i know it's just the war

[rm]

I'm walking home with a sack of groceries, and as I pass down a block I pass down several times a day every day a man from a group of people hanging out there takes a handful of change out of his pocket, shakes it like dice and then pours it out on the ground. $1.37, but reading the results he informs me, "The signs say you will always have that ugly, retarded face and there is nothing you can do about it." The people he is with, of mixed gender and race, and all between the ages of about 20 and 35, laugh. I ignore it, and try tell myself it's just the war, not the one in Iraq, but the one that happens every day in New York about gentrification, race and money. I know half my neighborhood hates the other half and vice versa, but mostly, we all keep it to ourselves, except when things get out of hand like in the blackout or when the buildings come down.

It's hard for me to be surprised by these things. It's a rare day when someone doesn't call me ugly. Isn't that strange? It may be a rare day when someone doesn't call you ugly too, you just might not be as tuned in on the streets. Or maybe I'm just lucky.

Sometimes, I think it's because I don't have a modern face. It's such a throwback, the issue isn't that I'm not an MTV hottie, but that I look like someone who should have died decades or centuries ago. Maybe people see me and recognize the dead, and in their fear of mortality declare my features sin.

I wonder about things like that all the time. Strange mystical reimaginings of the casually cruel world. I also wonder sometimes if we hate the Arab world because they gave us the zero. Perhaps we do not see a revolution in math, an efficiency in accounting but an entire people that innovated the language of numbers solely so that we would at long last be able to name our worthlessness.

All of this though just underlines the reasons I don't do so well in the world. I think there's some sort of sublime artfulness under all the random hate and it makes me oblivious, both to the sheer bludgeoning stupidity of it all and of course the fact that I may indeed be ugly.

Comments

[lolliejean.livejournal.com]

Random cruelty like this makes me want to head out and do vigilante justice on the people who perpetuate it. I'm amazed that your skin is tough enough to throw it off as you appear to be able to do.

When I was thinking about cities, places I want to visit, I discovered that although I'd love to come to NY deep down I'm afraid of going there. I'm afraid I'm somehow too soft to even be there. This is kind of strange since I've done lots of traveling to many different places and I generally don't feel anxious or uncomfortable.The idea of being in NYC makes me feel like a dumb, unsophisticated turnip and no other place I've contemplated seems to do that.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I can more or less throw it off now, although there's always this 90 seconds of truly muderous, insensate rage -- I mean, where I just want to rush up to people and start beating them over the head -- I can't even articulate it -- it's a scary feeling, and one of the things I don't like about New York.

Have you really never been to NYC? I think most neighborhoods where you would be alone you'd be unlikely to encounter this sort of stuff (they're too crowded for anyone else to focus on anyone else enough for this shit to happen) -- anywhere else, you'd probably be appalled by watching a NYC'er handle it... there's a whole lot of "no, no fuck YOU," laughter about it.

[lolliejean.livejournal.com]

I lived on Long Island (Suffolk County Air Force Base) for a couple of years in the early 60's but the only time I was in the city was when my dad took me there on a day trip for my 5th birthday. A loooong time ago.

I guess I would probably be fine once I got there - I'm a chameleon of sorts and as a result it's likely it wouldn't take me long to develop a NYC persona. I can do a fuck you war as well as the next person if that's the way it works! heh. The hub and I will get there eventually and he's great at fitting in anywhere after a lifetime of international travel so that will help ease any anxiety.