joe.

 

friday.
3/22/2002 01:02:07 PM

somewhere

You like Ulysses?

Please don't like me.  I don't like being liked.  People who know me seem to know this through some instinct or perceptiveness that is alien to me.  I make a concerted effort to conceal my discomfort at being liked.  I mean, being liked is something I am supposed to want, right?  So I try to appear as though I want people to like me, but despite my efforts they know the truth.  People are magical.

You see, I can't give in.  I can't like myself, because then I will have to cry.  He has been hurt—not lately, but hurt in his essence, back near his origins.  And if I give in to liking him, I will have to care about what happened to him then, and I will have to cry.  It won't be just a tear, or even a sea of tears.  Though some tell me there is a limit to these things, it feels like there will be no end to the tears.  It will be an inundating, annihilating flood.  It will not have an end, but it will end everything. 

I am not sure, but I think others have been there, to a place that is after the end of everything.  Maybe if I went there, I would discover what comes after the end of everything.  Or maybe I would discover that no one ever goes there, no one in their right mind, anyway.  Maybe I would realize, after it is too late, that all the people who do like themselves got off this train back at the last stop because they did not want to go this way, to the end of everything.  It would be just me and the old woman who keeps staring at me giggling, the crazy toothless lady with the dead leaves in her hair.  She is always on the train that goes to the end of everything.

Everybody has always known something that I have never understood, they all share a kind of common fabric, and I try to pretend that I am a part of it.  A friend once called it standing in anxiety, trying to think of something spontaneous to do.  Everything about me is wrong, I am not attached to that fabric, and the best I can hope is to deceive some few who are included, some one.  The best I can hope is to deceive myself.  But I already know too much.

I don't want to be alone.  But I am afraid of you.  I don't want tragedies to happen that always happen as a part of life, things like losing limbs or getting paralyzed, like breaking hearts, like dying.  And I won't survive that original pain, so I split myself in two, and I keep him, ...where?; I guess I don't know.  I keep him—somewhere. 


Already time for bed, again. 

Why does this always happen?  Another day is gone, and I'm just getting here.

Anyway, I told my boss today to take her bonus and stick it.  She wanted to give fifty bucks each to me and three others who came in on almost no notice to do overtime this week because somebody quit unexpectedly.  It went like this:  Unsmiling, she solemnly called me into her office.  Her face betrayed nary a hint of good nor bad—well, maybe a hint of bad.  She closed the door, and whispered conspiratorily, "We're giving this to the four who came in to do overtime."  She produced a folded fifty in my direction.  As I took it she said, "But you can't tell anybody, because we can't give it to everyone." 

"I won't do that.  Keeping secrets breeds suspicion and distrust; it's not worth fifty bucks for me to do that.  I won't do it for any amount of money."  She snatched it back. 

"Well," she said petulantly, "then don't take it."

"OK," I said, "Thanks for the thought."  I really kinda meant that.  She glared as I left.

Had I not been exposed in the past to their breathtakingly insulting and demeaning behavior, I—stunned—probably would have walked away with the bill, and despite later misgivings, never returned it.  But I have had practice with the fifty dollar bill at the place where I work.  And the last time it happened, I swore it would never happen again. 

Either give it to me, or don't.  Either be grateful, or be not grateful.  But spare me your disingenuous gratitude, and keep your strings-attached bribes that you call generosity.  If it's not above-board, it's not a bonus—it's a liability.


 

thursday.

Hello.  I have a flat on my bike.  Into which I pumped air whilst trying to get away from work.  Right after I chipped away the slush and ice which had encrusted the vehicle.  With my bare hands.  Then I rode home through small (and not so small) waterways which, dammed with slush and ice, had filled-up all along the road edge to occasionally disconcerting depths.  Oh, and there was wind and freezing rain, too.  My bike is in the shower now, recuperating.  (Actually, I sprayed it with detergent to loosen the grime in which the bike becomes encrusted on wet, dirty days like today.)

