"I tried to speak, to answer, but something heavy moved again, and I was
understanding something fully and trying again to answer but seemed to sink
to the center of a lake of heavy water and pause, transfixed and numb with
the sense that I had lost irrevocably an important victory." Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Like any slumber there is an end point of waking. I am an optimist - a
believer in the waking. Everybody wakes up: the question remains as to the
appropriate moment that happens, or the time when it is too late for any
substantive realization to occur. But, it happens ... either early during
first light or footstep. That is a time, indeed, of woeful and heartbreaking
regrets. However, it matters not as long as it is recognized and then
perpetuated in spirit.
A teacher, once explained sleep as "temporary death." Each twenty-four hour
day, according to the Grandmaster, consisted of three eight-hour segments
identifiable by certain fundamental actions: first work, then play, and later
sleep. These three segments, as distinct and separate as convention would
conclude, were as related and physiologically stitched as Siamese twins -
but, sleep ... ahhh: sleep is the most problematic because it can subtly
penetrate the domain of the other two states of existence without betraying
or compromising itself. It spends the majority of its time finding ways in
which it can impose its wearisome and idle impressions on the rest of the
universe, without even a quaint slip in technique. Hence, sleep is what - at
least - I try to avoid. Yet, there is the issue of being ... or feeling
trapped within a humanity of sleep, a treacherous and indignant wave of
laziness complimented by lack of routine and cerebral exercise. This is the
world we persistently defy despite its obvious satisfaction with the lulled
state of affairs. We continue taking long walks as way to comfort our
troubled souls.
Growing up as I did, there was no true understanding of my peers' life
positioning. At a very early point in childhood, prior to the formative
years, myself and others condescendingly referred to it as simple stupidity.
Raw foolishness devilishly mixed with a devastating dose of ignorance.
Perhaps, in some ways, we were right - or we only found an intrinsic way to
make us wanting or craving to seem right, because being right was comfortably
fashionable in its opposition to being wrong. Being wrong was in the
demented galaxy of contrast to being right - or, really, it was being
superior.
No ... we were puppets of our desires falsely claiming stewardship over each
other's fate when our innermost pleasures really ran the show. These
pleasures determined the extent of any ongoing relationships with the many
whom despised us as the talented few.
"Those were the days ..." a good friend breathed, then coughed in an effort
to exorcise freshly baked, but charred memories. "Speak for yourself," I
disagreed. That was when we were akin to foreign missionaries in a distant
land, yet a distant land darkened as a dream of a distant land discredited by
the deplorable fact that it was home. Not necessarily a den of iniquity, but
by chance of universe, shoot of crap and show of hand it became within the
span of our realization, a home. However, we daily suffered at the punishing
fists and fury of our peers, our young indigenous brothers of pre-adolescent
stage who faced fear of collective cultural insecurities through channeled
and targeted cruelty toward us.
At that time, depraved of mature reasoning, we were literally bruised -
mentally and physically - for an understanding. Our busted lips and bloody
noses were stark testament. Such unchaste acts resisted logic, therefore we
accepted it as the twist of circumstance and the positioning of ourselves on
some profanely disguised social ladder we did not have the leisure of
discovering or mastering. Those days, while conceding defeat to the forces
of fist over diplomacy, we would stare at each other like virgin equestrians
dismayed and overwhelmed by the unrestrained power of a mad horse. Flung and
pushed to the ground, the outer layer of our hard skulls scratching the
gravel between the cracks on the sidewalk, we stared intently into the pupils
of our eyes even as massive streams of magenta spilled into the pit below the
brow. Control of pain was as important as control of the situation before
us; the perpetrators of our agony knew only the augmentation of the former.
Therefore, it was incumbent upon the inflicted to make peace with that which
inflicts - rather than closing the firm path of necessary force that was
required during these limited, barbaric and street-wise engagements. It was
not that we were afraid of the perpetrators - our anxiety and reservation
towards tactical response may have been driven by a fear of our striking
familiarity with the fear before us: that fear can with little difficulty, be
ultimately absorbed and transformed into animalistic rage. That fear
realized pain had easily tempted us into an almost carnal collaboration.
Thus, we feared what that psyche-driven transition was capable of doing to
our weak-minded friends beating us into aggravated submission like slaves
before a Roman crowd.
The beastly impulses of civilization - or "man" - are never inhibited by time
or passing cumulus of history. They remain stored, indifferent to regional,
religious or racial root, in the farthest incisions of our consciousness,
trigger-locked, but cocked and ready at that moment of psychotic revelation
of pleading request. This I know. It is the appearance of the ensuing
tantrum that differs from one individual to another. However, its directive
stays the same, whether or not it is physical or emotional. We learned this
the hard, bone-knocking way at the most early - hence, the most unfortunate -
age. What is most compelling is that rage is most obvious according to the
youthfulness of its wearer. Rage is very child-like, child-minded ...
child-motivated by immature passions defying reason as fallen angels defied
God. That is why children can be incomparably cruel and unjust, to no fault
of their own. Reason has not established itself yet; logic is both
unharnessed and typically unknown. We expected these actions as much as we
anticipated eventual death, and so began our intimate, albeit cynical,
observations of humanity.
Humanity (we learned as experience cultivated a volume full of lessons) was a
misused term purposefully taken out of context. A denial of what we were
before we were even there. Humanity is a relative concept, you see. The
soothing sound of it on presumably well-intentioned tongues does not
necessarily provide the hidden Eleventh Commandment to total claim on the Prom
ised Land. Humanity is as evil as it is good because humanity is the
complete package of being ... human.
"We are not human beings struggling to be spiritual," a preacher once boomed
hard during a Sunday morning philosophical back flip from the pulpit. "We
are, in fact, spiritual beings struggling to be human." In that instant, as
the congregation swelled with the mood and an organist performed melodic
cadence on every syllable spoken, the preacher seemed to expose a strange
lack of idealism generally absent in most modern men of the cloth. He,
instead, opted to shake and rattle religious convention and presented this
new theory as reality; how much he was aware that traditional three thousand
year-old notions of humanity were sliced and vilified in an hour's worth of
sermon remains a mystery to us. But, what is now realized is that there was
nothing original in his assertion. The centripetal powers-that-be had known
this for centuries, yet chose censure in place of true enlightenment.
Unrestrained social decay is then prompted by the gradual lifting of the
curtains.
C.D. Ellison is a contributing writer to Metro Connection. He can be reached
at againstthegrain@metroconnection.info. |