Take heed, I know it well. . . . .

 ******************

He was into "Akido"-- the ancient, subtle Oriental art of playing negative energy against itself and letting all pass you like a crying wind, leaving the master unscathed. Gary, in a rare moment of jovialness, was horsing around with the kids out in the snow-- practicing his devilish, wizened tricks from The East-- not letting himself get caught up in a tangle of arms and legs but tripping us up and knocking us down one by one. It was "The Jailer" showing his mastery. Then it was "my turn", the big ox, and I flipped Gary over my shoulder with a grunt.

My only impression was sailing legs and Gary looking bewildered in a snow bank as he grinned around like a chagrinned rabbit, and deliberated whether or not to break all the bones in my hand.

So much for Eastern philosophy. . . . .

********************

Even in this era of new-fanged technology!

And Scott cut the strings quick.

"Ah, naturally," said the pasty-faced grad student with a ponytail as he tapped his glasses, "the internet was a creation of 'ARPANET' in 1969, a manifestation of the military-industrial complex in event of, ah, nuclear war so computers could share information across a damaged network". The tour continued. "It's really an integrated solution and a sound model for networking needs".

I had a keen sense of humor, but I wasn't confident like Scott. . . . . I couldn't tell stories like Scott. I wanted to be Scott, but without the rough edges. Like how at a drunken party he and his friends stripped two passed-out dudes naked and packed them into bed with their arms wrapped around each other and the horror as they slowly swam back into cognizance with a warm body at their side that was not a pretty girl. Or when he talked about scared, weak urbanites getting torn to pieces in prison to the 9th grade's tittering delight. Or how he bet his friends $20 that he could sleep with a dumb, blond confused ditz or even informing how many calories were in a mouthful of semen to the class's hilarity as I looked over to the girl I loved with sadness, she who had rejected me for my quirks and gnarled search for existential meaning that had turned me into an heroic fool who failed every test of teenaged "acceptability" in this contorting limbo bar of life he could not match to save his life.

Were our daughters & loved ones
safe in a world like this?

Naturally, to be suave in an urban setting you voted for Clinton. You were pro-choice and sensitive to women's issues. You said the right things, seducing her in your "lager-lad" graces as you raised your eyebrows with witty significance like the foulest of cynics.

"When she starts leaving tampons in your medicine cabinet, that's when you know the two of you are really serious!" he nodded with a wink.

He spoke of multiculturalism, and by the time I had steadied myself with deep piety for this weighty, universal theme that was "the coin of the realm" in this snail-eyed age he had long since moved on. All of this seemed to sweep blindly past the eyes of the tuned-out New Left utopians who wandered around in a "who-am-I-to-judge" daze, and you began to garner deep suspicions about this liberal ideology that tolerated the omissions of EVIL from it's own. But what was I but one stupid kid? And it seemed easier and safer just to go along. . . . .

"Awww, SHIT. Awww, SHIT".

"Awww, SHIT"."

The "High Scores" list was an amusing pun if you were sharp enough to catch it. It grew very tiresome very quick and the more uptight faculty would holler at the kids to turn down the volume because observers ($$$) were coming through to fund this alternative liberal arts utopia, where technology was "the key to the future". Your charity dollars at work!

"Awww, SHIT".

Scott merely raised his arm up at the depravity, perfectly at home. He ruled over his fiefdom, the "tech lab". When he was cultivating his business clients on school time, the kids knew to lay low and play their shareware games with petty sniggles.

Scott was leaving us.

Cyber-commerce beckoned, and he figured that he could make a hell of a lot more than $20,000/year being a vile kid's show host like a winged Mephistopheles on an alcohol binge. Straighten up, get a haircut, wear a suit, go into consulting for the sake of hand-flapping technological dullards. Fuck their women, even. He was writing his own ticket, and though I hated his guts I was going to miss him.

I felt like a south sea islander watching his missionary carve away at a canoe to sail away forever.

"What are you lookin' at?" Scott shaking his head ever-so-slightly before he turned his beady eyes back to the screen like a winged bat, the Lucifer of hair-splitting interjection that could somehow always rationalize his selective morality, but only when it suited him.

There was so much to learn from this man, how to be sharp and confident and how to talk to girls. Women. . . . . beautiful women who went to this very school whom I didn't have the slightest idea of how to approach. Would I always be a hapless white sack of shit in the scheme of things? On the losing end of evolution? Misunderstood, hated? Laughed at? Alone?

