct that towards me. Because I wasn't there when they gave all of themselves to all of whatever they chose to, but since like everyone else, they made a choice. Sure those choices were connected to other choices, but even as they wound their way along, the fact remains that there was a choice to be made. What that choice was, no matter what, is what they have to own.

The entire thinking is so selfish that I locks up my mind. How selfish must a person be, to think that their pain and their agony is so ultra terrible and unique that for them to find themselves again 'sacrificing' for the sake of some unknown and amorphous reason as a relationship, is arrogance.

So, WHEN is it going to be 'my turn'? When WILL it stop 'happening to them'? I DON'T FREAKING KNOW!!

That is why if you haven't walked in someone's shoes, you should watch what you say. You aren't the only one who has had to let go of hopes and dreams, or have what you wanted snatched away from your hands. Then to be surrounded by all the 'what ifs' and reminded of all that you lost and gave up for... what?

For this??

VETERAN'S DAY

There are so many things that Veteran's Day has meant to me for the last 20 years that I don't think I can put them all into words.

Growing up, there was a lot of talk about why would a brother want to join a 'white man's Army' and all that. The draft had been stopped, Vietnam was not too long ended, and the carefree disco 70's were in full swing.

There was a lot of negative things said in the hood about being in the service, but for me it was always a real option. A cousin had a good experience when he was in the service, seeing a little bit of Vietnam and getting out and making something of his G.I. Bill. Then the series 'The World At War' and the huge Time-Life books about WW II made me think about how cool it would be go out and fight the Japs in the Pacific, hopping island to island.

My childhood summer's were spent in the jungles of the South Pacific, or liberating the surviving soldier of the marches to Bataan... even now those hot summer days that I find myself outside traveling long distances to nowhere recall those mental images. I have never let go of those memories.

When Page spoke to me her senior year, she asked me about what she wanted to do. She was Navy ROTC and wasn't trying to go straight to college. It wasn't that she didn't have the grades or the ability... but then, what do you call it when someone has the talent to do something but doesn't want to pursue something that many would say should be an obvious direction for them to take with the next step in their life?

I don't know what other advice she was getting about her future, but I remembered how crappy it was for me my junior and senior years. No one sat me down and spoke to me about anything. Wait, Ron and I had discussion about a future, but it was still one of me making up my own mind, rather than having things suggested and discussed. My Mom was in a 'different place' as far as I was concerned and my sister Sherita was the one that her and my Aunt Doris, who lived with us, were focused on.

So I sat down with Page, and we started getting material on the military. I explained the different missions of each branch of service and told her what I thought of each one based on my experience. She went Air Force along with a buddy of hers, who was a little drifty as well. I think it did the both of them a lot of good, giving them exactly what I thought it would, a fighting chance at making a good life.

I hope Page can get her 25 years in ... she will be a young woman still, early 40's, my age now or thereabouts. You do the math.

From watching the interview with Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski, and Bill Parcells, I began to feel a remorse for my Military Career. When I was in high school, the service was a 'top five' option, which is why I joined ROTC. It wasn't that I was squared away or anything like that. I was still a kid and was being a hormonally challenged teenager that knew just enough to keep the Army in mind for a career.

Though I had found the socialization part of high school such a challenge that it would affect my academics, turn in me into a underachieving student, I did still have the Army. Considering how my home life was, chaotic because I was rudderless, the Army shot up the charts. Because no matter what, I knew that I had to get out of Detroit.

At the time, had my Mom and Aunt really talked to me about college, I would have listened. But falling to a 'C' grade point average and other troubles like getting kicked out of Renaissance High at the end of my junior year, did not give them hope for me. I wonder why that was ... though I have an idea it was part of the insidiousness that infects the 'Black Matriarchal Complex' that did it. But I certainly aggravated things. Cutting classes and getting caught doing the 'ol' In and Out', while not signs of delinquency, didn't put me in a favorable light.

In the end, I was glad that I decided to take charge and make something happen in my life.

Myself, I had intended to go Air Force. But the Army recruiters were in the front of the office and once they got a hold of me, that was that!! I blew out the ASVAB test, and told them to put me in a job that I did not have to get dirty in!! At first I was in Fianance (ooh, how ironic!!), but when I pushed back my date (I don't remember why that happened or what I was thinking sooo ...) I ended up changing my MOS and that is how I became a 71 Lima.

I think that things shook out the way that they should have. I went to Korea and was having a great time. And this is where 'everything changes' ...

I am having a harder time than I thought dealing with seeing 'my military career' that I did not get to have or live. Another thing about the Sportscenter at West Point, was Sage Steele talking about her father who was a cadet and the first black man to letter at Army. It said so much about where SHE came from, and how she spoke about her father, 'The Colonel', it made my heart skip a beat.

Let's be honest. I would have never gotten married had I been able to stay in the service. Would have never met my ex Wife and would have kept on career tracking while I was in the Army. May have earned a campaign ribbon ... a couple of tabs ... a degree as well, who knows?

What I do know is that I never got to live the life I had wanted to live. That is a fact. Could have boxed forever ... Ray Mercer made it to the Olympic Team and the cat who I used to follow in the agate fight results in Ring Magazine, Carlos Elliot, a Marine station in Japan did get a title shot.

Every single day, a variation of these thoughts run through my mind. Everyday.

So being here in a place that I don't care for, surrounded by the life that was within reach as I try to deal with holding back the bitterness of disappointment, is difficult.

I am going to get up and find something to do, in spite of not wanting to do anything. Once again, I am going to try to live a life at someone's pace.

Do I really want to try this again?