Fuck 9-11
by Isonomist
09/10/2010, 9:56 AM #
I was standing on 5th Avenue with a crowd of New Yorkers from all walks of life,watching the biggest buildings in one of the biggest cities in the world burn like candles. No one knew what had happened for the first hour or so. Once we knew it wasn't an accident and the city began shutting down like a fort under seige, we began dialing family and friends and the schools where our kids were trapped by untrained administrators, getting dial tones and terrifyingly calm computer voices telling us the lines were down. No one panicked, you can see the footage. We did what we had to do. Boats poured across the Hudson from New Jersey to ferry people out of harm's way. People put their kids' schoolmates up for the night, companies closed, neighborhoods were blocked off, there were lines wrapped around the hospitals to donate blood.
The next day the stench was unbearable and unavoidable. I'm reminded of it today because down the block from my office, a restaurant is on fire as I type. The sickening smell of burning meat and building materials and ozone is all too familiar. We were out on the streets, collecting things to donate to the rescue responders. There were no trucks, no food or supplies could come into the city then. We were in lockdown. On my street, rescue workers walked from store to store looking for bottled water and food, covered to their hips in thick grey dust.
Within days, when the city was running again, but the fire was still burning and ash floating all over us, we went back to work. My route took me past the armory, the local operations for the rescue effort. On the walls of buildings surrounding it, were photos of the missing, smiling out at the camera. I felt myself in the very shoes of the family member or friend who had taken that photo in a moment of joy, and now had to xerox it onto a leaflet begging to know if this happy face still lived. I cried as I passed this part of town. We cried at my office. My kids wore paper dust masks to go outside. The dust and ash blew through our windows. The stench didn't abate for months.
It was March before the fires were completely out. And years before the hole was emptied. New Yorkers flinched at the sight of low flying planes. We stayed away from the site, or trepidatiously peered, in full knowledge that we were walking on sidewalks strewn with the ash of our neighbors' remains. We were angry at photos of tourists taking photos of the site with smiles on their faces. Fuck them. We tried to be tolerant when family members visited and wanted to see it. Like asking to see fresh scars from some near fatal collision.
The annual 9-11 ceremonies were tasteful, heartbreaking, and at some point, too boring to watch. When 9-11 was renamed Patriots' Day, when politicians started using it to scare people into voting for them, when radio talk show hosts and cheap tin pastors started using it to boost their audience ratings, when people who had never been there and had no right to wrap themselves in it began doing so, 9-11 ceased to be sacred. Now it's just another insincere glow in the dark plastic trinket holiday, co-opted by people who say we, who lived this horror, are not real Americans. The people who died on 9-11, and the people who ran in to save them, we're not patriots. The people who died together: Arab, Hindu, Christian, Jew, European, African, Latin, Asian, Indian--every strain of human bloodline, every religion or lack thereof-- and the people who ran in to save them, recover their bodies, and mourn them, all of us, are now the sworn enemies of the people who hold 9-11 up as their rallying cry. We're atheist godless, idol worshiping terorrist lefty liberal New York assholes who hate the constitution and the country and our troops and real Americans, and unborn babies and fuck you.
I'm done with that three ring circus.
Showing posts with label isonomist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label isonomist. Show all posts
10 September 2010
09 June 2009
Men Yelling.
Men Yelling.
by Isonomist
06/09/2009, 10:23 AM #
It was pouring, thunder, lightning, and dark as night this morning. I waited for the worst to pass and stepped outside with a golf umbrella and knee high galoshes. Not three doors down from mine I could hear a man screaming in fury. "Move it! You fucking assholes! You morons! Move it now you stupid idiots!" and on in that vein as I got closer to the corner store. I looked in the crowd-sized windows and saw an older man standing in front of a line of workers, all, including him holding a long granite countertop, and in front of them, a couple of guys scrambling to move some bakery racks out of the way. The depth of the man's voice was the only thing that kept it from qualifying as a scream, but when I saw him, he seemed almost serene, except for the contortions of his mouth required to make that volume of noise. I didn't stop, but there was plenty of opportunity to hear him continue his berating, enough so that as I turned the corner, another worker entering the store saw my reaction, half-grimaced and rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly, acknowledging my reaction to the abuse.
There was something almost transcendent about the scene. I flashed on a simultaneous history of crappy bosses, cruel teachers, my angry father, my ex, strangers in a rage anywhere, all these angry voices and their contorted faces.
A few blocks up the next street, as I was maneuvering my gigantic umbrella under a leaky scaffolding, a man coming the other way began yelling as he stepped up onto the curb. Not really looking at anyone, just yelling to the rest of us passersby: get the sidewalk clear! Clear the goddamn sidewalk so people can walk!
I have no idea how many of us he was yelling at, holding his elbows up almost to his shoulders and threshing at everyone around him as he walked.
And I thought of an exercise I'd participated in a few weeks ago, something meant to help teachers learn how to speak to children. In it we arranged a set of 8 chairs in a ring, facing outward. 8 adults stood on the chairs. Three other adult participants were told to walk up to each adult "teacher," now several feet taller than us, and say "I'm a child, and I just want to belong."
Those of you who know Rudolf Dreikur's work will be familiar with that idea: kids who are misbehaving are sending you a quite different message than the actual behaviors themselves might indicate. The behaviors and the typical adult reaction are so ingrained that Dreikurs made a chart. If you have x reaction to the child, he's probably doing y for reason z. They pull on your shirt, they throw a tantrum, they sit in a corner dull eyed, they demand attention, all because what they really want is to matter, to be part of what's going on.You may wonder how Dreikurs could categorize children in these neat little boxes; people often asked him that very thing. His response was, "I don't keep putting them there, I keep finding them there."
This exercise was meant to cut away the extraneous distraction of the behavior itself, to get to the deeper meaning: include me. The "teachers" were told to give various dismissive or negative responses, the kind you and I might normally give an annoying or misbehaving child.
You may be able to imagine the effect of seeing a small woman standing before a now 8 foot tall man, her face scared and pleading, "I'm a child, and I just want to belong." You may be able to imagine the effect of this giant yelling back at her, "GET BACK TO YOUR SEAT! I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR CRAP! I TOLD YOU ALREADY YOU CAN'T COME UP HERE!" over and over as she cringes before him. But it's not the same as being there, seeing her fear and his fury. Knowing the two of them have been in these roles in life before. Remembering times we'd been in the shoes of either of them. Several of us burst into tears. But we could also see what had happened to this man. That he had lost everything by blowing up at her: his dignity, her trust. Our faith that he was only acting a role. Of all the "teachers" he was the one that stuck in all our minds, troubled us.
We later found out that the two of them were in-laws. He was her sister's husband. She told us that she'd been terrified to go up and say her line to him, because she knew what she was in for.
