PROLOGUE

 Two wounded souls, both alike in identity
 Meet as strangers searching for dignity
 The land of their birth denied them their dream
 While they strove and fought their nation’s scheme
 Held by stubborn fate, they built hardened shell
 To protect themselves from their world of hells
 Each day brought them showers of bitter tears
 From parents whose acts evoked frightened years
 They crossed paths at last, and sparks flew all night
 But they loved so intense it caused a fright
 Two paternal angels stepped into the fray
 And gave them purpose and saved the day
 Then fate and dumb luck opened up their lives
 And let them see love through each other’s eyes.yes.

 IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE

A coming-of-age travel adventure of a man of color who flees Britain in the early 1980s in search of his African identity and discovers the nature of his character through his experiences & encounters the meaning of life and love.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented leaset;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
     For thy sweet love remember’red such wealth brings
     That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
                               -   William Shake-Speare—Sonnet 29

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BG7N494K/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3

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 LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

                 Langston Hughes (1938)

 Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 (America never was America to me.)

 Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed -

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrant’s scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 (It never was America to me.)

 O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 (There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

 Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

 I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek -

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! O grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

 I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean -

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today -- O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In that Old World, while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings.

 In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That made America the land it has become!

 O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home -

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand, I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

 The free?

A dream still beckoning to me.

 O, let America be America again -

The land that never has been yet -

And yet must be -

The land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine -

The poor man, Indian, Negro, ME -

 Who made America!

 Whose sweat and blood,

Whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry,

Whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose -

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath - America will be!

 Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster past,

The rape and rot of graft, the stealth, and lies that

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain -

All, all the stretch of these great green states -

And make America again!

CULTURE SHOCK NEWS SHOW

                         MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF THE 21^st CENTURY

 A)  Overview/Structure/Content:

 CULTURE SHOCK NEWS SHOW is about the shock of cultures coming together in our world today! Culture Shock represents the change that is thrust on someone before they’ve had time to fully absorb it and adjust. Culture Shock is about confrontation by someone or something that challenges our assumptions about who we think we are! As Alvin Toffler reflected in his book Future Shock, in 1970, “The culture shock phenomenon accounts for much of the bewilderment, frustration, and disorientation that plagues Americans in their dealings with other societies. It causes a breakdown in communication, a misreading of reality, [and] an inability to cope.”

The CULTURE SHOCK NEWS SHOW format is a one hour, 13 week series, which will focus on a particular cultural idea and explore aspects of that idea with interviews, commentaries, cin(E)poems, cultural news stories, discussions and mini-documentaries, in order to stimulate positive dialog between and within cultural groups.

The CULTURE SHOCK NEWS SHOW  target audience is the 20 -55yr age group, college educated, multicultural, women and men. We will emphasize the nature of the American society primarily in our programming and engage other nationals and indigenous peoples in a dialog about the changing nature of cultural identity and its significance.

The goal of CULTURE SHOCK NEWS SHOW is to establish an intelligent and practical format for discussions about culture. It is our intent to feature discussions, which are provocative rather than controversial, thoughtful rather than abusive, positive rather than negative. It is our belief that here in America it is particularly important that we understand the different cultures at work in our society today because the future of living on this planet requires that we all learn to understand each other’s traditions and cultures.

 B)    Background Information

 The CULTURE SHOCK NEWS SHOW (CSN) through its production company, Quilombo Enterprises ICM, has been continuously broadcasting in the Bay Area, since 1992 at Peralta Community TV (PCTV) Laney College, Oakland, California. 

CSN  has evolved over the past 10 years, from a studio-based talk/interview show; to a poetry performance, documentary, social commentary, dance and music performance-based news magazine.

CSN has featured prominent local artists like, John Santos, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Piri Thomas.

