Source: NY Times
Richard Pryor had a hilarious bit on one of his old comedy albums from the 70s, maybe Craps, where he talks about going back home after becoming famous.
“Hey Richard!”
“Hey, what’s happening, man?”
“Nothing, nigga. You know, you ain’t that funny. You just doing that same old shit you was doing in high school.”
“OK, man.”
Beat.
“Let me hold $5 dollars? You OWE me that.”
That’s how Black leaders sound to me whenever I hear them criticizing President Obama with the argument that he should be doing more specifically for the plight of Black people. Not that Black people have abandoned Obama, he still has absurdly high job approval ratings among us. 97% or something like that. The same percentage of protection a spermicidal condom gives against conception. That’s teflon, that’s supernatural.
So where do these unemployed Civil Rights workers get off taking shots at the first Black president for not doing enough for Black people? I mean, seriously, if Obama does nothing else except sit in the chair and play solitaire for the next 3 years, he will have accomplished more for Black youth than decades of Black History month. He will have set the ultimate example for achievement. What else do you want?
I know, they thought as soon as one of us got in the Big House, things sho’ was gon’ be different, all the pig’s feet you can eat, fried chicken at the post office, welfare bonuses! I mean, seriously, what were they thinking he was going to do? And with what money? With the entire country spasming from recession, he was going to somehow make the public case that Black people, poor, helpless long-suffering Black people were going to be at the front of the line for relief? Do you want pitchforks at our door? Do you want lynchings? I mean, Black folks are like 1-degree of separation from being a terrorist demographic after this whole Nigerian bomber nonsense! You also want to put us in the political crosshairs for being a “protected” demographic?
Here’s the dumbest part. Elinor Tatus, editor of the black-owned Amsterdam News
“Every time someone brings up an issue that affects blacks, he says that’s an issue that affects all of America,” Ms. Tatum said. “But at the same time, if he were of a different race or ethnicity, he would be playing to the black community. So there’s a double standard there. Should we be the victims in that?” - Elinor Tatus, editor of the black-owned Amsterdam News
Where do I start? With the easy and simplistic dismissal of the insanely smart strategy of equating issues that affect Black America with White America? I mean, for 400 years they played the same game on us. It was so effective that when the Master’s house caught fire, the loyal slave would run and try to put it out. Now Obama is flipping it on white people and saying, “Black America is in the shitter and why wouldn’t it be? The rest of the country is too. Let’s fix it together.”
Next, her just plain stupid comment that if he were a different race, he would be playing to the Black community as a matter of course. I mean, c’mon son. We’re talking about the POTUS. There have only been two ethnic groups to hold that office. White Presidents in the past have not only acted for the benefit of the country, but also for Black people in particular (hello, who signed the Civil Rights act?). They have also completely snubbed Black people and gone about their presidential business with zero repercussions (hey, George, miss you). There has been no standard except that Presidents, like all politicians, have always had to juggle their political interests with the interests of their constituents which, unlike a Senator or congressman, includes the whole nation.
Finally, the assertion that we are “victims” of negligence. If anything, we are victims of our own complacency and die-hard reliance on the federal government to provide police protection and job opportunities. We had a choice back in the 60s when Elijah Muhammad offered us a vision of non-integrated Garvey-ian self-sufficiency while MLK offered you a parking spot at the federal building. We chose the desk job and left our aunts and cousins in the hood to fight it out, so let’s not act like it was America that abandoned the Black ghetto. The fact is, the poorest Blacks and whites have been sucking at the federal tit for generations now, summoned only now and again as soldier ants to fight our silly and pointless wars. Obama takes over the dairy and all of a sudden the Black babies want more milk. Well, nigga, where is your cow?
Crying is not how you get more milk. You want more milk, you need to collectivize our voices and present a unified agenda, hand that shit off to a never-say-die, well-connected Washington lobbyist and make it happen. But what is the Black agenda? What do Black people want? Who are our leaders?
Certainly not speaking for the 97%, that’s all I’m saying.
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I understand atheism, believe me. Growing up in the Black Baptist church, I have no difficulty relating to an aversion to dogmatic certainty and unsupported absolutes. But it occurs to me that an atheist should be the first person to realize that if God does not exist, it cannot be God who inspires such absurd conclusions. It is humans who desire justification for their actions, people looking for solid ground to base their assumptions about the world. In essence, the same kind of people as atheists.
