----- Original Message -----
From: joe harcz Comcast
To: Norm DeLisle MDRC
Cc: Jill Gerrie MI ARC
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2016 7:16 PM
Subject: Fw: [blind-democracy] busted aganvariation on a chtholic school theme
Sorry this has been interupted several times and well can't rewrite it over and
over again....But perhaps this goes to where I come from, and I ask, especially
Norm to step up to the plate once again. Perhaps that is unfair, for I know he
has done a whole lot. But, still I'm asking....
Just part of a novel I've written and amended on and off...Actually they were
all reall characters with some variations, of course. Actually, the reall
Bernie wasn't as loved except by me and a few others for what happened.
Actually the real Bernie committed suicide by addiction and overdose. Actually
the real Bernie I loved and was not recognised for his true heroism, which
wasn't in war but in promise and deeds.
Actually, the real Bernie fell from grace in 1969 or 1970, and actually so did
I.
We just travelled different paths and I was just one bit luckier than him. Of
course, we both were unlikier than those we caused to be killed.
Yes, this is a part of a large novel.
Stories must be told I guess.
BTW the real Bernie not only lost his legs, but also accidently killed a little
girl on a search and destroy mission in some province I can't remember nor
pronounce to this day. Actually the story told is that his weapon hit the
ground as he slipped and hit a little girl. I have no reason to doubt this
account.
And it haunted my real friend forever until his death.
I do not judge the real or fictional Bernie. For there but for the grace of God
go I and I was lucky as I drew a high draft number.
Thus, I was never there, but I did see the aftermath of Vietnam. I saw it all
abut me. And it makes me weep.
I have so many colleagues, friends and so forth who have never recoverred from
it all. Shit, I was never there, but don't know if I've fully recoverred and my
thing is much, much less of a sort of damage as we all know.
But, that war and its aftermath and all those whom I knew before, during and
since along with my actions in civil rights formed my social conscience.
They led to the formation of my "disability concience" too as I was beginning
to lose my sight then and became blind later with disability awareness in
between.
Norm, I know you fight against confrontation. I know this and think I know why.
I know how traumatic this all was and is. I really do, or at least think I do.
But, now we have fascism on the rise and now we have agencies perviting
everything we knew , to say the least everything about the independent living
movement, and we have people openly advocating for euthanasia and we have open
and naked exploitation of PWD and systems that are corrupted against us.
And, I ask you, Norm to fight, and I mean fight, not with force of arms, but
with all your power against all that is against us.
I sense how difficult it is for you to do so. For believe it or not I'm not
confrontational by desire. No, that has been thrust upon me and others like me.
For, all humans are endowed with "flight or fight" syndromes as conditions of
humanity; as instincts for pure survival. My "fight" syndrome is acute, for I
have never or rarely never...grin. have left a fight....
And I do not mean to leave the literal fight or battlefield either. For, there
are other fights and means of fighting than physical violence. For, as a matter
of fact as obnoxious as I'm known to be I haven't engaged in physical violence
since I was a junior in High School, oops except for football, when I got in to
a physical fight over a girl of all things....Smile...
Seriously, the trauma of war hits us all hard, veterans and outright victims of
war most of all.
I've literally held the hands of dying vets who left this world guilt ridden
over what they wrought in the latter regards.
Recently and before their deaths some Korean vets, and friends of my dad
confided with e the horrors of what was done to them and what they did to
others at the Chosan Reservior for example and I do not wish to go in to that
nightmare of a thing either.
This is all a strange way to get your mojo going Norm, for I think I know your
soul and true being.
I know you are a good man who wants to do good things; and in fact for the most
part as far as I'm concerned you'e done just that. (BTW perhaps you've done
more than me too, by the way, and I'm not judgemental in the negative sense of
that term although we always must have some sort of judgement in this world.)
Now, we've seen people with disabilities affronted and violated at our own ADA
celebration. We've seen thousands continuallly exploited and turned in to
commodities. We've seen, once again advocates like me and eleanor and her mom
retaliated against with state resources and funds and illegally violated for
and over words and whistleblowing.
We've seen me, personally violated, abused and persecuted and all the while
with limited resources and while under personal extremus and with a bullying of
state and state funded agents, and agencies.
