"Anticipation" is hanging me up. It's hanging up the whole damn nation. Damnation. I'm anticipating everything these days. Of course I'm anticipating noise. In my screwed-up skull I'm anticipating the construction noise to begin any second now. Anticipation tears at your chest. Makes your breathing heavy and irregular. "Sorry, Admiral Stockdale, I'm cavin'." I've got no faith in myself, the Admiral would tell me. I'm afraid of what hasn't happened yet! And isn't anticipation a kind of fear? You see, it's a clash between "hope"--which according to Admiral Stockdale is a "non" existent--"faith in yourself!" is his motto--and "what will be that will be." "Oh, hell, I hope that damn construction noise isn't irritating again today like it was last week...and the bastards worked Saturday this week, too, the sorry, rotten, son of a bitchin'...." And thus my nerves are jittery as hell--there is no HOPE! I know that. Even though ironically the motto of my family's patriarch, he wore it as a charm on his watch chain, he had it engraved onto the backs of his watch cases, he had a gold ring with it as a seal--was "HOPE"--our crest showing an anchor with the word "Hope" across it--"We are anchored in Hope." My ancestors were anchored in Hope. I'm doomed. Where do you drop an anchor in the streets of New York City?--how do you anchor in anything in this constantly shifting shiftless town?
Of course at the bottom of all anticipation is the arrival of DEATH. We don't like to face death, though we love to see our entertainers face it day-in day-out on our teevee and movie screens and in the televized news--there's a story this morning about a pregnant teenager who murdered the father of the baby last night in cold blood. Can you imagine what that scared, pregnant, teenage girl was anticipating? Oh, yes, I know some of us welcome the Big D. Some of us have our hopes all anchored in the depths of death. "I'll be over this pain when I die at least." False hope. Wow, Admiral, hope is not real--it's like cowardly to depend on hope. Gamblers who depend on hope lose consistently. Gamblers who consider percentages--having faith in their ability to gamble against all odds--are the successful gamblers--and there aren't many of those around. As a teenager I had two friends who attended the Baptist college in my hometown and they were big basketball fans and they took me to basketball games at their college and they introduced me to all of the players on the team. This particular year, this college had a pretty good basketball team, led by their center, a 6' 7" dude, big for those days, though Wilt Chamberlain and Bevo Francis, both over 7 footers, were playing college ball by then, Wilt the Stilt at Kansas and Bevo playing for the Rio Grande (Ohio) College Hilltoppers--but for this hometown college team, a 6' 7" center was quite an advantage, especially over teams they played in their division. One of the other players on that team was this dude Doyle Brunson, a guy who became one of the world's greatest poker players and is currently starring out in Vegas in Texas Hold 'Em tournaments. My friends and my brother knew him better than I did, I met him a couple of times but he wouldn't remember, though he probably does remember my brother. One of my friends had played poker against him back then and he said Brunson was so fucking sure of himself, like he'd make a bet and then just sit and stare at each player as they were considering calling him or raising him or folding--he said one habit he had, too, was making wild comments suddenly, like "Hey'd'ja know I caught a wildcat in my garage the other night?"--and that would throw you off just enough you'd lose your cool--this friend said the way Brunson played poker devastated you--and you got to anticipating this guy staring at you brazenly, distracting you, puzzling you wondering what the hell he was up to--plus he won a lot, plus you knew he was a champion bluffer, too, so he had you coming from all angles--it took a lot of "goin' deaf, dumb, and blind" when you played Doyle Brunson. He was so cool and intimately into poker, he would keep on playing during an earthquake, not even knowing there was an earthquake, his concentration (faith in himself) was so strong.
Doyle Brunson
And that's how you beat anticipation and the fear and dependency on hope that goes along with it, through concentration. Concentration on your own powers, on your own ability to do something greater than noise, like composing music under earphones through an eight-track digital sound board. Or as a writer, working on one of these blogs, while listening to music--these blogs can be used as psychiatric couches, or used to publish your diaries, or, hell, you can publish your own newspaper--you can glorify thine own self. Advertise for yourself, a la Norman Mailer, like on these blogs, or on FaceBook, or on MySpace--except that asshole Rupert "Aussie Racist" Murdoch owns MySpace so I'd avoid it. You know Murdoch gathers information like Bill Gates for power and profits. How do you think Yahoo and Google keep on becoming bigger and better and offering more and more information and keep on making millions upon millions? Why through the big bucks they make gathering and selling information--all kinds of information, selling it for big bucks--like Yahoo got for spying for the Commie Chinese a couple of years back.
Through White Pages.com, for instance, I recently found you can find a hell of a lot more about people than their phone numbers. Several years ago I got it into my crazed head that I owed this woman I had once been madly in love with an apology for something I did that turned her against me, so I tried to find her via Google--and I tried to find her husband, too--and I tried to find her by Googling her name and where she used to live and her profession, etc., and I found her, but at sites that hadn't been upgraded in 20 years, or in again several-year-old mentions of her in a professional sense, though I really wasn't sure it was her or not, though in a couple of cases I knew it definitely was her. I found a general email address on a professional site and wrote her a long email but it was sent back to me by demonmail as undeliverable. Then I found an email address for, and I was sure it was him, her husband, but it didn't come back on the back of a demon but he never replied to it either. I didn't know, but I figured he'd turned on me, too, and probably hated my guts now though I'd once been his best friend. But I was conjecturing, figuring this woman had told him of our....