The difference, or so it seems to me, is in the semantics. God means different things to different people. Not only might not God exist, but a coherent and universally shared meaning of God definitely does not exist. It seems problematic, if not ridiculous to disbelieve in an object about which nothing concretely is known or agreed upon.
My worldview works fine with or without reference to God, but I enjoy the poetry of it’s anthropomorphic connotations, the symmetry of macro to micro, body of man to universal body, all the cute mystical stuff. It informs and enriches my primary preoccupation – writing.
Moreover, I see abolutely no exclusion between God’s role and God’s nonexistence. Things, objects and creatures exist. Ideas do not exist anymore so than inactive computer programs. They are conceptual entirely, abstract utilities. God in particular is the idea of the role of supreme creator. As supreme creator, God is uncreated. Nothing uncreated exists. God is unlike all its creatures specifically because it does not exist and, yet, it is. It is analagous to space which, though it cannot be located, informs the location of everything that is.
“There is nothing worse
than thinking you are well enough.
More than anything, self-complacency
blocks the workmanship.
Put your vileness up to a mirror and weep.
Get that self-satisfaction flowing out of you!
Satan thought, ‘I am better than Adam,’
and that better than is still strongly in us.”
- The Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks w/ John Moyne
These are good words for me to wake up to this morning. Good, because today I want to make a change. Yesterday was Hell and I don’t want tomorrow to be. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life regretting the rest of my life. I want joy and I want wisdom.
I stay up all night usually, waiting for God knows what, watching television, intoxicating myself, playing music and feeling between sad and hopeless. I fight the darkness with words, writing and singing things I often do not feel, alive when they seem to touch another soul, leaving mine empty after. Such a desperation to connect, I sometimes don’t know what to do with it. I often find myself so miserable and longing, all I can do is obliviate my senses, go underwater, until I can’t hear anything but eternity’s rush.
I think Rumi would tell me this is good. I think Rumi would recognize my agony as premature maturity. My intention is clear, but the object of my longing waxes and wanes like the moon, is obfuscated by clouds, plays tricks on me in the night. I seek her in places I have looked before, places I know she will never be again.
It is foolish to search this way. I’m racing around the house, frantic to get to work, looking for my keys, only to realize they are in my hand. Where did I leave my joy? the heart wonders. When did I begin living this way?
The joy of my son is more radiant than a thousand star-births, but when he is angry, the whole world is ash. He runs through the world, clothes half-on, neither pursuing nor evading happiness. He is life’s mirror speaking to me. Not long from now, he will recognize himself and his perfect mirror will begin to smudge and darken. He will choose the day or the night and be miserable half the time. May such a time pass quickly. May he soon read a good book, hear a good word or meet a kind teacher to explain this error.
May he never go looking for himself in me, for I have looked that way and she is gone. When he finds himself, may be realize it was never lost and we are both saved.
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You think you know so much with your modern science, with your particle accelerators and missions to Mars. You think you can somehow capture the Universe in one of your telescope lenses, like some kind of screwed up peeping tom spying through a window.
Well, I hate to break the news to ya, Sport, but your cool, sane Universe is really one big chewy gum-ball of fucked-up chaos.
Long, long, long time ago there was this thing, this Seed, more itself than anything ever has, can or will be. It had always been that thing and would never not be that thing. It was perfect. And at that point, it was the only thing that could be said to exist at all.
Nobody knows what happened next, but something did. How do we know? You numbskull, look around you. We know because all this shit exists! Flowers, muggings, dope, Jesus, calculus and American Idol. The whole kit-and-kaboodle is here now, Pandora’s box is empty, and it’s goddamn for sure not because of nothing. So get your head outta your ass and pay attention.
Like I was saying. Something happened and nobody knows what, but afterwards things existed and started moving around. For the first time ever, the Universe was… different.
Things started simply. At first, there were only two things, the two most special things that ever existed. They were brothers. Sisters. Friends maybe. Who knows.
The first sibling to wake up was Darkness. And Darkness looked out over all the nothing and found nothing lacking. He found it utterly perfect and rational. For a long while, he wandered the Empty alone, content and fulfilled.
Then one day, the first Darkness had ever noticed, he saw something in the distance and was alarmed. For one, he was not used to seeing, as there had never been any light or the need for it. Two, such a thing as distance struck him senseless and unnecessary, a horrific division of an otherwise perfectly knit void. Nevertheless, he found himself drawn to it and began to drift towards it.
