blacksnextdoor

I was over the sink, washing dishes the other day when of all things, I wondered how Mariem was doing.

Mariem was a fiery Latina Republican who I worked alongside for TWO, I repeat TWO years which included the last very fierce campaign for President in which her ugly world view was this inescapable background noise in the office I tried in vain to block out day to day.

She’d quote Karl Rove and Sean Hannity after reading the latest headlines on her computer screen, turning a professional space into her own personal right wing podium, in these sudden hostile outbursts, egging on the politically like minded around her to join in the most miserly, bigoted, cynical little tete a tetes that would make smoke fume from my ears.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I complained about her during a meeting with a couple of higher ups. Instead of them showing the slightest bit of interest, they recited clichés about team spirit that left me wondering  (like I always do before I quit a job), if my financial stability was as important as my mental health.  

One night, upon leaving the office, Mariem appeared in front of me on the street and began to rant and rave about how much she distrusted upper management, hated our company. When she was done venting, she offered me her hand and clasped mine as if we were comrades in some worker’s revolution.

From that moment on, every day at noon, she’d ask me if I felt like having lunch together. She’d ask with a grimace as if she expected me to ignore her or say ‘no,’ which for a while I did. One day, I decided to join her and the next thing I knew, it became a regular routine.

Was it a cheap thrill? Were we re-inventing or betraying ourselves? How was it possible that I was able to sit with such an evil witch at small tables for two every day and enjoy my salad?

One answer may be that Mariem’s cell phone chats with her sister had the same intensity and tone as those with mine. Sometimes, in fact, when she’d end a super hyper sisterly chat with Lorena, it would seem as if the same breathless confidence would continue between us and vice versa.

We were both inspired and moved by this similarity without ever really acknowledging it, our lunches often becoming this super personal time in the course of the very impersonal business day where I could expect Mariem to insist that ‘I eat some steak or a burger for my anemia’ or coerce me into sharing a red velvet cupcake with her lest she eat a whole one by herself and risk getting fat.

How the hell in my journey into myself, did I find this…this…reactionary McCain Palin supporter? Was there any benefit in this strange exercise?

During this time, I remember an African American friend of mine in marketing at one of the famously liberal New York publishing companies, telling me that she had white co-workers who wore Obama buttons on the lapels of their jackets but never uttered so much as a ‘hello’ or ‘good-bye’ on any given day at the office.

Anyway, I no longer work in the same office as Mariem.  My last days, I was unable to take a minute more of the morbid, venomous, racist critiques of the Obama administration that would sporadically rise up from her desk and spread throughout the room like some toxin poisoning everyone within reach and I recall not so much as uttering a word to her in parting.

Were the contradictions of our friendship error messages we ignored or was there something natural at the core of it  that our clashing political interests obscured?

Still, as much as I fondly recall dashing through the streets of Manhattan shoulder to shoulder with Mariem, laughing, if I ever see that witch again, I’ll keep things simple and exclude her from my view.

Meant to take a sabbatical from blogging. Too restless, feeling more and more trapped in the bleak news report that loops over and over without end: the economy this…economy that…the economy, the economy, economy…

Anyway, I’m back because before I began this Blacks Next Door public diary, I promised myself, to do it for one full year — so I will do my best – despite my wide mood swings to honor BND’s September 2010 expiration date.

“The economy’s still not doing well.” I overheard someone sigh in the elevator last week. You would have thought he was mourning a dying family member or dear friend such was the intensity of his melancholia.

Life by numbers is oppressive. It’s also stupid. Ever have a manager shove a spreadsheet into your face that’s supposed to be a snapshot of your value within your organization that doesn’t reflect any of the important intangibles like what the forces were that inspired you to perform well or may have led your daily performance to be not at all inspired?

Well, if the Republicans continue to have it their way, this is how America will be ruled: by spreadsheet.

