No Empathy... or Mykel's Blog for July 2023
You’re STILL WrongorMykel's August 2023 Blog/Column No Empathy....
by Mykel Board
“We are surrounded by people
who appear to be happy, people who clap their hands and dance in the
streets, people who sing for the pure joy of singing… and you think
they don’t suffer? You think that they are somehow excluded from
the battle of the human condition-- death, infirmity, lost love,
poverty, crime and all the rest of it. We’re all half mad.”
--Robert
Wilson
“There
is only one way to understand a lonely bench in a park: Sit on it;
watch whatever it is watching; listen to whatever it is listening to!
Sit in spring, sit in winter, sit in summer! To understand something
deeply, you need to live its life!”
-
Mehmet Murat Ildan
[NOTE:
All the people and events described in this blog are true. No names
have been changed. No
one is innocent.]
I’ve
just left the cancer center. Prostate… what old men get. I’m an
old man. Radiation surgery… cyberknife they call it. Five
cybercuts in 10 days. Not painful… but requiring a weird diet of
non-fiber food: white bread, popsicles, canned fruit. A double
laxative at night… then a Fleet enema in the morning just to make
sure nothing is left inside. After that, a half hour on the operating
table.
Your
choice of music while they cut. First was Dixieland Jazz. Then The
Velvet Underground,
Today: Patti Smith.
I have other choices. At
a hospital, I don’t
want to ask for something dead: (Kennedys, Boys, Milkmen, Grateful).
It might make the staff uncomfortable. Right now, they’re helping
me off the table just as Patti asks if I know how to pony... like
Tony Maroni.
I
leave the building… on the street now. I need to find a post
office. The Upper East Side… I don’t know this neighborhood. I’ll
ask someone. Here’s a fellow patient, skinny guy… about half my
age… just leaving the cancer center.
“Excuse
me,” I ask, “do you know where there’s a post office nearby?”
“Sorry,
I’m not from around here.”
“Thanks anyway.”
I
ask a security guard… standing in front of the next building taking
a smoking break. I love it: a smoking break next to a cancer
hospital.
“I know there’s one close,” she says, “but
I’m not sure what street.”
I thank her. Ah, here comes
a very determined-looking woman… wearing a backpack… body leaning
forward as if marching into battle… I approach her.
“Excuse
me,” I say, “do you…
She
snarls… shakes her head… waves her arms above her head as if
brushing away a gnat attack. Stamps the ground... harder as she
passes me and disappears around the corner.
I
don’t get it? I’m 5 foot 3 inches tall… pushing 80 years old…
barely standing after radiation treatment. Did she think I was going
to attack her? I don’t understand the cruelty. All she’d have to
do is say, “I’m sorry,” and then give an excuse. She wouldn't even have to stop. I just don’t get the inhumanity.
BOING!
That’s it. That brings me exactly to what I want to write about.
First some definitions (to quote Humpty Dumpty: words
mean what I want them to mean…
so don’t bother looking this up):
SYMPATHY
is feeling sorry for someone. When someone dies you send a sympathy
card. When you see a wounded animal, you feel sympathy. You feel
unhappy because someone or something else is suffering.
EMPATHY
is the ability to feel the emotions of someone else... to mentally
put yourself in their jockstrap. To understand what makes them
tiktok. To “get it” as if from inside another person.
You’re
probably familiar with Jim Testa. He’s known for half a century of
music writing… for supporting bands that nobody’s heard of… for
supporting friends (including me) that no one else would dare
support. A great human being. That’s why it hurt… when Jim said,
“Mykel, I’ve known you for a long time… and one thing I’ve
gotta say… again… is that you have no empathy.”
The
remark comes after I say I refuse to be bullied by the language cops.
I’ll say Colored
People
if it fits what I’m talking about… or if it proves a point. How
is People of
Color okay,
but Colored
People offensive?
And what’s the problem with being offensive anyway?
“Mykel,” says Jim, “I’ll
say it again. You have no empathy.”
