AN HONORABLE ROGUE 2

vincent van gogh

This morning, having coffee, sitting at the desk with computer, I heard what sounded like mouse scratchings in the wall to my right. I saw this small table with a drawer I keep a lamp on, thought I'd open the drawer an inch or two if a mouse was maybe inside the drawer; I've heard mice won't stay in a drawer that is open. I pulled the drawer open about two inches and saw the business card of Lorne R. Campbell. It felt like he was speaking to me after the meditation on him last night writing. It wasn't spooky; I don't find such coincidences spooky, rather quite natural. Taking it for spooky comes from interpreting it from outside self, whereas I see it coming from inside self. Can't explain it, but I'm so used to it, I take no special note of such coincidences anymore. If it means his spirit came to visit me, I doubt it. His soul would be well established in a new body. He's been gone twenty-four years. I'd guess he's at least twenty, someplace unknown to me and anybody else. Last time, he was born in British Columbia to Scottish immigrant parents. They moved to San Diego, California, when he was eight. He grew up on Coronado Island the other end of a long bridge from the city, played tennis in high school. His senior year he represented his school for the city-wide tournament. For the final round, city champion, he was put up against a kid with some sort of physical impairment, and Campbell could not allow himself to beat the kid. Where's the honor in beating a cripple? He gave the game to the kid and let him be the champion. After school he took a merchant ship from San Diego to New York by way of the Panama Canal, late 1920s, was delayed in Panama for a six-month jail term, more than likely for something involving liquor and a woman. I forget the actual reason. I felt a sense of visitation when I saw the card, felt like he was thanking me for the consideration I'd given him writing about him, for the trust. I felt it almost as if he were in the room speaking to me.

 

vincent van gogh

 

I'm recalling something he passed to me leaving the body. He had spoken a few times of my weak self-confidence, something he saw I needed to work on. I heard him. By chance, I was staying a few weeks in Miami, painting, when he had his collapse in New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona. His wife was wheelchair bound, he called and asked me to drive up to take him to a doctor's office, a four hour drive. He asked me to stay with them. I saw two helpless people needed a hand. I drove to Miami, picked up my objects and returned to take care of things like going to the grocery store, whatever comes up, to have someone in the house who could function and drive the car, to pick him up from the floor if needed. It was pretty clear to both of us these were his last days. He needed rest, time to sleep. I helped to keep everyday life necessities out of his head while his mortal frame was waning fast. I knew this was his final days and knew just as well that the shit would start the moment of his demise and I'd be in it up to my eyeballs for at least a few days. It was one of those times I said I-can-handle-it with a fair certainty I could not. As long as I had my keys in my pocket, I was free. Pushed past my limit, all I needed to do was turn the key in the ignition. Having such a clearly defined exit I was able to handle it fairly well when the buzzards started flying in, two of her brothers, one a fraud of a chaplain in the Navy, the other one a vacancy with the television on and nobody home. It was obvious from the start they were there to be sure I did not confiscate the South African Krugerrands Lorne kept in a little safe in a closet anybody who wanted it could easily carry away, and it was never locked. I didn't give a shit about his damn Krugerrands. I didn't want anything, which nobody believed about me, because they, themselves, were there wanting. It was funny being under suspicion for what they were there to do. I could see it, they didn't know I could, and they kept me in stitches by simply being fake in everything they said and did, pretending sincerity like bad actors. Lorne's daughter arrived, who was my friend; we supported each other under the gaze of the buzzards. Her brother arrived and I left, given that she had support in him. They were the children of his second of three wives.  

 

vincent van gogh

 

The buzzards offered me Lorne's car, wanting rid of the nuisance of its negligible market value, which I declined, an old land yacht Lincoln with an excellent motor, in good physical condition, a good highway car, but I wasn't going to be driving about in Sparta in a Lincoln. The wrong people look. I didn't want to pay taxes on it. Didn't want to pay for repair parts, expensive tires. I just wanted what I had, a 78 Toyota pickup that stayed with me until the frame rusted away. I didn't want a land yacht. The time came very soon for me to get on up the road. My heart was heavy with grief after losing someone I respected way high up, and my reason for being involved was over. The buzzards were there to wrangle over money and things and a will. Not me. I was there to get the hell gone from there. I hit the road for Charleston, about half way to home, and visited my friend John a couple days on the way home. Next day we walked to a small movie theater that showed art films to see a film, I forget what it was. Walking back to the house, John was talking and my mind was reeling from recent experiences, deeply occupied. I really wanted silence. I let him talk while I noticed I felt something new in my walking. I felt something in the way I was walking I'd never felt before. I went within and felt the walking, asked self what was I feeling. Answer: self-confidence. I realized this was the mantle Lorne had passed to me, his student he had gifted his knowledge to and love for the people and culture of these mountains. I walked paying attention to the feeling in my gait, feeling the self-confidence in self that was conducting my subconsciously new manner of walking. The buzzards got their things; I was the one he gifted in his passing, a boost in the self-confidence he saw I needed. His thank you in spirit, for giving him the chance to rest when his energy was waning, came from the same place that called me to open the drawer this morning to see his name on a business card. The self-confidence never faded away. It continues. I drove home from Charleston in a new spirit, though in a state of sorrow, too. Nothing like the highway for processing a logjam in the head.  

