By Ernie McCray

PRELUDE: What’s written here are words that poured from me when I tried to, just for a few moments in time, air my mind of all the mania that seems to come from the White House from time to time aka all the time. It’s as written, word for word, with punctuations added to tidy it up a bit.

Ready, set go! Whew! What a world! What’s up, girl? Hard to breathe, easy to see, and hear, though, don’t you know. But it’s a mess at best. Some kind of crazy ass test. Lord have mercy on all the rest that has to exist with whatever this is. Whatever this is. Some crazy kind of show biz. Tis. T-I-S. Tis. What is the universe to think of this experiment that’s run into a ditch, a sink hole, where there’s a risk of not getting out?

Man, social media, what a bit. But I like my little bit in it. Facebook, mostly. Keeping up with friends and people I’m interested in. Knowing what’s up with them. Commenting every now and then. Trying to keep it real. In touch. Knowing that the world has some nice touches to it as I read what everybody has to say, most of it, seemingly, in a meme kind of way. Folk’s truths. On the loose. I dig it that most of my friends among my Facebook friends haven’t given in to the meanness that can take place in that cyberface.

Whoa, people fling around terms like idiot and stupid and asshole and all kind of yo mama carryings-on. People get unfriended in a blip in time. Cancelled. “Hey, don’t bring that shit on my timeline or I’ll find your ass and kick your behind! You offend my friends, you Trump supporting scum! Kiss my bum!”

What the hell is going on? Can’t we all get along? I haven’t unfriended a soul although there’ve been a couple of times when somebody dropped some bomby words in a conversation – but hey, go for it if you’ve got to be that way. I do wish you wouldn’t be that way, by the way. And I’ll tell you so.

But I like that there’s a place to say a few things and let others know you’re still walking among the human race, trying to be positive and contributing to what happens in your little section on the Milky Way, on this wonderful place we have to stay, revolving and spinning around the sun, truly heaven on earth to some lucky sonofagun who has found his place under that sun and has been running with the ball having fun and not having fun, laughing and crying, mourning and damn near dying, fortunate to have traveled to faraway places, meeting faraway people, all trying to make it before the day is done.

And some homo sapiens talk about making it to heaven when their day is done, a place that’s supposed to have everything anyone could ever want or desire or seek. And I go, wow what a place, it sure sounds neat; it sounds just like where I am if you ask me. We are residents in heaven and we fucked it up and don’t want to clean it up because, I guess that “would be too much like the right thing to do” as my grandfather used to say. Who knows? I don’t! And neither do you.

We’re just out here, going for what we know. Watching the Daily Show and Seth Meyers and the king of it all, Stephen Colbert. Bill Maher has put himself out there walking against the traffic on a superhighway, having said something about being “a house nigger” in a joke that stopped right there, and now, in some people’s minds, he’s the biggest bigot in the world rather than a comedian going for something funny when something funny wasn’t there…

And, oh, I wish we as a society would drop “nigger” somewhere where it can’t breathe air because to me it’s the ugliest word there could be anywhere; right up there with “bitch” which I swear is the foulest word imaginable. I’ve never allowed myself to be a nigger although I’ve been treated like one but that was on them. They just didn’t know.

Oh, I used it once upon a time, with the same excuses used at this time, that it’s an endearment we brothas and sistas use, that it’s taking a negative and giving it a fresher view. And now here I am being a momentary hypocrite, talking about how I hate the word, but to all this bullshit I’ve just got to say “N___a, please!” We black folks could eliminate that word in a microsecond because if we don’t use it it pretty much ain’t gonna be used because you know they’re scared of us don’t you? All that “he seemed beastly” crap? So who’s gonna use it against a monster – other than the police? Believe me…

And I’ll end this with the “B” word. It’s not in my vocabulary because of the women in my life. My mother. My hero. That amazing Howard graduate made me who I am. Her mother who I never knew but felt her through my genes – a lot via her sister, my aunt, of the great variety, Lillie, who I called Lila, who told me stories of old in our every now and then chats; My daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters, all beautiful and bright and hopeful and delightful.

The women at the church, Mt. Calvary, who would pinch my cheeks with joy when I got my memory verse right; Mrs. Warner a dear old woman who lived at the corner who let me cut the lawns at the white folks’ houses she cleaned, one of my best friends; Geneva, another old woman who let me use her typewriter to peck out my little ditties – she would smile and fix me lemonade and treated me like I was Langston Hughes: “Boy, you so smart. And so good looking too.” Lordy (who do I think I am, Jim Comey), I loved that woman; my three wives and the woman I’m in love with now…

Women, plain and simply, ain’t bitches to me. That’s the end of this stream of consciousness spree! Can’t wait to read what I wrote. Are the Warriors gonna take this thing tonight? I hope!

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Ernie McCray

I was raised in a loving and alive home, in a black neighborhood filled with colorful characters in Tucson, Arizona. Such an environment gave me a hint that life has to be grabbed by the tail as tight as a pimple on a mosquito's butt. With no BS and a whole lot of love. So, from those days to now I get up every morning set on making the world a better place. On my good foot*, and I hope my writing reflects that. *an old black expression

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