I thought of the men in that store, and how I felt when bosses treated me like that. How many people I knew who had become saboteurs of their own employers in the face of that, why Office Space had touched a nerve. What the tradeoffs were, for a pleasant boss or parent, for spouses who give up power struggles and the need to win. And I thought of the yelling boss in the store. What he was really saying, and how ignoring his words was the only way his employees could stand to work for him. How frustrated he must be to realize they tune him out. The cycle of ever escalating abuse, trying to get a reaction. Trying to matter. To belong.
How many ways do we undermine ourselves and our relationships because instead of listening to the message, we only hear the words?
isonomist
by Isonomist
06/09/2009, 10:23 AM #
It was pouring, thunder, lightning, and dark as night this morning. I waited for the worst to pass and stepped outside with a golf umbrella and knee high galoshes. Not three doors down from mine I could hear a man screaming in fury. "Move it! You fucking assholes! You morons! Move it now you stupid idiots!" and on in that vein as I got closer to the corner store. I looked in the crowd-sized windows and saw an older man standing in front of a line of workers, all, including him holding a long granite countertop, and in front of them, a couple of guys scrambling to move some bakery racks out of the way. The depth of the man's voice was the only thing that kept it from qualifying as a scream, but when I saw him, he seemed almost serene, except for the contortions of his mouth required to make that volume of noise. I didn't stop, but there was plenty of opportunity to hear him continue his berating, enough so that as I turned the corner, another worker entering the store saw my reaction, half-grimaced and rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly, acknowledging my reaction to the abuse.
There was something almost transcendent about the scene. I flashed on a simultaneous history of crappy bosses, cruel teachers, my angry father, my ex, strangers in a rage anywhere, all these angry voices and their contorted faces.
A few blocks up the next street, as I was maneuvering my gigantic umbrella under a leaky scaffolding, a man coming the other way began yelling as he stepped up onto the curb. Not really looking at anyone, just yelling to the rest of us passersby: get the sidewalk clear! Clear the goddamn sidewalk so people can walk!
I have no idea how many of us he was yelling at, holding his elbows up almost to his shoulders and threshing at everyone around him as he walked.
And I thought of an exercise I'd participated in a few weeks ago, something meant to help teachers learn how to speak to children. In it we arranged a set of 8 chairs in a ring, facing outward. 8 adults stood on the chairs. Three other adult participants were told to walk up to each adult "teacher," now several feet taller than us, and say "I'm a child, and I just want to belong."
Those of you who know Rudolf Dreikur's work will be familiar with that idea: kids who are misbehaving are sending you a quite different message than the actual behaviors themselves might indicate. The behaviors and the typical adult reaction are so ingrained that Dreikurs made a chart. If you have x reaction to the child, he's probably doing y for reason z. They pull on your shirt, they throw a tantrum, they sit in a corner dull eyed, they demand attention, all because what they really want is to matter, to be part of what's going on.You may wonder how Dreikurs could categorize children in these neat little boxes; people often asked him that very thing. His response was, "I don't keep putting them there, I keep finding them there."
This exercise was meant to cut away the extraneous distraction of the behavior itself, to get to the deeper meaning: include me. The "teachers" were told to give various dismissive or negative responses, the kind you and I might normally give an annoying or misbehaving child.
You may be able to imagine the effect of seeing a small woman standing before a now 8 foot tall man, her face scared and pleading, "I'm a child, and I just want to belong." You may be able to imagine the effect of this giant yelling back at her, "GET BACK TO YOUR SEAT! I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR CRAP! I TOLD YOU ALREADY YOU CAN'T COME UP HERE!" over and over as she cringes before him. But it's not the same as being there, seeing her fear and his fury. Knowing the two of them have been in these roles in life before. Remembering times we'd been in the shoes of either of them. Several of us burst into tears. But we could also see what had happened to this man. That he had lost everything by blowing up at her: his dignity, her trust. Our faith that he was only acting a role. Of all the "teachers" he was the one that stuck in all our minds, troubled us.
We later found out that the two of them were in-laws. He was her sister's husband. She told us that she'd been terrified to go up and say her line to him, because she knew what she was in for.
I thought of the men in that store, and how I felt when bosses treated me like that. How many people I knew who had become saboteurs of their own employers in the face of that, why Office Space had touched a nerve. What the tradeoffs were, for a pleasant boss or parent, for spouses who give up power struggles and the need to win. And I thought of the yelling boss in the store. What he was really saying, and how ignoring his words was the only way his employees could stand to work for him. How frustrated he must be to realize they tune him out. The cycle of ever escalating abuse, trying to get a reaction. Trying to matter. To belong.
How many ways do we undermine ourselves and our relationships because instead of listening to the message, we only hear the words?
isonomist
08 May 2009
Craigs List: breaking down cultural barriers
Craigs List: breaking down cultural barriers
by Isonomist
05/08/2009, 6:02 PM #
I honestly couldn't understand a word the woman said. She called herself Maria, Merieme, Maryam, Marie, depending on when she called or emailed. She wanted my stove. Or rather, I wanted someone to buy it, and she looked like my best prospect. I can't tell you what country she was from, but I would have guessed somewhere in Northern Africa. Egypt? Algeria? Hard to tell. These negotiations require phone calls and at least 5 emails before anyone shows up at your house. I could pretty much tell by her voice she'd be wearing a veil.
At first she was going to come alone. Then she called back, and I could almost make out that she was sending her husband. I swear to God, his name was Osama. I don't react, I live in New York. So I say fine, send Osama over. I gave them my address and turned on the tv in the bedroom so it would sound like there were other people here, then I plugged in the stove. I know how to live dangerously.
Of course they're late. People buying stuff on Craigs List are apparently, as a whole unable to show up within an hour of whatever time they agree to. Once before, selling my old portable dishwasher, a French artist named Rodolphe, after heavy email/phone negotiating, showed up a day late, inspected the dishwasher, ran it (it worked perfectly) called it an old piece of crap and offered me half what I was asking. I sent him away. I'd rather keep it. It's still in the bathroom.
Finally she calls me. She's downstairs. Literally right downstairs, at my door. But she's forgotten apparently that you have to ring doorbells to get people to come to their doors. So I try to make sense of the endless babble, half English, half something (I have no idea, but it's not Arabic, at least not Middle Eastern style). She can't seem to get a sentence to come out straight. It starts off ok with a subject and somewhere on its way to a predicate the words collapse into themselves and some other topic interferes somehow until neither of us can remember exactly what we'd started with. Strategically, I begin to respond to the sentence I think she meant to state, that is, what a normal person would say under such circumstances, such as "I'm right downstairs, how do I get up to your apartment?"
