a lay line to corruption
today is my birthday
today I begin my epistle or ‘blog’ as the tone deaf would prefer. If corruption can be spoken out loud, it will defeat any comer, so the way to describe it is obliquely. That is, through a filter. This is done by holding the idea of C_________ in your head while reading these glancing blows and parries. If this place or site houses the means and essence in any degree of what we consider “corruption”, it can only hold it as keeper holds a wild animal: gently and always from the side — never, ever straight on.
this is a work about complexity and the balm it provides civilization. Complexity is written into rules and etiquette. So…rule no 1:
We cannot change people. that is we cannot make people be the way we like them to be or wish they would be. We can force someone, I mean to move forward and act upon someone. We can cut a finger off or shave their hair or put them on a train to some god-forsakes anti-world. We can make them feel worthless or fill them with self-doubt. We can fill them with feelings of unease at how they should be treating us. Fair is fair. We deserve things. Why can families be such hellish tiny units anyway?
But I want to step back and address that clever ninth grader who has might have just started reading this and being clever and so turned on by their good teacher’s lesson on “active” reading, stops right at the beginning and wonders why I have written it is my birthday but I have not said how old I am. Well, to challenge this precious youth who has a wild future before him or her because she has decided to read “between the lines”, I will answer this question.
Every sentence I write or speak to someone else is meant to establish my position. I could have had so many more interesting conversations with people had I not prefaced or included in my self-defense an acknowledgement of my age. “Well, when I was your age..” or “I am too old for that shit..” or “Maybe when I am older…” What in the world does this have to do with the exchange of ideas. On the open field of expression (which I know is hardly open), should not ideas stand in relation to other ideas? Do we want our children to understand that like a decrepit private boys school, we must always account for age before treading bravely into the maelstrom of doubt and investigation? Ahh, yes, Jimmy, you can certainly challenge a senior but make sure you open the door for him first or give him your place in line for lunch. What is this message?
To respect someone is surely to give consideration to their expressions without holding a lantern of wisdom in birthday years up to his cheek gently warming him or should I say warning him? Rather, I respect you because I consider your ideas as I consider my own. We must also respect our own utterances so they may be assessed in the cold and warm light of day without any recourse to mind-reading or apology.
So, what of weakness? The first goblin I wish to drive a gentle stake into is the self defense of “understanding”.
“Did you not know what I was going through when I called you a whore? So I apologize for this slip of the tongue but do think you should take me into account in all of my own self-involvement before you take so much offense at a mere five letter word?”
How did we get here? And can our promising ninth grader make sense of this in all its irrational convolution? So OK, she must take into account first peoples age and then their background before venturing any consideration that this exchange may have been abusive? Ahh, so let me take your hand and guide you back to the origins of abuse and this must take us back to the concepts of “trust” and of course “weakness”.
today i my birthday.
And I have to write as my life as a “weak” person.