Life, Law, and You

Life, Law, and You

You have been told over and over again if you want ever to see your words in print and read by a curious and adoring reading public, you must follow certain rules when writing, two of which are to write what the reader wants to read, not what you want to write; and to avoid being cute. You say screw to those recommendations because you write for fun and release and not to seek fame and fortune. If there is only one reader in this worldwide world and on this vast planet, who appreciates and enjoys reading what you have to offer, that's fine and sufficient to you. 

Yesterday you accidentally cut yourself quite badly---blood rushed out in a torrent and you couldn't stop the bleeding---and had to rush to the emergency room of a local hospital. The middle-aged female doctor and the nurses who attended to you were very nice. You were touched by their kindness and professionalism. All too often in the past you had to put up with the condescending haughtiness of health professionals. They appeared uncaring and acted as if they were doing you a big favor and their services were free of monetary compensation. That was why you developed an intense dislike and distrust, if not disdain and contempt, of these individuals who, in your eyes, performed their services purely in exchange of money, instead of a noble calling of saving lives. 

A life, by itself may not not mean much, if any at all,  for the outsiders and the uninterested, but certainly means a damned whole lot to the entity who possesses that life. The instinct for self-preservation kicks in when the entity perceives that it is in mortal danger.  At least that was what how you felt and acted yesterday.You acted purely on instinct. You were nervous, but alert and were aware that you must act quickly to save yourself, and money be damned. And you were glad that you did. You of course realized at that time all your prior flirtations with self-destruction were childish, immature acts and words of "literature". Your life, whatever left of it, is still beautiful and worthy to be preserved at all costs, except perhaps not including honor and justice. You still have to live with yourself everyday when darkness falls and stillness of the soul returns. Conscience must count for something. That "something" sets apart men from boys, real humans from vain simians. Compared to the lives of many others around you, it is far more precious and worthy. You still have a lot to offer, at least to those who know you and need your help when they need it. Later on, you told your mishap to various persons who knew you. Their reactions to your mishap told you a lot of how they felt about you. Succinctly speaking, nobody really gave a damn about you, except yourself. No wonder there are so many long, sad, faces wherever you go. A happy, caring man is hard to find. Speaking about a happy, caring man, last month you gave in to the sirens of human kindness and lent $200 to an acquaintance, even though you had sworn to yourself that you would never do such a thing again because you had been screwed in the past. But the pleading voice and the anxiety registered on the face of that acquaintance were too much for you to bear. Besides, you liked the dude. He was a cool Asian  who just let the gambling addiction overwhelm him.You said to him, "Bert, please don't disappoint me. Pay me back two weeks from now as you promised. I like you and you know it. Don't screw somebody who likes and trusts you. Here's the money. I don't want to make a big production out of this, but you know it is my hard-earned money. I had to sweat for it." He nervously chuckled, but embraced you and said, "Thank you, Roberto, thank you. You "saved" my life! Don't worry, I'll pay you back." And he did. You were relieved, but were prepared not to see those $200 again. Gamblers are notorious for not keeping their word. 

You are now sitting in a court of law, awaiting a trial involving alleged traffic violation, and quite woozy from the tetanus shot you received yesterday. You didn't run the red light as the power-hungry, rednecked, lily white, pasty-faced police officer who wrote so on the traffic ticket. The light changed to yellow when you were right in the middle of the intersection. You had no choice but to proceed. The officer pulled you over and lied on the ticket. He also gave you a citation for failure to carry the vehicle registration. The sticker on the license plate was not enough for him. What a sorry piece of humanity! While talking to you, he turned around and lectured a woman who jaywalked. Humans love to assert power whenever they have a chance. Anyway, while waiting for your case to come up, you watched a variety of non-traffic cases being adjudicated. The tone of the voice of the presiding judge, the body language of the opposing attorneys, the marshals, and the defendants---some of them were in prison garb and in chains, all reflected the interplays of the principles of power. Life, in its purest form, is about power. No wonder assholes, scumbags, and simians love it so much. 

Your case came up.  The cop, a certain Thompson was there. Here is the transcript of the court proceedings as you remember them:

-Mr. Wissai, the records say that you ran a red light and failed to have the vehicle registration. How do you plead?
-Not guilty, Your Honor. I didn't run a red light. The officer knew it. And I knew it. What he wrote in the ticket was not true and he knew it. The light turned to yellow when I was in the intersection. I had no choice but to proceed. I could not stop right in the intersection. About the registration form, I had it in the glove compartment, but I was too flustered and upset for being accused of running a red light when I did not do it, that I could not find it. I asked the officer that if he ran the license plate he would easily see that the vehicle was registered to me and that I paid the registration fee.
-Officer Thompson, do you have anything to say about what Mr. Wissai just said.
-Your Honor, he lied. He ran the red light. I was right behind him. I saw him do it.
-Your Honor, may I say something?
-You may, go ahead, Mr. Wissai.
-What I said about the light turning to yellow when I was in the middle of the intersection was absolutely true. Now the officer disputed that and accused me of being a liar. Obviously, one of us here is not telling the truth. I have a conscience. The officer has a conscience. I am at peace with my conscience. I hope the officer is at peace with his. I am an immigrant. I came to this country primarily to live in freedom and in justice and respect for the law. I certainly feel I have not violated the law at all. 
-Officer Thompson, you have anything to add? 
-He violated the law. He ran the red light. I saw him do it. It was my duty to carry out the law. 
-Okay, here's my ruling, Mr. Wissai. I give you a benefit of the doubt about the traffic violation. Also, please keep the registration handy and produce it when asked by an officer of the law. Okay? Case dismissed. 
-Thank you, your Honor. 

