On Appearances

"Who was my Daddy, Mommy?"

"Why, honey chile, that's an interesting question.  Well, I don't rightly know the answer to that.  See, I was very popular in my day, an' I had a lot of boy friends, and one thing jus' led to another… an' I had you, sweetie pie.  Isn't that nice?"

No, it isn't.  But to continue:

"Why did you have me, Mommy?"

"Well, akshully, to tell you the truth, honey lamb, it was becuz the gummint paid me to have a - to have yew.  Now, isn't that nice?"

Actually, no it isn't.  Actually, it's appalling.

Foolish people in charge of this crap: How did you ever think to be doing good by paying single females (and acknowledging that White and Hispanic females got caught up in this scam as well) to have babies on the taxpayer's dime?  And more than one, for heaven's sakes??  (Anybody can make a mistake.  But we learn from our mistakes.  Or are supposed to.  That's what life is all about, honey chile.)  

Oh, I know what was really behind it.  This was not just bleeding-heart-liberal stuff.  This was outright Marxist intentional stuff: in order to so burden, with a deliberately-created welfare class, the free-market, free-enterprise, private-property capitalist system that it would collapse, and give these Marxists amongst us the Opportunity they wanted and were creating to substitute their desired socialist system on the ashes of the Old Order.1  But a lot of legitimate people bought into the subterfuge; and I am here to tell those of you - and those leftist ideologues amongst us as well who have ears to hear - that the bottom line is that   

a child has a right, a) to know its father - to be helped to be raised by its father;2 and b) not to have been the product merely of cupidity; but to have been wanted, in and for him- or herself.  (Plus, keeping aware of our origins is not just a racial or national but a spiritual exercise.)  I wonder how many of these feral youth roaming our streets are hurting existentially - and strike out inchoately at their surroundings - because they know that their mothers had them basically just 'for the money'... 

Some more strong talking:

You - whoever you are; and you know who you are  - have no call on other people's money.  Not in this system, which honors the principle of private property.  

What the hell is the matter with you? What kind of consciousness is it that gives you the wherewithal to think that taking money from others - robbing Peter to pay Paul - is okay???  

Oh, I get it.  You Blacks that we are talking about3 have bought into the racial/racist argument: the blacks have been kept down by the whites, so this is only fair.  'We're just getting our own back on Whitey.'  Is that it?  Whitey owes us…. 

To which I say:

Bollocks.

Wake up, people.  You have been played like a violin.  Or more accurately - that is, metaphorically speaking - like a fiddle. Like the 'fiddle' - scam - that it is.  

Yes, blacks have been hard done by, by the majority white culture in & of America.  Yes, we are still moving out from under the shadow of the era of slavery in history.  But playing the victim 'fiddle' is not the way to go into the future.

Two wrongs don't make a right.  Pick yourself up, like other racial and national groups have, and make the most of life in a free country. 

Which, I assure you, this country is going to remain. 

Marxist ideologues to the contrary notwithstanding.               

--

And speaking of 'coloration,' and made-up dialogue to make a point:

I realize now, at this point in time, that I foresaw, back in the late '50s-early '60s, the changing demographics of America when I wrote the screenplay that I referred to the other day, and have outlined in previous blogs; about a youngish, sort of drop-out American male (say, a young Clint Eastwood) who is 'discovered' in a small fishing village in Mexico by a young American dark-haired beauty (say, the young Elizabeth Taylor) - standing for Innocent, vibrant, vital America, before it gets corrupted by 'the world' - on her way at the time to Europe - standing for 'the old,' the jaded, the effete, the 'finished.'  She has come to the village, before she heads off for the fleshpots of Europe as a college graduation present, just to say a quick hello (and, as it will turn out in 'reality' as well as momentarily, goodbye) to her father, who is there with a couple of business 'partners' on some mysterious business, disguised as simply a fishing holiday.  They are in actuality up to some corporate skullduggery (fixing prices??  That kind of sense).  The Three Wise Guys, then, in this convoluted, metaphorical tale, wherein what you see on the surface is not in fact what you actually 'get'.  Or not…

Anyway, the plot thickens, after only a couple of days of her visit; and our erstwhile heroine, having discovered the presence in the village of a fellow American - our hero; here on a leg of his Hero's Journey, 'disguised' at this time as a helper at an artist's colony (a legitimate enterprise, but itself being used as a cover, it will turn out, for some young Hispanic revolutionaries, who are out to help overthrow the Norte Americano Gringos, momentary occupants of their rightful ancestral 'turf,' as they have been led to think) - and an attractive guy at that (name of Ray.  Her name is Joyce.  Geddit??  As though they were natural partners, just momentarily separated is all, but time - and the plot - would unfold their coming together; right???  Wrong, as it will turn out.  But first things first) - arranges to borrow some disguising clothes from one of the young maids at the villa her father & Friends have rented, and slips into the village, under the cover as well of darkness, to do some for-a-lark 'slumming' in general, but as well, specifically to check out this somewhat mysterious fellow countryman of hers, who initially got her attention when he ignored her in her previous attempts simply to be civil.  It is, to her, as though he - rudely; again, to her - doesn't want to have anything to do with 'her'.  (We understand that a little, telegraphed from back at the beginning of the film, in a Prologue, when we saw some American soldiers returning from war - some war; some where - and anonymously 'buried' among them, we are led to understand, is our film's Hero.  And so a sort of Bill Ayers/Weathermen figure: reactionary to the corrupt, crony-capitalist concept that War Is A Racket.  But to continue.)                     