CSN recorded and broadcast a lecture by Dr. Cornel West called “The Souls of Black Folks; the video “La Promisa” about the annual celebration of St. Lazarus in Cuba; and the historical documentary “HMS Windrush”, the story of the first Jamaican immigrants to Great Britain in 1948. In the last few years in collaboration with the National Poetry Association, Inc. and its video archives promoted through Literary Television (LTV),

CSN  has emphasized performance poetry. Because of this association with the NPA/LTV and access to their video archive of over 500 cin(e)poems, prominent local Slam poets have been broadcast on my show, as have international video poet performances. 

CSN’s mantra is “Changing the World through Poetry” because we believe poetry is the last refuge of the individual in our society today.

 C)        Mission Statement & Vision:

 ·         To provide a forum where the people of the world can express their thoughts and feelings about their vision for the 21^st century.

·         To facilitate the integration of diverse cultures into the host country of their choice.

·         To provide a forum where conflicts resolution between and within cultures can take place.

·         To entertain and enlighten through poetry performance and individual creative expression.

·         To change the world through poetry.

 

 

Poetry

Reclaimed

 

She said she missed being single,

as her curled cupped breasts

pushed up against her camel hair

sweater tight over faded jeans  

that had holes through which shone soulless

kneecaps brimming with scars.

 

Her breath was hoarse and dry from too

many sleepless nights whirling on cocaine

poles with colored lights and grasping

hands and eyes that shone with pure

greed and hopes and faith left at home

with the whims of brooding children.

 

Once, a long time ago, she heard a

sound pounding irresistibly through

her perfect wrists and well-shaped

hands that electrified a spirit she once

listened too but had abandoned to fate

and the church and patrimony, because

her soul could not be saved by pliant

hands and the opiates of sacrifice buried

beneath piety and mesmerizing gongs.

 

Later, when she ditched her man and

recovered her dignity and began the long

chase back to womanhood in earnest.

She realized she had within her the power

to transcend her beauty and the lure of her

ripe plum breasts that forced her to live in

the voluptuousness of other people’s shadows.

Only then was her expanded spirit capable

of hearing the sound of her own true beauty

resonating through the eyelashes of her sequined eyes.

 AN AMERICAN EDUCATION

Higher education and the pursuit of happiness are considered central features of the American dream. But what are the real benefits of such a noble ideal? From what historical tradition of education comes this presumption? Why does the college system believe it is best equipped to teach a purpose for life? And what are the actual results a student gains with an American education in the 21st century?

An American college education, its teaching styles, top-heavy administrators, powerless teachers, and the debt burden of its participants fails to prepare students for the real world and doesn’t teach students a sense of purpose in life. An American college education is not worth the time or expense. It must be re-thought and re-invented.

Anthony Kronman, a former Yale professor of the humanities, writes in his book: Education’s End that the history of American education can be divided into three phases. 1) the founding of Harvard College in 1636 to the Civil War in 1860; 2) the Civil War until the 1960’s the age of "Secular Humanism"; and 3) the 1960’s to the present, the age of "Political Correctness." His book is a meditation on education. Like his other ‘academic’ books, he explores his subject with pedantic thoroughness that stretches the credulity of truth-seekers outside of academia and the frustrations of students with his didactic musings.

From ancient times the Christian Church has been the primary vehicle for educating white males in the western world. Harvard College, founded by English Pilgrims in 1636, established a "church in the wilderness," thus initiating the concept of education in America.

The Christian Church educated its congregation in faith as the guiding fact of human experience. But it was only males of the elites that had access to colleges like Harvard from those early days into the late 20th century - women were not admitted to Harvard until 1977.

After the Civil War and into the 20th Century – the "Age of Secular Humanism," western societies rejected the dogma of the Christian Church’s view of education based on faith. The German concept of the "University" was established to explore the "Truth" wherever it led. The focus of these secular institutions was a commitment to the "Research Ideal." Education would increasingly be focused on finding new information that could assist government, industry, and- a new humanist concept - the people.

