Bearing Witness

The graduate student who had a major crush on Ward liked me for myself; she was kind to me in an authentic way that was better for me then my too tight cleaving to my former best friend, Susan Davison. Susie-- I made Sue, and then her sister, live for me, because I did not really venture forth and take risks. With B---, the graduate, it was of a gentler tenor of mutual appreciation, and I got caught in the middle, between her and my philosophy professor, because she and I bonded, and she got hurt, with Ward and his open marriage rationalizations. I am not saying anything illegal occurred. B--- was of age, but I became the shoulder on whom she wept, and for that, I cannot forgive the not so spectacular instructor at Widener in his sinecured cocoon. Living his theories was a convenience which disregarded young adults like B--- and I were stupid. Though I no longer wear it, I still have the beige windbreaker she gave me before she departed. She had to go back, as she fell in love with Ward. I knew myself better. I was saturated with Jerry, besotted, obsessed in an unhealthy and dangerous manner. He and I are both circling the drain and I'm still writing it, flavors diminished as they may be, but I knew it was closer to intellectual rape as opposed to being Fallen, as B--- had fallen into a desire David was irresponsible to encourage, and I cannot forgive him. In anger, forgetting my rancor toward John for not seeing the woman I wanted to be for him, I told him in anger what Ward had wrought, and Tassoni and I were not so dissimilar in indignation. Tassoni threatened to go to the tenure committee. I attempted to dissuade him as I did not want to be involved and the woman was my friend. What happened after that?

John heads his own department in Ohio. I am a genocide survivor who pisses off Poets & Writers, the philosopher has a goatee, his protege an unfinished rite of passage, three television series rolled into one.

Disgraced Under the Torch

"I believe in genocide," Robert Downey Jr, not emulating Michael Gambon

James Gandolfini begins to be noticed in his supporting roles, in one of those mysterious processes of the sudden obituary for a performer one never knew, like the old friend in your back pocket; his support was small but pivotal in She's So Lovely.

How much the man is to be blamed for the muddle of The Last Castle is open to debate, but he hit the requisite notes as the resentful subordinate. In Fallen, (98), he is supposed to be the false feint to Denzel's righteous Hobbes, but Sigel's cinematography makes everyone look diabetic, and one wants to rush to give Goodman insulin rather than fear his conversion. If Hoblit is connotative about race, it is not implicit, and his unwitting template for the now tiresome bro series, The Supernatural, is not to the director's lasting credit.

The film strives for nuance, however, in a more ambitious fashion than the show. Azazel is a stand in for our inhumanity to ourselves. No obstinacy can eliminate it, just as strength of will cannot eliminate vulnerabilities that thick set matrons, their brains made of alligator stool blockage, will prey upon.

My manual wheelchair flip in 2007 was humiliating enough, lying for three, four hours latched onto a belt buckle which threatened my organs. How many days pass, Trudy, a well trained Oprah gibbon, launches her assessment team upon me, always on a day I have something to resolve, shamble-ass Debra Horne bellowing in the hallway "Do you want to hurt yourself?"

A former vocational counselor from Mississippi's civil service, and then they call out the big guns in April of this year, Department of Health and Human Service assessors. Do they inspect the work the rental agent hasn't done? No. Do they care how many of these aides violated my personal dignity? No, they use their ability to walk to intimidate me, rushing my bedside, before I held their utter impotency at bay on second visit at my door. I've had enough. I am not going to forget, and I'll break the law, if necessary, to punish this cruelty. This is your energy for the vengeance fueling hell. I forced my disability center to file a grieve with DHS, nothing happened, but this same department jumps through hoops for minorities scoping my back as a target, making themselves fools in the process. The state may not fall anytime soon, but bureaucratic procedures at this pro forma level are a travesty. I am prosecuted for my debt on one end and my disability on the other. Why not simply restore me to employment and relocate me? No, my failure means my body will be used now in PA for slave labor. 

Carbon Residue

For every degree of ignorance in the universe, there are a trillion bosons to replace what we eliminate. I aggrandize my animosity towards Trudy Richardson, manager in distress at my non-compliance, and Debra Horne knows when I've roared like the thunder lizard about my duress, this doesn't mean we're going out for ice cream in a bully matron competition. To take all that effort to fight methods that were superseded by law so long ago.

I found a job I actually want, and envision a dead standstill due to the fact I expressed anything so positive as desire. I am here and not there, but while preoccupation meshes trepidation, what's on my mind is why Fallen fails. Sutherland has that bouffant with which grandees coast. Goodman is the disruptively hidden force; Gandolfini is the foil not in on the secret, and Davidtz is the distressed damsel who is at best a mediocre guide. Hoblit's pacing is plodding, but this was meant to be a film that pit Hobbes against inexorable forces, and ends on a trick in such a way as to feel sold, even if a sordid atmosphere was meant to be complicit with the sensibility of the brooding horrific. Had it been tighter, the natural approach might have worked. 

I have to put the condition of this efficiency out of my mind. I don't have my tools, my monetary affluence has depreciated and been absorbed back into making my defiant body the improvished stepping stone, and I'm rolling in a wheelbarrow and I'm leaving and filing a hate crime complaint. I have to write my cover letter.