Abandon was a Whirling Dervish in a previous life and so before she drops a load she will spin sometimes twenty or so times in a circle. One time she actually created a whirlwind but thankfully FEMA was there to “take care of,” in the Mafioso form of the phrase, those who hadn’t already died.
So I was walking Abandon in my hood the other night when she found a dirt spot surrounding a sidewalk tree and started her circle dance of fecal evacuation. There was a group of people sitting on a stoop, which is kind of a superfluous thing to say, as in Washington Heights just about every stoop is covered with locals sitting all night. During Abandon’s dance, one girl around twenty or so said, “What’s wrong with your dog?”
“She doesn’t like to defecate in front of dirty Spics,” I was going to answer but it is a known fact that every Hispaniard carries a blade—guys, girls, geriatrics, babies in the crib—and I didn’t feel like being filleted that night. So instead I said, “This is what she does before she goes to the bathroom.” Because of the distraction, Abandon had stopped her whirling and instead took to smelling the local urine of those parts. I added jokingly, “But because you distracted her, she missed her chance,” just like when Kramer from Seinfeld had to take a dump but after being unable to find a bathroom he, too, had “missed his chance.”
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4qiPSJo3pQ&feature=related at 4:35]
As a wordsmith, I find word choices to really tell a lot about a person. For instance, when someone says, “I axed you a question,” that is usually an indication that they are an uneducated moron. If someone says, “Them niggas should swing from a tree,” that is always an indication that they are an uneducated moron. And if someone says, “What’s wrong with her?” or “them,” it shows that they think that anything that falls outside of their miniature circle of understanding has to be “wrong.” And while many might not label these people morons, I will.
The world is so vast and information too grandiose for us little peebles to think we will ever be able to absorb every little tidbit or have an understanding of how it all works. That is perfectly acceptable. Knowing how all the tricks are done only creates a person whose eyes no longer light up when he goes to see the magic show. But to assume that something we don’t understand is “wrong” is not only idiotic, but arrogant.
A medical doctor that says, “You will die unless you inject this poison [chemotherapy] into your system” is an arrogant ass. His education consisted of breaking down humans into categories of diseases and memorizing which drug, provided by the same pharmaceutical company that paid for the construction, upkeep and textbooks of his medical school, to prescribe. He knows little to nothing on nutrition, fasting, herbal and other natural medicines. There are countless amount of people who were told they had no other option from their medical doctors, took another option, and are living well past the time when the doctor told them they would be dead. I know of a few personally. One had cancer and was given six months to live—14 years ago. Another beat two crippling disorders, one being Multiple Sclerosis—which has no known cure in the medical field—with nutrition and exercise. More accurately the medical doctor could say, “From what we know, this is the best recommendation we can offer,” and while I might disagree with his recommendation, at least he wouldn’t be an ignorant, arrogant prick in his offering.
We look at other religions, where the followers seem to pray to hundreds of different gods and goddesses (Hinduism), or shave their heads and give up sex, excluding the occasional circle-jerk among monks (Buddhism), or blow shit up in the name of God (Muslim) and think they are all “wrong.”
Can you not see that someone outside of our cult of reality might think that praying to a hippie that we believe turned water into wine and raised the dead and walked on water and died to magically remove all of our sins and then came back to life three days later—and all of this was recorded sometimes a hundred years after the fact without a single Kool-Aid drinker wondering why nothing from age 12-30 is recorded about this magical hippie in these same books—may be considered “wrong”? (Christianity) Or how a religion based on the sole goal of accumulating money and taking over the world could also be considered “wrong”? (Judaism)
The people in the West can’t understand why people in the East sit around all day with their eyes closed. The people in the East can’t understand why the people in the West can’t sit still without having to check their email, or turn on the T.V., or grab a snack, or call their friend on the phone, or a myriad of other things. So we look at the “other” as a group of back-ass freaks and this somehow makes us feel better about ourselves, all because we can’t say those three magic words:
I DON’T KNOW.
The supposed hippest, coolest people around seem to want everyone to conform to their understanding of how to be or else they ask, “What’s wrong with her?” These radically “cool” cats are just as square as the mother and father they are rebelling against—just as tyrannical. The only difference is that their parents don’t understand why a boy would wear his hair long and prefer to sit on the street corner with his homies all day and these copycat youths don’t understand why their parents think making an “honest” living is where it’s at and why they wear suits that actually fit properly instead of loose jeans that hang below their asses.
I went into a Verizon store and the Moonie-trained employee by the door asked me, “Can I help you?” I told her that I needed to break this $100 bill I had into either two fifties or some other derivative that added up to a hundred so that I could put $50 on my pre-paid phone. She started to talk out of her asshole, which reminded me of the time I was using a girl’s bare ass like a pillow after a good round of sex and she blasted a fart in my ear. To this day, I still can’t hear the same out of my left ear and gag every time I smell the Q-tip after cleaning it. The Verizon Moonie said, “Yeah, they probably won’t have change over there.”