I left the whole thing alone for a long time, but I was out with this chick t'other eve and she mentioned White Pages.com and how you could find anybody's phone number on there, and also where they worked, whatever the hell you ever wanted on someone. When I got back to my computer I wrote this old lover's name and city into White Pages.com and son of a wild boar, her name came up along with her phone number and her current address....
I'm proud to say, now that I've found all this information on this woman, I feel like leaving her alone. Besides, she's not the same woman I still love in my memories--I'm getting sentimental, and as Admiral Stockdale would warn me, "Getting sentimental is a sign of cavin' in!" "You got me there, Admiral, you got me, dude."
And just as I'm talking about anticipation--the construction dudes are on the site--I can sensed them over there; and that anticipated noise I've been anticipating since Saturday evening is back.
My "demon" is noise. I am so fucking sensitive to it. People are always saying to me, "What's wrong with you, Wolfie, are you deaf?" You know, like when they ask me a question and I look like I'm looking out into space. But, no, I'm not deaf. I'm listening to them, but I'm checking out all the other sounds around, too, I'm hearing beyond the immediate, listening to other things going on, especially sounds that irritate me, that wrestle with my jiggy headed nerves. It's like I once felt standing before a large Diego Rivera mural, I'm involved in the whole scene--I'm stretching my aesthetic sight and listening powers onto extreme broadband, trying to catch the whole of the painting first and then boil it down to the messages within it--how Diego worked first up from a "ground" or "foundation" on up into a completed work. So, again I say, I'm not hard of hearing--I can hear the big shovel firing up down on the construction site, earlier and earlier, this time it's 6:53 am--and, yet, I don't really hear that shovel--I'm still anticipating hearing it? This'll drive ya nuts, folks. I should be looking at this construction site as a whole. The whole I should be looking at is first that it is a building construction site, one among dozens in this neighborhood. It's there; it's not going away until it is completed from the "ground" or "foundation." The situation (the site) contains within its boundaries two big combustible-engine shovels, one, the little one, down deep in the basement hole it's digging at the back of the site while the big Cat shovel is back up at the street end of the site sitting up on the highest level of land on the site, the rest of the site being a couple of canyons. That's the site. And I know full well what's going on in that site. What I can't know is the amount of noise these contraptions and the human monkeys operating them are going to make at any given moment. It's that noise I'm always anticipating. My Gestalt psychology therapy is setting me back on the right track though. Whewwww. I blow out my anticipatory worries and accept the whole for what it is. This city is a noisy city. And yes when they are building an 18-story hotel next to your home, you gotta expect some noise, uneven noises, unsteady noises, machine noises, human noises-- like construction dudes love to holler as loud as they can at each other and they whistle as loud as they can too to signal each other or get each other's attention. One would think they might be deaf from working 5 months straight now with the roar of those shovels and compressors and constant whirring roar of the concrete trucks and dump trucks as they back in and out of the site to unload or being loaded, both of those operations creating great thunderous noise--and there's their metal-cutting saws, all these noises being up close and next to them, in their ears, even if some of them are wearing ear protector headsets, 8-plus hours a day for now 6 days a week, and sure, if I want another anticipation to drive me nuts, then I surely am anticipating them working on Sundays soon and at nights, too, in the sometime future.
Admiral Stockdale sez: "Fuck expectations, Wolfie, just keep yourself in control of your own self, buddy boy. You only have faith in yourself to get you through adversities... yes, maybe a bit maimed, crippled, or blind, but still alive."
Whewwwww. I let out another steamy breath of relief. I feel better.
It's just Monday. Blue Monday. And as Fats said, "Oh, how I hate Blue Monday/Gotta work like a slave all day..."