FLASH TO CALVIN: Calvin sits
on his milk crate… the color of the crate slightly lighter than his
skin…. He gets darker in the summer. His back is against the side
of the building that corners Bleecker and LaGuardia. He wears a black
baseball hat, a plain gray t-shirt and bluejeans. On his feet, some
kind of sneakers that are neither new nor fashionable. In his left
hand is a plastic soda cup with a few coins on the bottom. He sees me
from his corner… smiles and waves.
“Calvin!” I shout from
across the street. “How you been doin’?”
I
cross to talk with
him. Simultaneously, I pull a single dollar bill out of the watch
pocket of my jeans… where I keep my homeless money.
“You
on your way to your favorite place?” Calvin asks me, nodding toward
the Peculier Pub, my regular hangout.
“How’d you
guess?” I joke, dropping the dollar into Calvin’s cup.
“You
goin’ back to South Carolina this summer?” I ask.
“Mykel,
are you kidding? You know how hot the summers are in New York? Double
that for South Carolina…”
He interrupts our
conversation to talk to some passing folks… all with purple NYU
T-shirts… talking with each other… gesturing with their
cellphones.
“How you doin’ today, folks?” He says,
rattling the coins in his plastic cup. They keep walking… like he’s
invisible.
Calvin and I talk a little
more. My sister lives in South Carolina and we’ve talked about that
before. Calvin’s family is from a different part of the state than
my sister is.
“It’s almost like a
different country,” he tells me.
I often think about Calvin.
Where does he go at night? How does he get to South Carolina once a
year? Hitchhike? Do people still hitchhike in 2023? What’s it like
20+ years after the last time I hitchhiked. What’s his life like? I
can’t imagine!
FLASH
TO MANNY: In a wheelchair on the other side of Bleecker… down a
little bit.. usually in front of the CVS on the corner. About
50, a big guy... missing a few teeth on the bottom… I drop a buck
into his plastic cup. Even though it’s nearly 90o
out, he’s covered from shoulder to knees in a blanket.
“Mykel,” says Manny. “
Gotta talk to you. I always see you hangin’ out with these Japanese
guys… girls… whatever. Lemme warn you. Be careful of ‘em.”
“But, I like Japanese
people. They’re smart and fun.”
“They act like they’s your
friend,” he says, stealing a glance to the right and left. “But
secretly, they hate you. They want to kill you. Take it from me… I
know.”
What happened to this guy? Is
he talking about the Japanese or Asians in general? Did he serve in
Vietnam and end up in a wheelchair? Why would he say something like
that? I can’t imagine why he feels like that. No clue to what it
must be like to have that kind of fear and hatred inside... stewing
as he sits in the heat and asks people for money.
FLASH TO KEVIN: If Manny is
big and fat, Kevin is a monster. From neck to knees… rolls and
rolls of it… His body is just a lump… a huge lump… any
particular part: chest... stomach... back... ass… They fold into
one another… just blobs… impossible to know where one part ends
the next part begins. He’s like a huge mound of jello on a bench.
Not really ON the bench, but dripping over the bench.
Kevin’s bench is in front of
H-Mart, the Korean supermarket chain. I often shop there. Not
expensive... good Korean food... good Japanese food at two-thirds
the price of the Japanese stores. Kevin’s cup doesn’t get a
dollar from me. I know him too well.
“Mykel,” he tells me twice
a week... when I shop at H-Mart, “I don’t want your money. I know
you’re going into that store. Bring me a Coke when you come out.”
I say to him, “Kevin, you
say the same thing to me every week. I know you by now. You know they
got a sign in the store… in the soda section… by the Coke. HOLD
ONE CAN FOR MYKEL TO PICK UP FOR KEVIN.”
He laughs.
We shake hands… bump fists
actually. I go into H-Mart… buy some frozen Korean pancakes, red
miso, pork dumplings… and a can of Coke. I pay... walk out…
freeze. Kevin is on his feet… leaning forward… yelling…. Both
fists clenched at his side… the muscles on his neck throbbing.
YOU WHITE BITCH! WHO DO YOU
THINK YOU ARE? YOU WON’T EVEN TALK TO ME? DON’T EVEN SAY “I’M
SORRY!”
