Alone

Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

918

Abstract

e.I had just become comfortable with the European greeting — cheeks touching cheeks and pantomime kisses — already a quaint relic of a more sterile past.I miss kissing. I need a hug.Even before everything became different the sands were already shifting. Polarization racial inequity me too. And I fit the profile.I can’t apologize for my inherited privilege because I didn’t cause it to happen I can only try to make the best of it by recognizing it and trying not to exploit it.I can’t even say with any certainty that I was never that guy. Unfaithful elitist insensitive prejudiced creepy prick. I hope not, but I’m not an impartial judge.I can only imagine what it must be like for those who are not me so I do imagine it and I try to see the world through their eyes through their stories (fictional th

Options

ough they may be).Is it empathy or appropriation when my characters are not me? A black man in the ‘60s an abused little girl a husband who’s lost a wife a mother who’s lost a child someone who loves the wrong someone else.Am I too old to feel their passions? Too white to see their struggles? Too jaded to care?I accept that I will never completely know them only scratch the surface if that and I don’t do it to amuse myself as I am often unamused and sometimes destroyed by even the faintest facsimile of their lives.So, if you will allow me this modest conceit as I sit here alone in the dark tonight to mingle with these ghostly metaphors and forgive me if some of them might resemble you even vaguely.I am only trying to understand those whom I can no longer touch.Jim Dutton © 2022</article></body>

With all of you

How do we learn to be social but alone staying distant from those closest to us shouting intimacies through covered smiles and muted words?

Industrial humanity in the fullness of two dimensions we share ourselves without sharing our touch trying to enjoy our freedom to be captive.

I had just become comfortable with the European greeting — cheeks touching cheeks and pantomime kisses — already a quaint relic of a more sterile past.

I miss kissing. I need a hug.

Even before everything became different the sands were already shifting. Polarization racial inequity me too. And I fit the profile.

I can’t apologize for my inherited privilege because I didn’t cause it to happen I can only try to make the best of it by recognizing it and trying not to exploit it.

I can’t even say with any certainty that I was never that guy. Unfaithful elitist insensitive prejudiced creepy prick. I hope not, but I’m not an impartial judge.

I can only imagine what it must be like for those who are not me so I do imagine it and I try to see the world through their eyes through their stories (fictional though they may be).

Is it empathy or appropriation when my characters are not me? A black man in the ‘60s an abused little girl a husband who’s lost a wife a mother who’s lost a child someone who loves the wrong someone else.

Am I too old to feel their passions? Too white to see their struggles? Too jaded to care?

I accept that I will never completely know them only scratch the surface if that and I don’t do it to amuse myself as I am often unamused and sometimes destroyed by even the faintest facsimile of their lives.

So, if you will allow me this modest conceit as I sit here alone in the dark tonight to mingle with these ghostly metaphors and forgive me if some of them might resemble you even vaguely.

I am only trying to understand those whom I can no longer touch.

MEMOIR

Alone

With all of you