I am bankrupt.  Docket #02-41552, filed March 14, 2002.  Any day, I may come home to a dark and cold, de-electrified house, though I am assured by my lawyer that if I am home when they come to shut me off and I present the aforementioned docket number to the Mass Electric employee, that "they should leave it on."  They should.  Likewise with the phone.  Although Verizon has already shut me off, the CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier), Ztel, my current phone company, will shut me off March 24, unless the bankruptcy court's injunction (represented by the docket number) prevents them from doing so.  No matter how much my lawyer—a really wonderful woman—tries to explain it to me, I just can't grasp the logic of bankruptcy.  She says it is designed to give people a second chance and a new start.  But it still looks to me like none of these companies should ever want anything to do with me again. 

There is a lot of laundry—about four loads worth—laying on the bathroom floor, piled-up nearly to the height of the windowsill.  I have been intending to attack it every day for over two weeks.  There are things in there which I forgot I owned.  The house is a mess, there are computer parts scattered all about, old unopened mail, and piles of semi-discarded papers, forms, newsletters, and magazines.  The biggest accomplishment in my day is folding up the futon. 

This is a low point, in case you hadn't noticed. 

I hope I get up early enough to get something done; I hope very soon that I begin to care whether or not I get something done.  It has gotten so that a little thing like a flat tire is just about completely overwhelming.


 

wednesday.

Got back from Boston and found a comment from joe.  I thought, either I wrote this and forgot (dementia), or... I couldn't imagine what else.  Then, two lines in: Ah ha!  And I wanted to faint.  Oooo-wheee, baby.  Joe!  The other Joe, the one with a hell of a story, a cut-the-ribbon, christen-the-boat, stain-the-sheet and smash-the-glass story.  The one who...  Well, maybe we can go into the details later on.  The point is that I returned from my reluctant excursion to Boston, and received an invitation to Cologne.  Germany. 

I can't escape life, apparently.  At least not yet.

I remember when cologne was something you gave on Father's Day to that man you couldn't love—or were afraid to love—because you were a boy with a difference, and you knew most of what you felt toward other males was 'wrong' and you weren't really sure which feelings were OK with Daddy, and which were not.  It was cute for the straight boys to want to marry Mommy; it was not cute for me to want to sleep with Daddy.  So we gave cologne. 

Somewhere long ago I noticed Cologne was also the name of a place, so long ago in fact that I thought they named the place after the toiletry.  And I thought that was odd.  It was among the first in this lifetime of many misconceptions on my part. 

Joe.  Wow.  The strong fumes of our past are flooding my brain—his wet mouth, his once-familiar taste, the intoxicating scent of him.  And the absolute clarity of his intentions, which cut through and scattered that nebulous fog-cloud that was me.  Joe loved me, but I...   Well, let's just say I wish I had more substance then.  I was a misty summer evening and he a brilliant noonday sun.  We played and played, chasing one another around the days—so few days—and we tried to stay, we tried.  But showers fell and darkened the teary sun, and a cold wind cut the lonely night to shreds.  They seperated, but not without knowing that once, in a glistening twilight moment, the night and day were one.

And wouldn'tcha know, I mean, isn't it ironic that long after I stopped applying expensive potions from tiny vials to strategic locations on my body (which could, in the past, precipitate a shallow, but none to shabby encounter) that today the necessary proof of my substance is to simply show-up in Cologne.

Forgive the bad pun, I am falling asleep.  Good night.  And good luck today at the hospital, Joe.  You will definitely be hearing from me.


 

monday.

I have to run.  Laundry.  Bank.  Train to Boston.  And it is snowing. 

The forecast says the temperature will continue a gradual decline until it reaches eighteen degrees on Saturday.  Eight-fuckin'-teen!  Winter will be plunging its long icicle-fangs deep into our shivering hearts, even as we welcome spring on March 20.  Excuse me while I pour some hot coffee over my head.  (It's like wetting your pants; it feels nice and warm for a moment, but then there's problems.) 

