End: Aleph & humility
A.
I was born a Roman Catholic, Irish Catholic, and although my brothers and sisters and I all made our first communions, our first confessions and all were confirmed XX, we were never particularly sentimental about our ethnicity: no Irish jigs or XX, no one drank excessively--not really-- (dad sz jaysus); and Saint Pat's Day was no big deal (green). We attended church every Sunday until I was about twelve, then we stopped going just as easily as we XX, that is, we slipped off the XX of just as the XXXX, and yet, there was one thing that, over the years, rankled me, the idea that the Irish are XXX and XXX.
"When the Irish potato famine happened," an old college friend started with XX, "they didn't have to starve. I mean, they could've just fished for their meals out of the XXX."
Oh my God, I had to mutter under my breath as XX. "Oh, my XXXX god. Are you fucking stupid, or what?" I shot back at him. "The point isn't that there were no potatoes to eat, asshole, the point is that their entire economy, their entire XX in trade was purposely wiped out by the British and all those poor tenant farmers ended up in XX debt to their XX Protestant landlords. They have to pay rent, too, dickhead. Just like you and me."
You see, I knew what he was doing: XX couldn't defend his point about XX, so he resorted to bigotry, and was saying, essentially, that the Irish XX were too goddamn stupid to feed themselves; too XX to put a fishing rod in the XX and feed their families---and he was saying this, or implying this, because his position was completely indefensible and he knew it.
"How fucking stupid do you want to be?" I continued with Xx. "Even a hungry dog will feed itself any way it can. Are you still taking the stupid pills? Are you, like, so pathetically XX by your XX, that you literally can't distinguish your asshole from a XXX?"
I couldn't stand the arrogance and prejudices of some of my friends----absolutely hated the XX---but I could always get my revenge by berating them for their XX. And it was especially sweet to XX and XX my Jewish friends. You see, I was a precocious child, I knew XXX by the age of seven and I loved it ---I didn't like it, I loved it ---when my Jewish friends said something not XXX and I could correct them. In other words, I loved telling my Jewish friends how stupid they were. I'm not an anti-Semite, it's just---well, let's face it---how many times does an Irish Catholic get to tell Jewish professors and XX and that they're so fucking stupid, he can barely XXX?
"Wait," I stopped another friend, Joshua Moses, my former editor. "You're telling me that crime went down in the 1990s because abortions were more available in the 1970s? You mean, the answer to the problems of crime, XX, xx is killing black babies? Is that what you're saying? Shit, you'll believe anything they tell you. Anything the mass media wants you to believe, you accept. How can I even stand in the same room with such a XX moron? You're an embarrassment, do you hear me? You're XXXX."
Describe his response.
The word applied to me, eventually, was 'strident.' I was XX and XX. Couldn't be dealt with.
loved calling them stupid:
golding
grossman: legislature & hispanic
burn-out
larry king
nancy speez, scandalously ignorant; soup, bucky, Casablanca
my favorite: "the shit that comes out of your mouth"
1. holocaust/good ordinary people
2. "that's the tragedy"
3. Vietnam and Jim Crow--neighbors look the other way
4. "you're a dolt!"
5. "I didn't know they made Jews that dumb."
Conversations w JM: politics, spirit
w blau: cosmos, holocaust
B. RockBill: Cohen, Hunter, George Clinton, Phil Bloom , Hubert
C. Margo: all about the dog, beauty and sweetness, and I hope she wrote her story.
D. Crown Hts, Ivan and the Russians, Ellenville, aleph-beis, smells of room
(i.) A beard or whatever you call it
(ii.) That's what I'm afraid of
(iii.) just what Reuben shows you
(iv.) "i wouldn't say he's brilliant"
(v.) Reuben the Gentile story
(vi.) other Rockbill interviews
Reuben:
1. what music (viola) teaches you: share, listen, be silent, act instead of criticize
2. humility/aleph
3. nothingness & zero
4. that means you really wanted to be here
5. judge the state not the man who inhabits that state
5a. arthritis
6. macrobiotic
7. yang/yin
8. men/women
X. *Ellenville, sabbath, Russians
Y. **Rockbill, ribbed about lubavitch
Z. Margo and Josh Moses
9.death and life
10. Cain and Abel
11. Beth-Hakmidsash
12a. the dead
13. kindness
14. sword
15. hand on mine; Yakov @ turnstile/micah, new orleans
16. Chani
17. the living & what we can do for the dead
18. Reuben ruminates, meditates on his illness
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