IN THE END I WILL OWE THE WORLD A DEBT for being so patient with me while I was making my way out of ignorance.

...Actually, that's just another one of those magic brooms sweeeeping bullshit into tiny palaces. (Bullshit actually compacts rather nicely. Like stinky, gossamer, candy spun from a Miniature Hell and how's THAT for an image?) The world hasn't been a bit patient. Sometimes not one bit. But you know, it doesn't matter. This ain't a game for the easily tired or weakened. And nobody promised me a jalapeño garden, anyway.

A reader may, from my stance today, guess that I have been long-involved in such views pro-brown, anti-oppression, stand up for the little guy stuffs. But part of why I am so driven to the underdog and the oppressed is because I came from a place of iron rule. My home life, that is. My old home life. Not because I was taught to be this way. I do wonder sometimes if everything that happened is worth it because it did deepen my empathy. But we cannot know or extrapolate or guess how we'd be without our own history.

As is the case with the flight path of many of my most deeply held convictions/learnings, the trip began on the opposite shores. While I was brought up with many positive examples from the community my parents often interacted with (this is a story for another day), I was not born nor raised to be someone who thinks in terms of "social equality," I am not someone who has lived a life free from fear and ignorance and racist thinking, and in fact, I was very often raised by these agents. Half the time I'm patting myself on the back for not being a complete raving lunatic. (Then when I'm done patting myself on the back for that, I thank myself for the loving touch, and summarily offer myself tea. I kindly accept without hesitation, and it's all a very, very groovy and sane scene, as you can imagine.)

I once got so upset with myself for how often I referred back to the days of the dreaded Legal-Adoption-Induced "adoptive father," that I promised myself I would never mention it again after a certain age (33). This was a noble (maybe) and dramatic (certainly) and unrealistic (unfortunately) goal. Because I do tire of it. Thinking of it. The memories, the questions, the righteous revulsion, the tangled web of love and loathing. I've tried talking it out, therapy, groups, sublimation, roleplaying...all that shit. I've probably even sketched this mini-story of family Horro-gin out in every part of The Skin of My Soul! But knowing myself and bettering myself has had a lot to do with my revisiting those things that shaped me. (If this kind of introspection, tale and memory is too involved, intimate, unbloggy, or otherwise undesirable to you, know that this particular series of posts takes this form purposefully. You could skip only the Skin of my Soul series and that would effectively detour you. From most of this. I won't promise anything.)

In the end, there is no complete undoing of the marks the mold makes upon you. In the end, there is no pill, no fix, no reversing what made you who you came to be. You simply have to choose to be—as best you can—a different person, moment by moment. Each choice, as often as possible, you examine for taint. Sometimes you miss a spot and maybe it will take someone else to point out the stain on your sleeve. Sometimes you can hear them.

Some behaviors and ways of thinking you immediately turn away from. I've never had any incidents of hitting my kids, or ever even speaking cruelly, derisively, or condescendingly to them. Ive never had issues with gay people, have had them as roommates. I usually feel more comfortable with gays because I don't feel the need to deny so much of my natural expressive, intuitive, emotional self in their presence—as most male groups do require. (There happens, again, that use of selective vocabulary and forced physical movements, and you certainly ditch words like "beautiful" or "tender," etc). I am grateful that for whatever reason, those particular traits did not stick with me. Those were the ones you say "I'm never being like that." The times you are right, that is.

Some ideas and thinking you soak up without even realizing it. But it's odd what sticks and what does not.

My adoptive father (as I tend to call my on-paper father) was a character. Again, I'll say (for those who are new to the scene) and just to set the scene, he met my mother when he was 21, I was six, she was 24. He came from the projects of the Bronx, was an Irish-Catholic, lost his father at 11, and was feeling about as overwhelmed and intimidated by snagging this woman who was older, smarter, and more educated than him—and in taking on her two sons from a previous marriage to a Mexican man.

This man—the one I call "Gearheart"—came into my life at about six, and he was certainly a complicated man. "Crazy," one might say with some degree of confidence. But then again, giving something a label only means you have a word for them. And we're all "crazy," to begin with.

