'Look In Their Eyes, Ma, You'll See Me'
Fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept,
for this one quality is the foundation of Manself,
and this one quality is Man,
distinctive in the universe.
The home phone rang today in the middle of the day.
I put my book down and briskly made my way through the hall before the fourth ring, thinking that maybe my wife or someone else who knows I'm home right now because I have to work tonight just needs to ask me a question.
I soon as I put my finger down to answer the call, though, I knew that I would be answering the call of someone who doesn't know me but who wants something from me anyway.
I usually know this when people call me Christopher, which is my first name. This man didn't do that this time. It happened the other way.
He asked for my wife.
When I told him she wasn't here, he asked if I were here husband.
"Yes."
"Hi, I wanted to see if you'd be interested in joining the (was it the Committee? Association? Coalition?) To Stop Illegal Immigration."
And time quickly slowed down to sub-seconds within seconds.
It wasn't just the irony. It was the affirmation. The confluence of past and present and fiction and reality.
Here I am, on a quiet day before I have to go to work, reading the center core of "The Grapes of Wrath," doing what I should have done 15 years ago when I tried to bullshit my way through book reports.
You know, it's the one about scores of family being forced off their land by invisible banks and compelled to head west to magical California, where there's so much promise and opportunity because a handbill told you so.
Only to find so much hatred for the disheveled masses seeking refuge and just a small slice of the excess left behind.
Where people are dying in abstract ways, but mainly as a result of the phenomenon of people de-humanizing other people. Which is the same as death, if you think about it, because you cease to be a person if you can't fight your hunger and your pride to remain what makes you a person.
As all good art does -- or even just a sublime combination of a few words does -- you are able to think of what the essence of something is through a story told about it, the story you have molded into a prism through which you see a certain thing as it is.
That's why Jesus spoke in parables.
And it's why I love to hear the tales children spin on the affairs of matters.
But, to the man seeking to enlist soldiers into his association/committee/coaltion to battle illegal immigration, let's just say ...
"No, I'm not interested in that."
8 comments:
A little saucy when you posted this, perhaps? Or maybe a It's all the same anyway.
Buy buy buy from the people who can sell. I can never turn the bastards down. I like Newsweek and they like selling magazines. It's win-win, but is it a scam? Door to door, phone to phone. Stay isolated but don't get cut off.
As for coalitions/groups/associations/commitees/societies...
Count the rest of us out. Certain people need a group to identify themselves. The rest need to continue the search without convenient calls from telemarketers telling us what to think.
Drunk... I stood in line to get halo 3 and i'm hammered. So, forgive me.
For the most part the people behind all these associations/coalitions/committees are white supremacists groups so it's best to stay clear even if you do think illegal immigration is a bad thing. I would never join anyway though. Like you said, any group who's main purpose is to dehumanize another group of people sucks.
yep, they made us read steinbeck at school. that one and of mice and men.
i guess my own journey is similar to that of the joads.
they don't bother with those committees over here...they just stab the immigrants or beat the shit out of them, usually over who was first in a queue. this country sucks.
I have two friends who forward me emails that tick me off, mainly jokes about immigrants and Middle Easterners. It pisses me off. If they're truly my friends, how can they not know that the "humor" won't be appreciated? Both had grandparents who immigrated, which blows my mind. Short of telling them to fuck off, I haven't come up with a surefire way to make them quit.
Oh, the irony.
http://lowebrow.blogspot.com/2007/09/could-this-have-been-me.html
When you mentioned people dehumanizing other people, this came to mind.
Ha, very restrained of you.
what's interesting to me about the immigrant thing is how much we use what they do here but then feel victimized by them when they are encouraged to come here.
like in that white stripes song ... "who's using who, you can't be a pimp and a prostitute, too."
kind of an obvious observation, but still interesting. i guess the joads, though, weren't needed. these people are, but are still treated the same.
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