I am generally a miserable cuss right now because I am leaving my house.  It is my day off, and I am leaving my house.  I don't do that on my day off.  And I cannot come back to my familiar bed, my own clutter, and my precious coffee pot until Tuesday night.  Tuesday fuckin' night! 

I used to gear-up for a trip to Boston, I used to get all psyched and optimistic on the bus ride there, and then I would focus on staying all happy and smile-faced for the potential life-love (read, fabulous regular sex without emotional conflicts) who, breathless, would stumble upon me, cheerful and charming, in one of the ancient gay bars in Boston.  Optimism is not my thing.  Not anymore.  I did optimism once; I met Daniel in one of those ancient gay bars and I made him fall in love with me.  He gave me some fabulous sex, not so regular, and some goose-bumping emotions which I never expected.  I wish I stayed there, I wish Daniel had been perfect, I wish I was not HIV positive.  I half-lived in Worcester then, and half-lived in Boston with Daniel.  Now I fully-live nowhere.

Nowhere, as best I can rekon from where I stand, is better than somewhere over the rainbow.  Things used to be different.  I used to be different. 


Every day.  I have been here every day.  Silent.  Mute.  Every day, with my muse playing soulful notes like a muted coronet—wailing, moaning, pleading, groaning.  And every day I hide from the screeching subway-noise of your eyes consuming my lines, scraping along all the steel-track-length of my thoughts, into my mind, reading my heart.  I have been here hiding from you whatever words would have come, denying, god-like, the incarnation those words so sweetly sought.  You give purpose to the whole goddamn network of neurons and thoughts and tunnels and minds and trains—you give it all a purpose, and a reason for being.  You are the destination of everything I write; it comes from somewhere else, and it uses me as mere passage, bound for you.  It uses me.  It uses me.  I stopped it.

I am letting go.  Surrendering.  Giving in to its will.  I will, once again, actively participate in giving this thing what it wants, and with hands against headboard I will push back against its invading, penetrating force.  I will cooperate with its appropriation of me for its own purposes; I will make its will my own.  I had my own way for a week, I stopped it and refused it passage through my openings, and I found out again, like a dozen times before, what that would cost.  It costs too much.

I don't want this.  (Or do I?)  If I decide that I do want this, then it is no longer rape, is it?  Then I can happily participate in the crime, and even have a good time!  The words demand to have their way with me—but they require me to fight.  They demand me to scream into the pillow, to squirm beneath their weight, to fight their naked force and break my fists against the wall they thrust, they thrust, they thrust me up against.  The words demand a struggle, otherwise they will not come.  They demand me to be me, contemptuous of their intrusive visitation, raging under their dictatorial commands.  The words demand that I preserve within myself one true thing for them to chase.  I would surrender without a fight because I fear the pain that resistance brings; the words will not allow it.  They demand I feel everything. 

Therefore, make not pain the pleasure, nor subvert the tears to joy; give nothing you rightly own away—give not love, nor agonies, nor joys, nor sultry summer evenings of fading sun away to anyone.  Own them.  Stand up and own them, and cry for your pain, and sing for your joy.  And write for your life.


 

monday.

 

sunday.

A fascinating snippet from a fascinating site.


Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume One: The Will To Knowledge, Penguin, London. (First published: 1976).

— Queer theory grew, basically, out of this book. Why? Because Foucault argues that the current Western social view of sexuality is not the sum total of knowledge gathered over the aons, but was invented last century. Our current discourses about homosexuality (or heterosexuality) suggest that these are distinct conditions, or identities; but to Foucault these are just labels put onto people because of some actions they may or may not engage in. In other societies which employ different discourses, these labels would just not make sense.

