H2Omeloncholy: January 2022

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

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pe·nul·ti·mate

/pəˈnəltəmət/ adj. "second to last in a series"

Oxford Dictionary

The sky is not falling. Yet. Sea levels are rising. Yes. Stardust, we be. Ashes to dust - stargazin'. Gentlesoulfolk, we find ourselves 'starring' in a cliff-hung episode before the finale. The fissures further split, though slow, beneath 'Empire' - as its cracks of unconscionable exploits continue to squint, wince, and cower. At daylight.

There is a happening. Right now. Some goose-bumpin' action - all about us. A gift, perhaps of epic proportion, to invigorate the weary social justice agent. We have before us sum'in upon which all of institutional jurisprudence is built. We have - in our grasp - that which domestic violence and generational trauma and state-sanctioned atrocity, and the very ilk of most ills - from time immemorial - rely, to so much as gleam the potential within the possibility for reconciliation. If not even reparations.

We have...our wish come true. We have 'their' penultimate confession. No, it ain't the-of-the 'final word', propelling us forth into the sphere of healing that only Afrofuturist science fiction fantasy imagines. But dammit, my good peops, how it counts! It is the pride before the fall, the pause before the epiphany, that moment of toes poised for the quantum leap from ~~black~~ grey matter-ed synapse to common sensical revelation. 'They' have confessed. At last.

And they have done so on a loop de loop that would be a wet dream for litigation. Everywhere it can be notated. For the record. Presently, they are most revealing at school board meetings, unburdening their souls, practically upon bended knees:

"We don't want our children to feel bad about their whiteness."

"We don't want white children to feel guilty."

guilt

/ɡilt/ noun "the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime"

Oxford Dictionary

Many of them utter - in the same breath, mind you:

"My ancestors came thru Ellis Island. What does slavery have to do with me?"

"That was a different time."

"I can't be held responsible for what some great-grandfather did whom I never met."

"Maybe there is 'some' racism left. But that's not me.

Ask my black neighbor, What's-His-Name."

"Some people just need to make everything about race.

Since they keep bringing it up? Maybe they're the racist ones."

All of the above implies absolution from guilt. Doth it not?

One will not insult the astute reader (for indeed ye must be to bear with this lil' ditty) by mentioning the fallacy of a distraction that has become the phantom row about 'critical race theory' - that is actually not taught to Junior. Unless Junior is the rarest of prodigies, pursuing his law degree as a pre-adolescent.

How hath this miraculous confessional comet graced our non-falling skies!? For...oh...for the only way that one's child is at risk for this alleged "guilt" - which others might actually consider an invaluable portal to empathy-infused civic responsibility, if said child is entrusted to access more humanity than the hypoCRITICAL parent - is if...c'mon...if racism...is quite the power. In and to a shared culture. And it is a horror. And it is a terror. And a most gross injustice. Inducing guilt. Is this not an unADULTerated admittance, daresay, crystalline confession? Enuf to make 'em fear that verifiable history morphs into this boogey-man called a racist that does not hide behind pointed hood yet actually resides within, causing a crisis in the self-esteem development of the next generation, absurdly privileged enuf to succeed upon and because of ignorance from hardest fact.

Thank you. Eva so. Albeit absent any glimmer of contrition, your paranoia about truth is the most glorious of exposes. Why and how can Junior "feel bad" about the past unless you are finally fully acknowledging that it is a past so severe in shame, upending thine own notions of legacy to an origin of tragedy, that...uhm...that merely knowing it may wreck the world into which you are raising him to believe that he is entitled to construct his confidence upon this reverberating sin of kin. Again, thank you.

Let us give praise: your penultimate confession is a start - to setting us all free.

a clever as compassionate critique

on the implausibility

of POSTness

Til our next 'post', feast upon produce in season...

CV

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Penultimate Confession