As Anthony Kronman writes: "This new ideal of scholarship contrasted sharply with the older notion that a college teacher’s first duty is to give his students moral and spiritual guidance. A Teacher does this by introducing students to the more-or-less fixed system of knowledge and norms that constitutes their intellectual inheritance." In Mr. Kronman’s world, gone is the father and mother, gone, the church, and gone the national identity. Thus the questions is: can the college take over the role of a spiritual advisor?

Mr. Kronman’s third phase, "Political Correctness," which began in the 1960s and continues today, challenges the ideals he valued in his youth, of manifest destiny, which now, being critiqued, have been found wanting. Is education a repetition of past mistakes disguised as absolute truths or an exploration into the present and future?

Let us not forget, democracy in Greece didn’t work for the people! Pericles was a benevolent dictator who died after his master plan - hiding from the enemy – failed! The past has lessons only if we listen to them, and history’s mistakes should not be embraced just because the leaders insisted they were correct?

From the 1960s to the present time, college academic life has required courses in humanities regardless of the student’s major. Academics responded to the "Civil Rights Movement," "Political Correctness," and "Affirmative Action" by imposing diversity of ideas and ethnicity within the classroom. This reactive move towards inclusiveness questions the very ability of the researchers of the humanities to anticipate such changes. If the Humanities are about understanding humans and their ability to change in given situations, why didn’t they see Political Correctness coming! What were they researching?

Real educators can help us identify the uniqueness that makes us individually unique, but they can only point the way. "No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!"

Frederick Nietzsche, the German philosopher who went mad plumbing the depths of his mind for the meaning and purpose in his life, had a point; the world is all around us, not just in our heads. It’s the individual who must seek their path.

Education is an essential ingredient to the pursuit of happiness, creating a politically and socially aware citizenry. All would agree this is a good thing for America. Cornel West preaches: "Democracy is founded on the idea that those who are affected by political actions must be an integral part of the decision-making process that guides and regulates their lives." Thus, politically aware, and socially engaged people are the same thing for America and the democratic process needs to develop as our founders imagined.

Today, our political classes have hi-jacked democracy with Machiavellian malevolence, using democracy’s openness and freedoms to undermine freedom.

American peoples’ lack of broad political comprehension about their responsibilities as citizens is continuously exposed by media pundits and entertainers who make a great living laughing at stupid Americans. This demonstrates the failure of our educational institutions generally and the Humanities department specifically that have failed in one of their fundamental responsibilities – educating a socially and politically engaged populace.

America’s anti-intellectualism, in the past, has always been an existential threat. There was still the notion that sooner or later, the true American spirit would rear its head and fight for democracy. We are now in that moment of history when the promise must be revealed. There is no fight! There are only the cringing displays of intellectuals hiding in their ivory towers with their hands out for payments from private industry.

What is stirring America’s current melting pot of nationhood, set ablaze by "Political Correctness," and the abandonment of the intellectual class is that there is no consistent narrative coming from those whose primary responsibility is a national narrative: the intellectuals the educators!

Where would we be without the words of the Constitution, the civil rights movement, the suffragettes? Our society and culture are based on the idea that ideas matter! More than ever, we need a national story that will help us deal with the new crises with rapid-fire explosiveness in today’s America.

The history of America’s research ideal approach has always been to throw money at a problem. The problems that America faces today require courage, consensus, and compassion, which are unfortunately not preached or practiced currently in our secular society that seems determined to become a theocracy.

An American Education is no more than a money-making enterprise that profits administrators, private industry, teachers, and students in that order. Each college, in each state, is an industrial unit unto itself. Administrators rule the roost with salaries twice that of Teachers. Increasingly private industry is providing online computer programs for public institutions.

Teachers focus on tenure, students on quotas, grade points, transfer requirements, state requirements, parking tickets, food privatization, and the unrelenting abstract tests that frazzle brains and alienate souls. All this is in the service of a top-heavy pyramid structure that rewards the organizers over the educators.

