Mind(ing) the Gap

Hope you're having a great

 

AM!

 

C U Soon ...

Looking Fallward

Another Summer's End ...

* * *

Labor, No Love Lost (2013)

Another Black (and White) Eye

Lately, over the past ten years or so, in what are supposed to be "dog days" -- the world on vacation and sweating out (sitting out) the last weeks of summer (or August, in any case) -- full of unwatched news cycles ... traditionally, nobody paying attention ...

Since 2005 or so, our lazy hazy crazy last dayz of summer have unleashed Hurricane Katrina ... the NSA depths ... a tortured Robin Williams' soul (today, just weeks later, we pray for Joan Rivers) ...

And a fear-mongered, race-baited, hate-fueled carnival, belched from the bowels of flyover country ... setting things back again, erasing gains made.  Although happily, with the possible exception of Jon Stewart, most people in the U.S. have come to understand that RACE did not necessarily need to be played this time in Ferguson, Missouri.

Michael Brown was black and the cop is white.  So?

November 2014 grand jury decision:  We live in Turkey Times.

How twistedly "comforting"!  Convenient to too many.  A superb excuse!  For increasingly mobile, handily organized and bit-champing losers to get up and do something ... to whiff opportunity and  attack like wolves, a small town and pack of public protectors, scarcely equipped to handle such limelight ...

In fact, as the inciteful, typically ridiculous media coverage wore on (and on) this month, racial flames quickly wound up on the back burner, as video of Michael Brown robbing a convenience store surfaced ... the gunned down Michael Brown iconically wearing the exact same clothing -- right down to his flip-flops or whatever they were -- as he lay motionless, lifeless, in the street.

Was it "hunting season" to white cops in Ferguson?  Was (Is) Darren Wilson a vicious, predatory racist?  Or a police officer confronted by a large and menacing individual who was, by accounts, "walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic" ... and therefore, the police officer -- doing the job of any police officer, of any color, anywhere -- reached out to the large and menacing individual and said, "Stop doing that.  Stop walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic.  You're going to get hurt, or cause an accident and hurt others.  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  Get out of the street!"

Now in such a situation, if the large and menacing individual pipes up either literally or figuratively and says, "NO", the situation becomes inherently escalated; tensions, automatically mounted.

If the large and menacing individual then advances toward the police officer, especially if instructed to stand still (or walk the other way and stop being a nuisance) ... Escalated.  If the large and menacing individual is sneering or snarling, or maybe swearing ... defiant in any way ... likewise, escalated.

At a certain point, whether or not the large and menacing individual is literally "armed and dangerous", he effectively becomes so.  If he's throwing punches, BOOM!

Guess what?  Escalated, to Danger from Nuisance:  intrinsically a threat to public safety ... as well as to himself, if there seems to be complete disregard for consequences, including his own welfare.

Michael Brown was caught on video roughing up a store owner; and then he decided to wander in traffic.  WHY?

If I did either of those things, I would expect a visit from police.  Because Michael Brown was not brandishing a weapon, it's somehow OKAY that he strong-armed a store owner, stole a few things and then wandered around, menacing drivers and police officers?  Because it was "his" neighborhood??  Because he wasn't "armed", he therefore couldn't be dangerous, to himself and others ... and such black and white thinking is really okay?

Michael Brown should have just been left alone, in other words, to enjoy his Saturday, and ignored by cops when he ignored and advanced toward them?

Really?

Should Michael Brown have been shot six times in the face of perceived threat (danger), given the fact that he himself was not armed?  A single bullet, a warning shot in the air, might have sufficed.

Should Michael Brown have been killed?  And then left to die in the street, uncovered for hours, like so much carrion?  Certainly not.

Were mistakes made by cops in the handling of this?  And those mistakes amplified, magnified, emotionalized, dramatized by a race-baiting media and incendiary public?

Yes and yes.  Yes.

And did Michael Brown happen to be black, and his killer, a small town police officer, white?

Sadly YES.

Armed & Dangerous

So sadly, here we go again ...

Where There May Be

On a train in France a couple weeks ago (thankfully, not this one), I dove into an unreserved seat beside a petulant clove cigarette - this fragrant, smoking thing named Zoé.

Seeing Zoé's golden legs up on the back of my neck the seat in front of her, spying the empty seat beside, I went sprinting down the train aisle toward it, only to be met by loud protestations as Zoé sensed her alone time getting squashed.

"There are plently of empty seats, Monsieur!" this angry bird actually snapped at me.

"Bone swa," I grunted.  "Like to sit here."

Once, twenty years or so ago, there wouldn't have been this French resistance ... my presence, and Zoé's together, would've formed a pièce de résistance!  Led to peace ... Would've spelled detente!

Of course, I was that much younger then ... and Zoé, newborn ... But the point I'm trying to make is that seasons, things and people change.  If I felt growing "old" back then, imagine being middle aged now - when in an equivalent number of years removed, I'll be pushing seventy ... then daisies ...

"The Death of Jeff Glovsky"

And so might you.