I'm not trying to be rude, but she's standing down there in front of the ground floor restaurant (which is packed, and loud, so she probably can't even hear me) in her veil and her jumbled English, unable to take the step of pressing the button that will activate my buzzer system so I can at last buzz her in. Seriously. I can't just pick up the handset and press the button that unlocks the door. She has to ring the bell first, even if she's on fire and drug addicts from the park are actively robbing her, I am helpless to save her unless she can reach the bell. The fact that my landlord thought this kind of buzzer system was a good idea should tell you all you need to know about how this place is run. I guess Osama gives up at this point because the next thing I hear is this deep voice saying, "we're here." So I tell him to ring the doorbell, just like I told her. It crosses my mind they must think I'm an enormous asshole making them ring it when I'm right there at the buzzer. I do kinda feel like one, even though it's not my fault.
She rings, I can see the back of her head on the video monitor, still clutching the cell phone when I let her in. I say, "Take the elevator," but it's faithless. I know damn well that she, like every Craig's List devotee before her, will take the filthy, disgusting hellhole of a stairway. What could possibly be so untrustworthy about the elevator that anyone would choose to climb that cavernous maw? And she calls me again, from about three steps below my stairway door. Which means I have to move three bikes, two pieces of furniture, and a 9 foot high fire door to let her in. Which I do. Because otherwise I'd have to tell her to go all the way back down to the lobby and start all over again, and she already hates me enough with all the hoops I seem to be forcing her to jump.
There's something almost feral about her, I think she must be scared I'm going to pop her in the oven and turn up the heat like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. It's hard not to like scared people, you can see everything in their eyes. She looks maybe her late thirties, forties. Hard lived, however many years. She has the deep, exhausted eyes of Gorki's mother.
She apologizes as she comes in the door, and continues to apologize on and off through the negotiations. I turn the stove on for her. We test the burners. She tries to tell me why she needs it. Something about renting out an apartment or needing to for cash or something, she has four kids, her husband, then she asks me for a job, she'll do anything, babysit, clean house, so I say, you babysit? And she looks at me like I might be insane after all, and says, No, I've never had a job. Finally a declarative sentence. I was so proud of her.
She asked me to cut her some slack on the price, because the stove was old and I didn't have the "book" (what is it with Muslims and books?). So I come down about 20%. No, she says, clear as a bell. She asks for 30% off. I split the difference at 25%. Done. But now I can't tell if she's agreed to her last price or mine, so I end up saying my final price about three times before she heads down to get Osama. I'm starting to talk like her.
Up comes Osama at last. He's got to be seventy, but burly, more African looking than Arab, a little guy, I could probably take him if I had to. His clothes are well broken in, halfway between New York handyman and souq merchant. He sizes up the stove, and me, decides I'm harmless (you can see this work, it's like a toggle in people's minds, whatever their test is, once you pass it, their faces relax and they get down to business). Merieme leaves, and this beautiful kid comes up, their daughter, she looks like maybe ten, and she's helping Daddy. She has no accent but pure northern American newscaster English. She's bubbling over, ready to pick up the stove and throw it over her head if we need it. This is an adventure for her. Dad pulls out a wad of cash the size of a grapefruit, with hundreds on the top. and peels off a few bills. I give him change, and together we load the stove onto the dolly. To him, I'm just part of the business. I prefer that. I don't need Osama's judgment.
His daughter helps us the way kids do at that age, holding the elevator, maneuvering the stove backward, while Dad and I wrangle it through the door, then stealing a ride on the dolly when Dad's in front and cant' see she's not really pushing. She's quick, smart, friendly. We get downstairs and he takes off to tell Merieme to move the monster SUV over to the sidewalk. I can't imagine why, in the fifteen, twenty minutes it took us to get the thing downstairs, it hasn't occurred to her to pull up in front of my building. While he's off doing that the girl says,
"Do you like to live here?"
"It's ok," I glance at the construction mess in the lobby, the fcracked sidewalk.
"It's so noisy!" And I notice as she says it the deafening barrage of chatter coming from the restaurant.
"Oh, I can't hear it upstairs. The floors are solid. But you're right, it's noisy."
"So do you like using Craig's List?" She smiles.
"I like it ok, it's better than eBay."
"I know but like, what about that guy that was killing people? I was so scared for my mom to come I was like, no mom, it's too dangerous, I was so afraid."
This is New York, so I say, "You're smart to think about things like that. It's always a good idea to be careful." (instead of, oh stuff like that never happens here, or whatever lies people tell children out there in suburbia) And now Osama's gotten through to Merieme that their Giant Silver SUV needs to move. They double park and we roll the stove over to the rear. As we're all three struggling to get the stove off the dolly and into the trunk, which means lifting it about three feet up and sliding it onto a sleeping bag put there to protect the new looking carpeting, some guy behind me says, hey, HEY. He's in a van, we're blocking him. "Move that car," he says.
"We will, as soon as we're done."
"No, move it now." He tries to give me the dead eyes, but dude, I have teenage boys. Fuck you. He can sit there for the rest of his life.
"We're almost done." I go back to helping Osama heave the stove up, and realize there are three boys watching us work, sitting in the back seat. I cut them some slack in my mind, because the girl is at least two years older than any of them. The dolly's free so I pick it up and shoulder it.
"Nice to meet you all," I say. When I head back to the house, they're still jockeying the stove around on the new looking sleeping bag in the new looking SUV. They look like they could have just walked out of the desert into Casablanca, dusty, tired and ready to go home.
by Isonomist
05/08/2009, 6:02 PM #
I honestly couldn't understand a word the woman said. She called herself Maria, Merieme, Maryam, Marie, depending on when she called or emailed. She wanted my stove. Or rather, I wanted someone to buy it, and she looked like my best prospect. I can't tell you what country she was from, but I would have guessed somewhere in Northern Africa. Egypt? Algeria? Hard to tell. These negotiations require phone calls and at least 5 emails before anyone shows up at your house. I could pretty much tell by her voice she'd be wearing a veil.
At first she was going to come alone. Then she called back, and I could almost make out that she was sending her husband. I swear to God, his name was Osama. I don't react, I live in New York. So I say fine, send Osama over. I gave them my address and turned on the tv in the bedroom so it would sound like there were other people here, then I plugged in the stove. I know how to live dangerously.
Of course they're late. People buying stuff on Craigs List are apparently, as a whole unable to show up within an hour of whatever time they agree to. Once before, selling my old portable dishwasher, a French artist named Rodolphe, after heavy email/phone negotiating, showed up a day late, inspected the dishwasher, ran it (it worked perfectly) called it an old piece of crap and offered me half what I was asking. I sent him away. I'd rather keep it. It's still in the bathroom.
Finally she calls me. She's downstairs. Literally right downstairs, at my door. But she's forgotten apparently that you have to ring doorbells to get people to come to their doors. So I try to make sense of the endless babble, half English, half something (I have no idea, but it's not Arabic, at least not Middle Eastern style). She can't seem to get a sentence to come out straight. It starts off ok with a subject and somewhere on its way to a predicate the words collapse into themselves and some other topic interferes somehow until neither of us can remember exactly what we'd started with. Strategically, I begin to respond to the sentence I think she meant to state, that is, what a normal person would say under such circumstances, such as "I'm right downstairs, how do I get up to your apartment?"
