Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Can Someone Explain WHY Emmett Till had to DIE?

"If you have to get on your knees and bow when a white person goes past, do it willingly." -Mamie Till

“I hated the white people who did it, but I hated the Negroes even more for not fighting back. I hated them all.”-
Former Resident of Money, Mississippi

"It seems like nothin' good ever happens up on Choctaw Ridge...and now Billie Jo Mcallister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." -
Bobbie Gentry

My son Ryan, received a college scholarship to play football in Mississippi. We went over to Jackson to sign his 'LOI'. It’s ironic that my son lived in Mississippi. My Dad—who pastored a Pentecostal church for 27 years-- said that if Christ returned to Earth and was in Mississippi he just have to ‘take his chances with salvation because he would never again set foot in the Magnolia State.’ Maybe it had something to do with Emmett Louis Till.

A history lesson: Mr. Till, a fourteen year old Chicagoan, was visiting Money, Mississippi in the summer of 1955. As the story goes, on a dare from one of his friends, he said “hey baby” or whistled at a girl as he was leaving Bryant’s Grocery Store and Meat Market. The angered and offended young woman told her family—that tragic decision set actions in motion ending Mr. Till’s life.

On the night of August 28, 1955, good ol’ boys from the town dragged Mr.Till from his home, beat him until he was unrecognizable, shot him in the head with a .45 caliber weapon, affixed a 75-pound cotton gin fan to his neck, and hurled his body from a bridge into the swift current of the Tallahatchee River. (Yes, Billie Jo McAllister’s bridge!) His body was found three days later. His funeral on 6 September 1955, drew attention from as far away as France.

Every black man older than 40 knows the name, Emmett Till. I learned of Mr. Till’s plight long before the names Jackie Robinson, Malcolm X, and Fredrick Douglass entered my consciousness. What kind of people could do this to a young boy? What kind of place would allow this to happen—and then, acquit the killers after just 67 minutes of deliberation--offering righteous indignation that were even be charged. He was just a nigga’, after all.

No wonder my Dad refused to return to Mississippi. He didn’t even want his remains buried there. But Malcolm X’s family house was burned down in Omaha, Nebraska…far North of the Mason-Dixon line. It leaves me wondering: Was it the place or the people?
Sarajevo, at one time, was a cultural and artistic flashpoint of Europe. It was full of cafes, bookshops, hard-working people and progressive thought. The Olympics, for god’s sake, were in Sarajevo. Then, the pot of race, religion, and ethnicity started to boil…the killing started. What is Sarajevo today? How is it a better place? Did people make the place evil, or did the place make the people do evil things. I just wonder.

Mississippi is beautiful. As Ryan and I walked the tree-lined campus, and soaked up the beautiful Mississippi evenings, I had a jarring flashback to Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner. What a confluence of evil, in a place that seems so full of old world charm…do the people bring the evil, or is there something in the air, water or soil that causes good people to go bad. Things were going nicely for Adam and Eve until they ate from the tree. How does this descent into evil occur?

Do you just don’t wake up one morning and say to your friend, “Ok, the next colored teenager that talks to any girl gets a goddamn cotton gin fan wrapped around his black neck and tossed in the Tallahatchee river, got it?”

Long ago, I gave up believing that people were fundamentally good. One can choose to be a good individual, but the drag of our selfish, self-centered, ‘me-first approach to the world’ ultimately prevails. What other explanation exists for beating a young boy until he was barely recognizable, then tying a cotton gin fan around his neck?

There is a park in South L.A. where I used to play basketball. Back then it was called, Manchester Park. I had just finished one of my 500-shot routines, trying to pattern my game after Oscar Robertsons’. As I reached the North end of the park, three guys stopped me. They were from a gang called the “Park Boys,” a collective that would ultimately fold into a sect of the Hoover Crips. They beat me until the blood ran from my nose. And then, they stopped. I was on my knees, trying to get up, and and old lady pushing a grocery cart from ABC market stopped and looked at me. She didn’t say anything, but shook her head and kept going. I stumbled to my feet and touched my cheekbone as it was starting to bruise and swell. I thought: “Why are they doing this to me?”