Or would one only stew in helplessness?

****************

Yvette stood in the doorway and the 9th graders' eyes turned to meet her. Brown hair whipped up in waves, dressed in a light blue shirt and jeans. Scott, dirty and cynical as always, congratulated her on those veritable senior's accomplishments-- beckoning her to walk further into the rectangular room that doubled as a band practice space. The accoutrements of a liberal arts education hung on the wall-- a laminated poster of the Greek Acropolis, and the sleeve of a "Village People" record. She stepped forward-- half-confident, half-embarrassed-- knowing not to draw too close to this dubious trickster with the mean, cruel eyes, trying to repress her laughter borne of distrust. Rumor was that he went out with one of his 19 year-old students after she graduated.

She-- this shy, patriotic Jewish flower I loved from afar. And the golden girl, no less-- the one they trot out at fundraisers-- smiling, hand-clasped proof that small, alternative, private education works! The one, cute as a button, who delivered patrons' coats at the end of "Bingo Night" as administrators barely held on by the skin of their ingratiating teeth! Why, cut a check for $10,000 on the spot! But note that her neighborhood behind the school was gated, and covered with sharp spikes to keep out "the niggers & gays", all lurching around with their pants around their ankles and high on the liquor of lenience.

If there was a photograph, an archetype of what she represented to that close-knit community, she would be huddled around with the others, that urban, street-smart, friendly place. Nothing sells a place quite like a beautiful girl, quick to smile, suggesting so much. . . . . as you sold your soul to the devil at "Crossroads school" like a man holding up his chained wrists and lamenting the honeyed trap of "the happy end" which ultimately leaves us all worse off.

I wanted to speed up time and leave my grade behind. Out of that group of losers, misfits, and developmentally-disordered cretins who frankly, couldn't "cut it anywhere else" it seemed that everyone had to turn on somebody. I wanted to join the older kids, but that was impossible, always ushered into a room of hostiles who belittled my alternative point of view like a scene inside a state lock-up for a bunch of sniggering half-wits. They hated me, they misunderstood me, they abused me, they spat on me, they tortured me, they raped my feeling of self-regard.

The older kids liked me for my wit and intelligence, and considered me to be one of them because I looked their age and "could talk shop". . . . . and in many ways I was by far their equal. Yet when Yvette sat out in the hallway, I could not physically pass in front of her, I felt so shy and powerless as a teenaged boy who was never taught by his passive father "how to be a man and take the initiative".

On the cusp of holiday break, Yvette was on a soaring mission. She was looking for the Jewish kids to throw together a presentation about Hanukkah. I joined, but in truth I was never one of them. . . . . only on my mother's side, and she never had strong ties with that community. Only in the secular-Jewish sense of eating bagels and falling for New Age clap-trap like her fellow 20th century, crack-brained rootless who were into rainbows, dildos, and hollistic therapy if not "the healing power of crystals" as I rolled my eyes at her constant pecking intrusions.

I leapt at the opportunity, just to be counted in with this wonderful young woman and I merely stood there with everyone else as she passionately outlined the basics of something ancient and gnarled and loaded with the cultural cachet of holy selflessness I barely understood in front of an assembly before some black Muslims explained the importance of Kwwanza. And that was it, about the only occasion I ever had to exchange words with her.

Only because of Yvette, did I have fascination with anything Jewish-- and only to feel closer to her, in sympathy like a loyal city kid never truer and bluer. I didn't particularly relate to this tangled history of repression and group martyrdom fantasies and ACLU-type liberalism that took down the Christmas Tree from city hall with pressing, turtle-dicked insistence through the anti-democratic courts. To pick a random point in history would not be in 1909 with an anarchist radical scratching out a manifesto in a grubby New York City tenement about how the hidden currents in our godless universe inherently pointed to "the overthrow of the state" that led to communism. . . . . a rather bloodless way of life that dialectical materialism could not reconcile with the myth and greatness of human legend-telling.

This was a contradiction in my life in coming from a culturally-mixed household. . . . . I was too Lutheran to fit into the Jewish community and too Jewish to fit into the broader society. I was packed with too much brain, an excrescence of intelligence and restless thinking that had the ability to weigh several options like a good doctor or lawyer or economist or Talmudic scholar who could map it all together in a titanic web of connections. But if these talents aren't channeled right, they can be inverted back upon you in horribly destructive ways as you tally all the reasons why you're a worthless human being upon the cold, pitiless face of the modern city.

