Unnoticed in Clever Worlds

The most troublesome aspect of being an well educated writer is the real-time awareness that what you are producing is shit.

How is it possible that not one of us thinks we are stupid? Regis Boff

Three years later I threw Jimmy down a hill.
My father, in his chair behind the newspaper, heard me say “I broke his leg, he is in the hospital.”
Without lowering his paper, he said, ” Serves him right.”
Every boy is first the product of his father. Mothers are there to erase what parts of this they believe they should or can.
I was always ashamed of being the biggest in my class. At seventy years old I still never look in mirrors.
Jimmy, my next door neighbor and three years older, would push me down and hold me in the mud or dirt until I cried. He was smaller than me, so I was his trophy; he would take my hat as well.
I came home sobbing to my father who worked at a bank all night. He waited for me in the afternoon in the kitchen having just woken up.
All he ever said was, “What happened?” My telling him seemed to be his response.
Later Jimmy would throw my hat on our patio making sure my father saw.
There grew a silence between dad and I. Men and boys know this quiet. Women do not. It is what makes us so dangerous.
One afternoon, while I was crying my father dragged me to our neighbor’s door and screamed that I was ready to fight him. Jimmy did not come out.
There was no more hat stealing after that.
I grew, but Jimmy did not.
Years later while home for my father’s funeral, I ran into Jimmy, and we sat and talked on that same patio about the bullshit things of a shared childhood. We were both grown men. In the end, he had turned out passable. We shook hands, and as I turned away, I knocked his hat off his head.

More men are realized as gay when the last call bell rings at the bar than from any other sound.

I like being white. It is easier. Everybody who is not white seems to believe that we hold everyone else back. I hope this is not the case but I suspect it is. We tend to keep to ourselves so people who are not white mostly overlook that whatever we are doing to them is nothing compared to what we do to each other.

Democracy works only if Capitalism and Socialism are comrades. Living is no fun unless you feel you can claw your way to the top of something. That stated; life is also unfair and always discriminatory to the vast majority of people, and that, of course, is less fun. It is the responsibility of Capitalism to provide the help that is needed and to do so without belittling the destitute.
It is the obligation of the Socialists to remind people that money must come from somewhere and that jealousy might get you elected, but it will never solve your problems.
The Capitalists will not recognise the suffering without prodding. The Socialists will deny the importance of balance, concentrating only on the suffering, unless they are forced to be realistic. This is what government should focus on.
If the Capitalists refuse to be generous, they will be slaughtered by the masses eventually. History is not a stranger to the murdered and selfish rich, but she is far more familiar with the starving poor.

This always summed it up for me. “Proof that God created the Heavens and the Earth is not nearly as significant a search as is the inquiry into whether He had any choice.”

Women talk to insist that they are alive. Men are mostly silent around women in hopes that the stillness will kill them. It is, I think, a poor plan. 

The utter collapse of journalism is a good thing. It anticipates that human beings are smart enough to take possession of their own truths.

FaceBook has taught me the value of just one person saying “Nice job” about something I have created.