Ah the compelling, opposing appeals of giving comfort and truth. You wake up, you sense there’s a Whirlwind coming, like a sky-high flute of fire, and you want to step outside and clang the porch bell. I can’t bear to — can you bear to watch any more violence as it happens? Just because you can see it doesn’t mean you should. It singes your soul. The dad in me wants to protect you, cover your eyes.
You know, hanging out on Tweaker, or Twerker is not good for me. I hung a shingle on it in 2009, but never really used it until the last few years, fleeing arguments on Facebook for arguments on Titter. You can only box with haters so long on social media before you fall out. Not die, but fall out of that Octagon. My big mouth on Facebook probably cost me 200 teacher friends. Just in my school alone, I was on first-name bases with oh, 85 staffers.
After my conflagration in 2016 through 2019, somewhere after quitting teaching, working with dying elders, and fighting the state board of education, I began to pick up new friends through social media, a few really good friends, people I would definitely give a full frontal hug, and go have a cheeseburger with them. They squinted into the Wind and knew we were being thrown phony bones by media.
So then arguing on Turder occupied me during the pandemic. Maybe outrages will still suck me back in. Oh, I’m sure they will. The specter of smacking idiots around always lurks over my shoulders. It’s Monday, so obviously there’s a new outrage and someone to upbraid.
But how do you snub those fights, and give people Truth without breaking their spirits?
All I can do is tell you stories. I’m good at that. I can spin a yarn. I’m not interested in overturning implacable convictions. The fundamentalists in the world can’t be touched. I was just thinking about my domes and siloes of untouchability, and how I run to my conspiracy theory that:
IT DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE! — That nothing that veers outside the Memo may be seen. It won’t be seen in the NYTimes, in Newsweek or The Atlantic, or all the colossal podcasts by major influencers. So every time I received no reply from a major outlet, a put-off or delay, or another brick to lay on my wallpaper of rejections, I think, “Yup, that’s ’cause it doesn’t fit the narrative!” I’ve used this term since a reporter said it to me, so I named my chronicle essay after it. Suspecting that Americans’ lust for Nihilism, Grievance, Equity, Empathy, and Identity are bullshit fashions sprung downstream off the heads of Marxists and Marxist feminist influencers doesn’t fit the narrative. Calling Black Lives Matter a prime destroyer of black lives, calling MeToo hateful towards women and men, calling gender activists hateful towards girls, towards little kids who suffer from autism and homophobia doesn’t fit the fucking narrative. Truth doesn’t fit the narrative.
So, my daughter tells me, “Dad, everything you disagree with doesn’t fit the narrative. You can’t just say that.” She knows my slow boil, and penchant for wrath. Well, I’m not saying that everything doesn’t, but I know how it looks. Everything I disagree with doesn’t necessarily not fit the narrative, so there’s a hole to patch in my software.
What this “narrative” signifies however is man’s (or just my) need to know. And everything that doesn’t fit the narrative is probably just my abyss of unknowability, my wish for faith that I lack. My latest conspiracy theory. No, none of that. As with Catholics, Hindis and Branch Davidians, I want some answers. Don’t give me religion.
Give me some answers, bub!
From now on, I’ll be better about posting regularly.
Here’s a question: What is YOUR narrative? Is it possible to define in the positive sense, not the negative of saying what it isn’t. This is a rhetorical question. Take for example a certain creature that lactates and lays eggs. It is neither a mammal nor a bird. That is usually how we define a platypus by what it is not. This also assumes a binary situation there something is or isn’t. This is how humans like their world to be tidy. But as we all know, the world is chaotic and complex and far from tidy…