i was wrong.

there is a point where a person has to accept their limitations.  it's not something that many of us were taught to do as children, and it's sort of funny, in a way.  when you're a child, or at least when i was, i was told that i could be anything that i wanted to be.  as a man, i know that i have limitations and to step beyond them is to court personal disaster.  i accept this, and in some ways i comply, but in many ways i push those boundaries every day.

i was wrong.

i got up this morning and i said my prayers and i turned everything over to Jehovah God, including an apology for my partaking in Tuesday's foolishness.  i did crunches because i have no core strength and i read from Revelation and three meditation books.  i then came in the living room, checked my email and found that Create Space was still having problems with my book.  this is after i've changed it i don't know how many times.  the cover, that is.  so, i called them and got the new specs and i got a new cover together and i submitted it, and by that point my monster had talked me out of the gym, but that was okay.

i was wrong.

i went to breakfast with Marc and i was strangely aware of all the white people around me.  now, mind you, i grew up in a completely mixed neighborhood on the east side.  Ayers Street.  my neighbors on one side were Italian, on the other side were Poles.  down two houses was a cop named Richard and his mother, white.  down the street from them was a biker/hippie enclave.  nice people.  blacks and Hispanics strewn all throughout.  as i look back on it now, i think we invaded and there were some people who decided not to have a problem with us and found that they were right, that we were human and just wanted life as they and everyone else did.  we got along.  there were weed sellers on the street and weed smokers.  everyone played together, rode bikes together.  eventually the young brothers down the hill got caught up in crack sales and became big time and notorious.   but i was grown and gone by then, and my parents were on their way to Liberty.

i was wrong.

i was aware of the white people in the restaurant.  i was aware of my friend Marc's whiteness.  I was aware of the waitress, the patrons and the truckers.  i was aware of a couple of Mexicans who were there for breakfast on their way to work, from the lime-green reflective vests, and i felt bad for them.  i was aware of the tension, like a sustained note from a violin in a horror movie, between the few blacks and the many whites.  i was aware of feeling surrounded.  i wondered, briefly, what it might feel like to get beaten until my blood poured from my wounds.

i was wrong.

i left there, went to Struthers and got Rachel's clothes because she was sick and needed fresh bedding.  I went to my parent's house to wash her stuff and visit.  Deedy came by and i spoke.  i talked to my dad about the election.  i spoke to my mom about dieting and about being willing to change habits of worrying about other people and neglecting herself.  i saw my brother, one of my sisters and my aunt.  i took Rachel's clothes back, talked with her for a bit, got my ass home and i thought.

i was wrong.

i thought about a woman on Facebook, a white woman, who has finally found her niche, in urging people unhappy with the election results to 'get out of the country'.  reports are coming in, few but sustained, about harassment and violence toward people of color, regardless of culture.  people are angry, people are afraid.  some people are jubilant.  three women at Golden Dawn tickled to be able to be bitches openly in regard to black people.

what comes next?

in the past couple years, i have watched cops publicly executing black citizens.  i have said, to my brother, that it struck me as a sort of 'proving in', or 'making your bones' in mob-speak.  in the world that is about to come, there will only be room for those who are open hostiles.  the cops who kill and say they felt 'threatened'.  the George Zimmerman's.  some, much smarter than i, began to lay the foundation for this all along.  no charges stick against a white officer killing a black man.  so much so, the one female officer shot herself in the leg and blamed it on black men.  8 years have driven most white people insane, and now they have a chance to let it all out.  and i ask myself, what comes next?  what is next for my people?  what is next for my child?

i was wrong.

this is not a good world, it is not a good country.  i've always known that.  what i was wrong about, what i was so fucking wrong about, was the amount of undercover racists who were just laying in the cut.  it was never that i thought the hate had abated. i think i just believed it wasn't quite as widespread as it was in the fifties and sixties.  but where could it had gone?  no one who killed Black Panthers was ever charged.  no one who killed freedom fighters were ever charged.  Emmitt Till's killers admitted to a national publication their murder and were never punished at all.  many who were a part of that murder are likely still alive.  a president gets his head blown off and no one is ever punished.  is that not because it was an inside job?  would not some of those who know all about it still be very much alive today?  this is America.  a place of open hostility as the result of secret insanities.  i misjudged.  i could have changed nothing, but if i missed this, then it's almost certain i've missed other things.

i have to do better.  or i have to stop trying.

and i haven't decided which just yet.

forgive me, Father.