In her local plumage, then - complete with shawl covering her head and masking her features - our erstwhile Heroine slips into the life of the village, and, having sussed out that our Hero is in the taverna, quietly having a drink on his own, goes to his small adobe casa (that she and we have known by now is strictly off-limits to anybody; and with an old hotel 'No Moleste' sign on the door to emphasize the point) and, trying the door and finding it unlocked, furtively slips inside.  After some finagling with a lantern, she discovers the interior of this mysterious man's lair.  Which takes her breath away.  Not the utter simplicity of it - like a hermit's cell (but with some painter's gear in one corner).  But the walls. 

Whitewashed - like giant artist's canvases -  one is a desert scene, with horned skull in the foreground, a single cactus - with two prickly 'arms' - in the middle ground, a range of barren hills in the background, and a single buzzard in a searing sky, the sun like something out of Van Gogh's imagination, complete with pulsing waves; another is a seascape, with a giant wave, which a single dolphin is riding (to what 'shore'?; what 'purpose'??); another is a jungle scene, like a nearly impenetrable wall of foliage, with the eyes of a feline creature of some kind looking steadily at us from within its domain.  (You can almost hear the low, menacing purr.)  And the fourth wall is - 

still bare.  In the middle of which is the door; in the open doorway of which - as if having come out of its incipient state, its message of unfinished business, into 'real' - or at least, our - life - is standing Ray; just looking quietly at her.  (Though you can almost hear the low, menacing growl that we have just been led to feel.)  

"Oh!" she gasps, hand to heart, and almost dropping the lantern; burbling on: "You startled me!  Well, I guess of course that's obvious, isn't it.  I mean - Hello," she says with a show of some bravado.  "I'm…."  She ends on a plaintive note, as if begging his pardon.

'You're in my space.," he replies levelly, with a touch of menace.  (I told you he is somewhat like a young Clint Eastwood; as I see him.) 

"Yes, I…see…that.  Yes!  You're…I mean I'm…  Hey, I'm sorry.  I was just - curious… Hey, you're good.  You know that?  Well of course you do.  I mean - these walls, are - something else.   You should - you know - exhibit, or whatever it's called.  You know?"

Silence.  

"You know what I mean?" she tries again, trying to think of what to say, how to act.

Silence.  Stare.

"Hey, look, really, I'm so sorry, I really am.  I just -  "

"Sit."

"Okay."  

She sits obediently, perched on the chair as if alertly waiting on her master's next command.  He sits across from her, at the small table in the middle of the room, in the only other chair in the room.  In his space.  The table positioned as if, when sitting at that position, he can survey his private kingdom - his private world - equally.  Now, he surveys her, and her costume.  Still nervous, but gaining control of herself, she says:

"Hi.  My name is Joyce."

"I know."   

Silence.

"You do?"

He continues to look, more at her costume than at her directly.  She wonders about his remark, and what to say regarding it.  

"And you are…" she tries on for size.    

"…I'd like…to paint you," he says, simply.

"You what? - You would?  Paint.  Oh.  Oh, really?  Well - well, that would be - Okay.  Fine.  By me.  I mean - really.  That would be an honor," she finishes, with a look around the room at the amazing walls; then has a sudden thought: "I wouldn't have to…"       

Coming out of his thoughts, he 'hears' her comment, and shakes his head; replying: "Just as you are."

"Oh.  Well.  That's okay, then.  That's - good.  I mean - really.  It would be, as I say: an honor.  And all…" she concludes, on a note of unsureness of precisely what all she is getting herself into…

What she gets herself into, on the surface, is a series of sittings, wherein Ray experiments with different styles - as if 'mirroring' the image of Innocent America going 'out' from Her roots and trying on different 'styles' of her own (including religious), as she explores the World that she has been 'born' into.4  And eventually settles on her as she is; which includes her skin tone darkening under the influence of the equatorial sun…The last version of her that we get a glimpse of, before the plot moves on, is of her looking more natural and comfortable - and more mature - in the young peasant woman's outfit - shawl and blouse - that she wore at the beginning of the process; as if adjusting to it, 'matching it' better…in the combining of the two energies, of her new makeup.  Not at all like a played-out, jaded, decadent, Old-World European... 

Anyway.  You get the drift, of this essay, On Appearances.  

And on whoring after false gods.

Both of which make us think that we are separate from one another.

When actually, we are all

One.

---

footnotes:

1 including deliberately breaking down the nuclear family unit; in order - for control purposes - that The State would become the Go-To Parent.  Including for the feminist class that was developed - intentionally - to give more juice to the Revolution.  And the lesbian 'class' too, for that matter.  Another sordid story.
   There is, I am sure, a special place in heaven for those who deliberately create poverty, and turmoil.  They may have their justifications.  But they also have the consequences of their actions, to sort out. 

2 for the child's sake (including the right to know its roots; and getting conditioned thereby to the idea that knowing our origins - including our ultimate one - matters), and the sake of the father.  (The most civilizing experience that a man can have in life; including in learning to take responsibility for his actions.)  

3 And here let me acknowledge the role that the Republicans played in all this scammy stuff as well, in being so shortsighted in their desire to make money off the deal that they failed to look down the road to today, and the crisis emerging from their cupidity as well. 

   And also to acknowledge - as I said; but to reiterate,.for total clarity's sake - that White and Hispanic women got caught up in this scam as well.  But the Blacks were singled out years ago to be the main cannon fodder for The Revolution.  

4 A child made to not know its father, anyone???…