Some New Art ...

When I was younger I thought there were two types of households: one where they hung framed pictures of Jesus and one where they hung framed pictures of JFK. I grew up in the latter.

We also had a framed picture of the first Mayor Daley—but when my parents got divorced that was taken down along with my dad’s guns and a copy of Mein Kampf.

“We have to know the history of those who live to hate us, Jessica…”

It was also a first edition. At one time I seem to recall it (Mein Kampf) sitting side-by-side some Leon Uris book , and when I was old enough to recognize such placement as cruel and unjust; a sick literary juxtaposition of an author who wrote about the Jewish exodus, and the author of the Jewish extermination I moved Mein Kampf to the damp and moldy basement, and placed Leon Uris next to Phillip Roth. Always trying to create community.

Now.. maybe 30 plus years later, I am thinking of framing a picture of Barack Obama and placing it on my wall. I should note I’m not into idolatry—not since Andy Gibb passed away at least-- I don’t have pictures around my house of spiritual iconoclasts or literary giants or political wunderkinds. I might’ve considered putting up a picture of Marx or something, but that would be in complete contradiction to the secular sexiness of socialism compounded by the fact that the bidding for a Marx daguerreotype starts at like $500 scrilla on Ebay, which by the way is (I think) our version of a proletariat revolution, but I digress.

I was slow to jump on Barack Bandwagon mostly because I’m a Kucinich like liberal (compared to the Infitada like liberal, which I just can’t embrace-it’s like liberal fundamentalism). I am: anti-death penalty*; want to impeach the current president and try him and his rodeo clowns for war crimes and believe it's government’s place and responsibility to provide health care for its citizens. It is also government’s job to take care of its weakest, oldest and most vulnerable people.

So.. Obama is less of this kind of liberal. He’s a little bit of what I’d call a tweener—he swims mostly in the left lane, but swims to the center on gun control, health, defense and the death penalty. However, unlike several of my relationships, I’m not ‘settling’, I’m inspired. Inspired by someone who appears to authentically believe in inclusiveness, worldliness, doesn’t espouse some ethnocentric (he obviously can’t) way of being, and who because he has been ‘an other’, marginalized, and compartmentalized understands what it's like to be left out.

To possibly be led by someone who understands the affect of isolationism I believe can only bring about a more profound not just understanding, but desire to know those unlike self. We live in a world not a suburb or a country club or a workers union. I think Obama can lead the world (or our world), because he has actually lived in it.

So.. I may frame a picture of Obama and place it on the wall. One could argue that there are several, okay most, pictures on my wall of black men, and thus African American culture and that he would just be part of my motif. Perhaps-but this picture isn’t just two-dimensional; it’s multi..dimensional, a prism to possibility and (deep breath) hope.



**Until our justice system is completely just the idea of state sanctioned killing is inhumane and incorrigible. The idea of the state using killing as a punishment is so..fucking feudalist. It's astounding really.