I'm not trying to be rude, but she's standing down there in front of the ground floor restaurant (which is packed, and loud, so she probably can't even hear me) in her veil and her jumbled English, unable to take the step of pressing the button that will activate my buzzer system so I can at last buzz her in. Seriously. I can't just pick up the handset and press the button that unlocks the door. She has to ring the bell first, even if she's on fire and drug addicts from the park are actively robbing her, I am helpless to save her unless she can reach the bell. The fact that my landlord thought this kind of buzzer system was a good idea should tell you all you need to know about how this place is run. I guess Osama gives up at this point because the next thing I hear is this deep voice saying, "we're here." So I tell him to ring the doorbell, just like I told her. It crosses my mind they must think I'm an enormous asshole making them ring it when I'm right there at the buzzer. I do kinda feel like one, even though it's not my fault.
She rings, I can see the back of her head on the video monitor, still clutching the cell phone when I let her in. I say, "Take the elevator," but it's faithless. I know damn well that she, like every Craig's List devotee before her, will take the filthy, disgusting hellhole of a stairway. What could possibly be so untrustworthy about the elevator that anyone would choose to climb that cavernous maw? And she calls me again, from about three steps below my stairway door. Which means I have to move three bikes, two pieces of furniture, and a 9 foot high fire door to let her in. Which I do. Because otherwise I'd have to tell her to go all the way back down to the lobby and start all over again, and she already hates me enough with all the hoops I seem to be forcing her to jump.
There's something almost feral about her, I think she must be scared I'm going to pop her in the oven and turn up the heat like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. It's hard not to like scared people, you can see everything in their eyes. She looks maybe her late thirties, forties. Hard lived, however many years. She has the deep, exhausted eyes of Gorki's mother.
She apologizes as she comes in the door, and continues to apologize on and off through the negotiations. I turn the stove on for her. We test the burners. She tries to tell me why she needs it. Something about renting out an apartment or needing to for cash or something, she has four kids, her husband, then she asks me for a job, she'll do anything, babysit, clean house, so I say, you babysit? And she looks at me like I might be insane after all, and says, No, I've never had a job. Finally a declarative sentence. I was so proud of her.
She asked me to cut her some slack on the price, because the stove was old and I didn't have the "book" (what is it with Muslims and books?). So I come down about 20%. No, she says, clear as a bell. She asks for 30% off. I split the difference at 25%. Done. But now I can't tell if she's agreed to her last price or mine, so I end up saying my final price about three times before she heads down to get Osama. I'm starting to talk like her.
Up comes Osama at last. He's got to be seventy, but burly, more African looking than Arab, a little guy, I could probably take him if I had to. His clothes are well broken in, halfway between New York handyman and souq merchant. He sizes up the stove, and me, decides I'm harmless (you can see this work, it's like a toggle in people's minds, whatever their test is, once you pass it, their faces relax and they get down to business). Merieme leaves, and this beautiful kid comes up, their daughter, she looks like maybe ten, and she's helping Daddy. She has no accent but pure northern American newscaster English. She's bubbling over, ready to pick up the stove and throw it over her head if we need it. This is an adventure for her. Dad pulls out a wad of cash the size of a grapefruit, with hundreds on the top. and peels off a few bills. I give him change, and together we load the stove onto the dolly. To him, I'm just part of the business. I prefer that. I don't need Osama's judgment.
His daughter helps us the way kids do at that age, holding the elevator, maneuvering the stove backward, while Dad and I wrangle it through the door, then stealing a ride on the dolly when Dad's in front and cant' see she's not really pushing. She's quick, smart, friendly. We get downstairs and he takes off to tell Merieme to move the monster SUV over to the sidewalk. I can't imagine why, in the fifteen, twenty minutes it took us to get the thing downstairs, it hasn't occurred to her to pull up in front of my building. While he's off doing that the girl says,
"Do you like to live here?"
"It's ok," I glance at the construction mess in the lobby, the fcracked sidewalk.
"It's so noisy!" And I notice as she says it the deafening barrage of chatter coming from the restaurant.
"Oh, I can't hear it upstairs. The floors are solid. But you're right, it's noisy."
"So do you like using Craig's List?" She smiles.
"I like it ok, it's better than eBay."
"I know but like, what about that guy that was killing people? I was so scared for my mom to come I was like, no mom, it's too dangerous, I was so afraid."
This is New York, so I say, "You're smart to think about things like that. It's always a good idea to be careful." (instead of, oh stuff like that never happens here, or whatever lies people tell children out there in suburbia) And now Osama's gotten through to Merieme that their Giant Silver SUV needs to move. They double park and we roll the stove over to the rear. As we're all three struggling to get the stove off the dolly and into the trunk, which means lifting it about three feet up and sliding it onto a sleeping bag put there to protect the new looking carpeting, some guy behind me says, hey, HEY. He's in a van, we're blocking him. "Move that car," he says.
"We will, as soon as we're done."
"No, move it now." He tries to give me the dead eyes, but dude, I have teenage boys. Fuck you. He can sit there for the rest of his life.
"We're almost done." I go back to helping Osama heave the stove up, and realize there are three boys watching us work, sitting in the back seat. I cut them some slack in my mind, because the girl is at least two years older than any of them. The dolly's free so I pick it up and shoulder it.
"Nice to meet you all," I say. When I head back to the house, they're still jockeying the stove around on the new looking sleeping bag in the new looking SUV. They look like they could have just walked out of the desert into Casablanca, dusty, tired and ready to go home.
09 October 2008
On Class Warfare.
On Class Warfare.
by Isonomist
10/09/2008, 8:35 AM #
Recently a friend sent me an email called "questions," asking things like: What if things were switched around, What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, following the debate,including a three month-old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his college graduating class? What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was divorced? What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married? What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
The email goes on to ascribe the narrow gap between the two candidates to racism. But this is not just about racism, this is and has for a long time been a class war deliberately incited by the Republicans since the days of Reagan. , Joe Patterson, the founder of the NY Daily News, once wrote that “class feeling is always antagonistic to the interest of the whole people.” You would think that was a principle on which the United States was founded. We like to believe there are not such differences here, we're all supposed to be equal.
But what we see, and what is clear from the last 3 elections, if not the last 30 years of politics, is certain Republicans deliberately and strategically manipulating public opinion against the educated, against the "elites" who have been successful in life while holding liberal values, who are willing to do the right thing and pay more taxes to help their fellow Americans, against those who think the government should be responsible to the needs of its electorate. It's not something you see in real conservatives. This is the strategy of a certain type of Republican. That strategy has won elections, but has caused a rift in this country that we can’t shake, that’s tearing us apart, weakening our military, and killing our economy.