Norm, and Jill, I grew up as a white working-class individual in the middle of
the turbulent sixties, in a Catholic School and full of values against
exploixtators and such. I was an early civil rights agitator and even lived
with Black Panthers and such. I fought for union rights. I fought for women's
rights. And I was a wet-nosed kid in the mid-seventies who fought for both
disability rights and the rights of labor (teacher aides in the GSID) at the
same time.
Now, almost fifty years later while I am a person with disabilities and twenty
six years after the passage of the ADA I must say I know viscerally, and every
day the discrimination and bigotry against us, and indeed me.
I need you. And wee need you today. We need you in our fight for social justice
more thanever!
The utter civil rights atrocity on ADA (and indeed constitution Day, September
17, 2015 was just symptametic of what has gone wrong in America. Whatpart of
the ADA doesn't anyone understand when police forces can be musterred in full
body armor to keep people with known disabilites out of our own civil rights
celebration while others without disabilities are allowed to be not obnly
involved but profit from the experience? Sorry, I'm more than pissed off at it
all and the fact I was falsely arrested, falsely imprisoned and confined, and
persecuted at the state teet for more than a year whilst under the extremes of
poverty, lack of resources and under the strain of not only my own disability
and its ramifications and insults; but also those of my parents and theirs too.
Norm, again I understand
I really do. Now, we are really facing facism and I don't make that up.
Now, is a time to make a fighting, if non-violent stand. Please stand with me.
Joe
----- Original Message -----
From: joe harcz Comcast
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2016 5:30 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] busted aganvariation on a chtholic school theme
Busted again…
Ok, I had to get back into the good graces of mom and dad if not with my
Church. So after my sacrilegious confession with Father Jim I found myself
piling in to the family station wagon and off to Sunday Mass> Yea, I was sullen
and in the Purgatory of my indefinite lifelong grounding, and after the fact I
felt guilty about that too. Matt was pricking around with everyone as usual
even teasing Rosa once again which was going to get his sorry ass murdered and
maybe take some heat off of me all on account of mom’s condition, which seemed
to be remarkably settled for some reason I couldn’t figure out. But, then again
I wasn’t fucking Einstein or Pasteur or something, but just a fucked up and
busted up Catholic kid from the near burbs trying to get his way out of the
crap I was in.
It wasn’t that long of a drive, though poor Kazz because of his wild night
might have thought it a caravan through some sort of fucking desert or
something might have thought so. His eyes looked like sick and putrid egg yolks
but a night of puking up Mad Dog can account for that. Let alone getting his
cherry busted.
I, still felt protective and would cover his ass at every moment and knew he
would me too though. For some reason though Kazz was a self admitted coward to
pain dispense out by the Church, the parish, the community of faith and most of
all mom.
Soon all eleven of us tumbled out of the wagon and into the pews of old
Conception. But, little did I know more mysteries would be conceived and less
revealed in the experience.
So there I was sitting in the pew waiting for mass to begin with my dad and
whole family sitting next to me going through the motions. But, in the stunning
silence, except for the rumbling of parishioners coming in and getting settled
all I could think about was Didi. That’s not the worst of it. I was having very
impure thoughts, very impure. My mind raced like a series of movie flashbacks,
in full blown Technicolor, and on a wide screen back to the night at Brenda’s
house. Man, it was maddening. I felt her warm breasts. I felt the soft blush of
her pubic patch. I saw her naked form diving gracefully into bed. I felt her
tongue, smelled her arousal, and heard her panting. More. More and even more.
It was a tangle weave of pure x-rated Technicolor with sound and smell to boot.
Man Larry Flynt could have made a solid million for all I was thinking right
about then.
It all played out in my eyelids just like I was watching a movie even when I
closed my eyes of course.
And all this was going on in the church where I spent six days a week, during
the school year well before since I could even get a woody for such thoughts,
or even knew what a woody was for that matter. Now, I had a big crisis in
faith thing going on at the time to say the least and that didn’t bother me.