This might not have been totally baseless. Perhaps she knew they were like those stores where the sign says, “OUR CLERKS NEVER HAVE MORE THAN $20 IN THE REGISTER” to prevent hold-ups. One time I held up one of those stores—because I’m not greedy; I would have been happy with just $20—and the score was $49. I initiated a lawsuit against the establishment for false advertising and won $8 million dollars in a settlement. I spent all the money on Michael Jackson’s Pez dispenser collection, which was filled with Ludes to give all the little boys before he Catholic priested them. I ended up selling them on eBay for $20, which is all I really wanted in the first place.
But I could tell her comment was baseless. This little cookie-pusher couldn’t just say, “I DON’T KNOW.” So, because I can’t just let anything go and because she was a total moron, we continued to have a discussion about why she wouldn’t just send me over to the register to see if they could break my fuckin’ hundred. Our whole conversation was a complete waste of life for me. It was probably reinforcement for her that she was a viable cog in society’s grandfather clock whose time has been off since it was created, serving no real point but preventing her from having to say those three dreaded words—I DON’T KNOW—like when someone tells you, “I love you” and you stumble back in return something lame like, “I’m very fond of you as well.”
Go to any self-proclaimed “expert” and ask her a question that she can’t answer and rather than say those three magic words, “I DON’T KNOW,” she will probably come up with a bunch of bullshit and hope the noxious smell will prevent you from querying further. I’ve done it. They’ll cut and paste whatever trivia they can remember from all the texts they’re plagiarizing and if nothing applicably applies to your question, they will still fill the emptiness with words. It can seriously come out as bizarre as this fictitious exchange:
“If cooking food breaks it down and, in effect, predigests the food outside of the body, why would it matter if the digestive enzymes to help break down the food are destroyed, which seems to be the main talking point from the raw food community?”
“I mean, raw food is in its natural state. Did prehistoric man have microwave ovens?”
“No, but they also didn’t have books where they memorized certain facts and as a result couldn’t think on their own.”
Because we identify our self-worth with what we know. We are rewarded in school through test scores that record for the life of our studenthood how much we know (really how much we can memorize for the test and then immediately forget afterwards.) We are rewarded by parents who smile broadly and say, “That’s great, Jimmy! You got a 100& on the test!” If I were a parent and my kid came home with a 100% test score, I would probably say something like, “Seriously, do you not have a life outside of memorizing useless facts?” If my kid brought home a 50%, I would probably beam with excitement and declare, “That is awesome! Now we know what you don’t know. Don’t ever be ashamed of that.”
We have gotten so away from living naturally, and by this I don’t mean in a palm leaf thatched hut in the woods somewhere but true to our nature—eating when we’re hungry, going to sleep when we’re tired, leaving a tired-ass classroom when we’re bored stiff, singing when we feel a song coming over us, playing hopscotch even though all the other boys laugh at us and chant meanly while pointing at us, “SISSY, SISSY, USE YOUR VAGINA TO PISSY!”—that we grab onto useless “information” as our means of feeling good about ourselves. We feel naked without being clothed in memorized nonsense.
And it is this same fear of those three magic words, I DON’T KNOW, that close our hearts to others who behave differently, who believe differently, who think differently, and who dress differently than us. Why not ask them what is up with the robe, or the underwear on the outside of the jeans, or the hair with a bird’s nest on top of it? Too risky. It may show that WE DON’T KNOW. Much easier to call them names, insulting epithets, put a label on them, than to show a sign of weakness.
We’re all so “street” nowadays, whether we hang out on the stoop or in an office. “Gotta be cool.” “Can’t let them see you sweat.” “Gotta know it all.” But we don’t. Why not have the balls to be honest about it, to question what we don’t know and maybe LEARN for a change?
Who knows, maybe I’m just WRONG. I can admit that I DON’T KNOW. The difference between you and me is that I don’t give a shit. I know my worth doesn’t come from books or videos or classes or workshops or awards or trophies or 100% test scores or a job or mission or “good works.” I don’t believe in an angry and mean “God” that I should fear who will only accept me into his family if I behave like a goody-two-shoes little bitch. I don’t have anything to prove to anyone and this makes me free.
“Well that’s fine but you’re going to burn in Hell for eternity for it.” I DON’T KNOW. Maybe I will. But I rather burn in Hell for eternity than to listen to your insecure self-righteous ass for a single second. THAT, I do know.
REFLECTION:
How many people or groups of “others” do you think as wrong or stupid? If it’s a group, what do you know about their culture? If it’s an individual, what do you know about his background that brought him to the point where you are seeing him today? For an easy example, take the Middle-East struggle. If you wave the Israeli banner in your viewpoint and see the Palestinians as savages, think of the issue from the mind of a Palestinian who feels displaced and mistreated. If you wave the Palestinian pom-pom and see the Israelis as oppressors, put yourself in the shoes of an Israeli who only wants security for his family. Does filling in your I DON’T KNOW change your view of the “other”?
MEDITATION:
Take any individual or group that you either don’t like or think is moronic. Imagine you are one of “them.” Dress like this perceived “other.” Speak like him. Argue the issue that the self with which you tend to identify may disagree with. Live a day in the body, mind and soul of this “other.” Walk a mile in his shoes (wear socks, though, as you don’t want to funk them up!)
Come back to the self that you identify as your own. Do you think any differently about this “other” now? Perhaps you will see him in a whole new light, the light that shines from within the both of you, and less from the individual behaviors and dress and thoughts that only make up the surface.