And the rant goes on. He
stands and shouts down the street at someone I can’t see. I’ve
never seen him like this. He could have a stroke. If he were white,
he’d be red in the face. I steal behind him… quietly set the can
of coke on the bench… he’s still yelling not seeing anything but
the object of his rage. I turn toward Houston Street and head home.
FLASH TO WILL: Will’s from
Texas… Austin… BA in film from UT. He arrived in New York at the
beginning of this year. His plan? Live on the street until he earns
enough money to get a place of his own.
25 years old, Will is the
thinnest of my homeless friends. He’s amassing his future fortune
by working for DoorDash, a food delivery service that makes its
workers compete with one another to score points for quick service
and good ratings. Orders flash to cellphones close to either pick-up
or delivery points. The first person to accept… provided he has a
good rating… gets the job.
Will also makes money on eBay…
learning and visiting thrift-shops… anywhere the subway goes…
pickup up DVDs and electronic doodads… and “flipping them” on
eBay… two to ten times their original value. Will travels the city
wearing a huge backpack… for his deliveries and his thrift-store
finds.
Will
is a schlemazel.
Two months ago, I saw him with a shiner… not the beer, but the
black eye.
“What happened?”
“Mykel,
it was weird… these two crackheads… they chased me. They wanted
to mug me… I fought them off… screamed at them. One got me right
in the face. Blam! It’s a little better now, but still hurts.”
“I’ll buy you a drink,”
I tell him.
While waiting for orders from
DoorDash, Will hangs out in a mid-town library. He’s got a laptop
in his knapsack, and can connect and post on facebook. Today marks a
week after the black-eye incident.
“I was attacked again…
mugged… wallet stolen… all my money… at swordpoint!”
This is New York. People get
mugged. I understand. But mugged at swordpoint? In the subway in
2023? That is impossible… or would be for anyone not Will.
“At least I still have my
cellphone.” continues the facebook post. “I couldn’t survive
without that. Doordash! What would I do?”
Give it another week.
“I fell asleep on the
subway. Woke up… my phone was gone.”
Will
sleeps on my couch once a week or so. I watch him planning his next
day. After the phone is gone, he’s still planning… visit Verizon…
it’s insured… get a replacement… how will they transfer the
number? Where’s the nearest Verizon? We sit on the couch to work
out the details. But I think: How
can he do that? How can he keep going? He could easily move back to
Austin where its familiar… easier… more friends than one old
Jewish guy who’ll give up his couch once a week. What gives him the
power to keep it up… and to smile and be friendly… and not to
hate the world? I can’t imagine.
POW!
it hits me… like a Fleet Enema. Jim is right. I don’t have
empathy. I can’t put myself in other people’s jockstraps. I can’t
imagine what it’s like to live on the street. I can’t see myself
hating Japanese people. I don’t know how it feels to be confined to
a wheelchair… to be black… to flip DVDs from the Salvation
Armies. I think about that… wonder… but I can’t feel it. Yep,
Jim’s right. I don’t have empathy. Sympathy yes! I live for
sympathy. Sometimes I even feel sorry for people who are much richer
than I am. But empathy? No, I just can’t do it.
Shit!
It’s late. I gotta get to today’s prostate zapping. That enema...
that music choice… I need to stop at the bank first. POW! Out of
the house, down Broadway… what’s this. Some girl with an ID tag…
she wants me to contribute to something… just to talk to me about
children or animal abuse. She moves to block my path. I snarl…
shake my head… wave my arms above my head as if brushing away a
gnat attack. I stamp the ground harder as I pass her… not saying
a word, and then, I disappear around the corner.
See
you in hell,
Mykel Board
ENDNOTES:
[You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com.
Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music
or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137,
New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified
when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in
the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at
https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]
→
Headline
of the week dept:
Speaking of homelessness. I saw this headline on
the internet:
Homeless
Man With No Arms Stabs Tourist
I
hope the tourist wasn’t Will.
→
Speaking
of Will dept: CNN
reports
DoorDash
is jumping on the speedy delivery trend. The
company is now
offering
10- to 15-minute delivery. Okay
Will, you’re really gonna have to jump to it to pick up the food
and bring it to the lazy shit who ordered it… in a quarter of an
hour!!! Make sure you bring your pepper spray, though you might not
have time to use it.
