as he sipped beef bone broth like
a breakfast tea he
thought it was poetic he listened to a Mingus piece Peggy’s
Blue Skylight lost for forty years
it was discovered in Detroit
ahDetroit he knew a few guysclowns who referred to it as Detriot they liked to finger the city for its ’67 riots You can always count on those people burning things down, destroying property.
ahDetroit he knew a few guysclowns who referred to it as Detriot they liked to finger the city for its ’67 riots You can always count on those people burning things down, destroying property.
Those people you understand why they were protesting
Protesting? Rioting. Those people‘ll
riot about anything.
You fuckin idiots The black citizenry . .
.
. Citizenry? . .
.
. Yahcitizenry Shaddup an listen They
were protesting police brutality As
Philly did in ’64 They protested police brutality
he almost mind you he thought almost
almost wondered if they were still alive
if they were what might they think of Black Lives Matterwhat might they think of black
boys and men being shot to death by frightened cops ah one wannabe cop cops who can kill if they feel threatened threatened by unarmed black men a black man being a black man was a
threat kill if you feel threatened great cop mantra the wannabe had Stand Your Ground and balls really had to be twisted by a ferocious public outcry to force any kind of questioning of wrongdoing or accountability
black people arent protesting anything
new
theyre protesting a continuity that has come down since before the signing of the Constitution the three-fifths
slave vote for white votes the Thirteenth
Amendment struck that down the threefifths and freed all enslaved people the Fourteenth provided them full citizenship yahright
the Fifteenth granted black men the
right to vote yahright
then those inked pagesthose amendments were
renegedquietly withheld when Reconstruction went south
their ignorance had breathtaking
depth and breadth then however he always came around at the end of his argument and allowed them their ignorant bliss
there was no reasonreally to
remember those guys
though his memory was shaken up last
night watching Spike Lees Bamboozled
a couple of themtheir fathers
had lawn jockeys in their backyards he
had plastic flamingoeshe bought them they thought his flamingoes were queerer than
their fathers lawn jockeys
crazy how memories return
and this on top of him currently reading a book by Benjamin Alire Saenz The Book Of What
Remains where in his prologue he cites the writer Jonah Lehrer Proust Was a
Neuroscientist who wrote that every time we enter a memory we change it
our memory is not true
he wouldnt go so far as to call his
memory a lie
he had a spooky long memory
he couldnt say how many times his
parents asked him when he shared what he rememberedwanting to be sure that what
he thought had happened did in fact and it was a memory not fictionnot something he was making up he was sympathetic he was a storyteller and theyd ask Why would you remember that?
You werent even three then.
they were startled
he laughed You realise youre my checkdownmy
witnesses I come to you to verify that
my memory is correct I dont want to
lie
1003, Day-between-Two-Ts, 3
10.18
