Marginalized!

When did this word get its negative connotation, as referring to someone or something that's "unimportant", "a sideshow", "hardly worth it, save as a footnote to history" or "significant, maybe formerly, but now pushed out of the way like a hopelessly stalled wreck, its sidetracking richly earned." With so much unadulterated, pure CRAP between life's margins, especially in this time and place: not long before the Mayan doomsday clock is supposed to strike thirteen here on ol' played-out planet Earth, how about setting our sights on the hidden treasures of life off the highway, well off the "frenetic freeway" and safely tucked in and on her shoulders, or even further away into the woods, beyond any outer guard rails where no one has, hopefully, peed or tossed too many beer bottles or condoms to shatter the illusion of escape to this Shangri-la and from a not-so-kind humankind? There are so many times when not being at the center of attention is quickly discovered to be, as ex-con Ms. Stewart so often tells us, "a good thing!"

It was a pleasant surprise for a, hopefully, innocuous narcissist like myself, when a gorgeous redheaded lady in a smart plum colored pantsuit rang my doorbell early this past summer and gazed briefly, but with the proper degree of professional seductiveness and intensity, to inquire if I were aware of the joys that a complete set of volumes of such-and-such brand encyclopedia could bring into my life. Attention was being paid, regardless of the reason, by this pulchritudinous young specimen of the fairer sex and my self-centeredness was initially tickled enormously. Reason at that moment, actually asked for a moment of my time however, and even though my libido trumped my lumbago and the chance to hold court was nearly irresistible, an even more pleasant surprise than the aforementioned one was that I wanted to hear what that little voice of common sense was trying to tell me. Rationality, I heard, politely enquired of me: "do you need an encyclopedia?" Voices in my head of the non-delusional variety: revolutionary phenomena (not rare instances of sanity, I assure you, but most novel in their simple non-convoluted sensibleness), perhaps signs that my mature years were becoming exceptionally ripe and (especially for a guy with no great track record for practicality), were finally having their say. In one fell swoop of oblique honesty and whimsy, my fantasies of fruitful flirtatiousness shunted aside, I softly declared to this lovely creature, with no malice or trace of sarcasm (and only a hint of sorrow and contrition, as in "I'm sorry to have to inflict my personal burdens and failures on you, but one must, in order to properly answer your question"): "I'm very sorry. I am an illiterate." So conversation stopping. So liberating. So effective. So time saving. So mean. So long.

Alone with my '53 Encyclopedia Britannica, I've no glitzy top notch sales gal to feign "in crowd" status with, no monthly invoices with the prestigious return address and icon of Lotsa Learnin', Inc., Teachers to the Upwardly Mobile since 1969!, nor any chance to trade in coupons for trips to Burkina Faso attached to the rear inner cover of volume 1: "AArdvaark-BUmpkin." I have just willfully played a part in having been marginalized. Will Homeland Security send me an E-mail for not being a patriot and spending some greenbacks on a new American made (sort of) tool of Higher Education, though printed in Singapore? Will I be out of the loop the next time Trivial Pursuit is pursued at someone's next barbecue/charades/sitdown/buffet? Well, blow me down, I will have done been marginalized again!

I had been teased, deservedly so, for agreeing to subscribe to "Jet" magazine some forty plus summers earlier after a pixieish black woman explained my part in her task of racking up points to win a college scholarship via subscription sales. My assent led to wags offering the usual proposals to me, Mr. Softy, to help me become the proud owner of the Brooklyn bridge (and several others of the same name) and to purchase a giant warehouse of previously owned but near "mint" refrigerators a little northeast of Nome, Alaska. Well, I've come a long way baby, from the prepossessing young man (and middle aged one) who almost always aimed to please (and as an atypical non-bar hopper in those salad days, rarely had to be told to "please aim" by fussy bouncers who didn't get my old chestnut explaining the toting of my mug of "suds" to the sanitary facility: "I'm cutting out the middle man."). Now I'm trying to please myself. Instances of my efforts at sales resistance are: no subscriptions not really wanted and no third helpings of quadruple-cheese Mac'n Cheese, lasagna or rugelach accepted (or safely digested) from Italian/Jewish mothers of friends. Laughable baby steps for an incorrigible "shirt off my back" type? Well yes, they are. But who's to judge harshly? Forget not the afflicted one in "Greaser's Palace" and his cry of most relative joy: "I can crawl! I can crawl!! (zounds, an allusion to part of this blog's title, first one since early '11!)"

