"In a controversy the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for the truth and have begun striving for ourselves." - Buddha
"Disturbing," she says to me, assessing my writing. "Obviously, you're very angry."
Am I? I wouldn't say very angry. "Very" being the overused word of a pre-teen, or twit waking up to an AOL homepage: 'This star's dress was very awkward' ... 'What happened next was very cute!' ...
Verily, I pray, forsooth, spare me your limp and impotent adverbs!
"The new German one is weird," she says smartly ... failing (not deigning) to elaborate. "What do you hope to achieve with this?"
"With what?"
"Your writing. Little stories."
"My 'little stories' comprise the pieces, and piecing together, of a life."
"I see."
"However bent, misspent, or insignificant ... small. I write with a big mouth!"
"You talk like you write," she says, again smartly.
"Vice versa. But thank you."
I swallow a toothpick -- the gnawed, wet remains of one -- by mistake. "Holy shit ..."
"Want some water?" She hands me a glass of wine.
I started this blog (to answer the question) with one goal in mind: to stop, at the very least, counter, the Ripoff Reports and other libelous public defecations on my name ... which have been my scarlet letter, my Jogi Löw moment, my 15 minutes of internet infamy, since 2010.
In the disgusting, un-private glass sphere that our globe, and each of our lives, have become, I refuse to relinquish control of my name ... my life, my potential for livelihood ... because one individual -- in his own mind, running around with cape and red underpants, thinking he was doing something Super and righteous ... and others then, blindly, hysterically piling on, compounding the damages inflicted and delaying, if not preventing, (re)solutions -- campaigned to defame, "name and shame" and destroy me.
No.
That won't happen. Nothing like it.
Again.
"I'm very angry. You're right," I say.
Get over it, Jeffrey ... my mom used to say, when I'd petulantly refuse to do something or other if things didn't go, from the get-go, my way; then my first 'real' job in New York, as a light and sound engineer at a theater/cabaret called The Ballroom ...
Eventually, I quit The Ballroom, and I was at this party when The Doors came on: "Five to One", and the line, "Your ballroom days are over, baby" ...
Having just left a job at a place called The Ballroom, I bellowed and blustered along with that line, in my best and loudest, drunk Jim Morrison.
"No one cares, Jeff," my then-girlfriend told me.
I went home from the party that night alone.
My point being, I know. I get it: No one does care. And I've already made my belabored points, in writing and publicly flailing away.
But I care.
My goal will be achieved.
My voice in a cape, and my pen in red underpants ... Saving my name and reputation.
My goal will be achieved.
My voice in a cape, and my pen in red underpants ... Saving my name and reputation.