→
Pearls
Before Swine dept: It
seems that TickTockers have been promoting
“Yoni
Pearls,” small bundles of a variety of herbs. The idea is to insert
them into your vagina (if you have one) to help improve odor, remove
toxins and treat bacterial and yeast infections. “Reported side
effects are, itching, dryness, stinging and cramping." I donno,
I can think of better things to put in MY vagina.
→ I try to be a philosopher but I Kant dept: This from a facebook pal of mine:
THE
NATION AGAIN
I’m
a long-time subscriber to the The
Nation.
It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only
agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely,
when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends”
would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for
all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in
THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.
This
time, Lev Golinkin
writes
about
how the Western (and pro-war liberal) media praise Ukraine fighters
who have exactly the same philosophy as US white supremacists. And,
as I still can’t figure out how someone can be Pro-Israel and
Anti-Trump at the same time. Israel has more public places named
after Donny than anywhere
else
on earth. In any case, there’s a nice letter from Bob Gris (no
link, sorry) quoting the evil Alexander
Haig who called Israel “the largest American aircraft in the world
that cannot be sunk.”
Finally,
there’s a nice discussion
of
Bernie Sanders and how this guy usually gets everything right.
You
can read more, or even subscribe at:
https://www.thenation.com/
LINK
TRADE DEPARTMENT:
I
did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions,
complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read
it here.
It’s a good one.
I
read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice
to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook
me or email
me
if
you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you.
You add me.
Here's
a start:
Jason
Rodgers sent me his book Invisible
Generation…
free! And I lost it. Jason, a long-time partner of Suzy Poe, has been
bugging me to review it… and I can’t. So the best I can do is
promote it. I have a lot of respect for Jason… he is a libertarian
(in the best sense of the word), and a super-smart guy. When/if I
find the book, I’ll give you some more details.
Video
of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube
DatingGame-like
video.
Guess who wins the bachlorette!
Here’s
Richard Goldberg:
goldberg.wordpress.com
Poetry
and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The
Latency
And
my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He
cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's
Recipes.
And
here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour
diary of
sorts.
Andy
Shelton has an interesting blog here.
Savage
Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing
for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains
that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.
Chris
Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS.
You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue
soon.
George
Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books
featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it
temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.
And
my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas
Master Blog.
And
connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL
PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.
Here
are a couple video links.
This
from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low
And
this
one from
my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.
Jim
Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere
awhile back. You can read it here.
Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t
see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera.
You can stream the album here.
Kyle
Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped
by the secret police… I think. I post his
blog
for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise
metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or
repulse you… or both.
My
long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out
his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here
it is.
Oh
yeah, then there’s me.
I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You
might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.
Let
me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and
want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already
seen mine. god@mykelboard.com
“We are surrounded by people who appear to be happy, people who clap their hands and dance in the streets, people who sing for the pure joy of singing… and you think they don’t suffer? You think that they are somehow excluded from the battle of the human condition-- death, infirmity, lost love, poverty, crime and all the rest of it. We’re all half mad.”
--Robert Wilson
“There is only one way to understand a lonely bench in a park: Sit on it; watch whatever it is watching; listen to whatever it is listening to! Sit in spring, sit in winter, sit in summer! To understand something deeply, you need to live its life!”
-
Mehmet Murat Ildan
[NOTE: All the people and events described in this blog are true. No names have been changed. No one is innocent.]
I’ve just left the cancer center. Prostate… what old men get. I’m an old man. Radiation surgery… cyberknife they call it. Five cybercuts in 10 days. Not painful… but requiring a weird diet of non-fiber food: white bread, popsicles, canned fruit. A double laxative at night… then a Fleet enema in the morning just to make sure nothing is left inside. After that, a half hour on the operating table.
Your choice of music while they cut. First was Dixieland Jazz. Then The Velvet Underground, Today: Patti Smith. I have other choices. At a hospital, I don’t want to ask for something dead: (Kennedys, Boys, Milkmen, Grateful). It might make the staff uncomfortable. Right now, they’re helping me off the table just as Patti asks if I know how to pony... like Tony Maroni.