Did Emmitt Till ever ask that question while he was getting beat? I wish there were some way—like in the film Minority Report—that I could watch this crime take place… through some sort of hidden time machine/security camera device. What were Emmitt’s final words? Did he plead with this crew of racist savages to spare his life? Why, at some point, didn’t one of the murderers say, “Enough, the boy has learned his lesson.” Surely, talking to a white girl doesn’t mandate being thrown in the river. Was there no decency in any of these men? Were they bereft of all humanity and goodness? But maybe there was just something in the air that day. Or, maybe there is something in the water and soil of Money, Mississippi: Like Emmitt Till’s blood, for starters.

When I look into his soft, reflective eyes of Emmitt Till I am reminded that he, too, was a black prince. One whose life ended because of reasons that are, without question, inexplicable... I am forever saddened at the death of this boy. Think of the unfullfilled dreams that sank to bottom of the river with his broken body.

The world is an evil place. We delude ourselves when we think it isn’t. And, the people in Money should have never stood for this.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Rethinking the Meaning of 'Juneteenth'

Juneteenth was problematic for me. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on 23 Sept 1863, but the word did not get to Texas until 1865. This ensured nearly two extra years  of slavery for Texas blacks.

Slavery in Texas has a complicated history. Almost more than any other location in the CSA, whites stood against slavery. Despite that nine of every ten Texans came from the South, the great Sam Houston opposed the extension of slavery. Houston became governor of Texas in 1859 running on a pro-union/anti-slavery platform.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the Texas legislature put the vote for secession to the people. It is interesting to note that the vote was for secession, but not for joining the Confederacy. Houston had no faith in the Confederacy and refused to swear allegiance. He was removed from office.

After the firing on Fort Sumpter, the 2700 Federal troops in Texas were made prisoners-of-war. By 1862 there was an unpopular draft. Many union supporters took their families and moved to the north to either fight for the union or evade the draft.  Others hid out and were joined by the numerous deserters from the rebel army.  By the summer of 1863, just before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, so many Texas soldiers were deserting the army that General Magruder contacted the governor and asked for his direct intervention to stop the number of men who were simply walking away. Denton and Wise counties become home to so many deserters that people loyal to the Confederates became terrified at the influx of pro-union supporters. 

In Cooks Country, 40 white men were hanged for being union sympathizers. 

The last battle of the Civil War was fought on 13 May 1865 at Palmito Beach (near Brownswille.) Men from both races died in this battle, some from the ‘Colored’ regiment.  The undisputed  irony is that these men died for no cause as General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox six weeks earlier.  It was at this battle that many Texans first learned of Lee's capitulation.

The sphere and circumstances of life are devalued during war. Humanity is diminished. Everyone suffers.

I see Juneteenth differently. 

The Juneteenth Holiday is beyond color,  holding a level of symbolism for every person in the State. It represents a day of closure-- a day from which everyone could finally move forward and shape a different future with a focus on peace and prosperity....a new hope.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Cotton, Capitalism and the documentary," LaLee's Kin"

The second principle of Capitalism is to control wages, salaries and benefits. One cannot plunder if labor costs are steadily rising — and plunder is a consequence of capitalism. It’s just who get to do the plundering.

With this in mind, we plunge into the documentary, LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton. I watched it thinking: “Man, what great archival footage they have of Mississippi in the 1930s.” 


LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton, made by the great Albert Maysles is stunning filmmaking. The first time I watched the picture I came in about 1/3 of the way through. Naively, I thought the film a historical piece about Mississippi sharecropping-- circa 1940s. I dropped my coffee cup on the living room floor upon realizing this was from 2001.

The story follows LaLee Wallace, a 62-year old grandmother living in West Tallahatchie County, one the poorest areas in the U.S.

Sharecropping. Still.

After reconstruction, there was a halcyon period where blacks had some political power. To say it was short-lived, is an understatement. The rise of the KKK and black codes hastened the demise. As the ‘Negro’ of the late 18th century came to realize that political power was D.O.A., they turned to the labor unions. In the South, ‘Negroes’ were excluded from unions because of race. Although, in some instances, brickmasons, plasterers, painters and carpenters founded their own unions.

Booker T. Washington believed ‘skilled labor’ was the future for race. For every one lawyer or doctor, there were hundreds of jobs for skilled, trained blacks.  This, he believed, is where advancement of the race held its best opportunity.
 

