I would like to live in the trees with the chimps–do not get me wrong, I do love living in cities. I am not foregoing civilization–yes, city order, city culture, Christians and Pagans. I am not so sure, though, that even the chimp-me could beat a baby baboon against a tree. The appropriate question is not whether or not a chimp were me, but if I were a chimp? Right?Yes, if I were a chimp, how would I act in a crowd, how would I interact with these others who piss me off, who annoy me, who berate me, who mock me, who disrespect me? Questions do beget more questions as they take me–take me where? Where am I going with this? You might ask. I do not.
Take the baby baboon by the feet and swing thus . . . meaning lies within–and it is interesting here how meaning lies. Nothing but what is meant to be? Intentionally–what is it about intentionality? We reduce individuality, thus we make irrelevant the idea of choosing to have done something and having done something without meaning to, without intention. They are the same thing to those who seek hegemony, for those ready and willing to berate you, mock you, belittle you, devalue you . . . I watch an old film of Jane with her monkeys. See Jay watch a film about Jane; see Jane play with her chimps. Hypocrite brother, my likeness, you other monkeys. I see my Self of many selves, another and another and another—old monkey me on parade, an image of me I make myself.
All things made, how made, I feel the fabric of her dress, a new fiction seeks its generation. The thread—don’t lose the thread. I am, I declare, An ape of God. I recall having read everything I had read about God, everything I had read about not God, everything I had about doubting God, about whose God was whose God, how God was what Gd was fir however many conceived of God, what need it fulfills in the human heart, if we can still speak of heart or of soul, wherein then does the mind exist–foolish people thinking mind is more talent than soul, some languages have one word for what we insist is less confusing by having two.
I wish I had read more Montaigne. What we are, the eyes have it, Medieval English ballads I learned by heart, the texts I have since lost. I was in my early twenties. I used to be able to sing Barbara Alan, verse by verse. I unravel a ball of yarn in the labyrinth. How do I know if it is long enough. Theseus was sure I am sure, have been sure– did I ever ask this question?
I discovered in university that the world was not post-colonial—a new suit could not change this monkey me into a new man, no matter how imperial was the design. All by the dreamers of empires again, colonial dreamers still dreaming dreams of master and slave; if everyone in the world would wake up tomorrow white, we would still have niggers—if everyone were black, the same would be true–what would be true? If everyone woke up black tomorrow, we would still have the bigotry of color–no one would be color blind . . . I’m dark chocolate, I’m milk . . . I’m caramel . . .
How many do impose the rule that I have no right to talk about what we do talk about, sometimes without saying what it is we are talking about, as if everything unsaid is loud and clear by just maneuvering our discussion toward something never quite articulated, as we do so often on and in matters of race in this country, especially with the idea of niggers in our society under hypothetical conditions . . . the if I can talk of guineas, I can talk of niggers . . . what tBut I am not your white man . . . not here, not now, not ever, not past, present or future. If you cannot get your mind around the idea that I am a Non-White Caucasian, then I can’t help you, won’t help, might avoid you or ever speaking with you even in forums such as this one . . .
The futility of considering anything other than what we should do to others before they get to do anything to us has preoccupied our minds as of late–adversaries, adversaries, adversaries . . . yet, no old barking Nazis banging on your door, just the received ideas in our new historicism leaving us prey to one inundation after another by tides recurring after tides, after tides, waves in, wakes out.
The Falling Leaf Review 