Foucault also argued that power is not possessed but is exercised; and the exercise of power produces a corresponding resistance. It is therefore partly because people try to shovel discourse about sexuality into the cupboard that it comes crashing out all over the place again.
[See the Foucault pages for more].

Oh, my!  So much to think, and so little time.


There is a warm wind.  It shakes the house, rattles the windows which have been open all night, and makes the doors sound like someone is there, trying to get in.  It's a storm; a mild summery Nor'easter, with clouds close and fast moving one way, and above them, high and slow, other clouds moving the other way.  The warm, wild air through the screen makes me glad that I am here. 

On a night like this, with God panting so near, can heaven be far behind?


81.  When something goes wrong—even though I know it is not my fault—I not only believe that I will be blamed for it, but also that I should be blamed for it.  I am fatalistic resignation man.
82.  I am delerious from Mary's praise. 
83.  I masturbate. 
84.  I think most religions are wrong about almost everything they dogmatize.
85.  Buddhism does the least damage among religions.
86.  When I think of people I've not spoken to in months, but have not missed, I still feel guilty, as if I should have wanted to keep in touch, when in fact I did not want to keep in touch.  If one is superficial and shallow, it is best to simply be that, rather than to be that while pretending to be something else.  Even a cad can find salvation in being a genuine cad. 
87.  I love P-town, I want to live there and work there, somehow.
88.  I don't want soon to die, but if I do I want it to be on a mountain's winter summit, or in a violent ocean's firm embrace; I want lightning's fierce explosions or blizzard's screaming howls to accompany my demise.  I want the world unquiet when I go. 
89.  I gave up caffeine, sugar and most starch when I was in my twenties.  I never felt better.  I want to give it all up again, I just do not want to give it all up again, yet. 
90.  I trim the hair in my ears and nose.  I also clip my eyebrows.  I have long eyelashes.  I don't trim them.
91.  I used to dye my beard (and my pubic hair).  Both are significantly gray.
92.  Typically, I lay in bed reading some unimportant thing—a book I've read before, or one that is not particularly good, or a magazine—until I catch myself snoring.  Then I set aside what I was reading, turn out the light, roll over and lay awake in the dark for about another hour.
93.  It could be that I want a light white wine, some seafood, and something flaming for desert (perhaps the waiter?) almost as much as I want love.  Almost.
94.  I am a size queen, but the one I totally toppled into love with, Kenny, made up in intensity what he lacked in size, and then some.  So it is true; size does not matter.  Unfortunately, with some men, size is all there is.
95.  I am most anxious and lonely when I come home from work at night around 11:30 PM.  I am least anxious when I wake up about mid-morning.  I am never not lonely.
96.  Back when I quit sugar I had a friend who said, whenever I complained about something, "What are you going to do about it?"  I have been hearing her voice a lot lately.
97.  Perhaps spirits are more substantial than the physical walls and the dimensions of time through which they pass so easily.
98.  I went through my high school yearbook again last week.  It was a thoroughly unrewarding revisitation of embarrassments; a monument to all I missed and avoided.  Someday, if I find something to replace it, I'll throw it away.
99.  The guage of a person's life is not, "Does it matter more than most"; the question—if one needs to be asked at all—is, "What irreplaceably precious thing about this person's life am I failing to appreciate?"
100.  I believe nothing is everything, the end is the beginning, God is you, and Life is the laughter of the universe.

Thanks Mary.


 

saturday.