He was an unexplainable weave of jarring contradiction, and little did I know when I first met him that he would prove to be a quarter of my damn life story. He listened (and I mean really, really, really long-term loved to listen and almost exclusively listened) to Bob Marley...yet called black people (yup) N words; he launched a relentless attack on my sanity over the years using various stylings...yet loved me enough to once carve my face from a block of wood. He physically confronted people in any setting, chased them down on the highway, followed them home raging (with all of us in the car scared as hell), radiated violent, intimidating energy like a porcupine "radiates" needles (when angry, his eyes were horrible, like forbidden punctuation marks from an ancient lexicon of disastrous deeds), yet would pull the truck over on the way home to sit and watch a beautiful sunset (pointing it out, "wow, that's so beautiful"), and would always jar and free a spider found in the home, never kill it; hated homosexuals (and called them just what you'd expect), assaulted them in public for winking at him, and also had many effeminate mannerisms, like sitting with his legs crossed at the knee (which I've never, ever seen a straight man do as a regular mannerism); he pensively and gently stroked his ear with a beard hair while relaxing, and eventually gave up the belt for the hand and the broom. He would rage out on something stupid like me trying to get the last word, yet laugh when I got suspended for three days for drinking in school (14).

I write this because I think true stories and feelings help everyone, in some small way. Just because life is reporting back from all quadrants. And with the entire map of transmissions, we can find and overall underlying design for ourselves to live a better way. I don't write any of this for any kind of sympathy. Receiving any lurid type of "sympathy" for talking about this stuff would be distracting. Many people have been through much worse than me, and are right at this very moment. I mainly bring this up right here and now to paint a good picture of what I came from, in terms of what attitudes I have had to sift through. To give some backstory on my own attitudes.

My adoptive father also taught me some about the power of language...in his own way. Like the time I said "scumbag" when I was eight. He just about lost his mind. To him, it was a street term for "rubber" (okay, that's where the word came from) and he found it worth getting very intense over. It made me very curious. Because to me, "scumbag" just meant "jerk." I didn't visualize the visceral scenarios he must have. But he hinted at a great power in these small words that one might only think were silly.

Like if you called him "buddy." Yeh, he would get mad! "Don't call me buddy. I'm not your buddy" he'd say. I wish I could convey to you the current of electricity he could put into any group of words. I cannot. If I try, it sounds dramatic, over the top. It may be something best done with song, or film.

To him, "buddy" was code word for "male lover" or something like that. "Where's the Kotex?" he'd ask me when I was one of the first kids in my grade to get my ear pierced (way back in the 80s, when you had to be careful to get the left ear pierced or else it meant you were someone's...Buddy).

Words were extremely important to Gearheart. Getting the last one, not being called ones he didnt want to, not knowing less than you.

I feel there are two things I have to cop to. I'm sure there have been other things, but I hope you believe me when I say that while it would have been understandable, I never really took on his feeling about Black people, other races, or gays. He may have left me a few things to work out in other areas. But the obvious things were easy to shunt away. Why? Because I did not embrace him as a role model. I quickly categorized him as an antagonist, even as a child. And you are less likely to want to imitate someone you see as an enemy. However, the more subtle things that weren't stated by him but only demonstrated by him may have sunk in a little deeper. But we're getting there.

The first thing that really sticks in my mind—and it's not as if it is a massive event yet it really bothers me still because it was so idiotic to say—was a comment I made to a friend in the dojang. (Korean word for "school," where you study Tae Kwon Do.) He had mentioned bringing in a CD and giving it to me. He was Black. I liked him a lot. You grow a bond with people you begin training with, advance through the ranks with, see tested and thrive. I liked him and his two younger brothers. We all trained together. And I was happy to get the CD. It was a mainstream, Alternative style album. (How's that for a contradiction in terms? That's why I always had trouble with that "alternative" label.) And he remembered one day that he had said he'd bring it in for me. That he didn't really think he enjoyed it anymore. Trying to make him feel BETTER about giving me the CD, I reassured him that "Yeah, because it's not really black music."

I know. I know, I know, I know. It was a stupid, ignorant thing to say. And I was 29, not 15 or something. The most horrible thing was that he was my friend and I meant nothing wrong at all by saying that. I guess I felt I knew...because I had listened to "black music" most of my life! I've always been into "black music;" hell, I followed hip-hop since it started, I had the original Sugar Hill Gang record, tracked UTFO, Grandmaster Flash, Bob Marley, Fat Boys, NWA...man, the list goes on. Didn't I have the right to say what was "black music" and what was not? Idiot. I wanted the CD so bad I went and proved how stupid I was willing to be to get it. It did not occur to me that if I could listen to "Black Music," he could choose not to. And thus...what did that really mean, in the context I had tried to use it?

I am stunned at how ignorant my statement sounds to my ears today. And that I felt comfortable saying it to my friend. I cop to it to be honest, and so that I can't pretend I've always had such groovy attitudes, or even that I'm made of them througha nd through. I have to maintain a overview. But I try to do that anyway. The examined life and all that. Check ourselves. I also must say that if I can feel so ashamed now, that is good. It means I am a little ahead of where I was. Although the awareness and admission doesn't guarantee that I can't slip back in some other area.