I leave the building… on the street now. I need to find a post office. The Upper East Side… I don’t know this neighborhood. I’ll ask someone. Here’s a fellow patient, skinny guy… about half my age… just leaving the cancer center.
“Excuse me,” I ask, “do you know where there’s a post office nearby?”
“Sorry,
I’m not from around here.”
“Thanks anyway.”
I
ask a security guard… standing in front of the next building taking
a smoking break. I love it: a smoking break next to a cancer
hospital.
“I know there’s one close,” she says, “but
I’m not sure what street.”
I thank her. Ah, here comes a very determined-looking woman… wearing a backpack… body leaning forward as if marching into battle… I approach her.
“Excuse me,” I say, “do you…
She snarls… shakes her head… waves her arms above her head as if brushing away a gnat attack. Stamps the ground... harder as she passes me and disappears around the corner.
I don’t get it? I’m 5 foot 3 inches tall… pushing 80 years old… barely standing after radiation treatment. Did she think I was going to attack her? I don’t understand the cruelty. All she’d have to do is say, “I’m sorry,” and then give an excuse. She wouldn't even have to stop. I just don’t get the inhumanity.
BOING! That’s it. That brings me exactly to what I want to write about. First some definitions (to quote Humpty Dumpty: words mean what I want them to mean… so don’t bother looking this up):
SYMPATHY is feeling sorry for someone. When someone dies you send a sympathy card. When you see a wounded animal, you feel sympathy. You feel unhappy because someone or something else is suffering.
EMPATHY is the ability to feel the emotions of someone else... to mentally put yourself in their jockstrap. To understand what makes them tiktok. To “get it” as if from inside another person.
You’re probably familiar with Jim Testa. He’s known for half a century of music writing… for supporting bands that nobody’s heard of… for supporting friends (including me) that no one else would dare support. A great human being. That’s why it hurt… when Jim said, “Mykel, I’ve known you for a long time… and one thing I’ve gotta say… again… is that you have no empathy.”
The remark comes after I say I refuse to be bullied by the language cops. I’ll say Colored People if it fits what I’m talking about… or if it proves a point. How is People of Color okay, but Colored People offensive? And what’s the problem with being offensive anyway?
“Mykel,” says Jim, “I’ll say it again. You have no empathy.”
FLASH TO CALVIN: Calvin sits on his milk crate… the color of the crate slightly lighter than his skin…. He gets darker in the summer. His back is against the side of the building that corners Bleecker and LaGuardia. He wears a black baseball hat, a plain gray t-shirt and bluejeans. On his feet, some kind of sneakers that are neither new nor fashionable. In his left hand is a plastic soda cup with a few coins on the bottom. He sees me from his corner… smiles and waves.
“Calvin!” I shout from across the street. “How you been doin’?”
I
cross to talk with
him. Simultaneously, I pull a single dollar bill out of the watch
pocket of my jeans… where I keep my homeless money.
“You
on your way to your favorite place?” Calvin asks me, nodding toward
the Peculier Pub, my regular hangout.
“How’d you
guess?” I joke, dropping the dollar into Calvin’s cup.
“You
goin’ back to South Carolina this summer?” I ask.
“Mykel,
are you kidding? You know how hot the summers are in New York? Double
that for South Carolina…”
He interrupts our
conversation to talk to some passing folks… all with purple NYU
T-shirts… talking with each other… gesturing with their
cellphones.
“How you doin’ today, folks?” He says,
rattling the coins in his plastic cup. They keep walking… like he’s
invisible.
Calvin and I talk a little more. My sister lives in South Carolina and we’ve talked about that before. Calvin’s family is from a different part of the state than my sister is.
“It’s almost like a different country,” he tells me.
I often think about Calvin. Where does he go at night? How does he get to South Carolina once a year? Hitchhike? Do people still hitchhike in 2023? What’s it like 20+ years after the last time I hitchhiked. What’s his life like? I can’t imagine!