In the manufacturing North, advancement was also tough. 'Negroes' learned trade and serve apprenticeships but there were no unions to accept them, no great industrial class willing to employ them and no banks to make business loans to sustain or support them in forming their own enterprises.

In the best Orwellian dialectic, we seek to eradicate a robust discussion of slavery from U.S. History--or, at least dilute it. There is a symbiotic relationships between cotton, slavery and the disenfranchisement of black persons in America. I am not saying there is anything that can be done about today--but, it must be acknowledged.

Mississippi has a dark and desolate past—a placed haunted by the ghosts of senseless murders, lynching and sadness. There are no lynchings and murder in LaLee’s Kin, but there’s a lot of sadness. What happened to LaLee’s ‘American dream?'

How did she end up living a sharecropper’s life in 2001 that was thematically identical to a sharecropper’s life in 1901? Surely, this can’t be what Booker T. Washington had in mind when he advocated for the 'Negro' to be content in his or her position.

LaLee’s Kin – to a U.S. audience—causes people to ask: “Is this really the United States?” Well, it is—for many people. The stardust left by the American dream is sawdust for those who live in poverty.

We can never face the long term impact of our history until we face the impact of slavery and cotton.
LaLee Kin is a movie that accomplishes that.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Rear Window -- Even when you're alone, someone is looking.

The loneliness lays a veneer over the murder. 

There is something savage and aching about the loneliness in Rear Window. It’s less about death--although someone dies, but more about life and how inexplicable it often is. Rear Window resonates even more today because technology has made us less contemplative with more access to more stuff but less connection with real persons. Loneliness does not depend on death, yet death follows the lonely, advertising for them to rush headlong to the balcony and toss themselves over. Or, as is Hitchcock’s way, find someone to do it for you.

Loneliness shines light on the cracks in our self-sufficiency. We are not nearly as secure as think. Technology has made us accept mediocre relationships.

The unspoken joke is that only in the movies could a beauty like Lisa Carol Fremont (played by Grace Kelly) throw themselves at a stiff like L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart)  and he ‘can’t make up his mind whether he’s interested in her or not.” I’ve always found this amusing. Another way Hitchcock, toys with us.

There isn’t much humor in Rear Window. It’s dark...filled with anguish. It is about the loneliness and alienation that stalks us. It about how we crave acceptance and companionship, yet see it elusively slip just beyond our grasp.

Yes, there is a murder in Rear Window--but the murder is of less importance than what we learn about the characters—and, ourselves. Rear Window withstands multiple viewings because of the intricate nuances that permeate his work. It stands above “Vertigo” and “North by Northwest” because it unravels the voyeuristic tendencies that lives inside each of us…and, how those tendencies turn us inward, drawing us more into ourselves making us more vulnerable to the effects of alienation. Rear Window is not a cautionary tale—unless, of course, you live in an apartment complex with nosy neighbors and have a penchant for murder.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

It's hard to save your own soul.

Duvall's 'The Apostle," is a movie I've seen more than 30 times. Duvall wrote it, directed it, produced it and wrote the checks. For that reason alone, it's worth seeing.  There is a lot going this picture. It reminds me of the way I grew up.

Without regard to one's position on the still smoldering embers that is Liberation Theology, one must admit that  confronting Jesus Christ, wherever this occurs, is transformational.

Christianity creates dissonance because  its belief system is devoid of middle ground. Christ corroborated this: , "I will spit the lukewarm out of my mouth." (Revelations, 3:16.) The middle ground is Christianity's dead zone, an  abyss from which all  should flee.  With this in mind, I reflect on  The Apostle. The film drives a telescopic lens into the touchpoint between a man and his quest to know God.  It is of no surprise that classic Pentecostals are gaining adherents in Latin America and Africa.

Latin and African cultures connect with the expressiveness  --the verbal release, if you will-- at the core of the Pentecostal Experience.  Liberation theology seeks this expressiveness--but, through acts of service to others.

The main character (Apostle E.F.) lives in a world--a Pentecostal galaxy --  where liberation is expressed  through acts of service to God. Simply stated, this means saving souls.

Robert Duvall-- a gift to anyone who loves movies -- directs Miranda Richardson, the late Farrah Fawcett, Billy Bob Thornton and, of course, himself, to muted, flawless performances.