What isn't changing naturally, though, is the way strangers regard each other.  Like nuisances and interruptions ... With little real interest, attention or even eye contact ... With little compulsion felt to look away from whatever else they're doing, playing or listening to at the moment their worlds -- or Words with Friends -- are invaded.

I feel all ages feed this corruption.  It's no longer a "Millennial" thing.  Our need to be alone, in fact, be anti-social with each other, is as pervasive as it is desperate.  Ironic on so many levels:  when we're fed transparently empty "news", and have no one who's driving the apple cart as it careens ever faster toward onrushing traffic, the brakes and steering wheels useless, threadbare tires spinning off ...

We need each other!

Otherwise, no stories left to build upon.  No love, or lust -- potential! -- unrequited ... carried through the decades, firing dreams and weighting memories, and hope (yet hopeful.  Waiting);

for who or what will be there when our "friends" outgrow their sex machines?  "Devices", "apps" and glowing tubes ... their piracies, idiocies, "reality" (really?) ... forced "fails", "quirks", fakely "eccentric" idiosyncracies?

"Blu Jg (Blue.Period) ... in E Major"

Me, I prefer to tread cobblestoned streets of each city ... avoiding the parking lot choked  superhighways (especially our "information" one) to pave my own roads ...

For better or worse!  When young, or now old ... willing riders or empty seats beside me ... Not "alone"; ever lonely, though ...

I'll get there.

Wherever "there" may be.

Splash Forth (Summer)

 

 

  

Jahr, Dude!

Bild The Year

"Black and White", ©Jeff Glovsky

2014 Custom Calendars / individuellen Kalendern

Labor, No Love Lost

(or, Square Peg in a Round World)

I'm ill-fitting, and self-absorbed.

Most of my writing is in the first person, and I'd never heard of Paula Deen until last month.  Even in my salad days -- or more accurately, my bacon cheeseburger (medium rare), profiterole sundae days (and late night, bad life music nights) -- I couldn't care less about popular culture.

Knee-jerkingly antipathetic toward anything "mainstream", I pointedly avoided the sardonics of "Seinfeld" ... the cloying, warm fuzziness of "Friends" ... the bilious pomposities of Rosie and Oprah, the horse jocularities of Ed and Jay Leno ...

Of course, Ed McMahon was with Johnny Carson - I stopped having time for that guy too, when he hosted the Oscars!  Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg, forget it.  And Robin Williams ended up going the same route:  essentially abandoning all that shtick about "drugs and people passing out" ... betraying his essence, reigning himself in and joining the cloying and warm, fuzzy "mainstream".

When Howard Stern became a judge on "America's Got Talent", all bets were off.  That, more than anything, put a nail in the coffin of what I perceived to be my 'youth':  rebellious, obnoxious, enigmatic ... Outside looking in, but not wanting to be in.

My early work life, not a whole lot different.  The fake camaraderie and/or seeming pointlessness of the American "air-conditioned nightmare", as Henry Miller put it (and as it perfectly describes too many of the office work wheels I've been a cog in) provided a woefully bumpy labor ride as a young adult ... and working in restaurants, I would either stare wistfully at a couple's table, assessing their body language, watching them smile and behave with each other and wishing I had someone to do the same with;

or wistfully stare at the asses of waitresses - blithely ignoring all other needs.

I've lost jobs and had businesses fail, often through nobody's fault but mine.  I've been labeled inappropriate, apathetic, inefficient, off my game, "superior to superiors", inferior to what's needed, beyond what's acceptable ... and, almost as ludicrous as the suggestion of (I guess) arrogance or condescension in the superiority comment above, I've been called unclean.

Now as you might imagine, of all of these, the complaint about my personal hygiene stinks the most.  Then again, it was probably the most head-scratching and off the mark, in terms of not only my work ethic and job performance, but also (as anyone who knows me will attest), my person.

Simply put, I am clean.  You're welcome to smell me.  I lift up my arms, with my shirt off, and dance; I blow in your face my hot, sweet-smelling breath ... I trust you'll inspect the long middle fingernails thrust with insouciance deep into your eyeballs.  And lick me.

By all means, you can lick me.

I'm clean.

This is what ricocheted through my brain, the day I got sent home from the lakeside restaurant where I used to wash dishes -- an early foray into underemployment -- and where, just a few hours earlier, Big Katy (Boss Lady) had reprimanded me that day about not chopping up some lettuce correctly.

"Make sure you really chop it!" said she ... pushing another fingerful from the salad bar into her mouth.  "This way, the customers can really get at it!"

She left the dining area then -- and me, in my filthy dishwashing apron, standing there with a head of lettuce which she'd lobbed my way like a softball pitch, after peeling a leaf off and blowing her nose with it -- and a few hours later, I get sent home because I'm "unclean"!

This is how people roll, of course.  The dirtiest, weakest, sickest links are always the quickest to point and think, "Do (and say) unto others ... "

And thus they do ... when they fit well.

Happy Labor Day!

"Night Work", ©Jeff Glovsky