There's something so delicious about not being part of the Passing Parade. Heck, it's really the Epitome of Peachiness to not even be aware of the dull roar of that struggling gang of Accomplishers and Strivers, their ever frazzled neurons and twitching "Gotta Haves" lashing them ever onward as they strain while in harness, like part of a great team of colts and fillies seemingly bound for glory, but more often than not, merely bound. To not be "front and center", to think of "limelight" as a wonderful shade of green to dapple one's already dappled skin (with "geezer" freckles) with its curious rays to match one's vodka lime ricky as one seeks just the right position in one's banana leaf hammock, nowhere near Nome: that's the life for me. "High Diddle-de-dee! Non-entity: that's me!"

To be forgotten: "A consummation devoutly to be wished?" There is a most telling moment in Fellini's "La Strada" in which Anthony Quinn's circus strongman character can no longer tolerate the disintegration of his assistant and companion, the simple waif Gelsomina. She has been traumatized by his provoked killing of a fellow performer. Their vagabond existence is dogged by her insistent and agonized conscience. He mistakes her pain for fear of arrest and lashes out at her with: "No one is even thinking about us!" This craving to be invisible and to continue to not think or reflect: as he has lived his entire life, is clearly threatened by this death, the reality and implications of which he tries to escape until the film's final scene. Well, this is not exactly the kind of forgetfulness I had in mind. If there are wonders and ecstasies to experience on these highly recommended sidelines of marginalization, how could oblivion play a part in the goings-on? Oblivious to unpleasantness? Yes. How about to stress and stupidity? No argument there, though these seemingly minor abhorrences have a way of demanding more and more attention if ignored too mindlessly. To a limited degree, yes, bring on the psychic anesthesia! But preserving consciousness, that's really the trickiness and worthwhile challenge of this art of being deliriously happily marginalized and yet truly alive! Think and reflect. Do good. And you've "got to serve somebody" as Bob Dylan admonished. How lovely to be one of Geo. H.W. Bush's "points of light" but to never have your light singled out. To have hurled one's body in front of and between a speeding car and a young child-woman on the verge of achieving aspirations of rewarding work and the creation of her own family: all preserved possibilities and then realizations thanks to such a supreme sacrifice, now this is a marginalization that the cynical and terminally selfish do not relish pondering. To contrive to bring about this series of events is another matter: mental illness is so finely separated from true heroism. Still, one ought to pray for an increasingly well honed practice of self-marginalization that might make that scenario possible if danger were to demand it: a sort of healthy antidote to the self-anihilations of the Haters. P.C. forbids naming names, but you know who you are and you can have and keep the conventional and current connotation of "marginalized." It fits you, you "Dead Enders" as Mr. Rumsfeld named you, though prematurely.

Well, enough. "Heavy" happily, rhymes with "Chevy", "levee", and "bevy" (Don MacLean taught us most of this a "long long time ago") and the sunny side of American history shines on, the current gloom notwithstanding. Don't want to be marginalized, positively or otherwise? That's A-okay in my book. Youth and/or vigor are made for the struggle and achievement is the human way and best path for most whose time and philosophical crystallizations have not yet arrived. Go for it. Living, loving: it's a dirty, immaculate, bleak, wondrous kaleidoscope of all the senses and it must be played out on those relentless blacktops of experience, hope and fear, anticipation, rollicking sweet joy and blackest sorrow. The margins won't do. But whenever time or tide has shown, as always it does eventually: that "it waits for no man", then there are special nooks and crannies away from the madding crowd, not hideouts, but refuges for a short time where the weary can rest and a pause may truly refresh if not restore an old soul.