I have to warn the reader that I'm about to write some stuff that is not nice.
I'm really, really angry right now. Because I was provoked, wrongly. In my neighborhood, Fort Greene, there's an Indian food place where I get take out, and I was waiting for my stuff and this girl, who was with her friend, looked at me and said shrilly "what are you looking at" or something like that. I wasn't looking at her. THen she started saying to her friend, "I hate it when people do that; I'm talking and I turn around and these blue eyes are looking at me." I wasn't looking at her; I was looking at the waiter to see if my food was ready. It doesn't matter; in Brooklyn there are some people who will go out of their way to start a fight with you even if you have done nothing to them. THese girls happened to be black but they can, fairly, be any race. I'm not saying it has to do with their ethnicity, so please I'm really not intending this as racist. I'm against racism and I hope what I'm saying doesn't get misconstrued. I am saying, though, that the wrongness of societies and some individuals doesn't justify someone acting toward me in a malicious way just because they throw me in a lump with someone, or some people. THere's gentrification going on here and many of these people are poor and rightly angry at the injustice they're facing, but I didn't do it to them. When someone is aggressive to me in any way I get shaken up, and my heart starts beating fast and the blood rushes to my face and I don't get mad often, but when I do, when someone provokes me, I get very mad and I don't forget. SOme people have been on my hit list for decades, now. BUt what I'm really mad at is that these are women, like the women who hassled me in Israel, and they had no good reason to do so. It was done out of malice, or well, I don't know what their intentions were but what they did was malicious, and unacceptable. I have a good deal of anger at those who have hurt me and sometimes I feel it rise up in me and I don't know what to do with it. But you can spend your life being a good person, doing everything right, but evil people are evil and will strike at you no matter what, and you may have no choice but to fight. I figured in this instant, even though I was head to toe mad at this girl (as I was at those at the airport) it wasn't worth spending a night at the hospital or jail (although she probably doesn't have much else to live for). But after all my energy spent trying to create justice and eradicate sexism, racism, classism, all those isms (except for feminsm) the very people you're trying to help.....well not all but some or one or two.....will slam it right back at you til it hits home, and that's devastating. And they're just.......melodramatic as it is, it's my opinion that they're just not good people and why are they alive? I mean, if someone had to die yesterday, why couldn't it be someone like them? I feel like I'm horrible for saying that and maybe it's wrong to say that, but I'm so mad and some people are just not good, they're just embodiments of meanness and they hurt people (not just me, but probably many innocent people) and they shouldn't be allowed to do it or get away with it. I suppose she had righteous anger at the racism, classism and sexism she's facing but she turns it to hatred, and aims it randomly at anyone in her way who reminds her of something or someone, she thinks negatively as a result of generalizations in her life. She is negative, and there are others like her. And it's women doing this, and that's the hardest part, I really feel bloodied by that, since I've made so many efforts to help all women and free them, so this is brutal, a slap in the face. It makes me wonder why I do it. I don't want to become a bitter person, I don't want to form hate. But some people won't be educated or enlightened; and I'd be wasting my time fighting with them. SO what do I do? I wanted to think I can go anywhere and all that people say about malevolent people is wrong and people are good everywhere and there's potential for peace and good will and all that, then this happens. Thanks for listening.