Pitting race against race among the lower classes is an old story, a convenient way for the upper classes in the South to keep both groups divided and conquered after the Civil War. Pitting North against South has ruled national politics as long as some of us can remember. Pitting the working class against the “elites” and (I love this term) “limousine liberals” and all the other epithets they use to distance their opponents from “real” Americans has worked very well for these particular Republicans, and we are paying the price for it every day. Unfortunately, it’s exactly those working class folks who buy into this divisive mentality who are paying the most for it. And how many Democrats buy into this themselves, disparaging the working class and the South for “not getting it,” then seeming surprised when that plays right into the hands of those Republicans machinating a deeper, wider gap among the people they seek to rule. Many learned and wise conservatives have distanced themselves from the Republican political machine for this reason: they see what it's doing to America, and they don't like it either.
I don’t have a solution for it, except to call it what it is, to speak up against it, and to stop letting the post-Reagan Republicans frame these arguments, like the tactic of accusing Democrats of inciting a class war just because Obama wants to roll back taxes for the very rich, back to Reagan-era levels. That's not class war. But Sarah Palin's smear strategy is. Hearing people call out "kill him" and "terrorist" and "treason" during her speeches, bragging about her ignorance and lack of education; putting down those who have attended good schools (on a scholarship for godsakes), painting Obama as an elite, and now a Mystery Man, glorifying her isolationism; it's as if she has never thought out the consequences of what she says. Even if the shouters are Republican plants, this is blatant incitement to crime. It's no wonder McCain won't say these things to Obama's face.
Knowing now that the RNC speech she gave was written by a Bush speechwriter before anyone even knew she'd be picked, and then tailored to match her background, crafted to build class warfare in the service of Republican politics, you have to ask yourself: who is the real Sarah Palin?
by Isonomist
10/09/2008, 8:35 AM #
Recently a friend sent me an email called "questions," asking things like: What if things were switched around, What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, following the debate,including a three month-old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his college graduating class? What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was divorced? What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married? What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
The email goes on to ascribe the narrow gap between the two candidates to racism. But this is not just about racism, this is and has for a long time been a class war deliberately incited by the Republicans since the days of Reagan. , Joe Patterson, the founder of the NY Daily News, once wrote that “class feeling is always antagonistic to the interest of the whole people.” You would think that was a principle on which the United States was founded. We like to believe there are not such differences here, we're all supposed to be equal.
But what we see, and what is clear from the last 3 elections, if not the last 30 years of politics, is certain Republicans deliberately and strategically manipulating public opinion against the educated, against the "elites" who have been successful in life while holding liberal values, who are willing to do the right thing and pay more taxes to help their fellow Americans, against those who think the government should be responsible to the needs of its electorate. It's not something you see in real conservatives. This is the strategy of a certain type of Republican. That strategy has won elections, but has caused a rift in this country that we can’t shake, that’s tearing us apart, weakening our military, and killing our economy.
Pitting race against race among the lower classes is an old story, a convenient way for the upper classes in the South to keep both groups divided and conquered after the Civil War. Pitting North against South has ruled national politics as long as some of us can remember. Pitting the working class against the “elites” and (I love this term) “limousine liberals” and all the other epithets they use to distance their opponents from “real” Americans has worked very well for these particular Republicans, and we are paying the price for it every day. Unfortunately, it’s exactly those working class folks who buy into this divisive mentality who are paying the most for it. And how many Democrats buy into this themselves, disparaging the working class and the South for “not getting it,” then seeming surprised when that plays right into the hands of those Republicans machinating a deeper, wider gap among the people they seek to rule. Many learned and wise conservatives have distanced themselves from the Republican political machine for this reason: they see what it's doing to America, and they don't like it either.
I don’t have a solution for it, except to call it what it is, to speak up against it, and to stop letting the post-Reagan Republicans frame these arguments, like the tactic of accusing Democrats of inciting a class war just because Obama wants to roll back taxes for the very rich, back to Reagan-era levels. That's not class war. But Sarah Palin's smear strategy is. Hearing people call out "kill him" and "terrorist" and "treason" during her speeches, bragging about her ignorance and lack of education; putting down those who have attended good schools (on a scholarship for godsakes), painting Obama as an elite, and now a Mystery Man, glorifying her isolationism; it's as if she has never thought out the consequences of what she says. Even if the shouters are Republican plants, this is blatant incitement to crime. It's no wonder McCain won't say these things to Obama's face.
Knowing now that the RNC speech she gave was written by a Bush speechwriter before anyone even knew she'd be picked, and then tailored to match her background, crafted to build class warfare in the service of Republican politics, you have to ask yourself: who is the real Sarah Palin?
13 June 2008
A less insane top post than some.
A less insane top post than some.
by Isonomist
06/13/2008, 7:53 AM #
Sometimes being a feminist is like being a Buddhist (or vegetarian, or pretty much anything that can remotely be contested), you realize that you can't really define who's in and who's out, including yourself. Gender doesn't automatically confer or preclude membership (here I will offer Rimbaud as an example, look it up). Nowadays, I wonder if philosophy and politics do either.
Recently, DC posted some (what I consider) scary, reactionary quotes from supposedly feminist women, who claimed they would not vote at all if not for women (ie, Hillary). To my mind, this kind of backward thinking is exactly the opposite of the kind of cooperative forward thinking that has allowed feminism to survive since Elizabeth Cady Stanton decided what to name herself. After all, it is men who vote to enfranchise women. They can't be all bad.
On the obvious level, refusing to vote (or writing in Hillary's name) translates pretty directly into President McCain, the repeal of Roe, a stranglehold on SCOTUS, the invasion of Iran, and eventually, President Romney (ok, I just scared the crap out of myself). I can't think how this forwards any kind of feminist agenda.
Less obviously, it cheapens the real efforts of the women's movement, just as bra burning did in the 60s, giving morons an icon of feminine irrationality to brandish. The emotional appeal of the refusenik mentality may seem noble, but what it really does is obliterate the voices of a generation of women.
Perhaps I've been asleep this last few months, but when last I looked, it was Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi (ain't she a woman?) working together to keep the Clintons (not just Hillary) at bay; Hillary was defending the exclusion of Florida and Michigan (when she thought she was winning without them), and championing the superdelegates (when she thought they'd rescue her from the hoi polloi because she was more electable). I think Hillary overanalyzed her campaign process and lost the nomination for herself because she underestimated Barack Obama's platform, appeal, and strategy. And because she didn't control her organization properly. Oh, and because she overestimated her appeal with far too many members of her constituency (and their willingness to overlook her neglect). And wait, also because she forgot her winning NY formula: fucking listening to voters and what we want. (Who was it ranting about her warriory right-winginess recently?)
