Esprit de Corps

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirant_lo_Blanch#

The literal translation for "esprit de corps"* is the spirit as it is expressed through the body, though its older usage described morale in the military. In truth, it was the best description I had for a Pinterest board I made about movement that covered art, dance, athleticism, martial arts, motion, movement, and the joy of being alive as it relates to the use of our bodies. Certainly, anyone who's ever been in mortal danger has their muscle memories to thank for the continued use of their body as it relates to other activities in a more peaceful future.

Sometimes, when I talk to my mom about my dreams or her MS, she tells me she has recurring dreams about running through a field of grass when, in truth, she was never athletic or even inclined to be active, preferring instead to sit and talk on the phone for hours, or dunk cookies in her tea (annoyingly, when also on the phone), or watch t.v. as she flips through magazines. She'll say it's because of her illness or her allergies (that she also sometimes forgets she has) but, really, it's because her personality prefers sedentary creature comforts. How odd, then, that her brain conjures up vigorous movement to express freedom and joy; feelings she was much more apt to attribute to cars rather than herself when she was younger and slightly more mobile, as part of her innate preferences for machines and artificial experiences over the real and the human.

When I studied ballet, I loved flying through the air the same way I liked swinging through the trees in our backyard, or spinning in a tire swing. Children excel at movement, in part because of their lower centers of gravity, something my less physically gifted parents would often quote at us, as further excuses for their inertia, cleverly designed to hide their laziness through pseudo-scientific phrasing. In contrast, we were made to work all the time, and when we did feel sick or take breaks, our parents hated that, too. "Get up! Do something!" It felt like they used us as charms to stave off their diseases, when they actually nursed our afflictions to budding stages.

There was a ferocity to our play-fighting as kids that transcended the typical city dwellers experience. My mom described us as "savages" or "wild monkeys hopped up on sugar" to her friends and family who are also round and cynical about it.  What were we?! She described the differences between us "soooo strange", like we were bound to be discovered as an ancient pygmy tribe from the bush any day. Me and my brother could fight for hours, scaling the narrow walls of our house's hallway like contestants on the game show "American Ninja Warrior", and it totally freaked her out. She'd never seen stuff like that before, especially among her squat hobbit clan.

I saw a native boy compete on the show last season, without any targeted training or benefit of a special obstacle course built just for appearing on the show, because he rightly assumed that his competitive sport of mountain climbing would do the trick for him, and it did. He grabbed a rope, released it in midair while spinning around to backwards-grab a moving obstacle that he then leapt from, landing perfectly on a mat with both feet. "Whoa! WHAT WAS THAT?!!", one of the announcers yelled out to the roaring crowd. That was an Indian, bro. His bright black eyes flashed with the same gleeful intensity as his big beautiful smile, pressing the red button that signalled his succesful finish. Welcome to the fight. We've missed you.


* https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/esprit%20de%20corps

Mrs. Michael

Being American is a funky experience, because we have more inter-cultural diversity than any other nation, which makes for some interesting combinations. For some of my Berkowitz family members, it's led to new waters where the Celt, Jew, and Native American combine, which means my oldest cousin Kenny "passes" for white, while his younger siblings did not. I use "pass" with quotation marks because like other mixed communities, parentage cannot often be assumed by appearance alone, which is probably the reason my cousin acts out so much. 

If he'd been dark like the rest of his family, it'd be more readily understood that his references extend beyond European ancestry to include the genetically dominant coloring of indigenous peoples. Like being "yella" among African-Americans signals bi-racial, a specific type of red/tan skin-tone marks Metis as "different" right away, especially in combination with black eyes and high cheekbones. It immediately sends a message to people, who pick it up as visual shorthand for "ethnic". 

But, just as skin color alone doesn't define the black experience, so non-indigenous parenting does not exclude or presume a cultural mismatch between, say, a squaw and her French, fur-trapping husband. Some cultures, even geographically dissimilar ones, get it, like my African-American friend and her Irish-American ex. Their daughter is easily discernible as someone of color because African features are genetically dominant over the weaker recessive genetics Northern people have from less exposure to direct sunlight, like blue eyes that often suffer from vision impairments because of less melanin.

That doesn't mean they didn't get along. They obviously did, and in no small part because Irish people have long been considered the lowest ranking ethnicity on the European scale of correctness, so much so that redheads (or "gingers" as they are disparagingly called) have entered our lexicon through sayings that underlie deeply held prejudices against Celts, like "the ugly, red-headed stepchild" as a way of saying someone is unwanted and unloved. A bigger put-down is rarely heard among us. It's a prejudice based on appearances that anyone who's ever been biased against in our society would empathize with right away, and it goes beyond looks.

Celts have long been oppressed for their devoutly Catholic beliefs that are tied to their prolific child-producing ways, which typically marks the lowest class in any society. Large broods make for less resources at home, and as traditionally disenfranchised people, blacks in America would understand Irish tales of woe quite well, especially over a few drinks, which brings us to their next bias as heavy drinkers. Pub society is very important to Irish culture, and so is a fondness for native-brewed drink, which I have a strong taste for as well. It does not include alcoholism and addiction because neither is a good time, beating in the heart of every pub as a cultural barometer to the overall health of the surrounding community.