Human potential will have no more meaning than what numbers justify. In fact, the future will be shut inside a coffin and handed back to you wrapped in a flag.

This is my final conclusion after a week of watching Republican politicos kick and scream and foam at the mouth over the President’s proposed Stimulus Package.

Allocating $50 million to The National Endowment on the Arts is a waste of money they ranted. How could citizens having music and art in their lives be stimulating except in some subversive way that only serves ‘liberal’ culture?

First of all, this is no longer the 80’s when the voice of the Right may have been more in tune with that of the mild mannered ‘man on the street’ than that of an artist like Andres Serrano.

After two terms of Clinton — who at least at the level of the streets I walk, was a conservative influence – and eight years of Bush, porn and gambling are bigger than ever.

And instead of the Piss Christ, we have Ann Coulter.

So the Obama team will have to use imagination as much as money to truly stimulate and inspire people to feel good, dream, innovate – not just consume but create.

Until then, as long as one of the most important cultural events in this country is basically a war game, yeah, sigh, The Super Bowl — with an ominous Bush regime icon like General David Petraus at the center to kick it off, America remains — as far as my watchful eyes can see — well, a Republican nation.

Trying to ease up the stranglehold of media, I search for truth at odd angles or look the wrong way on purpose.

The oddly unimportant news that Jimmy Carter’s bicycle was stolen gave me some relief from all Obama’s breathlessly euphoric pre inaugural coverage. Maybe it’s just me, but I can only handle so much spine tingling and so many goose bumps before I want to press the stop button at least for a moment.    

Bizarre but not unimportant has been the miracle plane landing on the Hudson. I got my eyewitness account from none other than Robin Roberts of Good Morning America who seems to have watched the plane’s descent from her apartment balcony.  Even with my tendency to distance myself from the crowd, I too am part of the Robin Roberts Fan Club.  How could I not be?

As I shuffle around my mirror in the morning, stealing peeks at the TV, like a pot of bubbling coffee somewhere close by, she blends right into my whole domestic daydream.

I hear chatter that she’s a closeted lesbian.  The criteria to be a straight woman seem to grow more narrow every day. Nor  does she pass the equally small minded  ‘black enough’ test.  Sooo tall, sooo  vulnerable.  I’m most fascinated by how her struggle with cancer has reinforced her femininity, transformed her in fact into this subversively glamourous force despite the rest of us.

Most anticlimactic event of the week:  Bush and that…that…you know what, Condoleeza, saying good-bye.  Does anyone really care? Did she ever exist down here on the same planet as the rest of us?

This is a woman who  – and I don’t care how much money as a consultant and speaker she makes in the private sector moving forward – will always be despised and remembered as nothing more than a nasty…well..you know what I’m trying not to say.

The way Bush trotted her about like some modern day Ota Benga, (the Congolese man exhibited at The Bronx Zoo in 1906) inviting the rest of us to join him in marveling at her ability to speak Russian and play piano.

It’s not clear that Condie spoke more than limited Russian and as for the leverage with the Russians her presence in his administration was supposed to have brought us – where is it please?

Just like McCain’s ‘maverick’ myth fell apart during this campaign as we observed his wife, Cindy, henpeck him during interviews and the Republican party pull him in a million different directions, Condie’s  having been friends with one of the girls murdered in the Birmingham church bombing didn’t cushion us from her bitter political agenda.

I have never seen anyone confuse unpopularity with expertise the way Ms. Rice did.  Will we ever forget her scowling defense of her administration’s mishandling of September 11?  Never an apology to the families, nothing.

Her subsequent global war on terror has been an empty spectacle.

Condie, the dominatrix marionette.  Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Anyway, refreshing doesn’t even come close to describing Michelle’s arrival on the scene.  Such style, warmth, candor, intelligence.

Yes, I’m emotionally ill-equipped to handle all the delirium of this upcoming inauguration, but I m ever so grateful to be experiencing this momentous change – and ever so relieved.