FLASH TO MANNY: In a wheelchair on the other side of Bleecker… down a little bit.. usually in front of the CVS on the corner. About 50, a big guy... missing a few teeth on the bottom… I drop a buck into his plastic cup. Even though it’s nearly 90o out, he’s covered from shoulder to knees in a blanket.
“Mykel,” says Manny. “ Gotta talk to you. I always see you hangin’ out with these Japanese guys… girls… whatever. Lemme warn you. Be careful of ‘em.”
“But, I like Japanese people. They’re smart and fun.”
“They act like they’s your friend,” he says, stealing a glance to the right and left. “But secretly, they hate you. They want to kill you. Take it from me… I know.”
What happened to this guy? Is he talking about the Japanese or Asians in general? Did he serve in Vietnam and end up in a wheelchair? Why would he say something like that? I can’t imagine why he feels like that. No clue to what it must be like to have that kind of fear and hatred inside... stewing as he sits in the heat and asks people for money.
FLASH TO KEVIN: If Manny is big and fat, Kevin is a monster. From neck to knees… rolls and rolls of it… His body is just a lump… a huge lump… any particular part: chest... stomach... back... ass… They fold into one another… just blobs… impossible to know where one part ends the next part begins. He’s like a huge mound of jello on a bench. Not really ON the bench, but dripping over the bench.
Kevin’s bench is in front of H-Mart, the Korean supermarket chain. I often shop there. Not expensive... good Korean food... good Japanese food at two-thirds the price of the Japanese stores. Kevin’s cup doesn’t get a dollar from me. I know him too well.
“Mykel,” he tells me twice a week... when I shop at H-Mart, “I don’t want your money. I know you’re going into that store. Bring me a Coke when you come out.”
I say to him, “Kevin, you say the same thing to me every week. I know you by now. You know they got a sign in the store… in the soda section… by the Coke. HOLD ONE CAN FOR MYKEL TO PICK UP FOR KEVIN.”
He laughs.
We shake hands… bump fists actually. I go into H-Mart… buy some frozen Korean pancakes, red miso, pork dumplings… and a can of Coke. I pay... walk out… freeze. Kevin is on his feet… leaning forward… yelling…. Both fists clenched at his side… the muscles on his neck throbbing.
YOU WHITE BITCH! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU WON’T EVEN TALK TO ME? DON’T EVEN SAY “I’M SORRY!”
And the rant goes on. He stands and shouts down the street at someone I can’t see. I’ve never seen him like this. He could have a stroke. If he were white, he’d be red in the face. I steal behind him… quietly set the can of coke on the bench… he’s still yelling not seeing anything but the object of his rage. I turn toward Houston Street and head home.
FLASH TO WILL: Will’s from Texas… Austin… BA in film from UT. He arrived in New York at the beginning of this year. His plan? Live on the street until he earns enough money to get a place of his own.
25 years old, Will is the thinnest of my homeless friends. He’s amassing his future fortune by working for DoorDash, a food delivery service that makes its workers compete with one another to score points for quick service and good ratings. Orders flash to cellphones close to either pick-up or delivery points. The first person to accept… provided he has a good rating… gets the job.
Will also makes money on eBay… learning and visiting thrift-shops… anywhere the subway goes… pickup up DVDs and electronic doodads… and “flipping them” on eBay… two to ten times their original value. Will travels the city wearing a huge backpack… for his deliveries and his thrift-store finds.
Will is a schlemazel. Two months ago, I saw him with a shiner… not the beer, but the black eye.
“What happened?”
“Mykel, it was weird… these two crackheads… they chased me. They wanted to mug me… I fought them off… screamed at them. One got me right in the face. Blam! It’s a little better now, but still hurts.”
“I’ll buy you a drink,” I tell him.
While waiting for orders from DoorDash, Will hangs out in a mid-town library. He’s got a laptop in his knapsack, and can connect and post on facebook. Today marks a week after the black-eye incident.
“I was attacked again… mugged… wallet stolen… all my money… at swordpoint!”
This is New York. People get mugged. I understand. But mugged at swordpoint? In the subway in 2023? That is impossible… or would be for anyone not Will.
