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=> narsai n jackie sittin in a tree

narsai n jackie sittin in a tree
Posted by Farid (Moderator) - Monday, December 1 2003, 12:06:13 (EST)
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How much of their behavior towards me had to do with being Assyrian and how much of it is just your garden variety, man-in-the-street type foolishness? Is there something in the way most of us approach this Identity that unhinges us further than if we were from any other "ethnic" group...and is it something in the blood...something in the learning, or something in the "being"...in trying to be Assyrian? Does playing the role do it to us...or is it genetic?

Well it isn't genetic...that was a trick question. I'm not convinced that there's any meaning to being Assyrian at all...outside of the Christian religion..and right there you have your first and greatest obstacle to a life that is to be lived under fairly normal conditions. The multplicity of idiocies you have to sleep next to and wake up with and walk around in the company of, as a Christian Assyrian, I think, finally does a person in...shoots holes through what might have been an otherwise sensible enough intellect. That could be the reason we have so many definitions and ways of being Assyrian and why there's a Skokie brand of Assyrianism...a Turlock brand...a Ceres way...a Detroit style...a California "thing" and the rest of it...because no one knows what it is and each group of three makes it up as they go along and are in fierce competition with the other group of three because anyone's definition is as good, or as bad, as anyone else's and no one is secure in his or her notion of what it is to be Assyrian. Even in our religions we've got the same competitions going between Lutheran, Baptist, Catholic, Chaldean/Catholic...Church of the East, Pentecostal and the rest of them.

Being Christian is being Jewish...as religions they're okay, I suppose...but not for people claiming to be Assyrian because there is so much specific loathing and envy of Assyrians in those religions...fear too. If the bible had railed against the Italians, called them every name in the book and if Jew scholars today labored mightily to put a negative slant on everything about Italians...you'd wonder a little at why Italians turned Jewish or Christian/Jewish and what kind of self-loathing or just plain looniness this might indicate...and I know you want to say, "But the Pope IS IN ITALY"! What the Romans did, was pin the blame for killing Jesus on his own people...it wasn't just his own hands Pilate was washing...it was the Roman Empire's hands...and who was going to argue with them?

That the early Italians, the Romans, took over the Franchise and put it to work for the Empire...thereby strengthening and extending its bloody grip for another 1400 years or so...is a miracle of good, practical, Roman thinking not, as dewey-eyed Christians are pleased to think, "a miracle of Christ's teachings". What could be further from Christ than the booming successes of the Chrstian Romans...or the British Christians and now the American Christians? And for the rest of us to bleat that we're the "real" Christians is like the sheep begging to be sacrificed cause it's the fairest of the flock. Makes no sense if you plan to live on earth and earth is where these leaders of ours struggle to survive and outspend and out-vie each other.

Consider Narsai and me. I've known the guy for 20 years and known him as no other "friend" of his has...and from our first meeting he's been in competition with me. I remember one sad day outside his office when we were discussing something completely unrelated and he all of a sudden fixed me with that snake-eye of is and said..."You know, I'm an artist too". This isn't the place to go into what an artist is or isn't...let's just say Narsai never felt I was that impressed by the hyped up souffle of that whole "Gourmet" thing...which, in a starving world, is more an embarrassment than something to be proud of...besides as Assyrians we've known good food for centuries, didn't need a passle of twits and their PR men and women telling us how to boil water "to perfection".

But that was the way he approached me, always...as a threat to his own standing...and it was made that much worse when we got deeper into the Assyrian community. After the Ashurbanipal was installed and Narsai didn't get separate mention on the pedestal, it dawned on him that I was "using" him to further "myself"...and furthering oneself is all these people are about...and so he bowed out of the Shumirum Monument and took up with AAS...actually that came a little later. At AAS he could be top gun...with me he always felt in the back seat...that I was using him to get me MONEY for projects that would only serve my own glory...he and Jackie and the rest of them saw me through their own eyes...personal glory is mother's milk to them. All I wanted to do was place as many monuments as I could and get lost. Anyone thinking to get rich and famous in the Arts is crazy to begin with...anyone setting out to do it among Assyrians would have to be lunatic-crazy or, just maybe...sincere? And THAT, boys and girls, was what really unnerved them because not only did the monuments far outshine anything they'd managed to do "as Assyrians"...but my attitude was all wrong and shone a white hot ight on theirs...rather than play up what I was doing I was saying it was no big deal...that we had lots of far more talented people than I was etc. Had Narsai or Jackie or Golani(who could only weld) been able to make sculpture...Jesus Christ THERE would have been a Second Coming...and in Jackie's case, a Third and a Fourth.