But I do think with effort and examination...and long walks in the sun, I do get better.

I like to say that everyone can change, and everyone ought to have the chance to do so. "Racism" is so tricky. It does not always have to be an instrument of aggression. Racist thought can be a child of generosity, even, and a commodity you wouldn't dream of keeping from your good friends.

I did think later about what I said. I thought about it over and over again. I wanted to go back and castigate myself in front of him for making him feel so on-the-spot small. To fret and moan and wring my hands and kick dirt on my own shoes. As you can see, it stays with me. This one dumbass reflection of my own ignorance. As if the man can't listen to corny mainstream music f he wants. I can visualize this idiot version of Me being at the Tower Records store when he tried to buy it: "Sorry, sir. This CD is for non-Blacks." (Of course now I'm being completely ridiculous, please don't think I'd really do that!)

But there is no moaning to him nor castigating or prostrating myself (that's not as dirty as it sounds go LOOK IT UP), just as often with our stories, there is nobody to absolve us. Some things you are just left with, and must look at for a time before you decide how to make it okay. And then do so. If you can.

The other thing I'd have to cop to feels bigger. It's a song called [edited out - i know it makes it sound more ominous, but after I posted it I thought "Why give anyone something to hunt for and perhaps use for ill intent?" the title is not remarkeable or a slur of any type] that I wrote in 1992, after living in a city that was still squirming from race riots a few years earlier. Now, I'd rather this go away and I never have to think about it, but that's too easy. And doesn't help me change at all, I don't think.

We all have reasons for our ignorance and fear and hate. We have to abdicate them anyway. How intricate and sticky this whole racism thing can be. Especially when everyone comes together with their own Reasons to hate or act ignorant.

I came into that city with a friend. We were musicians, and we were the same ones who had done cross-country traveling since we were 19 and 16, respectively. At this point, I think I was about 23 and he was 20. We were good (not "buddies") friends, we didn't start no shit, we had no "issues" with race, didn't think in those terms. He was White, and I was the odd hybrid of American of Mexican descent-in-denial of his Brownness. On the continuum, we were very "cool" and "kind" people. Very prone to enjoy people despite their color. We were our own version of "hippies" or "musicians." Totally into our trip, and it all had to do with music. We were into existentialist nonsense, the verbose artistas, oh so kerouac or butkowskian or dylanesque, and that's really all we cared about. We'd walk around joking, going off on riffs, dreaming of opening up some kind of business where we could do our art and get paid for it, and one day while walking through the city on a snowfallen day and were suddenly edged into an alley by two black guys. They eventually tried to scare the shit out of us in an alley, bombed us with snowballs, acted hostile, etc. No reason. No reason that I knew of. I didn't do anything to them, we didn't give them looks, didn't wander into anyone's turf or anything. They seem to be just a couple guys who had their own reasons for bringing our day to such a place. That day, I didn't even know the area's history, the racial tension still in the air.

I do not like being physically threatened or scared or beat. It brings up uncomfortable memories. I mean that day, we just escaped. And we didn't come back with guns or sticks or anything. Like I said, that was not our scene. We just wanted to play music and do art. We didnt fancy ourselves part of that city, even. Just wanderers, gypsies. Being accosted by a couple street kids (or just guys on the street) was unexpected and a complete surprise.

It wasn't the first time I've been with friends and cornered. Aside from the many incidents in my youth where I've been bullied (it happens to small kids) or gone through through the gauntlet at home—I've, later, been backed up against the wall at night, had glass bottles pelted at me like a rain of missiles, at night, nothing around by darkness and desperation. I've had a few different instances of threat, and I almost always have reacted violently myself. Whether it was to strike back violently, to escape violently, or just suffering a violent physical reaction (my back can go into spasm if keyed by a super high level of emotion or drama or threat or trauma, but i'm talking a level of drama like car crash level of tension). Remember, I don't point out any of this to say I was "right" in my response. In fact, that's the point. I delineate this to once again underline that we all have our Reasons for turning to that which only makes things worse. It is these Reasons that hold the potential for the human race's utter disharmony and destruction, if I may be so dramatic. (I may.)

This time, I did not react violently. It wasn't that dramatic a meeting of events. Yet, things like this begin "cycling" in my mind, and won't stop for a long, long, time. My music is almost always my personal therapy.