********************

It's somewhat amusing when I read your standard, pocket-sized edition of "The Winona Ryder Story". It almost plays out like a passion play, about how one day she showed up at her new school with short hair and a little vest and was mistaken for "a gay boy" by a bunch of rowdies and pounded to the point of being emotionally-traumatized. It was supposed to show "the intolerance of unsophisticated hicks" who could not understand "the genius" of a young swan "who would soon emerge in triumph as a young Hollywood beauty".

What I would say about such breathless verbiage in groveling biographies put out by impersonal chiselers of the celebrity industry is that it's very easy to write about the essential correctness of a person, brand, or an institution once they've made it, but beforehand none of us seem quite-so-destined. Like young Winona, you have a situation when you are like a Martian who has landed off a flying saucer-- all but wandering around with a space helmet and flailing around your hooks for hands-- and it's only a matter of time until the natives start throwing rocks. Why, they might even chase you over the hill with your strange family and figure "good riddance".

But it couldn't be said that "we didn't have it coming".

********************

After Gary dropped out "to parts unknown" presumably to Thailand for spiritual cleansing and/or bargain-rate sex, his replacement was a Turkish fellow named Zuff who pretty much took over teaching math for the rest of the semester and then was hired on "full time" the following year. He was scruffy. He looked to be about three cuts above an olive-skinned cafe street urchin in a port city overlooking the Bosphorous, though in the case of our bearded friend, he would sit around the table and perform mathematics. In an ideal world, wise men and philosophers would marvel and throw gold coins in his cup as they stroked their beards as my friend continued to unravel the mysteries of "The Quadradic Formula" right there on the page.

But there were no gold coins, nor much attention paid, not for the likes of a free-thinking Bohemian packing up his papers, maps, books, and flexible chess set in a rucksack and moving on when the authorities started giving him dirty looks. A boot to the bottom was his wages because he questioned authority. A "little death" unnoticed. So much for the "Socratic method"-- asking a chain of "dumb" questions that after a while the interrogated can't honestly answer. The upper hand, apparently, until the officer raised his club in anger and moved him along like a shivering cur.

If he was smart, he could have leaped to obey with over-obedience and made authority look ridiculous with sub-levels of irony. "Service with a smirk". In the Bible, this had an historical basis of "turning the other cheek" as a sign of disrespect instead of being kicked around like said cur.

But no, Zuff was taken to epic throes of self-pity.

Then there was the story of "Diogenes the Cynic", a man back in Ancient Greece who was so damn sour and set in his ways that he slept out in a broken rain barrel, didn't bathe, took a dump on the side of the road like a dog, and publicly masturbated in the business district just to show the world how curmudgeonly he was. Passerbys would stop by the fountain just to hear him preach on the virtues of believing in nothing as he rose his hand like a satanic Socrates. He owned only one possession, a drinking cup. When someone pointed out that he could live on less, he smashed it and drank with his cupped hands. Anyone with something to lose despised him.

Such a useless martyrdom, methinks, which would not play out in our days of modern hygiene. So it would be for "the unwanted philosopher"-- hungry, scorned, unneeded, despised, with scarcely even a warm place to shit, , , , , much less finding the shelter of well-paid employment.

I found that a little extreme, and wondered how that stance in one's personal life would attract prize girls like Yvette. Perhaps the truth was laid bare of what kind of quality feminine companionship an unwanted philosopher could draw around himself the time Zuff's girlfriend had some kind of flaky "crisis" and ran off to Chicago on short notice with his car.

Zuff was so nice, everybody walked all over him.

With his liberal sweetness, he could fall into exorbitant throes of self-pity. Like a man in a loin-cloth, laying on his side in the dungeon, lamenting the use of it all. Even at the age of 14, I could see how crazy it was and had to tell him that it had all the makings of a Green Party 10-penny comic opera. Or maybe I didn't tell him, because he could crack a smile once he realized that a thoughtful audience was listening to his existential fretting.

It was strange, how he could have courage in the face of authority but yet exhibit a hurting, "lay-it-on-me" martyrdom complex that played out a narrative of "crushed-yet-hopeful" righteousness in his head that would be inevitably betrayed and utterly "wiped out". Perhaps the conscious act of being on the far left is it's own agonied secular religion, a passion play of redemption found in the sympathy of others who show nuance and compassion. Perhaps all religions are rooted in a bit of self-abnegation and insanity, but Zuff laid it on awful thick.

