notes of the day

 

NOTES OF THE DAY

 

 

Some tropes punish ---

a cat-of-nine tails

snapped by an invisible hand ---

lash after parallel lash

liberating the mind/body

to embellish pain

with invisible blood.

The ritual is commonplace,

a normality in human  histories.

When you recognize

the hand that is killing you

is your own, do not surrender.

Celebrate yourself

with the irony of wrath.

 

This is one of many aesthetic responses

to Camille Rankine's poem "Ways to Disappear"

as you process this  question ----

"Invisible to whom?"

 

Smith, Clint. How the Word Is Passed : A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.  New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2021.

 

Smith's book should be read by all the people who read in New Orleans.

 

"We have no excuse for our vast historical ignorance of our own culture."

Cleophus Thomas, Jr.

 

"The recognition of self, or self--reflection, assumes the presence and activities of other individuals.  Moreover, it assumes the possibility of unifying an assemblage of disparate reflections---elements whose origins are unknown."

Ormiston, Gayle L. and Raphael Sassower.  Narrative Experiments: The Discursive Authority of Science and Technology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.:46.

 

In whose invisible mind does authority reside?

 

MEMO:  Send an Old Testament gift to the Proud Girls and Proud Boys in the U.S. Senate and in the House of Representatives.

 

The Irish sage said, "My fellow Americans, this was not a riot. This was a massacre."

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            6/2/2021 11:03:00 AM

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