Antoine Domino's "Blue Monday"
Blue Monday how I hate Blue Monday
Got to work like a slave all day
Here come Tuesday, oh hard Tuesday
I'm so tired got no time to play
Here come Wednesday, I'm beat to my socks
My gal calls, got to tell her that I'm out
'Cause Thursday is a hard workin' day
And Friday I get my pay
Saturday mornin', oh Saturday mornin'
All my tiredness has gone away
Got my money and my honey
And I'm out on the stand to play
Sunday mornin' my head is bad
But it's worth it for the time that I had
But I've got to get my rest
'Cause Monday is a mess
Monday Is a Mess
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
Another Decent White Man From the American White Past
William Lloyd Garrison
Here's an Essay On the Constitution and the Union
There is much declamation about the sacredness of the compact which was formed between the free and slave states, on the adoption of the Constitution. A sacred compact, forsooth! We pronounce it the most bloody and heaven-daring arrangement ever made by men for the continuance and protection of a system of the most atrocious villany ever exhibited on earth. Yes—we recognize the compact, but with feelings of shame and indignation, and it will be held in everlasting infamy by the friends of justice and humanity throughout the world. It was a compact formed at the sacrifice of the bodies and souls of millions of our race, for the sake of achieving a political object—an unblushing and monstrous coalition to do evil that good might come. Such a compact was, in the nature of things and according to the law of God, null and void from the beginning. No body of men ever had the right to guarantee the holding of human beings in bondage. Who or what were the framers of our government, that they should dare confirm and authorise such high-handed villany—such flagrant robbery of the inalienable rights of man—such a glaring violation of all the precepts and injunctions of the gospel—such a savage war upon a sixth part of our whole population?—They were men, like ourselves—as fallible, as sinful, as weak, as ourselves. By the infamous bargain which they made between themselves, they virtually dethroned the Most High God, and trampled beneath their feet their own solemn and heaven-attested Declaration, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights—among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They had no lawful power to bind themselves, or their posterity, for one hour—for one moment—by such an unholy alliance. It was not valid then—it is not valid now. Still they persisted in maintaining it—and still do their successors, the people of Massachussetts, of New-England, and of the twelve free States, persist in maintaining it. A sacred compact! A sacred compact! What, then, is wicked and ignominious? (¶ 1)
This, then, is the relation in which we of New-England stand to the holders of slaves at the south, and this is virtually our language toward them—Go on, most worthy associates, from day to day, from month to month, from year to year, from generation to generation, plundering two millions of human beings of their liberty and the fruits of their toil—driving them into the fields like cattle—starving and lacerating their bodies—selling the husband from his wife, the wife from her husband, and children from their parents—spilling their blood—withholding the bible from their hands and all knowledge from their minds—and kidnapping annually sixty thousand infants, the offspring of pollution and shame! Go on, in these practices—we do not wish nor mean to interfere, for the rescue of your victims, even by expostulation or warning—we like your company too well to offend you by denouncing your conduct—
(¶ 2)although we know that by every principle of law which does not utterly disgrace us by assimilating us to pirates, that they have as good and true a right to the equal protection of the law as we have; and although we ourselves stand prepared to die, rather than submit even to a fragment of the intolerable load of oppression to which we are subjecting them—yet, never mind—let that be—they have grown old in suffering and we iniquity—and we have nothing to do now but to speak peace, peace, to one another in our sins. We are too wicked ever to love them as God commands us to do—we are so resolute in our wickedness as not even to desire to do so—and we are so proud in our iniquity that we will hate and revile whoever disturbs us in it. We want, like the devils of old, to be let alone in our sin. We are unalterably determined, and neither God nor man shall move us from this resolution, that our colored fellow subjects never shall be free or happy in their native land.
Go on, from bad to worse—add link to link to the chains upon the bodies of your victims—add constantly to the intolerable burdens under which they groan—and if, goaded to desperation by your cruelties; they should rise to assert their rights and redress their wrongs, fear nothing—we are pledged, by a sacred compact, to shoot them like dogs and rescue you from their vengeance! Go on—we never will forsake you, for their is honor among thieves
—our swords are ready to leap from their scabbards, and our muskets to pour forth deadly vollies, as soon as you are in danger. We pledge you our physical strength, by the sacredness of the national compact—a compact by which we have enabled you already to plunder, persecute, and destroy two millions of slaves, who now lie beneath the sod; and by which we now give you the same piratical license to prey upon a much larger number of victims and all their posterity. Go on—and by this sacred instrument, the Constitution of the United States, dripping as it is with human blood, we solemnly pledge you our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, that we will stand by you to the last.
People of New-England, and of the free States! is it true that slavery is no concern of yours? Have you no right even to protest against it, or to seek its removal? Are you not the main pillars of its support? How long do you mean to be answerable to God and the world, for spilling the blood of the poor innocents? Be not afraid to look the monster Slavery boldly in the face. He is your implacable foe—the vampyre who is sucking your life-blood—the ravager of a large portion of your country, and the enemy of God and man. Never hope to be a uited, or happy, or prosperous people while he exists. He has an appetite like the grave—a spirit as malignant as that of the bottomless pit—and an influence as dreadful a the corruption of death. Awake to your danger! the struggle is a mighty one—it cannot be avoided—it shoul not be, if it could. (¶ 3)
It is said that if you agitate this question, you will divide the Union. elieve it not; but should disunion follow, the fault will not be yours. You must perform your duty, faithfully, fearlessly and promptly, and leave the consequences to God: that duty clearly is, to cease from giving countenance and protection to southern kidnappers. Let them separate, if they can muster courage enough—and the liberation of their slaves is certain. Be assured that slavery will very speedily destroy this Union, if it be left alone; but even if the Union can be preserved by treading upon the necks, spilling the blood, and destroying the souls of millions of your race, we say it is not worth a price like this, and that it is in the highest degree criminal for you to continue the present compact. Let the pillars thereof fall—let the superstructure crumble into dust—if it must be upheld by robbery and oppression. (¶ 4)
On the Constitution and the Union was written by William Lloyd Garrison, and appeared in the December 29, 1832 issue of The Liberator. It is now available in the Public Domain.
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