What a blessing to be able to go one more round with the only asshole i could never better - myself · As an ugly child in a family of pretty people; one learns the “terms of endearment” quickly or gets quashed quickly - my heart goes out to the youngest who had not only me to contend with, but also the Machiavellian machinations of my elder siblings, the two prettiest people to predominate the popularity politics of late 1960 Orange County, CA. Yeah, i know - over-the-top snarky, but you go with your strengths. Little wonder the two glommed onto each other when faced with the other-worldly weirdness of the lower middle child - older middler sister’s affectionate nickname for me · odd Todd. Of the few times i can remember my poet papa becoming violent with me was when i called her a “bitch” and when i declared my intention to grow my hair long: for the first infraction Pop got me in the older brothers room and “bitch slapped” my head from side to side - the 2nd infraction my have been closed fist · what i remember was leaving the house for not the first time, with his sacred vow in my ears “no son of mine is going to have hair growing below his collar.” 50 years later bald and all, she’s still a bitch, and my hair is down to the middle of my back, though there is no longer enough on top to braid.
And i love my sister - it is just that she is inordinately vain · quantifiably stupid, and instinctually cruel. We all work with what we got; she got ma - i got Pop · Oscar Wilde - ‘all daughters become like their mothers; that is their tragedy, no man does - that is his.’ This is the family i have to work with, and work i do as best as i am able. Little brother was finally shamed to respond to 2 weeks of email inquiries; mostly wanting to know if he was alive, or dead in the midst of the plague we all find ourselves. His wan reply advising me that i could find a cheap solution to my “health issues” through the “expat” network that must be around me was more condescending than angry. This reply is very helpful only to know that what my little brother suffers is great, and that he fears i might prosecute a malpractice suit against him and his Nurse Practitioner wife were they to recommend from afar an antibiotic drop for a middle ear complication i have lived with for 50 years.
I do not hate my people - i am angry with each of my siblings for different reasons which i make every effort to keep contemporary based on behavior. I don’t find them quite so fastidious nor honest in their behavior as they presume to be, rather i find them at the end of a DNA strand we share, clinging to objects and ego that they would deny me. The ego aspect of our family rupture is no great loss, for it was mostly “smoke and mirrors” as near as i can gather from 65 years of interactions, but the substance is simple “theft.” (hidden behind proletariate proclamations, and progressive assertions buried under - gimme, gimme, gimme.) At least the looters who are waging war for the crumbs of the capitalist capitulation have the courage to be up front about their desires. My family, as i experience them are attempting to legitimize their theft of a family heritage on no more than a fiction of moral worth, which i again spit on for anyone not wanting to share all the booty with all the people.
Now i feel obligated to finish my dance of 5 paragraphs for an audience that hasn’t the courtesy to acknowledge the same disrespect i would pay them face to face for their conceits. I drink, i smoke, i masturbate, because i am alone and i am as ugly as any version of Quasi Modo - but if you think Charles Laughton was menacing, come and be by my side while i expire after the live i have lived, trying to help the people i have tried to help survive. And in front of me is a refrigerator with a spot of singed vegetables, the mewling of a neighbor child waiting for kewl air - the curiosity of a landed gentry without land · and a planet laying into its own surrender to a greed manufactured at the core of its own troubled heart.
I could die right this moment in peace, without a woman in my arms or a child at my tangle - happily. I have done my best, which was not always good, and tried to help others more powerful than me to achieve more than i could · not always successfully - but sometimes so. I welcome the the end of the strife i have made and look forward to the kindness i will never see from minds i never knew. Just now, before i eat and finish my last smoke and drink, i hear the mewling of a child barely an infant being humored and jollied just like myself when young. I am relieved to know the best amongst us is stronger than the least amongst us no matter what pain i may feel in its absence.
addendum: today is D-Day + 76 years; this is worthy of mention as a significant date in the defeat of the Fascist Axis during WWII, and there was not a peep on my newsfeed - save the accusations of the current Attorney General claiming U.S. unrest is due to Antifa (Anti Fascist) provocations.
jts 06/06/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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