existabovethenoise

Gangsters look like you and me. They put their over-priced, ripped jean pants on one leg at a time, like the rest of us. And sometimes, their biggest act of aggression is making us believe that they don’t exist. Or worse, that we are the aggressors! I mean, really, isn’t that what the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement is all about? Staring into the faces of the gangsters and telling them to kiss our abused, marginalized, oppressed asses? Yes, power to the people! The people have a right to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. The people have a right to stomp into on-coming, already congested traffic, protesting the state of the U.S. economy, while endangering the lives of unsuspecting, innocent motorists, who might very well otherwise be confused for law abiding citizens. Yes, by golly, it’s the American way. We have a right to bear arms, fuck up traffic patterns and “EAT THE RICH!”

This is why I love America. Unabashedly, undeniably, unashamed and un whatever else terrorists want to scare us out of being. Every time I want to protest corporate greed, I look deeply into the eyes of a neighboring fellow American, longing to tell them that we should go sleep out in a park where homeless people live. This is protest. And since he, she, this person, is also an American, I KNOW they are trying to get their march on like it’s (August 28) 1963. And now, it’s confirmed. If I were to ask someone to go half on a march with me, he/she/this person would be down like Victor Ortiz after a Mayweather kiss.

No, really. This is why I love Americans. Because just when you think you can’t boycott an idea, the ‘real’ Americans break out their collective cape and do the impossible. They achieve what terrorists, extremists, jihadis, and insurgents couldn’t; they make us take a look around and ask ourselves, why do we think of ourselves as a ‘we’? And, is that thought rational?

Mind blowingly powerful, right? Downright gangster, no?

All jokes aside. My real answer to the rational question is no. Hell no! In all seriousness, how do you protest the idea of economic depression? Further, how do you protest the idea of economic depression by paying good American green backs to fly in from New Orleans to sleep in a park in Manhattan? How can this possibly be the back bone of a protest against greed, poverty and economic disparity? It doesn’t make sense. It completely solidifies my notion that the days of the effective American political protest are dead. It also completely solidifies my notion that it’s really Americans, every day Americans, people like you and me, two leg having, blue jean wearing Americans that are the true gangsters. Yes. We, us, you and me, we inadvertently destroy everything that’s sacred to us, down to the fabric of our morality, in a desperate attempt to fight an enemy that very much looks like our own reflection.

“I don’t know how much I believe in redemptive stories, even though people want them and strive for them. They’re satisfied with stories of triumph over evil, but then triumph is a dead end. Triumph never sits still. Life goes on. People forget and make mistakes. Heroes are not completely pure, and villains aren’t purely evil. I’m interested in the continuity of conflict, the creation of racist narratives, or nationalist narratives, or whatever narratives people use to construct a group identity and to keep themselves whole—such activity has a darker side to it, since it allows people to lash out at whoever’s not in the group. That’s a contact thread that flummoxes me.”

These are words from a great American gangster. Yes, so gangster, that I stood in her house many a time and she never once hinted that she was the great Kara Walker herself. (But, that’s a story for another time…) This is the story of the American gangster moderne.

We are our own best friends. We are our own worst enemies. Our right hands are kept downtrodden because our left, affectionately known as ‘greedy as all hell’, keeps using our maxed out credit card to pay our cable bill so we can keep watching Kim Kardashian and Evelyn Lozada go from hoes to desperate housewives.

Seven hundred arrested, privileged protesters with too much free time and no point surely take a fire hose and attack dogs to 30 Americans; gangsters, who are actually using their good sense to redefine, question, and confront the disparities of existence within the 50 states. So, there.

I would like to take the time to proverbially spit on the feet of people who want to defy government spending, by forcing New York City taxpayers to pay the NYPD over time to make unnecessary arrests. If, this weekend, one cop couldn’t make it to help a battered woman or to prevent a kidnapping, I won’t blame the cop. I won’t blame ‘the system.’ I’ll blame the brats who didn’t understand that corporate greed doesn’t have a Governor and that if their gripe is political, they should march their disgruntled arses right into their Senators’ and Congresspersons’ offices to give those constituency having gangsters a piece of their protest loving minds.

This is America people. Nobody owes you anything. This is a capitalist society. You have more than someone. You have less than someone else. Be real gangster, and directly redistribute the wealth by taking what you have and giving it to someone else. Don’t wait for a non-profit to do it. Don’t wait for tax reform. Don’t wait for social security to kick in. That addict that you walk past every day is also poor and he, she, this person was not born to beg outside of McDonald’s any more than you were.