Live for all, but understand that "the blood of the martyrs" only flows for oneself.

Zuff was so poor off, he could not even be inspired by the incredible narrative of "Forrest Gump"-- that one-in-a-billion chance that got to be everywhere in the course of history, born with the worst disadvantages imaginable, but turning it around all because he paired-up his "idiot savant" talents with his earnest, simplicity of heart and uncanny wisdom.

"He would have been EXPLOITED", groused Zuff in Green Party bitterness.

At some point, the discussion came down to "heaven on earth" or what a perfect world would be. For one, he said there would be no authority. . . . . no power-plays. . . . . no ego. . . . . and everyone would leave each other alone and be "open". How you can never really convince anyone of something until they were willing to have their minds changed and would otherwise be hostile and resistant if you even tried. There was a certain profitability in this "Babel of conflict" and all the forces of the status quo had to do in order to quash popular resistance to "the system" was pull some strings and get "the turkeys" to gobble ignorant buzz-words across the political spectrum, which-- incidentally, drowned out everything. Why this "shouting match" of chaos and confusion when anyone with sense could scratch out "the proof" in the dirt which ultimately settled all questions? Knowledge was a commodity that strove to be free and truth could not be duped so long as any man from below had the freedom "to check" the checkers.

And how in this dream world you would partner up with a brainy elfin goddess like Winona Ryder who would eagerly hold on to your every word as you breathlessly carried on like "a little professor", if not "a crusader for truth" like a scientist working selflessly in a lab out of some 1940's "Superman" cartoon with his beautiful assistant dressed up in Art-Deco women's clothing. She was soft where he was hard, complementary where he was weak, and though I didn't quite know who "this Winona Ryder" was exactly-- not by name, anyway-- I knew she had to be someone special in this world of filth and woe as we convened in the mouldy, reeking, indifferent basement with the humming fluorescent lights like two buoys upon a sea of darkness. There weren't many elfin brainy goddesses around, and even if they were in my line of sight-- like Yve wandering around the campus like a nymph of Valedictorian academia-- I wouldn't know what to say to one, except to lecture on pedanically about the world of John Hughes movies and classic arcade games like "Bad Dudes".

One afternoon, just about all the sap had been wrung out of him and he was like a dish-rag left out to dry. Once more, the faucets of those exorbitant throes of self-pity would squeak on, yes-- with all those rejoinders and cascading sentences such as "if only for" or "if not that", like a dying character on "Mobil Masterpiece Theatre" holding a hand up to his forehead, perking up "a little" now that a thoughtful audience was listening.

When the bleakness of the world hits us that deep, it's as if our immune system is weak and we're picking up various air-borne illnesses floating around to which the majority of the population, being hardier, are inured to with a stronger resistance. Men like Kurt Vonnegut and J.D. Salinger had frail constitutions and oftentimes found themselves in "the sick ward" of creative expression like a tuburculosis patient shivering with a blanket around their shoulders in a cancer ward.

The cartoon of our childhood demons haunt us-- a world where fantasy, nightmare, play, subconscious stirrings, and magic are all swirled into one heady brew where you're God of your universe and the texture of existence feels bigger, exaggerated. We must all return to the burst cocoon of where we once made our home and understand that it was a lot paltrier than you remembered, and that you can't really "go back". Think about it further, and you realize that cocoon is putrid with rot and fetid from the primordial transition and that yes, even children can die. . . . . teddy bears streaked with the puke of biohazard.

This "loss of innocence" was bothering my teacher, and his teeth were rattling with death.

"I'm tired of this job. I'm tired of arguing. I don't know why I bother. I'm sick of it"

"No you're not"

"Yes, I am"

"No, you're not"

"I'm tired of arguing"

"No, you're not"

"Yes, I am", and his eyes began to light up. . . . . beginning to understand.

"Then why are you arguing with me?"

Before I left, I walked over and gave him a hug. It cheered him up immediately, and he forgot all about "knocking on heaven's door" and left with a healthy bounce in his step. I had never seen him so happy. . . . . it took "a divine fool" to break his trance and that fool was me.

Why do I run this website for the world to see? You got to laugh at yourself, and if you gotta be anyone's fool I'll be Winona's. And you can't say that I ain't having a great time!

********************

"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

(Rheeee of Crickets)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

("I heard that, Missy!")