This films unravels the paradoxical threads of Christianity— that hungry quest for knowing, that desire for meaning and the quixotic, uneven balancing of time versus eternity. The Apostle  is filled with characters yearning  to avoid the abyss. In this film no one takes the middle ground because they see it for what it is: as a transparent fallacy. 

The universe does not balance all things.

Did I say how much I love this film?

Monday, May 18, 2015

An Affair to Remember: Kerr, Grant and the closest thing to heaven.

In every love affair, there is a moment when you have the opportunity to simply be decent. After the euphoria departs and is replaced with a knowing this real and enduring is the point where love can begin. “An Affair to Remembers” glides along the course. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr meet and fall in love in a perfect shipboard romance.
The pair—betrothed to other lovers—made a unique pact: “If what we feel is real, let’s meet at the highest point in New York—the top of the Empire State Building—in six months.” Such was the conflict.

 Would this --after returning separately to their lives and their loves-- survive or tumble onto the quiet slope of memory. At the agreed upon moment, six months later, only one of the lovers arrives at New York’s nearest point to heaven. The story, really, begins here.  The lovers—and their love—matures and is tested. What they learn gives tacit hope to all who in the wilderness of loneliness hope for an enduring love, a last love…one that is remembered.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Michael Brown, Eric Garner and a Polish Story

I stopped in a logo apparel store  to purchase  a new Lakers hat because my current one is 20 years old. The owner of the shop looked to be in his 50s.  After he tells he doesn't have Laker hats he looks at me and says, "You are obviously from L.A,. and seem like a mature guy, can I ask you a question."

I'm thinking: Ok, he means I'm old...but, whatever...

"Sure," I  say. He starts giving me his version of the Michael Brown/Eric Garner murders and blah, blah, blah...

Then, he gets to the crux of it. "Look man, I'm a white dude and when I get stopped by cops I just put my hands or get on the ground and do what they say and I don't understand why  'you' black dudes just don't do what cops say..." He goes on: "....they would leave you guys alone if you would just obey them.'

I'm thinking: "Why didn't I just leave when the guy said he had no Laker gear?" But, I let him finish.

"You seem like a reasonable guy and I don't mean any harm by asking, but I just don't get it. Why do blacks acts that way?" Inside, I am cursing myself for not having left. I just wanted a Laker hat, I don't want this conversation with the guy.

I said: "Let me tell you a story. When the German army rolled into Warsaw in what they called the 'September Campaign, they killed every Polish soldier in sight. German efficiency at its finest. A small team, with a few older handguns, hid in a sewer overnight. Aside from the sewage, they were besieged by rats.  The Germans were patrolling every street, gunning people down like mangy animals. There was a debate whether to stay in the sewer or climb out. Rats and stench or bullets. A tragic choice, perhaps. Or, maybe not. One soldier said: "All of you who are going to stay here, give me your bullets because I am going above ground....better to stand up like a man than die in a sewer in the company of vermin."

So he, alone, climbed out of the sewer and within minutes came face to face to face with a German patrol unit...."

I stopped the story at that moment.

He says, "Go on, what happened..."

"It doesn't matter what happened, I said.  "What matters is that you make the choice about how you're going to be treated...that's what men do. Courageous men die but once, but cowardly men experience a thousand deaths.'

"So, are you saying these men were courageous?"

"I don't know them personally, so I can't speak to that. You can draw from the story what you will," I said.

I went on: "For me, I decided, while standing at the corner of Manchester and Figueroa some 42 years where my line was...namely this...I'd rather be shot at than get on my knees like a...well, you know..."

He said: "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard... but I don't mean you disrespect, sir."

"None taken," I said. "Just get some Laker gear in your store.'

We shook hands and I left. He did try and sell me some Mavericks gear as I was leaving....but, I don't support the Mavs although I like Dirk a lot.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

THERE WASN'T ANY LOVE IN THE HEART OF THE CONGO


Listening as my mother described being raped, though heartbreaking, was not as traumatic as watching the HBO Documentary, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. It's my belief that the director, documentary filmmaker Lisa Jackson (herself a victim of a gang rape), felt similarly while listening to the Congolese women tell their stories. Such is the power of untethered emotion laid bare on the altar of abject disregard and abandonment by civil society.