Not only that but I'd finally begun to be able to pay Narsai back and in this year, when I fell into this hole and needed bailing out, I'd already saved him about $60,000 in taxes, with another $80,000 savings coming with the Shumirum. Imagine I'd gotten cancer or some other life-threatening disease and I needed $2,000 to get free of it. Narsai "rushes" to send me $1,500. Why? What's he trying to say and to whom? Right now he's telling friends of mine that he's "concerned" about me...that I must have gone crazy...that he's done nothing but help me and I'm throwing it...well you know.

But if I NEED two thousand...what's $500 less going to mean for me? It means I won't get cured, that's what it means. I told Narsai that I was the good guy here...that I'd cooperated with federal officials even to not turning Reynolds in immediately down here to Immigration which would have gotten him deported out of our lives because the Marshalls said they were best equipped to do it and "would be here soon"...so I sat and waited while charge after charge was filed against me and Reynolds got loonier and loonier until he exploded. Narsai even spoke with the Marshalls himself and they told him how grateful they were and also how concerned but that in this new day there was little they could do to intervene directly...so I sat on this hill vulnerable to whatever these people thought to do. When it got deadly...I refused to cooperate further and asked Narsai for $2,000 to mount a legal counter-attack and silence them all.

I know Narsai had the $500 extra I needed. Of course he isn't under any obligation...but that's just it. When given the choice, he chose to help himself...which is what he's doing at AAS...helping himself...they all do that...and the people with him in AAS and ZOWAA especially are all doing the same ting...helping themselves. And if I was built along those same lines I NEVER wuld have made sculpture in and for the community...I would have taken far more than I ever planned to give. It wouldn't have helped Narsai any to have seen me pull myself out of my predicament down here. In the years we worked on the Ashurbanpal he was also helping himself...the Cause is always secondary with these people.

Narsai saw an opportunity to pull ahead in the contest he'd been losing with me since we met...I REALLY needed him now...this wasn't a donation for a monument..or a plug here or an endorsement there...this was money, that sacred thing, but it was money to be used in saving my very ass...SURELY I was where he wanted me all along...wasn't I? Had I called begging for another $500...he would have sent it...would have sent $5,000 and gladly too. Instead and to his intense annoyance, I asked him for $5,000 "just like that". And again, he wold have sent it...if only. It's the casting couch all over again...Narsai wants a good fuck for his money. And he's getting one now too...just not the way he thought it would be.

Then there's Jackie. Was she really so taken by my big handsomeness that she couldn't help but throw caution to the wind and wet her drawers at the very sight of me? I doubt that was it at all. Jackie used to think I was really impressed when I'd say things ike, "Wow...THREE Benzes...where will you keep them"? Either her cars...her purchasing power, her "friendship" and the "exculisivity" I must know came with it...and then when none of it got me...her ASS, was supposed to do the trick. And I don't doubt she has one tricky ass.

Men "hunt" women. They don't necessarily want to eat the carcass...just be able to know they shot it down...and the more fleet of foot...the more nubile and powerfully built and sleek and swift the prey, the better they like it...the more determined they get...the greater the score. Men make shitty lovers for the most past...especialy the hunter types. "Getting" is what they're after...they know nothing and have no interest in enjoying. Jackie's the same way...a lot of women who've made it into that world are now hunters. Did she really imagine a romantic weekend for two...she and I in lovely Detroit...DETROIT? Or was she hunting? Had I taken her up on any of her come-ons, would it have led into bed...or would she then have played the demure maiden, who got what she was after when I succumbed to the promise being dangled in front of me? I'll never know. Bt does it matter?

If an executive suggests a blow-job at lunch once a week is a good way to advance in the company...and a female employee agrees and gets down on her knees in front of the man...at the ready...only to have him smile at her and say, "get up...just wanted to see if you would." Is that better or worse?

I'm not paying because I'm a bad sculptor...unable to do my job. I've been made to pay because I won't go down on these people...because I don't believe at that price, "It's about Assyria". I think as Assyrians we've been driven to our knees enough..and to now have Assrians try to do it to us and to be told to "take it" because after all some good might come from it...is as dirty and cynnical a thing as I can imagine...never mind that it undercuts the very soul and essence of what it is we say we want to achieve.

I can't make Art on my knees...and Assyrians aren't Assyrians from that position either. Those who would drive us to it, especially if they're our own and on top of that claim to be Leaders among us...are the most despicable of all.



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