When Darkness laid eyes on Glory, it was love at first sight. I know what you’re thinking. It’s nasty, a brother thinking that way of his sister. But this was different – they weren’t related in the genetic sense people are, people are related in the cosmic sense that they are. They were the first relationship. The first conversation. It went pretty much the way all such conversations have since.
“You new around here?”
“Sure, I guess. You?”
“Nope, been here a long time. Seen everything.”
“Yeah? Well, then, what’s to do?”
“We could go walking around. I could show you everything.”
“OK.”
The thing was, as the Two started off walking, Darkness immediately noticed something was different about Everything, and though secretly terrified, he did not want Glory to know. After a while of just walking, he asked, less boldly than intended, “Well, what did you think?”
“Think? Of what? We haven’t seen anything.”
“I know. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen… until today.”
“You calling me beautiful?”
“Sure.”
Make a long story short, they ended up falling in love and moving into together. Of course, Glory wanted to decorate, so she starts making things. At first, Darkness thinks her creations are interesting, if juvenile, and indulges her, but gradually as the making of things began to take up more and more of her time, he started to get jealous. One day he found her in a garden and confronted her.
“What are you making now? What is so special about all these things?”
“They are living things. They can know and enjoy things. They love and fear. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Darkness looked at the things around him. Small, puny, frail and pointless. They grew, they divided, they fought and they died. He could find no meaning in it. He could find no beauty in the passionate brevity of their lives, how desperately they struggled to remain alive, to last a few more moments before the inevitable end.
“Why have you made them so frail? They do not last.”
“You taught me the beauty of nothingness. My creatures come from nothing, it is only right they return there. My creatures are your children too.”
Darkness was aghast. His children too? Could it be? Was some part of himself in these weak, transitory beings? He didn’t know. Darkness was no great thinker, he only knew what he wanted.
“Don’t you still love me?”
“More than anything, my love.”
“More than your creatures? If so, then destroy them and return home with me.”
“I will not do that. I love you through my creatures. I am not complete without them. You cannot have me without them.”
Darkness thought powerful hard about it, but not long.
“Then I will love them too. Though I see no value in them myself, I will love them for you.”
“That is enough.”
Things were good for a while. Happy almost. Darkness and Glory had many children – gods, men, animals and spirits of every kind – and there was order. Darkness grew to love his children for their heroism in the face of certain doom, for their relentless spirit and determination. It was very strong, this spirit within them, it reminded him of Glory, his love.
Then one fateful day, without warning or herald, Darkness awoke and found his beloved gone, nowhere to be found. He called out to her but heard nothing back. He beseeched all his children to help him find their Mother, but none could find her anywhere. As the realization that their great Mother was missing slowly set in, a kind of desperate madness began to grow within their Father.
Darkness set off, leaving All There Is for the even greater, vaster emptiness beyond, certain in some inexplicable part of himself that he was guided. Through unutterably desolate space, Darkness surged like an irresistible wave of desire. There was no thought beyond To Glory. To Glory. To Glory.
God knows how long he went on that way. We simply cannot reckon it. But on he went until he went beyond Everything There Ever Was and came out to a new place. Only then did the madness leave him and he let out the longest and most terrible, bloody shout that Ever Will Be…
“GLOOOOOORRRRRRRRYYY!!!!!”
And then he sat down. Then he fell asleep and dreamed a strange dream. Of an Unsown Seed, a beautiful girl with eyes as bright as stars, and other strange things he couldn’t figure. He dreamt so long he forgot he was dreaming, until his dreams were of nothing but darkness, darknesses and glories, and slumbering things in the void.
The first one to wake up was Darkness…
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Finished my first complete literary thought in years, a mythic short story called “Darknesses & Glories.” I guess it’s good. I keep re-reading it over and over without vomiting.
The theme of “Darknesses” is relationship. The highs, the lows, the inevitability. The mythic tone lends itself to generalizing all of human experience. But when I read it, I just think about my sister Angie. The story could almost be an allegorical telling of our early meeting. Angie was the first person I remember loving me who didn’t have to. She was the first person, no matter how hard I pushed, wouldn’t budge.
Since then I have judged all love by these incredible standards and found most wanting. Until, that is, I met my son Langston. But that’s another story.