Actually, I thought that the religion of my birth was generally a crock, with
the notable exceptions of people like my parents and Father Jim. But, still I
didn’t think this was the time or place for such and internal pornographic
rampage. Just looking up at the larger than life and all too realistic crucifix
(in full blown Technicolor itself) while thinking these things and more was
really beginning to freak me out. And then there was the replica of the Pieta
and all those stark images on stained glass to contend with too. No, this
wasn’t superstition or even fear of God, literally, but it just didn’t somehow
seem right to be thinking what I was thinking, especially the way I was
thinking it right about then. Still I couldn’t seam to wrap the movie and put
it back in the case. And what was I supposed to do pray to God, a God I had a
lot of doubts about to intervene? I needed a distraction.
Man, they say you need to be careful for what you pray for because you might
just get it. But, just when I started to search for a distraction my prayers,
if not in fact, in deed were answered for a moment. It went down hill from
there though. Real fast. For right then the entire Cormier clan absent Grim,
who probably was either still in jail or sleeping it off, piled into the pew
right in front of me. Oh yea he was probably soaking his nuts off in the
Stonehenge jail after the bowling ball incident and the fight afterwards. Damn,
at that point I really felt sorry for the SOB.
All thirteen of them. All girls. All gorgeous. And to make matters worse
Christine the oldest parked her fine young ass right in front of me. No,
Christine was twenty years old, had the finest young ass in the county and legs
just this side of Didi’s. Plus she had long, straight blond hair that hung all
the way down to that fine ass. She had that Peggy Lipton thing going on if you
catch my drift though she had better tits which made things all the worse
especially when in profile.
To make matters worse she was unlike Chastity not like a sister to me. Fair
game for prying eyes and a pornographic memory.
Jesus, I thought with no sense of irony. The devil only tempted you with things
like a city and shit like that. Might have gone off the deep end if you had
Young Christine Cormier right in front of you eh? Didn’t matter that I was a
younger dweeb to Christine. I mean I was just the younger guy and all that
shit. But, your mind can sure play tricks about you when such a fine ass parks
itself right in front of you right there in church and all that and when you’re
sixteen and got all that stuff going on inside. Took my mind off didi for a
moment I must confess.
I pulled a Missal out of the holders on the back of the pew and opened it
trying to distract myself and my eyes. But, the latter were roaming up and down
Christine and my mind had a mind of its own right about then. Only the direct
hand of God himself could save me from my mind right then and then it happened.
It was a miraculous intervention alright! For my dad looked down and whispered
in my ear, “Nick, you might be able to read the Missal a little bit better if
you turned it right side up.” Dad had his subtle and not so subtle moments.
But, I knew he was reading my perverted mind right then. I just knew it.
Damn why in the Hell and how in the Hell was everyone reading my thoughts –
even dad? This really sucked big time.
For all my so-called smarts I was simply Busted again!
And it came to me right then and there, right in the pews of the Immaculate
Conception church of my youth that this is what a body gets when he lets his
little head do his thinking. And clearly my little head didn’t think for Jack
and everybody in the universe knew what it had on its own little mind.
All of a sudden through the church, even the whispering of the modest few
hushed. Even the proverbial Catholic babies – ever crying for their mama’s
breasts in those times as they were want to be – hushed. Everything hushed in
the Church right about then. It was freaking eerie. It freaked me out. The
silence of it all.
The silence stunned me back into focus and I looked down the main aisle to see
what was going on.
It was Bernie back from Nam and the V.A. Hospital being wheeled down the aisle
in his wheelchair. No one had had a chance to see him or even talk with him for
months since he left for Nam. He had to be carried up the steps of conception
just to get in to the place and there he was. The vibrant, good guy, gear head
and football pal rolling down the aisle with one leg missing altogether and the
other leg just pretty much a bone with flesh attached by his wounds from a
commy land mine but no muscle It was a gruesome Hallmark card to all the
Parish of what that war was all about up close and personal.
.
He looked so different and only after months. Months! For one thing he had
long hair and a beard and just wore some jeans and a white tee-shirt, at Mass
for Christ’s sake and for crying out loud! This wasn’t the clean cut 1950’s
wanna be Bernie who left us more than a year ago. This was a starkly different
Bernie in so many ways.
. They had to roll the poor son-of-a-bitch in to the alcove.
Bizarre as it seemed all I could think of is that Bernie loved cars so damned
much it actually got him in to the Army for stealing that “Judge” Pontiac
modified GTO and now he couldn’t even drive a car or at least not one like
that. I kind of slap myself inside my head for thinking shit like that. Then
the hush of the pre-Mass church was broken by Gina who shrieked simply,
“Bernie!”
