Thanks, Ken. Brave.
It's curious how political righteousness - left or right - within the
context of family can become a means to repress (or disguise) other kinds of
emotional family. An inheritance from the Depression and the Thirties? I
know it well! As well as I remember the hysteric reactionary 1940's voice
of Walter Winchell shaking the speaker in the family living room Philco
radio cabinet. The Reds are coming!
Our task (futile) was to catch Winchell on a tripwire.
Stephen V
> TRIPWIRE
>
> A child grows up in an airless apartment
>
> and hears
>
> screaming and shouting, relatives
> visiting, long abandoned by their mother ship.
>
> Sideshow.
>
> My father hides behind a newspaper
> defunct
> The New York Journal American
> while his sister stands, moans, keens,
> cursed as she thinks by her marriage
> by a life of badly dealt hands
> inveighing against a God she cannot credence
> and a fate unknown but malevolent.
> Personal offense is everywhere.
>
> My father, immured behind Walter Winchell,
> tries not to speak.
>
> Maybe they both had it right.
>
> No words are innocuous.
> All words are treacherous,
> carry the venomous bite
> without an antidote.
>
> I learned that at home or I should have.
> I am a slow study.
>
> Now and again I get to audit
> a refresher course in
> The Dialectic of the Universe of Offense.
>
> Every word throws you into No Man's Land
> knowing only the mines are there
> but not where they've buried the tripwires.
>
> Step on a wire and you're likely to be blown up.
>
> Sexual intercoursed without the sex.
>
> Watch how grown-ups behave--feeling hit,
> hitting back, kids in the playground,
> "Teechur he sed a bad thing!"
> "Mommy he start it!"
>
> To be truly offensive you have to
> stumble over a hidden wire and blow your
> ass off before you know what happened.
>
> Name your favorite offense.
> Plant your tripwire.
> Choose what you hate and seek it out.
> Be patient, someone will come.
> Just know that one day
> it will be your turn
>
> because whoever long ago dreamed up Fortune's Wheel
> nailed it, the cycle,
> and I--or someone--will be there
> to be offended.
>
> KTW/4-20-05
>
> -----------------------------
> Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com
>
> "A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank balance was, the
> sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be
> different because I was important in the life of a child."
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