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The Ape Code lives! Me and Sam sound great together. I couldn’t be happier. 10-years of playing the guitar have finally made me a decent enough player to carry off a two-piece. Sam’s drumming is exquisite and polyrhythmic, he seems to read my thoughts and we speak very little except for the songs.
Everything I struggled so hard to do in my 20s is now easy. I can play, I can write songs, I can sing them. I can make a record and get a video recorded. Technology and my self-esteem have finally converged in the sweet spot. Everything is in key.
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You think you know so much with your modern science, with your particle accelerators and missions to Mars. You think you can somehow capture the Universe in one of your telescope lenses, like some kind of screwed up peeping tom spying through a window.
Well, I hate to break the news to ya, Sport, but your cool, sane Universe is really one big chewy gum-ball of fucked-up chaos.
Long, long, long time ago there was this thing, this Seed, more itself than anything ever has, can or will be. It had always been that thing and would never not be that thing. It was perfect. And at that point, it was the only thing that could be said to exist at all.
Nobody knows what happened next, but something did. How do we know? You numbskull, look around you. We know because all this shit exists! Flowers, muggings, dope, Jesus, calculus and American Idol. The whole kit-and-kaboodle is here now, Pandora’s box is empty, and it’s goddamn for sure not because of nothing. So get your head outta your ass and pay attention.
Like I was saying. Something happened and nobody knows what, but afterwards things existed and started moving around. For the first time ever, the Universe was… different.
Things started simply. At first, there were only two things, the two most special things that ever existed. They were brothers. Sisters. Friends maybe. Who knows.
The first sibling to wake up was Darkness. And Darkness looked out over all the nothing and found nothing lacking. He found it utterly perfect and rational. For a long while, he wandered the Empty alone, content and fulfilled.
Then one day, the first Darkness had ever noticed, he saw something in the distance and was alarmed. For one, he was not used to seeing, as there had never been any light or the need for it. Two, such a thing as distance struck him senseless and unnecessary, a horrific division of an otherwise perfectly knit void. Nevertheless, he found himself drawn to it and began to drift towards it.
When Darkness laid eyes on Glory, it was love at first sight. I know what you’re thinking. It’s nasty, a brother thinking that way of his sister. But this was different – they weren’t related in the genetic sense people are, people are related in the cosmic sense that they are. They were the first relationship. The first conversation. It went pretty much the way all such conversations have since.
“You new around here?”
“Sure, I guess. You?”
“Nope, been here a long time. Seen everything.”
“Yeah? Well, then, what’s to do?”
“We could go walking around. I could show you everything.”
“OK.”
The thing was, as the Two started off walking, Darkness immediately noticed something was different about everything and though secretly terrified he did not want Glory to know. After a while of just walking, he asked, “Well, what did you think?”
“Think? Of what? We haven’t seen anything.”
“I know. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen… until today.”
“You calling me beautiful?”
“Sure.”
Make a long story short, they ended up falling in love and moving into together. Of course, Glory wanted to decorate, so she starts making things. At first, Darkness thinks her creations are interesting, if juvenile, and indulges her, but gradually as the making of things began to take up more and more of her time, he started to get jealous. One day he found her in a garden and confronted her.
“What are you making now? What is so special about all these things?”
“They are living things. They can know and enjoy things. They love and fear. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Darkness looked at the things around him. Small, puny, frail and pointless. They grew, they divided, they fought and they died. He could find no meaning in it. He could find no beauty in the passionate brevity of their lives, how desperately they struggled to remain alive, to last a few more moments before the inevitable end.
“Why have you made them so frail? They do not last.”
“You taught me the beauty of nothingness. My creatures come from nothing, it is only right they return there. My creatures are your children too.”
Darkness was aghast. His children too? Could it be? Was some part of himself in these weak, transitory beings? He didn’t know. Darkness was no great thinker, he only knew what he wanted.
“Don’t you still love me?”
“More than anything, my love.”
“More than your creatures? If so, then destroy them and return home with me.”
“I will not do that. I love you through my creatures. I am not complete without them. You cannot have me without them.”
Darkness thought powerful hard about it, but not long.
“Then I will love them too. Though I see no value in them myself, I will love them for you.”
“That is enough.”
Things were good for a while. Happy almost. Darkness and Glory had many children – gods, men, animals and spirits of every kind – and there was order. Darkness grew to love his children for their heroism in the face of certain doom, for their relentless spirit and determination. It was very strong, this spirit within them, it reminded him of Glory, his love.