She rushed from her pew in the front to greet him and in spite of her right
there before God, country, and the whole parish ran to hug him in his chair.
He seemed more than embarrassed by all the commotion. His eyes had a little bit
of the old Bernie in them and recognition of Gina too. But, they seemed
strangely vacant of any thing to me, kind of like dead eyes I’ve seen at
funeral homes, but not exactly. Kind of half dead and half living. Man, it
almost made me religious again or something because then I glanced up at the
life sized crucifix all gruesome, and oh so fucking realistic – with its blood
and stuff-- and painted above the alter and saw those same eyes in Technicolor.
Then I looked for some reason at the life sized replica of the Pieta and saw
the dead and closed eyes of the crucified Christ spread across his mother’s lap.
Bernie’s eyes were half-dead, half alive. They were startled. They were in
pain. They were sprinkled with a bit of joy at being home, but left a hint that
home would never be home again. They held in them something more than pain and
suffering. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
But, they also held in them bits and pieces of war, terror, hatred and fear all
all laid down in the jungles of Vietnam, and in a convalescence in a V.A.
hospital all brought back home to Northland with a vengeance in the Church of
the Immaculate Conception.
Then Gina joined him in the alcove. I saw her tender hand slide in to his right
beside the confessional booth. It was the same hand she held in mine along
with some making out oun a bus with her tender lips that she used on me to make
Bernie jealous of me only a year or so earlier. I was a dupe then and it was
just a comicall, teenage sort of Romeo and Juliet or something sort of thing.
I could see his once strong hand lie almost limp in hers. This was a hand that
wound into a fist almost knocked me into the netherworld over Gina not that
long ago.
I mean we only dated casually to begin with and Bernie knew that and it was all
about making him jealous in that teen-age sort of shit that used to go on.
And, for more than one reason my feelings just exploded inside. I never felt
like crying in public more than I did at that moment. I just wanted to ball my
eyes out at the thought of it all. For some strange reason I didn’t. I don’t
know why.
But, then, in full circle I could read the mind of the entire congregation and
I could sense, smelling their feelings in the air, and reading their minds that
they all to a man, woman and child felt the same.
The alter boys exited the vest able before the Priest, fortunately Father Jim
and broke the tension. Mass, was beginning and it brought everyone back to the
non-reality of it all.
My mind danced back and forth between my mixed feelings about my traditions, my
faith of my birth, my strange feelings about the war brought home, up close and
personal like this, my condition of selfish personal shit, my strange
wonderings of the mind and why I did the shit I did, my lucid moments and my
more disturbed moments, my loves, and my lusts and then back to Bernie who
after all was just another Christ figure right there in the fucking flesh that
even a blind man could see.
.
And I gazed down once again at the fine legs of Christine Cormier and the
gaggle of girls in front of me including my true and most irreverent pashion,
aside from Didi, of course, Chastity Cormier.
All was restless in the world and all was disconnected. Nothing made any sense
to me.
I bowed my head and prayed a silent prayer to the fine young ass and the long
legs of Christine Cormier before me as if this made one fucking bit of
difference to me, the world and the universe.
Still, I did so dutiffully and irreverently all at the same time.
Silently, I wept, deep inside, with cascades of love, lust and confusion
melting together inside of me, It was all to much to bare and all to
overwhelming to behold. So I fixed my lustful eyes on Christine's beautiful as.
Like a pillar it held me fast for some strange reason.
And then I glanced down the row to Chastity, the Cormier who Ireally loved. She
was vibrant, and demure at the same tie. She was a hidden rock of strength and
not just pure teenage lust.
She was Didi exept all too familar.
Then I shook myself awake from all of this confusion.
What the fuck was I thinking?
My bud and my pal, Bernie was broken all up and back home and we didn't even
greet him or know what the fuck happened to him for that matter.
And something overcame me for some strange reason I can't even explain to this
day. I went over to Bernie right there in front of everyone and right in that
dark mass and I hugged Bernie--kinda queer I know. But, this is even worse. I
kissed him on the head and said, "Welcome home brother."