  

vincent van gogh

 

I was grateful for the opportunity to be an assist to Lorne in a real way in his last days. My prayer for his passing had been that he would see it coming with enough time to come to terms with his life, the passing be painless, and that I be with him to perform prayer within. I drove home with the satisfaction that his soul had found its home in the light. He chose cremation, so there was no body left for the soul to cling to, though I knew his soul would cling to nothing this side of the veil. He'd reached a place in his life at age 80 where nothing was left for him here. His mind was on the verge of gone. His secretary, who was his mind and kept his law practice going, came down with cancer and died. The end of his practice. He knew he didn't have a lot of time left and moved to Florida to rest and get away from here, break all his habits, go out in peace, no funeral. He didn't want a funeral. He didn't want anybody at his funeral wanting to see him dead. He had a long list of people who wanted to see him dead. He wanted to trump them all and not allow them the satisfaction. I saw him dead, but didn't want him dead. He asked that his ashes be put in the New River, though I don't think any of them made it there. That was not my concern. The self-confidence was not the only gift he left me with. My fear of death fell away in that time. It just went away of its own, I noticed one day a little bit later that I wasn't afraid of dying anymore. I suddenly understood why, concerning the question to kill or be killed, Jesus would go with be killed. I believe if I were put into a kill or be killed no-way-out situation, I'd go with be killed. I also don't know that automatic self-preservation sees it that way. Do I really have that much rational control? I don't think so. I prefer not to test it. I doubt my mind has much influence on so basic an original instinct as self-preservation. Surprise doesn't allow time for rational thought. Like Peter Tosh sang, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. My friend, Lorne, who just about everybody assessed to be bound for hell on account of general excess and never going to church, I saw go into the light.      

 

vincent van gogh himself

 

 

 

 

 

 

AMERICAN RACISM POPS TO THE SURFACE

antoni tapies

The story of Florida racism is everywhere. Can't hardly go online without seeing Zimmerman's face or Trayvon's face. The trial was evidently pathetic. I've no emotion invested in which side won. I never doubted Zimmerman would come out not guilty, took that for a given. The South most often gets blamed for racist behavior, but only north Florida is the South. Central and south Florida is Yankee. What racism takes place there is not Southern. It's Northern. Now the talk is a new federal trial on wrongful death. Federal will be very different from a Florida town's courtroom. Regarding punishment for Zimmerman, I can't help but see he's already been punished severely. He doesn't have a life anymore. Didn't have much of one before, a tube-gawker and big-dog wannabe. Steven Seagal on patrol. Now, he probably needs to be detained in the county jail to keep him alive. Put him in prison, he's dead. Let him run free, he's dead. He's a dead man any way you look at it. He knows it better than we do. In prison, they would keep him in solitary like they did Jeffrey Daumer and Charles Manson. He is now in that company, people who will not stay alive inside prison or out. Somebody who already has a life sentence would kill him for the bragging trophy. How embarrassing for Zimmerman to have Ann Coulter of the Faux news channel cheering for him. He may be proud of it.

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When I say I saw the decision coming, I held out about .05% suspicion something odd could happen and it would work out against Zimmerman. In a town called Rosewood, west of Ocala and Gainesville, the white people set out to massacre the black community over a false rape charge on a simple black man there in 1923. The black people of Rosewood fought back. Well made and good acting in the movie with Ving Rhames, Don Cheedle, Jon Voight. Rosewood is the part of Florida that is the South. I don't mean to excuse Southern racism, I just get tired of the South getting the blame for racism when it is everywhere in USA. The white people that hate Obama are not particular to the South. No state, no region of the country is a hundred percent anything. Most states are on the line between one and another. Each election, the best propaganda campaign tends to win. I don't mean best by "quality," but by what works. Like Sarah Palin. She's the bottom where a quality politician is concerned. She's the top at what works when your target is the uneducated voters. Her message like W Bush's was, Yeah buddy, I'm dumb as a rock, just like you. By now it looks like republicans are putting all their eggs in the basket of anti-compassion. It's a basket that works politically. It's done wonders for the party since 1980. But there is a natural phenomenon something like a natural law, bullshit doesn't have a very long lifespan. The Reagan Revolution was so popular with both republicans and democrats that it looked like it's only counter force would be the time it takes for the bullshit to run itself out to the nothing that it was at the beginning. Like "trickle-down."

