"That's Kim Kardashian's husband! He was in prison and had a problem with drugs. He was on a program."-- my mentally retarded and enthusiastic client Joseph, with his complimentary data banks
Having finally streamed the first episode of High Castle, my main dismay had nothing to do with its quality as an Amazon original, and its exposition was finely tuned for a war era drama; it is merely terrain in which I've been to before, alternate timelines already adapted for the small screen. I will meander into the intrigues of the series slowly, you'll have to be patient as I fail to resolve or succeed at some level with my long overdue transition, though I made poor Joseph happy, the high function mental retardation client, the sole constant in my brief rise and more torturous descent, as far back as 1991, perhaps even earlier I may have shared space with him. He recognized Cameron Hilson's picture on my phone and grew excited, and told me your story, Cameron. This, the simplicity of a senior aged child is one of the sole reasons I followed you back, a retarded man adding to celebrity literacy. All it means, at best, is a sardonic bemusement, which does not have to be virulent for its own sake. You were a baller. I, who can barely conceptualize balance on my feet, can barely fathom the exhilaration of sprinting like a gazelle on the field. You have a drug problem, did some short time? My little brother died a drug problem, and North Philadelphia, in my lifelong game of hopscotch, can be liked to hard time in the obstinacy of my insistence in making my own way. I have mentioned Lydia Nayo before, the lawyer who blew Philadelphia for San Francisco, feeling the need to confide in me, unbidden, that she, having been raped by a white man, had the ability to compartmentalize bad actors apart from white privilege and ethnicity. Good for Lydia. I applaud, and invited her to lunch when her mother died and she had to return east.
Surprised? It never materialized, which is just as well, with my dismal view of African American norms, it's brass insolence, even insistence that I give it recognition, as it pertains to this public housing environment. As unpleasant as it is to stipulate, blacks can be just as cruel, and stigmatizing, as an Asian who perceives Europeans as barbarians, though this is a neoclassical conceit long since superseded, layered and obfuscated, as everything is in the digital era.
I caught fire on George Will's "Dangerous Disability" column, and as the crusty and challenging libertarian trespassed my provenance, I had my chamber loaded, and lost my thread, and now I'm surly, our governance via New York City's jackass not rectifying matters. I've naught returned to my other assignment, but I've been a bit overly phlegmatic mid-May, and have much up in the air. Given that it will rain through mid week, I'll counsel my own re-entry, seeping my way back, not giving anyone room to comfort me in a hospice bed, when it comes to that.
John Schnatter, chairman and CEO of Papa John's, posted his own apology on Facebook Monday. He revealed the two employees involved in the "reprehensible" message were immediately fired, as they "defy both my personal and the company's values."-- Cavan Sieczkowski
Given what I learned later on, I suppose it was an honor that Lydia, from my Speakeasy days, emailed me. She was a black attorney from San Francisco who had roots in Philadelphia, and the admirable ability to change her environment. She was raped by a white man but had the ability to differentiate that experience from such suppositions as "all white men like it rough with jig poon" and there I am ripping off Ellroy and his more extensive slang vocabulary. Lydia was trying to help me understand that not all blacks will necessarily victimize me, and I do understand that, but many African Americans have victimized me, and in the one case violently at nearly the cost of my life. I can juxtapose that with the young upwardly mobile kid who hugged me on New Years at Drinkers West, or Claudie and my conversation with him about cats, dead cats, the ashes of dead cats, Haiti. I have Graham Greene's fascination with this impoverished colony of the United States, and told Claudie about my work in that direction.
It is not enough. I am traumatized, even by Tim's inability to manage his time without nearly always giving me short shrift. I needed a new broom and dust pan; he indicated to me he would price it and pick it up, and this is the systems failure that attendant care represents. I am out forty five dollars for a vacuumed carpet and basically a three week argument with a fucking simpleton who considers my intelligence and acuity to be an insult to his entitled minority identity. Caucasian women are little better, but there the stigma is different. Monica Carr did not want to do the time and called the police to intimidate me. Susan McNally insisted that I comply with her terms, and I wouldn't. It is never going to end, and I am going to die in misery and frustration, if not physical anguish.
Sure, I have a side that once believed that civic decency was noble, and a passion for interpretation that still draws me to Jerry's output. I'd enjoy analyzing his work for you, how at his strongest Jerry can defy expectations, but his work that is online is not the work he shared in workshop, and taking all that out of the closet and going through that to apply my best sympathies to make you love me takes time, a luxury I no longer have, and will not have the more I have to depend on paraprofessionals, and if the indignities of infirmity get much worse, my options seem fairly stark. My meal today was a hot half and half powdered cappuccino and a carrot. This morning I had a pork roll and do not really feel like preparing a meal. I invited Lydia to lunch when her mother passed away. Perhaps out of duty. She declined. Then again, how can a hard black lawyer and a precocious spastic with their denigrating war wounds actually see past the labels each other carries. Thanks to the Jamesians I am now on Linked In. I avoided it because of my supervisor. All I wanted was a contact number for Senator Toomey. His staff telephoned. Uh huh. And I have to handle any expectation behind that euphemism.
What Toomey's staff learns contextually is different in framework than my mere EEOC grievance: I mean what I say about changing systems management around disability and sustaining matriculation.
