Asterion ~ Wednesday, July 29, 2020

As a person of color and a son of immigrants, simply fitting in was not in the cards as an adult; at least, not for me, an artist who cannot paint with words; picture the world as a story with a protagonist, even I can appreciate a well-written novel; remembering my own childhood is nothing like James Joyce, silly characters invented as pastiche for the real, only the setting is different, the time, the place, the themes; no one considers A Portrait of the Artist as real, only literary critics piece together the plot for instances of relation to actual people; consider a brown man who looks like an American, only Americans don't see this man as one of theirs; likewise, South Asians don't see him coming from India; only the damned know of the damned, in hell with the devil, red as crimson silence, a crime scene, blood, murder; ask my mother why we came here to the United States, not even she can say for sure, job opportunities decided our future, our past left behind, our homeland; as a small child, my consciousness developed with events, sadly, few events were of note, mostly trauma and damage, ordinary hateful actions by children we all know, nobody is accountable as everyone accepts our mutual games of torture, reconceived in hindsight, forgetting the damage is done, slapping a bully's wrists indeed reveals society doesn't care about change, merciless fate becomes karma, not mine but the other, my brother, my cousin, and friends, my parents aren't to blame in these matters of latchkey kids, lost in America, given their work schedules, they fed two boys, clothes and shelter, really what more could you expect, it was the Seventies; ask my father (in a tin box) what brought him to the States, nothing less than a better life for his wife and two sons; to start the narrative, but where, where to begin the tale; simple, on Crete, the Minotaur as a small deformed boy.