“At least I still have my cellphone.” continues the facebook post. “I couldn’t survive without that. Doordash! What would I do?”
Give it another week.
“I fell asleep on the subway. Woke up… my phone was gone.”
Will sleeps on my couch once a week or so. I watch him planning his next day. After the phone is gone, he’s still planning… visit Verizon… it’s insured… get a replacement… how will they transfer the number? Where’s the nearest Verizon? We sit on the couch to work out the details. But I think: How can he do that? How can he keep going? He could easily move back to Austin where its familiar… easier… more friends than one old Jewish guy who’ll give up his couch once a week. What gives him the power to keep it up… and to smile and be friendly… and not to hate the world? I can’t imagine.
POW! it hits me… like a Fleet Enema. Jim is right. I don’t have empathy. I can’t put myself in other people’s jockstraps. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live on the street. I can’t see myself hating Japanese people. I don’t know how it feels to be confined to a wheelchair… to be black… to flip DVDs from the Salvation Armies. I think about that… wonder… but I can’t feel it. Yep, Jim’s right. I don’t have empathy. Sympathy yes! I live for sympathy. Sometimes I even feel sorry for people who are much richer than I am. But empathy? No, I just can’t do it.
Shit! It’s late. I gotta get to today’s prostate zapping. That enema... that music choice… I need to stop at the bank first. POW! Out of the house, down Broadway… what’s this. Some girl with an ID tag… she wants me to contribute to something… just to talk to me about children or animal abuse. She moves to block my path. I snarl… shake my head… wave my arms above my head as if brushing away a gnat attack. I stamp the ground harder as I pass her… not saying a word, and then, I disappear around the corner.
See
you in hell,
Mykel Board
ENDNOTES:
[You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com.
Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music
or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137,
New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified
when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in
the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at
https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]
→ Headline of the week dept: Speaking of homelessness. I saw this headline on the internet: Homeless Man With No Arms Stabs Tourist
I
hope the tourist wasn’t Will.
→ Speaking of Will dept: CNN reports DoorDash is jumping on the speedy delivery trend. The company is now offering 10- to 15-minute delivery. Okay Will, you’re really gonna have to jump to it to pick up the food and bring it to the lazy shit who ordered it… in a quarter of an hour!!! Make sure you bring your pepper spray, though you might not have time to use it.
→ Pearls Before Swine dept: It seems that TickTockers have been promoting “Yoni Pearls,” small bundles of a variety of herbs. The idea is to insert them into your vagina (if you have one) to help improve odor, remove toxins and treat bacterial and yeast infections. “Reported side effects are, itching, dryness, stinging and cramping." I donno, I can think of better things to put in MY vagina.
→ I try to be a philosopher but I Kant dept: This from a facebook pal of mine:
THE
NATION AGAIN
I’m
a long-time subscriber to the The
Nation.
It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only
agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely,
when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends”
would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for
all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in
THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.
This time, Lev Golinkin writes about how the Western (and pro-war liberal) media praise Ukraine fighters who have exactly the same philosophy as US white supremacists. And, as I still can’t figure out how someone can be Pro-Israel and Anti-Trump at the same time. Israel has more public places named after Donny than anywhere else on earth. In any case, there’s a nice letter from Bob Gris (no link, sorry) quoting the evil Alexander Haig who called Israel “the largest American aircraft in the world that cannot be sunk.”
Finally,
there’s a nice discussion
of
Bernie Sanders and how this guy usually gets everything right.
You
can read more, or even subscribe at:
https://www.thenation.com/
LINK
TRADE DEPARTMENT:
I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.
I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.
Here's a start:
Jason Rodgers sent me his book Invisible Generation… free! And I lost it. Jason, a long-time partner of Suzy Poe, has been bugging me to review it… and I can’t. So the best I can do is promote it. I have a lot of respect for Jason… he is a libertarian (in the best sense of the word), and a super-smart guy. When/if I find the book, I’ll give you some more details.
Video of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachlorette!
Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com
Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency
And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.
And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.
Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.
Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.
Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.
George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.
And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.
And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.
Here
are a couple video links.
This
from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low
And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.
Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.
Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.
My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.
Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.
Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com