Nanette Asimov, a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, reported on July 27, 2018, that "California State University trustees approved raises of between $8,000 to $13,000 a year for the 23 campus presidents, five vice-chancellors and CSU Chancellor Timothy White, whose annual pay grew by $13,510 to $463,855."

In May 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that University administrators are paid an average of $126,000 a year while the average Instructor’s salary is $70,00 a year. In 2017, there were 18,200 tenure track professors in the California University system, compared to 45,000 temporary instructors.

The largest share of educators is employed in the Humanities, fine arts, and interdisciplinary studies, accounting for approximately 35 percent of the university headcount; a Yale professor, like Mr. Kronman, makes over $187,000 per year, before his book deals. By contrast, the average student tuition is $12,000 per year in the California University system. It doesn’t take rocket science to see who benefits most.

As someone who returned to college after 4O years, I’ve discovered that people only learn what they’re interested in. When I was young, I learned about learning by traveling the world. That experience remains with me today and was more significant than any college education. Because of my real-life experiences with people and places, I became interested in History, Politics, Sociology, Philosophy of those lands, and my own. I studied Math because I wanted to be an engineer. I studied literature and writing because I wanted to write my stories. I studied art to become an antique dealer.

Today, where are the classes for creativity and innovation in an American college education, where are the programs for individual development? The Educational Industrial-complex’s payoff to their students is a degree that may provide them a 40% greater chance of getting a job than a high school diploma? But it’s for a workforce whose real wages have not increased in 40 years! A degree only gives a student passage to the wage-poor middle class, where they will spend the next 20 years paying off their student debts.

So, here’s my solution: let’s invest in our youth! Let’s provide free education for K-22. That’s a kindergarten through college. This is how we do it: from 2-5, all kids are offered free training that stimulates them to explore and enjoy learning. From ages 5-10 years, kids are instructed in civic and personal responsibilities and learning techniques. From ages 11-15, students are encouraged to be creative and innovative. From ages 16 to 17, students are exposed to what it takes to be an adult in the real world outside of school.

The college would consist of vocational study and the research ideal, wherever students’ interests take them. Let’s automate the administration with smartphones, convert the administrator back into teachers – thereby instantly creating smaller classes with a better teacher-student ratio. Put the teachers back in control of the teaching business, increase their salaries to a living wage of $130,000 a year, and use private industry only as a last result to provide services and products.

Each college student would do community service for the equal number of years they spent in college, at full pay. The money to pay for this is already available in society. Trim the military budget by half – the military is a wasteful use of taxes, a non-capitalist enterprise that produces no economic value for society!

The $200-300 billion yearly investment in education would result in providing an engaged, educated, and erudite youth who would be creative, innovative, and committed to making America great. A positive by-product of such a program would equalize the social and economic disparities in our ‘free’ society.

Finally, in my experience, people only learn what they’re interested in. Everyone is primarily motivated by their desire to be recognized and appreciated. College education does not accept students as emerging adults, only as profit generators for college administrators. Students are trained to regurgitate just what they think the teacher wants. There is no time for learning, only reacting. As a young man, I learned more by traveling worldwide than I ever did in college. The places I visited the people I spoke with created interest in the world and my place in it.

Returning to college is no more than the machinations of college bureaucracies, a lifetime burden of debt for young people. The training of wage slaves for the business world that is only intent on exploiting its workers promises nothing but heartaches for young people who desperately want to be a part of a positive force that can truly make America great in the 21st century.

 SPORTS – BEAUTIFULLY USELESS

 

Imagine swooping through the air catching a ball with one hand, and at that moment passing it to another to score a try, a touch-down, or a basket. Can you feel the exhilaration of sharing a victory, overcoming a stubborn adversary, conquering your greatest fears? The balletic skills and crafts of sports built over the years display a proficiency that defies all categories, empowering the participant providing awe and vicarious pleasure to the spectator and admiration and praise from the ancients who tabulate such feats. Yet none of the beauty, knowledge, courage, and fortitude on display during sporting events are of any significant value in the world of sports. Indeed, all the artistic, athletic activities paraded in front of fans and observers alike are secondary, misnomers, cannon-fodder for the pundits, cheerleaders, and gamblers. The all-encompassing obsession with winning sidelines the magnificent beauty of sporting athletes' feats. Or, more pertinently, not losing. 