Another failure on Hillary's part (and that of some of her older supporters) is a strange and glaring neglect of women who are not white. Not to say this is total: surely Hillary's excellent health care program would benefit women of color and their families greatly; there are other examples as well. But the starkness of Hillary's "white working class voters" and Bill's "Jesse Jackson won SC in 88" comments had to alienate anyone who was tired of cutting them slack.
The Clintons played hardball and they lost. On her claim of greater electability, an NBC/WSJ poll a week after the nomination shows that Obama leads McCain nationally 47% to 41%. This poll conducted from Friday to Monday, was discussed on Keith Olbermann's Countdown this Wednesday:
41 to 36 among independents, the group McCain said he needs to win. And those blue collar workers, so skeptical about Obama, they are going for him 47 to 42 . Catholics back Obama, 47-40, over McCain. Women, the majority of the country, the group supposedly considered a switch from Clinton to McCain, telling pollsters before Clinton‘s presidential ambitions had even gotten cold, that they prefer Obama over McCain by a margin of 52 to 33 . ...
This polling is done in such a way that it‘s overseen by one Republican and one Democrat. The Republican involved in this looked at the white women number, Obama 46, McCain 39. He said, the Republicans expect to win white men big, and they are leading right now in that. But it is white women who decide the election. His quote was, if a Republican wins among white women, we usually win that election. If this is the number when the wounds over Senator Clinton are so strong and so fresh, what chance does McCain if the those wounds heal or just improve a little bit?
This nomination was Hillary's to lose. She spent the last 8 years putting it together, and for awhile, it looked like she was doing everything right. Her failure isn't that she's a woman in a man's world, it's that she took far too much, and too many of us for granted, couldn't admit her mistakes, and couldn't be flexible in the face of a threat to her power. Isn't that what we're all kind of sick of in Presidential personalities?
As I said in a post below:
Women vote for Obama for all kinds of reasons, but I think most of the voters on the two coasts of any gender or race are voting for him because of what I'll call the Bald Tony factor: they're just voting for the guy who's going to do what they want done, and they're so used to seeing people of every color and background and gender doing competent jobs in any number of roles, that his race isn't really a factor. Just as most women who are willing to put aside his gender because he's saying what they want to hear. What they want to hear is that things will change: not just the end of the Sockpuppet Cowboy, but the return of responsible government. Nobody wants riots in the streets (ok, maybe the ELFs do) but most of us want some very concrete changes in government. Not what Gregor Samsa calls the totem pole issues, but Iraq, public health and safety, that pile of idiots in Homeland Security, the desperately self contradictory insanity stalking SCOTUS, the imperial presidency, congressional wimpitude. Oh, yes, we like our totem poles, but that's not what's got people putting differences aside this year.
I listen to some of the rhetoric of feminists regarding the way Hillary was treated and I'm astonished. Voting Democrat is like an abused woman staying with her abusive spouse? Well, if the alternative political analogy is running to the arms of Ted Bundy, I think I'll take my chances and some boxing lessons.
by Isonomist
06/13/2008, 7:53 AM #
Sometimes being a feminist is like being a Buddhist (or vegetarian, or pretty much anything that can remotely be contested), you realize that you can't really define who's in and who's out, including yourself. Gender doesn't automatically confer or preclude membership (here I will offer Rimbaud as an example, look it up). Nowadays, I wonder if philosophy and politics do either.
Recently, DC posted some (what I consider) scary, reactionary quotes from supposedly feminist women, who claimed they would not vote at all if not for women (ie, Hillary). To my mind, this kind of backward thinking is exactly the opposite of the kind of cooperative forward thinking that has allowed feminism to survive since Elizabeth Cady Stanton decided what to name herself. After all, it is men who vote to enfranchise women. They can't be all bad.
On the obvious level, refusing to vote (or writing in Hillary's name) translates pretty directly into President McCain, the repeal of Roe, a stranglehold on SCOTUS, the invasion of Iran, and eventually, President Romney (ok, I just scared the crap out of myself). I can't think how this forwards any kind of feminist agenda.
Less obviously, it cheapens the real efforts of the women's movement, just as bra burning did in the 60s, giving morons an icon of feminine irrationality to brandish. The emotional appeal of the refusenik mentality may seem noble, but what it really does is obliterate the voices of a generation of women.
Perhaps I've been asleep this last few months, but when last I looked, it was Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi (ain't she a woman?) working together to keep the Clintons (not just Hillary) at bay; Hillary was defending the exclusion of Florida and Michigan (when she thought she was winning without them), and championing the superdelegates (when she thought they'd rescue her from the hoi polloi because she was more electable). I think Hillary overanalyzed her campaign process and lost the nomination for herself because she underestimated Barack Obama's platform, appeal, and strategy. And because she didn't control her organization properly. Oh, and because she overestimated her appeal with far too many members of her constituency (and their willingness to overlook her neglect). And wait, also because she forgot her winning NY formula: fucking listening to voters and what we want. (Who was it ranting about her warriory right-winginess recently?)
Another failure on Hillary's part (and that of some of her older supporters) is a strange and glaring neglect of women who are not white. Not to say this is total: surely Hillary's excellent health care program would benefit women of color and their families greatly; there are other examples as well. But the starkness of Hillary's "white working class voters" and Bill's "Jesse Jackson won SC in 88" comments had to alienate anyone who was tired of cutting them slack.
The Clintons played hardball and they lost. On her claim of greater electability, an NBC/WSJ poll a week after the nomination shows that Obama leads McCain nationally 47% to 41%. This poll conducted from Friday to Monday, was discussed on Keith Olbermann's Countdown this Wednesday:
41 to 36 among independents, the group McCain said he needs to win. And those blue collar workers, so skeptical about Obama, they are going for him 47 to 42 . Catholics back Obama, 47-40, over McCain. Women, the majority of the country, the group supposedly considered a switch from Clinton to McCain, telling pollsters before Clinton‘s presidential ambitions had even gotten cold, that they prefer Obama over McCain by a margin of 52 to 33 . ...
This polling is done in such a way that it‘s overseen by one Republican and one Democrat. The Republican involved in this looked at the white women number, Obama 46, McCain 39. He said, the Republicans expect to win white men big, and they are leading right now in that. But it is white women who decide the election. His quote was, if a Republican wins among white women, we usually win that election. If this is the number when the wounds over Senator Clinton are so strong and so fresh, what chance does McCain if the those wounds heal or just improve a little bit?
This nomination was Hillary's to lose. She spent the last 8 years putting it together, and for awhile, it looked like she was doing everything right. Her failure isn't that she's a woman in a man's world, it's that she took far too much, and too many of us for granted, couldn't admit her mistakes, and couldn't be flexible in the face of a threat to her power. Isn't that what we're all kind of sick of in Presidential personalities?