Then one fateful day, without warning or herald, Darkness awoke and found his beloved gone, nowhere to be found. He called out to her but heard nothing back. He beseeched all his children to help him find their Mother, but none could find her anywhere. As the realization that their great Mother was missing slowly set in, a kind of desperate madness began to grow within their Father.
Darkness set off, leaving All There Is for the even greater, vaster emptiness beyond, certain in some inexplicable part of himself that he was guided. Through unutterably desolate space, Darkness surged like an irresistible wave of desire. There was no thought beyond To Glory. To Glory. To Glory.
God knows how long he went on that way. We simply cannot reckon it. But on he went until he went beyond Everything There Ever Was and came out to a new place. Only then did the madness leave him and he let out the longest and most terrible, bloody shout that Ever Will Be…
“GLOOOOOORRRRRRRRYYY!!!!!”
And then he sat down. Then he fell asleep and dreamed a strange dream. Of an Unsown Seed, a beautiful girl with eyes as bright as stars, and other strange things he couldn’t figure. He dreamt so long he forgot he was dreaming, until his dreams were of nothing but darkness, darknesses and glories, and slumbering things in the void.
The first one to wake up was Darkness…
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Everyone’s first theory of the world is magic. Nobody starts off thinking in quarks or physics. Nobody starts out thinking limits or possibilities. Nobody starts out thinking about sin.
The news isn’t real. The news is just people competing for our attention. Things don’t occur to us unless they affect us. What’s going on in Haiti right now doesn’t matter to me. Not really. As an abstraction maybe, as the idea that it is generally a good thing to try and help out people, sure. It goes in the same category as not bashing in kitten heads. There isn’t possibly enough stuff to fill up an entire 24-hour news cycle. It’s not that there isn’t plenty going on, because there is and, jesus, you don’t want anything to do with it, believe me. It’s that there’s not enough stuff that we give a shit about to fill up that much time and keep it fresh. A few things happen everyday that matter to all of us, the tv watchers and newspaper and blog readers. Way less than our insatiable hunter-gatherer’s appetite for intel.
My yeah-and-a-half-old son’s toy Elmo depresses me. He doesn’t know it’s not real. He thinks because it needs batteries, Elmo’s sick. That’s fucked up to play with a kid’s emotions like that.
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The biggest concern in my life these days is What am I Doing with My Life? Which is another way of asking Who am I? I always picture the scenario thus: I am laying on my deathbed, years from now after a long life, and I am remembering everything I have ever done. I am, in essence, re-living my life moment-by-moment, evaluating what was worthwhile and what was wasteful.
Will I regret how much television I watched? How many books I never read? Will I recall fondly the work that I did and the people I called friends? Will I remember myself a good and present father, a mindful provider and guardian? Will I regret the alcohol, the drugs, the meaningless sex?
I read somewhere that humans are terrible predictors of their own happiness. I don’t need to read that though, I know it from my own life. I remember being a kid and watching things for Christmas, begging for them, promising eternal contentment to parents and every sort of good behavior I could think of. Then, on the magic day, receiving the gifts, playing with them for a few hours and, ultimately, losing all interest. That kind of happiness is so fleeting. Like a sugar high that leaves you feeling lower than before.
I believe religions are an attempt made by our ancestors to solve this problem. They’re supposed to be road maps to contentment. By following the rules, desiring what you are told to desire and forbidding yourself the rest, you reach whatever the magical word for happiness is – Heaven, Nirvana, Fana, Clear. Even more, the journey is on paved road.
On the other hand, I have always admired the spiritual renegades like Krishnamurti who could entirely deconstruct religion and lay bare its fundamental urges, its elemental drives. Truth is a pathless land, Krishnamurti said. He meant that there were no paved roads to truth, because truth is ultimately a personal reality. That’s a terrifying thought. It fills me with loneliness and longing.
Physics tells us that no one ever touches, that the matter of our bodies is mostly empty space and force fields. When two lips press, they never really do. It’s just their exclusive atomic fields pushing against each other, never overlapping. To be solid is to be trapped. To be matter is to be bound.
What is the happiness of a solid? Is laughter ice melting into water? Is an orgasm water bursting into steam? Is the sun pure joy?
The one truth that cannot be disputed is that I will die. My body, as I type, is decorporealizing moment-by-moment, second-by-second. Very soon I will be just a skeleton. Very soon there will not even be that. Very soon I will be done with being. Is this Paradise?
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