 

There was a time when sports were a valuable development for youthful expression and growth. A time when a person's internal competition, momentarily substituted an external competition, became a teaching tool for objectivity, clarity, and the impetus to move forward and multiply. To create for the betterment of the community, through individual endeavor, to hone in on the youthful days of playing sports and create memories of sacrifice and effort that would be a storehouse for the future, when childhood was no longer an excuse. For it was playing that captured the muscles and spirit of youth and taught the mind and body to work together for a common cause." play" made it possible to give one's all while sometimes applying brutal effort to win. It was "play" that joined all the combatants at the end of the contest in the companionship of grace and effort. Of course, an effort was not always enough. There was also luck, the turn of the dice, the fall of the coin, the mistake by a player or a referee. But all these variants became a part of "play." 

 

Then, society’s need for competition took over. The spectacle of winning and losing became more important than teaching social skills through "play." Competition extended the "play" into a lifetime of adolescent fantasies. Competition replaced value with expediency, the ability to suppress one's true love of a game with a crass dedication to 'winning at all costs.' And then the gamblers took over, offering long odds for fans' idolatry and encouraging fans to pay for their addiction through meaningless patronage that soon emptied their pockets and destroyed their families with rage, anger, and betrayal. Competition soon mirrored our economic and political system of savage practices to keep those with little or no access to economic or political power at bay. While the powerful recklessly change the rules to suit themselves, even as they undermine their adversaries in the name of survival of the fitness. 

 

We have come now to accept competition as the primary measurement of humankind's progress. Once, pleasurable pastimes Cooking, Gardening, and Beauty are now defiled. We once indulged in such self-expressive activities as cooking, gardening, and beauty and appreciated them in the eye of the beholder. But now, they are measured in the money they attract, the followers they generate, and the paid publicists who promote them. What is beauty, a good meal, a beautiful garden? There is no consensus today outside of competition, money, and manipulation. 

 

Sports is nothing more than a gambler's den. Sports are divorced from their service to youth and society. Sports gambling is simply turning money from one greedy hand to another. And what is gambling? Nothing but a deluded belief in a winner as unique because of the role of a dice, the pull of a handle, or the purchase of a ticket? In none of these situations does the human in their being participate. The gambler leases his life to the abstract belief that her passion for winning will align with the cards, dice, roulette wheel, or favored team and reward them with money. An abstract commodity that is subject to taxes, debt, envy, jealousy, loss, and theft, and nowhere does it confirm that the winner is unique in any way. 

 

Is competition now the judge of progress? Was it unleashed competition and energy that pulled humankind out of the mud of poverty and elevated the human condition to the luxury of freedom? Even a cursory view of history undermines that myth. From man's earliest days, slavery created wealth and progress. There have certainly been feats of ingenuity, like the Dutch clearing the swamplands of the Netherlands, the Israelis turning the desert into farmlands, and in recent years the Chinese pulling half a billion people out of poverty. And there are numerous other collective and individual feats worthy of acknowledgment. Equally, there are disasters. The dustbowl of the American southwest. The slaughter of millions of people in WW1 and WW2. Wars of profound uselessness. The first three are examples of cooperation—the last three of competition. 