As I said in a post below:
Women vote for Obama for all kinds of reasons, but I think most of the voters on the two coasts of any gender or race are voting for him because of what I'll call the Bald Tony factor: they're just voting for the guy who's going to do what they want done, and they're so used to seeing people of every color and background and gender doing competent jobs in any number of roles, that his race isn't really a factor. Just as most women who are willing to put aside his gender because he's saying what they want to hear. What they want to hear is that things will change: not just the end of the Sockpuppet Cowboy, but the return of responsible government. Nobody wants riots in the streets (ok, maybe the ELFs do) but most of us want some very concrete changes in government. Not what Gregor Samsa calls the totem pole issues, but Iraq, public health and safety, that pile of idiots in Homeland Security, the desperately self contradictory insanity stalking SCOTUS, the imperial presidency, congressional wimpitude. Oh, yes, we like our totem poles, but that's not what's got people putting differences aside this year.
I listen to some of the rhetoric of feminists regarding the way Hillary was treated and I'm astonished. Voting Democrat is like an abused woman staying with her abusive spouse? Well, if the alternative political analogy is running to the arms of Ted Bundy, I think I'll take my chances and some boxing lessons.
06 August 2007
Losing.
Losing.
by Isonomist
08/06/2007, 11:15 AM #
A few years ago, after a particularly disheartening loss in the ring, Mike Tyson told a New Yorker reporter something that struck me deeply. I wrote about it here on BOTF back when, and began using part of the quote as my signoff on my email account.
"Life is totally about losing everything."
I thought I'd lost a lot back then, in June of 2005. My father had died of a heart attack when I was 21, my older son was in remission from leukemia, my younger son just diagnosed with vasovagal syncope that caused him to drop to the floor, unconscious, eyes still open, his whole body spasming until he came to again. No idea what triggered it. My boys had lost their dad two years earlier, which was far harder on them than me, and I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the right way to help them mourn someone I couldn't bring myself to miss. Both my grandmothers died within five months of each other that year. My job had deteriorated into a particularly nasty place to be. I was trying to accept that life is like this, that really I was very lucky, that things could be worse. The usual.
Of course things are worse now. I don't cry all the way to work anymore, and I don't know if it's the psychopharmacopia I ingest daily, or if I'm starting to heal. Instead, I see the dead. They lose familiarity as they walk closer, become strangers walking to work instead of my grandmothers, my son, my father. My sister in law. My aunt. I hear my son call me now and then, and can't always find a rational explanation for what I've heard. I ask him to help me find things and there they are.
I can't tell you why this comforts me. My belief in any of this is in the same box with Shrödinger's cat, no paradox to me any more. It just is/n't. I can't tell you why it comforts me to see other mothers mourning their adult sons on the nightly news. I want to call them up and ask them how we do it. Even though part of me knows. The part that doesn't really want to keep walking but does.
I've been through the whole process of mourning before, I know what's happening when I feel it-- anger at everyone but especially whatever God is or isn't and everything human beings say about it, the event horizon of depression shrieking in my bones, the tugging, insistent limbic self that still bleats for my baby somewhere in the middle of my brain. Those fleeting, lucid Archimedean moments where it all makes sense and it's ok that this is how it all happened because this is how it happens, has always happened, and always will happen until the stars die. Knowing where I'm going and more or less where I will end up doesn't make this much easier. Just a little less like chaos. You see me walking to work and you think I'm fine. My family and friends don't see what's happening below the surface. Somewhere in me I am always looking for him and telling myself he is gone. I have mourned him before, as he grew, and grew away from me. Only now there isn't a rational way to reconcile. I understand why the irrational, now. As the months go by I find it harder and harder to explain what it is: how can I be parenting the dead? And yet I am. I just can't tell you how it works.
by Isonomist
08/06/2007, 11:15 AM #
A few years ago, after a particularly disheartening loss in the ring, Mike Tyson told a New Yorker reporter something that struck me deeply. I wrote about it here on BOTF back when, and began using part of the quote as my signoff on my email account.
"Life is totally about losing everything."
I thought I'd lost a lot back then, in June of 2005. My father had died of a heart attack when I was 21, my older son was in remission from leukemia, my younger son just diagnosed with vasovagal syncope that caused him to drop to the floor, unconscious, eyes still open, his whole body spasming until he came to again. No idea what triggered it. My boys had lost their dad two years earlier, which was far harder on them than me, and I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the right way to help them mourn someone I couldn't bring myself to miss. Both my grandmothers died within five months of each other that year. My job had deteriorated into a particularly nasty place to be. I was trying to accept that life is like this, that really I was very lucky, that things could be worse. The usual.
Of course things are worse now. I don't cry all the way to work anymore, and I don't know if it's the psychopharmacopia I ingest daily, or if I'm starting to heal. Instead, I see the dead. They lose familiarity as they walk closer, become strangers walking to work instead of my grandmothers, my son, my father. My sister in law. My aunt. I hear my son call me now and then, and can't always find a rational explanation for what I've heard. I ask him to help me find things and there they are.
I can't tell you why this comforts me. My belief in any of this is in the same box with Shrödinger's cat, no paradox to me any more. It just is/n't. I can't tell you why it comforts me to see other mothers mourning their adult sons on the nightly news. I want to call them up and ask them how we do it. Even though part of me knows. The part that doesn't really want to keep walking but does.
I've been through the whole process of mourning before, I know what's happening when I feel it-- anger at everyone but especially whatever God is or isn't and everything human beings say about it, the event horizon of depression shrieking in my bones, the tugging, insistent limbic self that still bleats for my baby somewhere in the middle of my brain. Those fleeting, lucid Archimedean moments where it all makes sense and it's ok that this is how it all happened because this is how it happens, has always happened, and always will happen until the stars die. Knowing where I'm going and more or less where I will end up doesn't make this much easier. Just a little less like chaos. You see me walking to work and you think I'm fine. My family and friends don't see what's happening below the surface. Somewhere in me I am always looking for him and telling myself he is gone. I have mourned him before, as he grew, and grew away from me. Only now there isn't a rational way to reconcile. I understand why the irrational, now. As the months go by I find it harder and harder to explain what it is: how can I be parenting the dead? And yet I am. I just can't tell you how it works.
