In a articularly crude use of a facebook back in 2009 while
still a grad student at Berkeley ,
I posted a status update that read something to the effect of, “Campus Police respond
as gunshots rang out on the Northwest side of campus. Officers arrived to find,
the suspect, Chris Ferguson, to only have murdered his psychology final exam.”
The reactions to this post taught me a few things. One, not
everyone uses the term murder in a benign light, but amongst many of my boys,
Terrie especially, that word is thrown around casually to connote an especially
dramatic endeavor towards consummation or completion.
Example: With my voracious appetite
and gastroinstestinal satiety that knows no bounds, On Mexican night, I might
be overheard saying to he or someone else: “Yo, I was hungry as a muthafucka
last night. Those tacos got murdered.”
In other words, if you’re kinda slow, and still don’t get
it, half the time, especially as it regards modern black (s)language, ebonics,
if you will, pretend it’s opposite day, where bad, quite literally can and does
mean good, in any number of contexts.
Final example for the extra lay: “Yo
that chick bad, can often be translated as, “Salutations, good sir, that lady is
particularly beautiful.”
Secondly, those that got my humor, laughed, but did so in a
way that was illustrative to me as it regards my particularly likelihood, to go
on a shooting spree. My sister’s old schoolyard boyfriend, Ricardo, was one of
many who said, “Haha, good one, Chris, you almost got me with that one,” or something to
that effect. This got me to thinking, well damn, guess they thought I was
capable going Columbine, but after reading the recent headlines and lead-ins to
the Newtown
incident, that oh so familiar psychological profile for what have become routine goings on,
can essentially be drawn from recall:
“The suspect had a history of mental illness. He was
described as quiet by those that knew him and kept to himself much of the time.”
Well, damn, if the shoe fits, allow me to find some matching
socks. That is to say, that could be me on any given day (though the paternally
inherited extrovert has been out and active moreso than in the past)
Though this situation in particular and the headlines that accompanied
it can and will be problematized in any number of ways, firsts things first.
This history of mental illness bullshit. Instead of passing the buck and
shirking the blame to have it fall squarely on the shoulders of those of have
experienced the terrors and trauma so often are suffered mental illness, would
it be too much to say exactly what that history is. If we are to err, why not
do so on the side of specificity. As it regards onus bearing, could we not,
just as easily say, “The suspect had a history of being mistreated in general
and mistreated for mental illness in particular.”
Since, however, excuse-making is not the goal at this
critical juncture and because the privilege to represent struck during this unfortunate
time, allow me to do just that, and revisit the depths of the mind a solitary
mad man from someone’s who has “been there, and thought that” so to speak. Though
due to obvious sensitivities regarding gun violence in light of the recent
shooting in Newton, CT, such morose humor is best unrepeated in public spaces,
allow me to explicate, and perhaps even allow you to delve into a mind, who
more recently than I would care to admit (well actually I did recently admit to
it, please see one of my recent posts where ending up on the losing side of a
love triangle, had me whistling Hendrix’s classic ballad, “Hey Joe,” like Dixie).
While this much be able to be intuited, it really can be an,
“if I’m feelin’ it, someone else gon’ feel it,” type of situation. And by, “it”
of course, I’m talking about abscessed, festering agony of unrecognized and
unaddressed pain. While restraint has always been a source of pride for me in
my sexual and violent, less-capades, (so called for their relative infrequency
as measured against those of my peers and the frequency with which they can
manifest in the old thoughtbox respectively), there have been times when the Bishop
(see the movie Juice for the reference and the masterful acting of one Tupac
Shakur) has surfaced, and I simply do not give a fuck. While the menefreghista
in me comes, it typically goes just as soon, and my negative energies are
typically internalized. On the two occasions where they were externalized, in
an aggressive, malicious fashion my old knucklehead pops took a couple for the
team as it were, having earned them for a lifetime of half-assed parenting and
even more half-assed husbandry.
Thoughts ranging from mass murder to directed assault and
battery can be commonly overheard in everyday idiomatic expression (that is to
say, the phrases so casually thrown around like, “I’ll kill so and so,” during
moments of rage or even in jest, the familiar, “I’d like to beat the shit out
of such and such) there is a grand distinction between having an impulse and
acting on it.
However, during that fuzzy space between thought and action,
(and if close enough attention is paid, word is almost always put out in some
form or fashion), let’s ask ourselves if we are at all complicit in the actions
of another by our regard, or lack thereof, via indifference whether callous, or
unconscious, to the burdens borne by our brother. And if you are not seeing your
brother in the other then perhaps you may recalibrate your moral compass
accordingly.
Listening is free, therapy is not. Caring is a 24/7
operation, therapy is not. Getting meds requires appointments, time, and money.
Getting a smile should not. Giving a fuck is not just for the sexually liberated.
If you see someone in passing who looks like their day, year, or life, could be
going better, did you ask them, how they were doing? If you answered no to the
previous question, then why it is a shock, when just about one in two people in
our country, have been prescribed psychotropic meds in our country (guess can
agree, that damn near the majority could be described, as having had a mental
health history), when one of those (mis)treated souls loses it and consequently
makes others lose their lives as a result?
Abstinence is Birth Control are taught in schools as early
as elementary school. Drug Control is advocated in schools. In the wake of the
Newtown Massacre, with echoes of atrociously similar shootings still being
heard, the everpresent call for gun control is now deafening. If there is time
to teach everything in school, and push for controls of all measures, let’s
start with self-control, intrapersonal mastery, and interpersonal empathy insofar
as it is possible.
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