My interest in the Congo tracks to the first time I saw Casablanca. For you non-cineastes, that’s where Louis and Rick escaped to after ditching Ilsa and Victor to ‘embark on their own beautiful friendship.’
I remember thinking, “Ok, so where is Brazzaville?” For many years, I kept an article by the amazing and talented Helene Cooper in the space above my Mac. The headline from the New York Times article read thusly: “In the Congo, Trolling through the Lives of Those Too Wretched to Merit Aid.” This article is a reminder that the people in Walungu province suffered a tragedy that defies description. Of course, just like most people, I don’t do anything…except look at the article once or twice a week. Empathy, but not action.

Because of Cooper’s article, I watched the doc. If I had a DVR, I would have stopped watching twenty minutes in. I'm not given to squeamishness. I’ve seen teenagers shot with handguns and rifles. I’ve watched my Grandfather put a ring in a bulls’ nose. I saw people do things to cats, dogs and other live animals that would drive PETA into shock. And, when I was a young man, I spent years working at a busy airport. For those who have never had this experience, allow me to say that nearly every possible experience along the human continuum occurs at airports. Airports are a microcosm of mankind’s evolutionary pattern. Babies born in elevators- old men dying on jet bridges.

Nothing prepared me for this documentary. There were no reenactments, no hidden video of actual rapes—no stunning mise-en-scene-- just beautiful dark-skinned human beings describing their observations and experiences in chilling monotone. And, that they told the self-lacerating stories in their proper native French created an atmosphere ever more nightmarish.
Rwanda’s genocide left me speechless. I don’t understand it – nor, do I understand the current events in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). I assert it is the true nature of evil—no empathy for ones fellow man, no interest in anything but oneself. It is what spawned Hitler’s final solution—the absence of all goodness. It is a snapshot of a world without God. It is a world pregnant with the DNA of King Leopold--the first butcher of the Congo.

An OB-GYN doctor at Panzi Hospital in the DRC—one of the few locals providing aftercare to rape victims—described how several patients were so viciously raped with wooden instruments that their  uterus, bladder and vaginal walls were punctured. Surviving, of course, equates to a lifetime of perpetual incontinence. Ponder such humiliation.

But the most unimaginable lay just around the bend. One pregnant woman--from the province of Bunyakyjer— was captured by rebel soldiers. After being repeatedly raped by the soldiers, her children were made to ‘jump up and down’ on her belly until she aborted her fetus. Or, there is Sofie’s story—this smooth-skinned kid of 11 looks like she should be starting at forward on the 7th grade basketball team. Of course, this beguiling possibility doesn't exist because she was raped by soldiers and now has a son. The Interhawahine soldiers saw no distinction in age—they raped girls as young as five and women well past 70 years. One soldier described his passion for the septuagenarian: Well, she is not too old for me.”

A U.N. Peacekeeper— veteran of many missions — framed these events: “I have not seen, in my experience as a soldier, anything like this—as a human being, I am not comfortable talking about what I have seen.”

Honorine, a cop and mom of four,  has become the 'Olivia Benson' for the DRCs small police department. Honorine trudges  deep into the bush to find victims and obtain police reports. She is relentless in these efforts. She and her volunteers prepare statements using manual typewriters. Honorine promises to help usher in “the rule of law” by bringing perpetrators to justice.

Long ago, I abandoned the naïve belief that ‘people are basically good.’ I’ve seen too much on the journey. Human beings, I believe, are raw material for evil. It is only by the ubiquitous presence of God’s grace that any goodness manifests around humankind.

Life gets tougher in America—the oppressive weight of despair encroaches into the lives of small towners and big-city dwellers. But conversely, I know a guy selling Ferrari’s and Aston Martin's who says, “He can’t keep ‘em on the lot.” The chasm between the  'haves' and ‘have nots’ splits like I-35 when you pass Hillsboro— in times past, this chasm was bridged by a pale veneer of hope…a brittle possibility that ‘someday, I, too, can have opportunity.”

But opportunity floats like a ghostly vapor for those living in Bukava.  