You have personally known two judges, both are self-important, supercilious, and ignorant assholes. This judge was the first one that restored some confidence of yours in the competency of American judges at the lower levels. You walked out of the court room, feeling vindicated and triumphant, despite the intensifying wooziness caused by the tetanus shot.

Outside Fall is in full swing. The air is fresh and crispy. All the oppressive heat and humidity of the Summer were gone. Leaves are changing colors. Later on, as you walked into the Bellagio, the season's Fall exhibition in the atrium of the Conservatory was thronged with tourists, and your eyes caught sight of a picture of the woods in the Fall at the entrance of the exhibition. The picture showed red and yellow leaves on the ground in sharp contrast of the whiteness of the bark of birch trees. Your mind flashed back to the wonderful memories of pheasant hunting in the Fall with your host family back in 1966. The sensation of walking on thick beautiful dead colorful leaves in the woods while your scanned the trees for any sight of pheasant came back to you. You wonder if non-humans appreciate beauty as humans do. You doubt it, but you are not sure since you are a human, not a non-human. While male bowerbirds are known for building elaborate structures with sticks, grass, and objects of bright colors to attract females, you have a feeling that they do so with built-in imperatives of instinct, and not with a deliberate, conscious of choice as with the case of humans. Humans are notorious for their inaptitude to put up with boredom. They are forever on the search for the new, the different, new ways of expression, different modes of communication.  Just look at the changing tastes in fashion, painting, and sculpture. 

With fashion, we had the "progression" of nudity to crude clothing made of animal hides, leaves, and tree barks to elaborate, fanciful clothing with an odd emphasis on male masculinity to female sexuality, to androgyny, and current bold displays of female pubic region with a concomitant rise of tattooing and body piercings among both sexes. 

With painting and sculpture we have the "progression" from  realism to grotesque, oversized symbols, back to realism then to impressionist, post-impressionist, modernist, surrealist, and  post-modernist which is a fancy term for incommunicative and incomprehensible. Poetry as an art form at first was very communicative since it was designed for memorization and a tool to transmit history and literature. Its communicative power lasted until the second half of 20th century when incomprehensible forms of poetry appeared. The trend goes on unabated into the 21st century. Just open an issue of New Yorker, a barometer of modern sensibilities, at least in the U.S., you would bet very few readers would understand what the hell the poets wanted to say in a smattering of poems published in there.  It seems that contemporary poets suffer from a malaise called over-self indulgence. They write just to please themselves. No wonder very few, none as far as you know, books of poetry in the U.S. are in the bestseller category. Poets used to command respect and affection of the people. A few good ones were considered the souls of the people. And they used to write what the people wanted to articulate. Not anymore. No poet can make a living just from his poems. They have to have a "real" job to sustain themselves. You read somewhere that said art reflects the sensibilities of the times the artists live in. If that's so, modern and contemporary life must be a sad, dreary long stretch of alienation. 

But you are over-indulging yourself with this digressive diatribe. What you really wanted to convey in this maudlin, meandering missive is that if one wants to escape boredom and to appreciate life and freedom, one must at least once a month visit an emergency room of a local hospital and then spend some time in a court of law where the naked, relentless, brutal interplays of power are exhibited. 

September 27, 2013
Roberto Wissai/NKBa', BSR

P.S.

Thx for stating yr concern. I'm going to live. The wound is healing slowly with the help of antibiotics. Bleeding mercifully has stopped. Maybe the accident happened for a reason. A smart human drew lessons from his experiences. Bloodshed is the last resort and only as a defense. A bloody revenge is an unwise response to a problem. So is any act of malice. It causes nothing but troubles although it appears to bring momentary relief and release. Note your past angry words to me and mine to you. All acts of negativity are demeaning to the person who commits such acts. Of things we cannot speak nicely, we must remain silent unless they involve truths and justice and survival of a people or a group of which we are members. Still, I value truths and justice above all else, so if you find me wandering off the path of righteousness, feel free to call me on it. And I don't care if you resort to harshness to wake me up. Unfortunately, it is you who is the one who is afflicted with an inability to think straight, low level of intelligence, inadequate knowledge, penchant for cheap sarcasm, and an undying, recalcitrant propensity for self-righteousness. You need to cultivate an intense self-awareness and an ability to learn from criticism. Your critics are your unpaid teachers, even if some of them are malicious because if they are, now you know more about them and stay away from them. Unaccomplished (or not much accomplished) but egocentric folks tend to think unduly high of themselves. They don't really seem to understand they are only a legend in their own minds. After they die, nobody remembers or knows about them. They are a zero while they live and remain a zero after they die. I am such a person, but at least I am aware of my lot and condition. I laugh at and despise those who hanker and lust after power when they possess no real talents. Pursuing power, especially political power, when one has no talents is an act of supreme stupidity. I repeat what I wrote before, real humans (Buddha was a prime example) assert power over themselves; fools and jackasses try to assert power over fellow men, and many pay with their lives while trying to do that. Power is a double-edged sword. Only skillful swordsmen know how to use it without hurting themselves.