 

Sports today is a conduit through which billions of dollars are circulated, primarily between the hands of the same groups of people. The sports players who put their lives on the line will pay dearly for the rest of their lives, for the 'privilege' of entertaining their fans, with horrendous physical and mental damage—the pressure to perform begins at elementary school. Once identified as having the essential attributes of sporting prowess, the child is on a track to a one-dimensional life. All other interests in everyday life become sublimated to this primary goal. "Play" is abandoned—everyday preparations for competition and the elusive hum of success proceed with designed exercises and diets directed at the smell of success. And what is success? It changes daily, weekly, yearly. Invariably primary goals are implanted in the child's mind by parents and coaches. But the child is still living in the present! The child is still too young to understand what one year consists of, let alone five or ten years into the future—a dream of the Super Bowl, the Olympics, or the World Cup. A slow-moving fixated passion is germinated and built-up day by day. Soon the child has no identity outside of the goals set for the following day and a distant, elusive future. And what if she should falter? How do her parents and coaches, who have put so much into her, react? Does she dare to fail?

 

In all major sports, the pool of prospective candidates is limitless. Children from around the world long to become sporting icons. They believe they will enjoy the attraction of money and associated fame once they have climbed the "greasy pole of success." That is the carrot. The whip is the millions of 'Losers" left behind to rue the day of that missed pass, failed tackle, burst liver, broken jaw, hyperextended knee, the racism/sexism of the coach, referee, agent, manager, and fraudulent business partner. 

 

The competitive edge enters darker zones when the economics of sporting teams are fully exposed. Players are bought and sold like commodities to satisfy corporate and personal bank balances, revealing the dehumanizing habit of treating human beings as chattel. Today we see more women entering the professional sporting ranks, and on a superficial level, it is all good. Except women don't get paid the same as men, irrespective of the fact that most top-rated men's sports teams do not pay their way. But the given argument is that women do not generate equal money! Well, nor do men! Women are demanding to become hostages to the money-making machine of the gambler's world, just like men, in the belief that parity with other enslaved people will make them free (?)They may believe they are liberating their role in society. Still, in truth, they've just exchanged their role for a more rabid, hungry, and desperate condition of exploitation that attracts even more envy, hatred, and despicable treatment. In a world with no respect for people as human beings, it makes no difference what your gender, race, or ethnic origins are when you are nothing more than chess pieces manipulated by vipers in pursuit of money and power. 

 

Individual and collective dreams run out of steam when a fully conscious human being realizes they are nothing more than pawns in an elaborate game of exploitation. Yet, for many, the promise of sports is the hope and belief that they will improve their bank balance and redress the fault their society made by denying them honorable and legitimate avenues and choices to prosper and grow their families. Thus, competition is not between equal participants but between desperate humans denied all other choices but to throw their bodies and souls on the ashes of poor fortune and hope they make the grade. And once-famous such stars become even more enamored of their luck and skills, knowing all too well that those who they left behind are standing in the shadows ready to plunge a knife into their back if they should falter or bring the fantasy of sports exploitation to the light of day. That was Colin Kaepernick's unforgivable sin.

 

Finally, the highlight of the beautiful uselessness of sports is borne by the fact that none of the skills developed to put a ball in a net, over a line, in a hole, or a basket, provide the individual with any life skills or abilities to decern between right or wrong, good, or bad, love or hate, or between value and fraud. Professional sportspeople fail to advance to emotional adulthood because they are caged in adolescent emotions that rule their lives. Winning and losing is their only obsession. Their only meaningful existence, as human beings, is predicated on the rules of coaches, referees, and their management cabals. The moment a game is won or lost, the ability to enjoy it evaporates. To marvel at the effort expended by the athlete, the doubts overcome, the renewed faith in one's abilities. The proficiency of their labor is of nothing. The only recourse is onto the successive win or loss. It is continuing the merry-go-round of tomorrow, which never comes. It is living in a vacuum where all true human feelings are suppressed. It is becoming automated with a public persona and a private disconnect. It is living a schizophrenia existence showered with money and notoriety but lost to one's soul. Sport is a beautifully useless enterprise desired by all and fated to destroy the few who reach the heights of "suckcess." But the only truly liberating activity is to be yourself and enjoy being unique without having to sell yourself as a prostitute to prove it.