There are few things that we, who are so far away from the DRC, can do to alleviate such suffering-- or at least ease the pain. So like most Americans, drunk with 300 channels of HDTV and an ever-expanding list of 'first world problems,' I sit and stare-- sometimes catatonically-- and wonder how I ended up here and not in the DRC. And of course, I do nothing to help the Congolese women because all conceivable actions seem pedestrian. I don’t know where to begin. Thus, I place my lamp beneath a barrel and write words about their plight instead of getting up and doing something real.


Notwithstanding, tonight, in Bukava, someone old enough to be my grandmother or young enough to be my granddaughter could be raped by a soldier. And I, of course, I sit alone, Malbec in hand, fretting about whether the Lakers will lose enough games to draft Emmanuel Mudiay. I wonder what that says about me.

@Lindell153 (Follow Lindell on Twitter)

Monday, February 9, 2015

Crossing the Tracks

Odd things routinely happen to me when I fly. This doesn’t mean that odd things don’t happen to me otherwise, because they do.. It’s just that I am struck by the erstwhile coincidences and fully serendipitous that craziness that happens during the process of getting through security, checking in actually flying...

And, as I”ve gotten older the more I return to my love trains.

On a recent Sunday morning I was at the airport at the crack of dawn to board my flight home. Seated next top me was Randall. He was connecting at DFW then traveling on to San Diego. His final destination, however, was somewhere down in Mexicali. Randall explained to me that he riveted and welded for a living and a company was going to pay him to do that in Mexico for the next six weeks. He and his wife-- married for nearly 24 years-- were coming accelerating toward the end of their relationship and it was crushing him. Getting away, he explained, was the best thing for him because he didn’t know what else to do. My theory centers around 10, and 20 year signposts -- If marriage breaks up in ten years or less, it’s always about someone else. One partner finds another that they believe more fully meets their needs and they initiate the break-up. If the break-up occurs after twenty years, it’s less about someone else and more about uncovering that you absolutely,. without question, despise the future you see with the person you’re with. It’s about the loss of hope, and it being perceived with abundant clarity.

Randall asked me if there was a lot to see on the flight from DFW to San Diego. I told him there wasn’t a lot to see at 37,000 feet except for crossing over the Sierra Nevada was striking, although it came fairly late in the flight plan. Sitting across from me was Jimmy. He was a from a small town about 45 miles South of Tulsa.

Jimmy explained was on the way to Odessa because that is where he left his truck. His final destination was Hobbs, NM and he was a welder in the oil fields. Jimmy made $16,000 last month and was on schedule to earn ever more during March. He told me that there was more oil in Hobbs than in Iraq-- not that heaving kind, but the light, sweet crude.that everyone wants. I thought that Hobbs was only famous for high school basketball. Little did I know it was a haven for oilmen.

Seating across from me was Terrance. He was the assistant coach on a collegiate basketball team that just won it’s conference tournament. He had the trophy with him and it sadly proudly in the empty seat between himself and another player...who slept for the entire 54 minute flight. Terrance had played for three seasons, but since he wanted to graduate in four years, he decided not to play this year. Although he, at 26, was a bit older than most, he felt he connected with the players. One of the reasons Terrance didn't’;t play this year was because he felt the calling the become a pastor and wanted to complete his Theology degree and be about Gods work forthright.

On the rapid descent from 27,000 feet--- as Randall, Terrance and Jimmy were in different stages of sleep-- I thought about, of all things, how things get murky and all jacked-us for us guys.

And what does it come to for every man: Women, Money and Dreams. Men are such simple creatures-- each of the three aspects of life mentioned above will either be either a source of torture or pleasure for for 9 to 10 every ten men alive today. North American males are trapped in a spider-wed trifecta fiending for sex, money and lamenting the loss of dreams.
Despite the appeal of the ‘big-three,’ the real quest is to understand how everything fits together and one has can at least they are moving toward their destiny. And what is destiny, but a destination. What external forces determining your destination? I paraphrase the words of the prolific and prophetic words penned by C.S. Lewis: “Men live lives of quiet desperation, doing neither what the want to do, nor what the ought to do.” You cant stop what’s coming. For guys, desperation manifests itself in anger, self-destructive vices and and the desire to watch SportsCenter 24 hours a day and do nothing else.. All these, perhaps, are a mask to cover the deep wells of sadness lurking just below the surface.

@Lindell153 #FatherofRain