 

Florida's stand-your-ground law was run through the legislature by republicans. It's other name could be the open-season-on-niggers law. Republicans have made Florida, Texas, Arizona, and now are working on North Carolina, into the most demented states in the nation in their state governments. Now we have a new law that cops can't have above a certain level of IQ. Little boys playing big men. Alas, people with IQs think too much. Police state is rule by people who don't think, who don't even recognize Bob Dylan with his driver's license photo ID. If you'd like to see how police state works, check out George Orwell's Animal Farm. It's where cops got the name pigs in the Sixties, "Some pigs are more equal than others." Right now with the McCrory administration in NC, we are a racist state. Under democratic administration, NC is a progressive state looking to the benefit of all. It makes me happy to see the crowds of people demonstrating in Raleigh. These are not college students. Some are. What I see in the photographs is white middle-aged middle-class people, black middle-aged people, the black equivalent of middle-class. Largely people educated beyond high school. They don't count with republicans either, like college students. Educated people don't figure for republicans at all. USA has enough uneducated people to keep the republicans alive as the parrot party. McCrory is going by orders from corporate headquarters, not by what works to the good of the citizens. Look it up in the dictionary, republicans do not represent the people that voted them into power. It's in the definition of the word.

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I'd guess about 75% of this county is racist. In primary and general, Obama lost 75 to 25. It seems like a fair representation of the ratio. It was in Alleghany that I learned not to concern myself with other people's racism, only my own. People I respected way up high, like farmer Tom Pruitt and his factory-worker, farmer, preacher brother, Elder Millard Pruitt, were racist, Millard especially. One evening Millard and I were watching the news and talking. He mentioned to me he'd given money to what he called the Ku Kluxers. His wife walking through the room said, "You aint never." He said, "Talk to me!" A light-hearted way of saying I aint a-lyin. One evening that I was there watching the news with him, about once a week, I went with intent to make an appeal to him about racism, to convince him black people are people too, compassion, even love your neighbor kind of thing.

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During the news a bunch of beer bellied white working men in Mississippi or Alabama were taunting a 5 year old black girl walking on a sidewalk by herself through the gauntlet of those "creepy ass crackers," each one waving a beer bottle and wearing white tshirts, Invisible Empire printed on the front in black. News cameras and vans everywhere. Millard said in excitement like watching tv wrestling, "Now, there's a bunch of boys I'd like to be with." All my mental construct that I walked in the door with fell to the floor around my chair. Gone. In that thousandth of a second, I thought, What am I doing wanting to make him think like me? I said, "Would you be drinking the beer?" "No, I wouldn't be drinking no beer." I laughed at myself on the inside for days, weeks. It plumb got me over concerning myself with other people's racism, politics, religion, opinions or anything else. I saw in that tiny split-second, it aint none of my damn business. He wasn't telling me to be like him.

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If I've got a problem with racism, take care of it in myself. Earlier in the day I watched a video clip of some black guy I'd never seen before with ball cap on sideways, talking hip-hop hip, expressing with hands and fingers rapper style, explaining to his black brothers and sisters, especially the gang-bangers, the need to cut out the gangsta and prison recycle program, come into awareness, because they need to come together as a people. They are being defeated by white racism every day in legislation, in court cases, by police state. I paid attention to everything he said. We've had these kinds of speeches all the way back to Stokely Carmichael, every time some racist indignity comes to the surface. Obama's only apparent attention given the black people of America is telling them in speeches to get up off their asses and get with it. No matter what will be Obama's legacy, my feeling is that having a black president, especially a well educated one, has brought American racism to the surface. Some people seem surprised, like it's a new surge. It's only a surge in that it's come out from the background. It hasn't been popular on tv to be a racist. Television's attempt to be racially sensitive with black people in commercials, black tv shows, black characters in white tv shows, hasn't converted anybody. Television gives the appearance of little to no racism, convincing its devotees, like judge Roberts of the Supremes, the issue of racism is over and solved. LOL. Tell me another good one. He's a republican. He didn't believe that. He knew what he was doing, keeping the African Americans down. A toast with drinks before dinner at the club.

antoni tapies in person

 

 

 

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