There is no idyllic, innocent, we. Not even when you block traffic to defend the idea of an oppressed us that doesn’t really exist. Everybody is a victim and everybody is a perpetrator. Quit whining. Be gangster enough to look yourself in the mirror and tell your ego to move it’s high maintenance, obese ass out of the way, so you can actually see yourself for who you are. My fellow Americans, three things are true. There is no ‘we’ in empire. All empires fall. And, the United States of America is a card toting member of the empire club. So, what does that mean for us?

US is the G-Unit. So, you, my fellow American, are a gangster. Get prepared. Us all know that gangsters die young. No amount of Vitamin Water will wash away the reality that in the eyes of someone else – who lay outside of whatever ‘we’ you are part of today – you, my misguided compatriot, will get rich or die trying.

Pack out preparations are underway. My condo was shown to two sets of potential renters this weekend. Strategies to sell a car on the quick have been fast ablaze in my head. Undoing what has taken a year and a half and two apartments to build is no easy task – mentally, physically or emotionally. It’s all in the things we carry. And I’m always preparing to, transitioning towards, thinking about, leaving it all behind. No wonder there are so many things that I have yet to see or do in the nation’s capital. I have been preparing to leave since I got here.

A friend who had previously lived here came back to town this weekend and we hit some of the regular haunts: Dupont Circle, Georgetown, U Street. You know, where 20 somethings go when they haven’t really the slightest intention of getting to know the ‘real’ DC. Thrilled with the Potomac, not interested in the Anacostia. Speaking of which, we spent an unseasonably brisk hour on a boat tour in the Potomac. Aside from the unabashedly cynical and liberal tour guide’s jibes at the world, I came away thinking of all the things I hadn’t yet seen in DC. I haven’t gone to the top of the Washington Monument. I’ve never been inside the Kennedy Center. I never made it to Roosevelt Island. Mind you, I’m only talking about the desirable sections of town. There’s always so much to see and so much to do, even in the places in which we don’t want to be. Being in a constant state of transition makes it easy to explain why I haven’t yet set foot on every inch of tourist ground. Nevertheless, there is always the lingering feeling of having missed out on something special.

Parting is always such sweet sorrow, because it reminds me that special is relative. The lessons learned from life in DC have been special. The friends? Special. The firsts? Special. Navigating the circles? Special. But, this experience of living and leaving is, for me, not that special at all. Digging in deep to enjoy the bits and spaces that are accessible in the time frame available is quite familiar to me. So, it’s also special to know that there is, in fact, a whole block in Takoma Park where consecutive lawns host magical fairy, wildlife animals. Macs Tire Repair in NE is, in fact, open 24 hours. And Teddy’s Roti does make phlourie and saltfish roti – even on Sunday.

The valuable bits of local knowledge that get residents to and fro often overshadow the pressing need to see what the tourists see. Yet, the local bits can be undervalued, as props on a main stage set to the backdrop of a nation’s imagination of itself. The view doesn’t include the homeless veterans, addicts and families that live on DC’s streets. It doesn’t begin to taste the lead in the pipes or help navigate a left turn off New York Avenue. On the other hand, over taxed taxpayers without tourists does not a nation’s capital make.

So, what can you do? Whether tourist or townie, I would be hard pressed to deny that sometimes it really is just flat out gorgeous to head towards Union Station and see the Capitol building aglow. It is in such moments that I’m reminded that I’m precisely where I need to be, and it doesn’t really matter the cause for my being present or how long I plan to be here.

Two years would be considered a long tourist stay, but definitely not long enough to be adopted as a native. Although, more time wouldn’t mean that I would undoubtedly add a doubledecker bus tour to the daily planner. Sometimes it’s not about having more time. Because, with more time, it’s not necessarily true that I’d do all the things I didn’t care to do in the time I previously had. Perhaps it is precisely because time has been so limited that, thus far, I have even seen as much as I have.

It is true to say that my impressions of DC are born of few lived memories rather than a plethora of tried, tested and reviewed experiences. Both are valuable, though, neither more ‘true’ than the other. For me, authenticity is moot when the intention is to maximize the positive. Whatever it takes to get from point A to point B has it’s place in the life span of a longer than normal transition and a shorter than normal residency. It is not the best of both worlds. It is not a time to sow oats while waiting for real life to begin. It is both the process and the path of living life in my peep toe pumps: always the bag lady, dancing in a sundress and a scarf, at a crossroads between one enchanting rock face of the earth and another, chanting “Ora ye yeo, Oxum!”