05 June 2007
Someone else's Jesse
Someone else's Jesse
by Isonomist
06/05/2007, 1:49 PM #
This morning as I was heading down into the subway, I noticed a man hunched over on the sidewalk, on other side of the metal banister, peering in at me through the bars. The man was in pretty good shape, tight t-shirt to show off the muscle, decently handsome in a boyish way. And too sick to move. He was dripping with sweat (it was 70 degrees out), and pale under his light-black skin (not quite ginger but light enough that you could tell the blood wasn't in his face). His lips were quivering. I asked him if he needed a doctor. He said, "N-no?" I didn't believe him. Back up on the street. I asked him if it was ok to feel his forehead. By now a crowd was gathering. His MacDonalds breakfast was still neatly balanced on the top of the banister rail, but he was looking worse with every second. He nodded about his forehead. Clammy. His arm was cold, but I felt the need to comfort him somehow as I told him, "I think you do need a doctor, I'm calling 911." "Ok," he said. He looked so young and lost, his whole body shivering now. A MacDonald's manager had come out, and wanted him to come sit inside until he felt better. But the guy could not stand up, even with all his effort. "Don't try to stand up," said a Caribbean sounding lady behind him. "I know you want to but it's better if you don't." She gave me a look of relief and then approval when she realized I was calling for him. Waiting for the 911 operator to pick up (luckily no elevator music on the hold button), I asked his name. "Damien." The operator wanted to know what color he was: black; how old he was (I asked him) "Forty-one." Astonished, I asked him again, thinking he'd said "twenty-one" and I'd just misheard. I stifled that crazy ADD instinct to blurt out some clumsy compliment, and tried to relay the information about where we were and his symptoms. I wasn't putting it together. He's, he's talking, he's lucid, but..."Park Avenue? Park?" She kept asking. Finally she said, Ohhh, Park Avenue South. And in saying yes I managed to make that one syllable sound like "yes I am an idiot," maybe telepathically. She patched me through to EMS but by now I was talking too much. He's sweating, he's clammy, he's shivering, he can answer questions, he's lucid...Slow down, she kept saying. There was something about his symptoms I couldn't quite put my finger on (all you medical geniuses out there, shut up). I knew this. But all I could tell her was that he looked like he was having some kind of "reaction." Finally she confessed she was sending an ambulance, and I realized I was going to be late for work. The Caribbean lady was still there, talking to Damien gently, more or less on the same lines as before. She had that grandmotherly, schoolteachery look with the long skirt and neatly pressed blouse. The kind of person you'd hire to watch your kids without even calling all her references. "Can you stay with him if I leave?" I asked her and she nodded. I couldn't tell if she was smiling, but she kinda was. Like she knew what was happening to him, and he was going to be ok. I couldn't bring myself to believe her. Down in the station, I fumbled for my card for a few minutes before I realized I was holding it in one hand already. The train was coming, but as soon as I passed the turnstile I wanted to run back up and stay with Damien until the ambulance arrived. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Nothing could convince me I was doing the right thing by moving on. I even prayed to God to keep an eye on Damien, then I realized God's pretty spotty in that business. Thy will be done. I'd given EMS my phone number, and I hoped they'd call me, but they didn't. It was hard not to clog up 911 trying to get news of Damien, but I managed. It wasn't till I got to my desk that I realized he was showing every sign of insulin shock, and what I should have done (I'm an idiot) was send the MacDonald's manager back in for some orange juice or a coke. Then I had a flash of his mom not even knowing her son was on his knees on a filthy sidewalk in the middle of rush hour. I'm an idiot. I should have stayed and called whatever number he could give me, and whoever in his family picked up, they could have told me he was diabetic and to get him something sweet. They could have had a chance to come get him, and protect him till the ambulance came. Luckily, there was this Caribbean lady who looked like she knew how to take care of someone else's child.
by Isonomist
06/05/2007, 1:49 PM #
This morning as I was heading down into the subway, I noticed a man hunched over on the sidewalk, on other side of the metal banister, peering in at me through the bars. The man was in pretty good shape, tight t-shirt to show off the muscle, decently handsome in a boyish way. And too sick to move. He was dripping with sweat (it was 70 degrees out), and pale under his light-black skin (not quite ginger but light enough that you could tell the blood wasn't in his face). His lips were quivering. I asked him if he needed a doctor. He said, "N-no?" I didn't believe him. Back up on the street. I asked him if it was ok to feel his forehead. By now a crowd was gathering. His MacDonalds breakfast was still neatly balanced on the top of the banister rail, but he was looking worse with every second. He nodded about his forehead. Clammy. His arm was cold, but I felt the need to comfort him somehow as I told him, "I think you do need a doctor, I'm calling 911." "Ok," he said. He looked so young and lost, his whole body shivering now. A MacDonald's manager had come out, and wanted him to come sit inside until he felt better. But the guy could not stand up, even with all his effort. "Don't try to stand up," said a Caribbean sounding lady behind him. "I know you want to but it's better if you don't." She gave me a look of relief and then approval when she realized I was calling for him. Waiting for the 911 operator to pick up (luckily no elevator music on the hold button), I asked his name. "Damien." The operator wanted to know what color he was: black; how old he was (I asked him) "Forty-one." Astonished, I asked him again, thinking he'd said "twenty-one" and I'd just misheard. I stifled that crazy ADD instinct to blurt out some clumsy compliment, and tried to relay the information about where we were and his symptoms. I wasn't putting it together. He's, he's talking, he's lucid, but..."Park Avenue? Park?" She kept asking. Finally she said, Ohhh, Park Avenue South. And in saying yes I managed to make that one syllable sound like "yes I am an idiot," maybe telepathically. She patched me through to EMS but by now I was talking too much. He's sweating, he's clammy, he's shivering, he can answer questions, he's lucid...Slow down, she kept saying. There was something about his symptoms I couldn't quite put my finger on (all you medical geniuses out there, shut up). I knew this. But all I could tell her was that he looked like he was having some kind of "reaction." Finally she confessed she was sending an ambulance, and I realized I was going to be late for work. The Caribbean lady was still there, talking to Damien gently, more or less on the same lines as before. She had that grandmotherly, schoolteachery look with the long skirt and neatly pressed blouse. The kind of person you'd hire to watch your kids without even calling all her references. "Can you stay with him if I leave?" I asked her and she nodded. I couldn't tell if she was smiling, but she kinda was. Like she knew what was happening to him, and he was going to be ok. I couldn't bring myself to believe her. Down in the station, I fumbled for my card for a few minutes before I realized I was holding it in one hand already. The train was coming, but as soon as I passed the turnstile I wanted to run back up and stay with Damien until the ambulance arrived. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Nothing could convince me I was doing the right thing by moving on. I even prayed to God to keep an eye on Damien, then I realized God's pretty spotty in that business. Thy will be done. I'd given EMS my phone number, and I hoped they'd call me, but they didn't. It was hard not to clog up 911 trying to get news of Damien, but I managed. It wasn't till I got to my desk that I realized he was showing every sign of insulin shock, and what I should have done (I'm an idiot) was send the MacDonald's manager back in for some orange juice or a coke. Then I had a flash of his mom not even knowing her son was on his knees on a filthy sidewalk in the middle of rush hour. I'm an idiot. I should have stayed and called whatever number he could give me, and whoever in his family picked up, they could have told me he was diabetic and to get him something sweet. They could have had a chance to come get him, and protect him till the ambulance came. Luckily, there was this Caribbean lady who looked like she knew how to take care of someone else's child.
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