Pamela's Blog 16

Published on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“When You Become A Voice Of The Voiceless”

by Pamela Satterwhite

Confronting the real – you know, some unavoidable, raw truth – can trigger the fuck-it factor, the alternative to the tried and untrue and tried again…It’s the alternative to chasing the ‘gold ring,’ the ‘carrot,’ the ‘praise,’ the ‘approval.’ It’s what comes after playing by the rules, getting sick on the fickle food…

...He knew that if ever the day came in which it should appear that before him too there was a race set in which it might be an honour to have run among the foremost, his father and mother would be the first to let him and hinder him in running it. They had been the first to say that he ought to run such a race; they would also be the first to trip him up if he took them at their word, and then afterwards upbraid him for not having won. Achievement of any kind would be impossible for him unless he was free from those who would be for ever dragging him back into the conventional. The conventional had been tried already and had been found wanting. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

When you take seriously that you are a voice of the voiceless, you represent what I call the “fuck-it-factor.” The shit you get when you do isn’t always from the ‘powerful’ structures class society throws up to impress upon us our “smallness.” Sometimes the shit you get is from your neighbor who handles a child roughly to get her to "mind.”

Mornings are when I mingle with The Green so I see this a lot, as that’s when parents and children gather nearby to wait for the school bus. Putting the mom on the spot does no good, of course, and it would require a distortion of ‘truth’ in any case, as we are all complicit. And my single voice, as Machiavelli said, means little “to the opinion of the many who have the majesty of the State to back them up.” In these circumstances, single voices are, by definition, “wrong.”

There’s a little girl who talks to me whose name means “untroubled” who is anything but. She looks furious all the time. It’s easy to see why, as the integrity of her body – and her ‘longing’ – is routinely violated. I’m often the reason why because when I’m feeding or watering the traffic circle she’s curious about what I’m doing and wants to come see. For her mother, stretched to the max with three little ones, children allowed “too much” freedom only make her ‘job’ harder, given the streets are for cars and not people.

Sometimes when I’m watering my front yard “the mom” sends her children on a mission my way to ask for lemons. This backfires on occasion, like today, when we get engaged in conversation and we all forget the point.

“Do you have a backyard?” the little girl whose name means "untroubled" asked resentfully as she looks through the open gate that reveals planked wood.

“No, we don’t have a backyard, that’s a deck.

“Is that like a backyard?”

“Well…except there’s no earth to grow things in. Do you want a backyard?”

She hesitates. It seems she thinks she’s gone off-task.

“No.”

What do you wish for? What do you like to do?”

“Sing.”

“You sing? What kinds of songs do you sing.”

She sings.

“But I’m not really a singer.”

“Of course you’re a singer, you just sang. Did you write that song?”

“No.”

“Well, if you start to write your own songs, you can tell the truth. And when you tell the truth, you’ll be speaking for all the other people who think the exact same thing you think but nobody’s saying it, like: “I wish I could stay in bed. I wish I could stay home and play instead of go to school.”

“Did you go to school?” she asks with amazement.

“Yes.”

“Did you like it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, we had to sit in these desks all day, and we were always being told what to do, and I never got to do the things that I wanted to do, like grow things with the earth.”

“I know. You like to grow things.”

At this point her mother appears with a displeased look.

As if seizing an opportunity the little girl says: “did you like school?”

“No, I hated it.”

“Why did you hate it?”

“Well the teachers were mean, for one thing. They used to grab my hand and turn my palm up and hit it with a ruler. I hated that.”

I look at her mother now. “You know, we’ve all been brainwashed so much. Our bodies know the truth, but this system lies. This system is all about force. I think we have to stop wielding the stick with each other, stop using force.”

Her displeased look sets more solidly on her features.

She gathers her babies and flees the wild thing that is me.

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Pamela's Blog 16

Published on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“When You Become A Voice Of The Voiceless”