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.

Colored

The conversation about race and ethnicity can be a troubling game to the people who confuse it, because they lack proper cultural definitions within an appropriate context. I found myself in such a desert last week, watching a popular news entertainment show that highlights the most offensively outspoken headlines of the day. A prominent white news anchor used the word "colored" in her story about African-American issues and, like the jocks working the radio program that airs on t.v., I immediately took umbrage at her usage of it, too. What the...? Who the fuck is she? She don't know.

And then I remembered similarly odd conversations in my own past, where words can tumble out of control given the wrong situation, at any moment. Take, for instance, my meeting with a professor of English Literature during my time at Oneonta. He'd made some political references to his mostly "Anglo" class (or so he thought) of college students, about his supposed activism in South Africa with famous anti-apartheid movements that led him to flee the country to teach in our small po'dunk mountain town. Huh...really? He was handsome, so I dismissed him at the time for playing the adventurous romantic lead seeking to bed willing co-eds looking for a taste of the East, via one fucked-up African country and this state school educator.

He had a posh British accent that bespoke of his family's rather wealthy position in society through his obvious attendance at expensive private schools, and he had an irritating habit of wearing dopey silk ascots to go along with his condescension towards all things American that extended to decidedly less wealthy New York students, like me. I didn't think that much about him until a visit with my friend Donnel shook it up for me. We were still baffled by the death of her father while he was overseas in Ghana, and the subsequent disappearance of his body kept his whole family on edge, including me. According to their tribal customs, her mother needed to be in attendance to perform ablutions related his burial ritual, and they couldn't get any answers from the government or the state department about the events leading up to his death, leaving us in a paranoid "X-File" state.

There was talk of her father's assassination at the hands of some rival gangs with competing economic interests in their home village area which, given the general instability of many African nations, made more sense to us than we cared to admit. After he died, their financial circumstances drastically changed, revealing how deeply in debt their hereto presumed successful international businessman father was. During their foreclosure, our friend drove us past their house after school, to find deputies putting all of their furniture out on the front lawn, in full view of the entire neighborhood. "Just keep driving." Donnel said to us, crouched down in the back seat of the car. It was really disturbing. They moved to a smaller town home, and her mother began working as a low-end healthcare aide in a nearby nursing home to make ends meet, while we pursued various theories and connections to Ghana and Africa, no matter how bare or small.

During her visit to my college, I told Donnel about my English Lit professor with the supposed activist connections. Perhaps he could introduce us to a few of his contacts? We were desperate for any leads, and truth be told, I wanted to get a better look at him in private, to better feel out his intentions towards our student body. And so, one day after class, I made an appointment to see him in his office, a normal practice for any student seeking help, but totally rare for me. I'd never been to a professor's office before, and it was nerve-wracking to me, especially given the content of my errand. After I sat down in our semi-closed door meeting, I simply told him the truth. My friend's father had died mysteriously while in Ghana, and no one would talk to them about it. What to do?

He gave me a nasty look, then pointed to a map of Africa on his wall. You see, South Africa is there, and Ghana is here. See how faraway they are? Yeah, thanks. Asshat. But, you spoke in class about African geo-politics. Do you have any advice for my friend and her family about an agency that they can contact for guidance and support? He launched into another hipster diatribe about Apartheid and his status as a "Colored" man, because Indians (from India) were grouped in with "the blacks", and here he made a disgusted face like he smelled doggie doo-doo, which signaled to me that he was more upset about his classification as a minority in a faraway land than helping out poor black folks and their friends.

It was an astonishingly douchebag thing for him to admit to a student, especially since India has an extremely poor history of human rights, given the rigidity of their caste system of "Untouchables", but I was too stunned by his attitude to respond. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there, disturbed by the look of his purple tongue moving weirdly around his mouth while I had briefly talked. Back at my dorm room, I went over the exchange with my best friend from high school and college roommate, Karen, who was also navigating the rocky shoals of predominantly male academia as a history major; classes that often found her as the only female student in attendance. Here again, my heterosexuality counted heavily against me, as I described the shock of seeing a Chow Chow-colored tongue for the first time.

"You only went to see him because he's good-looking!" Well, yeah, but, no. I honestly wanted to help Donnel and her family, mired as they were in dire straits that I knew from my own mother's single parenting experience, a.k.a "My Mom Fell Apart Again": now performing a disastrous series of nervous breakdowns that we, as children and teens, were supposed to bear up under the weight of, and I wasn't sure how much more this family could take. She understood. Karen's parents (both dead for years now) were locked in horribly passive-aggressive co-dependence that saw her and her older brother begging them to divorce each other in lieu of an early grave, but you can read exactly where that got them. Nowhere. The stakes were so high for all of us to make it out of the messes they made for us, as a generation. They really needed my help.

After that, we took to calling him "Mr. South Africa" for his prettily-waved hair that was highlighted with a gay purple rinse, flatteringly cut just above his shoulders for that nouveau-hippie look, with his bevy of stylishly expensive ethnic-print clothing that fluttered around him like his many-layered Euro scarves, as the Indian answer to our naive prayers, while every AmerIndian on campus was probably just as interested in girls and hooking up as he was, because I howled at the midnight moon with them as a young pack member. It brought me back to talks around our kitchen table with my father growing up, as he explained to us that we're considered coloreds by society for first being Acadian, already a small ethnic minority, and secondly for our familial associations as Métis people.

I called my grieving friend from a pay phone on campus to tell her the bad news that I didn't get any information from the professor we could use (other than people around the world still hated us, which certainly wasn't new to us), and I never felt as frustrated and helpless as I did then, hanging up after a very brief conversation with my normally loquacious friend. I felt like I had totally failed her, in the face of some guy's arrogant assumptions about our society, but I was only 17 and a freshman. Now, I'm an expert in the media's weird and wild "Minority Reports", so old and out-of-date that they still think we're a bunch of simple black-and-white cookies they can split evenly in half, without the juicy red filling that beats at the heart of every American experience. It's time for a palette change.