[UPDATE: I have edited out any lyrics to the song. I know by doing this it makes you feel they are terrible. But...they are not. Yet, the song is just an ugly reaction to me. It says nothing, and for that reason along it is ugly, not for specific lyrics. It makes no good points. It just mocks, and makes fun. It reacts against the meme of "you are jealous and just want to be like us" and this song is saying "who would want to be like you?"

I thought long about whether I was just putting away something I felt bad about because I don't want to look at it. But I feel providing any fodder for that energy I was in then cannot be good, can only lend a hand against what I've come to feel today. So I hope it is enough for my purposes to talk about the song without being more specific; to admit to the "assault" without teaching someone the specific techniques to repeat it, to metaphorize.]

I hate writing all this. But I want to be honest. I always tell people that the greatest strength is bare truth. [except when you must edit that bare truth] Once you have that, nobody can tear anything away. [especially if Google does not cache] You have already past your own test. If I tell people this, I must try to live it. [and in this way become a righteous redactor]

I left that city, with my Reasons and my songs. I ended up in the backwoods of Upstate New York, where the song found a small circle of great appreciators. These were all White people. This was an area where I was called "Jack" and where I never once brought up anything about being Mexican. It was another land, another lifetime. That was the time period I thought I could stand aside from my own roots, and hop on another bandwagon, guess I was just like Malkin and Gonzales. I hope I've changed a lot since then.

I was asked to play the song live, people loved it. All to my present shame. But I can also say that I never posted it online, and I don't post the lyrics and I don't in any way help that song to live. [thus above edit] Yet, I know it's out there. And I wish I could burn every copy. I wish I could call up a prominent Black leader and apologize my past away.

But that's not how this thing works.

Why did I write it? I had a Reason, vato. Someone brought physical harm on me. For no "reason." Oh wait. They did have a Reason. I just didn't know it. Who knows what they suffered in the atmosphere of post-race riots? Who knows what happened to them? What if the people who started the race riots had "reasons," too? I bet they did. I bet my adoptive father had Reasons. He was a fatherless white kid in the projects of the fucking DMZ whose older brothers didn't even protect him, but antagonized him, too. I think the people in the woods of NY had Reasons, too. They were scared, maybe had been antagonized, too. Or taught, through antagonism, their own fears by parents. They loved the lines "I want to walk with a gang of ten so you know that you just can't fuck with us." Why?

Fear.

We're all scared. We are tiptoeing and we hate it. But why do we tiptoe, and why are we scared, and why do we sense this inexorable Unspoken lurking?

I say because this land is haunted by ghosts. By deeds never owned nor addressed. And they run and whisper about us, lifting rusty lids on heart wounds and rinsing scars with gasoline. At night, the graves breathe and send us reminders. Mists of rotten moss-miasma, and blood-soaked embers, always hissing, softly hissing.

As a nation and as individuals, we can not free ourselves from our past until we face it.

SO—I ASKED A QUESTION THAT I HAVE NOT YET ANSWERED, and it was What, really, do I have to say?

After years of verbal feats and badges and degrees and compliments and self-congrulations, the answer is "I don't know."

And that's the truth. I'm not even being clever. I don't know at any time my all-over, summingupness, definitive take on anything. In fact, thinking I did was a trap. Thinking I do is a trap always waiting. Thinking I can be so rigid, so fixed, so arrived, such a master of conquest over the wilderness of Self and Other and All is a trap. I mentioned in an earlier post practicing saying "I don't know," or "I need to think about that." And this is where I've arrived. I change, all the time. Humans do. Where did we get the idea that from moment to moment, we arrive at fixed and defined spots? I don't know, but I don't agree with that paradigm anymore. I am always a mystery to myself. If you ask me something, I must slow down and really let it work on me. Or I should. I may be a new Thing just with the addition of your question. I don't want to reel off hot reactions so much anymore. Those are protections. I want to be truthful. I don't want to clear away the murk, the dust, the dirt. I don't want to obscure it with an ocean of obfuscation. I want to let you be who you are at any moment, and I want to be someone who enjoys that and is allowed the same thing.

And I think for now that is my conclusion. For this post, for this moment. Language is a power. But ware it does not use you. Because all the while we stack up an arsenal of verbs, descriptors, metaphors, borrowed logic, and our very own Reasons for every action—we summon an army of brooms that will more than likely, bury our fragile truth.

PS:
My friend in the Dojang never gave me that CD. He probably decided that he did, after all, enjoy it.

[update: i'm sorry to bust in with edits and mock myself...but isn't it best, really? i get so serious as i sit on this beach of verbiage, happily shaping all my stinky castles!]