It also means a lot of my friends and family meet their "soul mates" in bars (or at least they pretend to), because the difference between, say, pint-hoisting cheer and a violent disease can become blurry, especially around closing time. Kenny's parents met in a bar, like that classic joke about a rabbi, a priest, and an Indian chief meeting for the first time at the local watering hole. Quite the set-up. And it was. His Sephardi-looking father, while shorter than his mom, definitely had the same black hair, prominent nose, and reddened skin of his native mother. Unfortunately for my cousin, recessive European genes kicked in for their oldest child with a vengeance, making him tower over them at 6 foot tall with light brown hair, blue eyes, and fairer skin. What was commonly called "attractive" by a European society in the city made him stand out like an awkward white dude anytime he went anywhere with his parents and siblings.

And dark they were. You can see my family reunion photo on this site to pick out the Indians in a snap, where you'd be much harder pressed to single out Kenny. Like my light-eyed middle brother, it made him susceptible to nasty jokes about amorous mailmen delivering to yo' mama when yo' daddy ain't home during the day, which made my brother and Kenny best friends as kids. It made him choose to favor his Irish side for visual (and beer drinking) similarity. But just like being red or partially Christian doesn't necessarily make you a Jew, so did he struggle to define himself by other people's stereotypes.

It's led to some really weird match-ups, like his younger brother Michael's marriage to a much older and less attractive divorced single mother, someone he also met in a bar, as did his sister (my late cousin) with her last two relationships before her passing. Whereas my cousin Kenny can pass for white, Michael and Ruthie had no such luck. Like the Native American actor who portrays a detective on a popular American "cops and robbers" show, Ruthie and Michael were always assumed to be Hispanic, as Nuyoricans became the dominant Latin/Mediterranean-derived "dark" cultures that dominated NYC in the 70s and 80s. Well, that, or Mexican.

In the quest to be suitably paired combined with low tribal numbers (Kenny's mom told us her tribe had only 67 people in it), it's made finding a mate hell on earth. Who gets it?! Michael went with an older Jewish/Italian-looking suburbanite from New Jersey, but I can't see how that can last. Homeboy may be "off the rez", but that don't make Euros easy pickings for the fight. She can't cut it. It means mixed kids are a genetic "grab-bag" that doesn't suit who you are, what you want, or what your expectations about being colored might be.

As a tribe, it means we know she'll try to "rule the roost" like the pushy older woman from her ethnic background(s) she is, and as an Metis male, that ain't gonna fly for too long with any of my cousins, no matter how drunk as fuck your parents were, or how pale the winter turned you. Red sees red. As soon as we met her at a family reunion in Maine, with her outdated 80s hairdo, clothes, and wrinkly tan skin, we knew she didn't belong. Not only looks-wise, but also her attitude and mentality. Plus, she has her own kids from some other guy. She's got another man, bro. Somewhere. Don't make you "daddy" to her, or him, or them kids! Which meant for the rest of the weekend, we addressed him as "Mrs. Michael": a youngblood with a banged-up, older-looking, Euro-broad. Yeah....good luck with that one, son. 
You'll need all the Irish you can get.

Minority Report

"Minorities" tend to change with the times, depending on who you ask, and the amount of money involved. Sometimes it's also dependent on the size of your notoriously murderous, squaw-stealing tribe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohegan_people), so you can cash in on the white man's excesses involving his drinking and gambling by manipulating those weaknesses (just like they did to you, right?), using the prized tribal lands that your ancestors fought for, to feed your own greed. Its sort of like a dog biting its own tail, don't you think? Neither party goes very far in sickly co-dependence, preferring to stay trapped in their own pattern rather than risking a cure to good health.

It's insanely cowardly, but that's how human nature can be sometimes. It's up to us, as "publicans" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publican), to keep the records regarding our histories straight, for the sake of our children's children.  So, today, it is with great pleasure (and perhaps a touch of sadness for your lately-ruptured innocence) that I present you with this true life story about murder by numbers. If I were you, I'd think carefully before your next racist diatribe, friend. You're probably on the majority list, along with the other so-called European elite. All I ask is that you let your computer do the math for you, by adding them up. Everything else has already been done.

Read 'em and weep, and then, I want you to disband your favorite federal "colored folks" organization, made for getting money through some trumped up case of "white guilt" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_guilt). Every type of human on this planet has suffered through some kind of holocaust or massacre involving direct family. It's over.

Africans around the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_diaspora
Hispanics, and other Latins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans
Holocaust victims, in total: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust 
Armenian Genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide 
Russian deaths during Stain's rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin 
Chinese starvation and state-sanctioned murder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution 
Communism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes
Great Potato Famine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29
And, finally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll 

Now, here are my relevant numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis_people_%28Canada%29. I expect no further questions need to be asked regarding repatriation, resettlement, and reclamation, on behalf of my people? Yes...?! Good! I hear nothing but crickets! I like that sound. Reminds me of the country.