anger

my anger grew up with me. it was as if it was always there. it was a strand within my dna or perhaps a lone chromosome and as i grew and matured, so did my anger.

at five, i walked onto the grounds at the terminal island woman’s state penitentiary a tabula rasa and three hours later i walked away from my mother with my anger draped over my shoulders like a poncho. no, she could not go home with me. no, i would not be able to see her in any environment other than this institutionalized setting with the set visiting hours and the rules dictating my accompaniment by a legal guardian. no, i did not have a dad, at least not one who would be involved in my life in any way whatsoever.

my anger giggled when my grandfather, (my guardian,) mentioned my biological father in absentia whose ass, he said, i should shove my foot up if ever the day came when i met him face to angry face. oh that would shock the big jerk when i clobbered him with my size four.

my anger flared up when i was removed from kindergarten for being early. it subsided when i spent days in the kitchen on the floor playing with hot wheels as lupe prepared albondigas.

it blossomed anew when my mom married a 5-foot, 5-inch hate machine when i was seven or eight. the two were like sleeping tigers when they were high on heroin. they were semi-normal when they took their methadone. it was when the drugs were unavailable or had been used up that things got crazy and the times when i was the one who got smacked planted embers of anger and rage deep inside me.

my anger, like my sadness, is unique to me and i own it. it colors my world view like a touch of black mixed evenly in with my white and all of my other colors. my anger facilitates my hate and i do hate.

i hate injustice. i hate bullies. i hate corporations. i hate lies. i hate deception from government officials. i hate when parents act as if their kids owe them something and not the other way around, or as if their children are accoutrement to their shabby little lives. i hate racism and bigotry and all manner of caveman-like action and thought that would stop our progress and take mankind backwards. i hate fundamentalism. i hate war. i hate fear and all manner of marketing based on it. i hate ignorance. i do not hate the ignorant-how could i? but i do hate ignorance more than anything.

anger is an energy and yes, anger is a gift. it hurts to be angry but there is no point in dwelling on history that cannot be changed. i choose instead to make it a positive. i choose to nurture my anger and let it hone me and shape me and sharpen me.

my anger chooses the books i read. my anger loves movies by lars von trier and music by rage against the machine and propaghandi. my anger is iconoclast.

it was my anger that pushed me in my early 20s from a cradle of comfort i had constructed from evangelical christianity, a firm belief in reaganomics, (formed on the basis of absolutely nothing,) and a trust in the establishment and family values and all things american, to a state of agitation and anger fueled by disillusionment, poverty, dissatisfaction and a sense of having absorbed wholesale lies.

• the usa is a better country than all of the other countries on the planet.


• the slim number of people in the world who believed as i did on the subject of god and religion and the after life would be joining god and jesus and the saints in heaven for eternity where we would enjoy streets paved of gold and mansions while all others, the nameless and faceless masses, would burn forever in hell, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair out in a lake of fire and brimstone because they refused to believe this sliver of a doctrine about an imaginary being and a load of revisionist history.


• man is essentially bad, hence why he needs forgiveness and why he should be consumed by guilt.


• race and ethnicity divide people while class differences need not be a concern.


• capitalism in and of itself is good.


• if our elected leaders claim to be christian, they should not be questioned for their actions.


• the war in vietnam was righteous.

lies... as the fallacious nature of my education became increasingly evident my anger grew and became my chaperon escorting me from fallacy to misconception to out-and-out lie. in response to my sub par education i read the communist manifesto. i chose non-american authors, devouring the works of camus, kundera, celine, and garcia-marquez, delighting in salih, achebe and gibran, snacking on the tomes of hamsun, lorca and xingjian. when i read americans i chose henry miller, richard rodriguez and h.l. mencken. i found myself attracted to ghandi and che guevara and oscar wilde and g.b. shaw and james joyce and w.b. yeats.

it was my anger at the status quo that moved me. had i not been mad i may have chosen the works of robert frost. i may have come to enjoy blockbuster hollywood movies, short on insight into the nature of man but long on special effects. i may have been a celine dion fan. i may never have questioned anything. i may have been wealthier and happier, more financially savvy but less informed about the nature of things and how to truly be a dignified human being, and of a lighter spirit from day to day but less equipped to contribute positively to the struggle of man, which is to evolve and constantly improve on the conditions of man.

thanks to kieslowski, godard, bunuel, almodovar, and kar wai, with appreciation to bono, lennon, yorke, vedder, cohen and morrissey, yes it was the artists who reached me and helped me to turn anger into so much more than merely a positive.

some of my friends see me as angry and they cannot conceive of this facet of me as a good thing. it is distinctly me they think. maybe they applaud me for going with it instead of denying it or something like that. mostly however, they swing from being annoyed at my anger manifested as a need to verbally chastise the acts and words of george w. bush or criticize grass roots advertising as a means of enlisting the lowest hanging fruit into the corporate, status quo mentality, to feeling pity for me because of how off-putting i really can be, (even if it is to one who does not want to be confronted or challenged in their long-held beliefs.) i can't be bothered but i am human and i am bothered. this too, makes me angry and contributes to my world view and the constant rounding and polishing that is my experience.

i would no sooner return my anger or choose to have lived another, different life than i would renounce my self education and its many virtues, including the personal enlightenment that has allowed me to step forward confidently into the world of fatherhood.

i have planned for success as a father by understanding all that bothered me as a child. i have imagined my father as a 16-year-old boy having sex then being confronted with the pregnancy. i have imagined his parents response when he suggested that perhaps the girl got around a bit and maybe the child was not his, how they latched on to that idea and supported their boy again and encouraged him to challenge the notion that he was in fact my father and how he was buoyed by that support and ignored my mother at school and around town and said they were not together until she retreated into the heart of her rough home to have the child me. i have imagined my alcoholic grandfather berating my mother for being a floozy at 14. i have imagined how he took no responsibility whatsoever. meanwhile my grandmother loved her daughter and instructed her to pray to mother mary who also had a child despite little sexual experience.

being pushed and pulled and moving from family to family and town to town, from irish catholicism to a pentacostal fundamentalism, from being urged to read the bible and all things related but never being steered towards the classics or any form of dissent, from a mother who spent most of my childhood in prison and introduced physically abusive men into my life when she was on the outside, to an extreme response to such circumstances, my anger thrived on a variety of impetuses.

i savor my anger. it is my lover and i love it. i am profoundly thankful for my perspective. i have much to live for, much to learn still, but i am deeply contented by my journey thus far and confident that my life has meaning annd my children will be better for my anger, my unique but also common perspective.