40 to go!
60.  I read the dictionary.
61.  I subscribe to National Geographic, though I do not know why, really.
62.  In my apartment are four computers.  Only one presently works.
63.  My bicycle chain needs oil, my bike seat needs to be replaced, and there's a huge hole in the middle finger of one of my gloves that must be sewn shut.  The hole started in January.
64.  I fantasize about the questions the interviewer will ask after my first book is published.  Actually, it could be my third or even fifth book—fantasies are easy that way.  I've imagined writing a good dozen or so books.  Does this make me a fantasy writer?
65.  I described this site to my family once as non-fiction writing, without the research.  That's because you've always been lazy, my sister concluded.  My brother and sister visited my site once, and went no further than here, and here.  They don't want to know.
66.  I usually think everything is my fault.
67.  Playing with a Ouija board with my aunt once, I asked it when my father would die.  At that time he was in his mid-fifties.  The board said 63.  He did.
68.  My room is a diorama in the museum of clutter.
69.  ..is not one of my favorite positions.  Spooning is.
70.  There is a terrifying place I should go, emotionally, but I don't.  I don't know anybody who makes such excursions into the emotional abyss (maybe I'm avoiding anyone who might challenge me), and at the mouth of that pit are all sorts of diversions encouraging me to go elsewhere.  I comply.
71.  I have been convinced, at least three seperate times, that my death was imminent.  I was wrong.
72.  I think there should be bare breasts in the Department of Justice, instead of naked ambition.
73.  I want to live—and I mean live for real, not like I do watching life, but like I have never done before, living life—at least once before I die.  (Refer to the abyss in #70).
74.  I sleep in my underwear.  Sometimes I even wear a cap.
75.  I brush my teeth daily, I seldom floss, I use a tongue scraper.  And Listerine.
76.  Most of my clothes are black.  Everything I've bought in the last year is.
77.  My right ear is pierced.  I usually do not wear anything in it.
78.  Basically I am a taker.  When I give, it is only because, for that moment, I figure I can afford it (spiritually, emotionally, etc.).  But I believe that on balance I am always in the red.  I am waiting for all that was ever stolen to be given back.
79.   I admitted a guy I knew from high school to the detox where I work.  When he realized who I was, he expressed—through a light mist of booze—the sympathy he used to feel for me when other guys would steal my lunch money. 
80.  I'm surprised I did not grow up to be the Unabomber.


Starting the last half.

50.  I stay until the credits finish rolling.
51.  I cried after Men In Black.
52.  I recently saw "Life is beautiful" and it is haunting me.
53.   I can't pay my bills and my rent. 
54.   Once in a while, I wake up 'foggy,' unable to concentrate or even think straight for ten whole seconds together.  This indicates I am going to have a seizure; in fact it is the effect of 'partial seizures' which are the beginning of a generalized seizure before it has spread throughout my brain.  If my thoughts are coherent enough, I can at this point take 3 mg of Ativan, and sleep for eighteen hours.  Somehow this prevents me from having a seizure, but it still costs a whole day.  I woke up that way this morning. 
55.   I do not want a lingering death.  But I believe that within the transition from the temporal to the metaphysical, though it may count from our perspective as only a minute or two, it may contain days, months, or even lifetimes of suffering.  I think it is funny how we use the phrase, 'Better off dead,' when we really have no idea.
56.   I am not sure, but I suppose human culture has improved since the Crusades.  I know Humanity has not.
57.   I like the sky to be gray and overcast, and and the ground to be white and snowy.  Everyone's mood descends closer to the mood I live in always, and I don't feel so all alone.  Blizzards are good.
58.   When I first get out of bed, I pee sitting down.  It relieves the need to aim.
59.   There is no such thing as a lone gunman in a political assassination.


"He got in one of the buildings and started shooting and throwing grenades, and carried on to the study hall where there were a lot of pupils," said Yona Emmanuel, a resident of Atzmona, which mixes pre-army training with religious study.

During the 15-minute rampage, the militant hurled a grenade into a trailer, incinerating a student in his bunk, and sprayed gunfire into the study hall, before being shot dead by a soldier.

The attacker was identified as Mohammed Farhat, from Gaza City. At 19, he was a year older than his victims.

the Guardian Unlimited

I feel sad, hopeless, depressed.  I need some food, some wine, and some serious recreation to cure my despair.  And as always, I still need to cry. 


 

friday.

Heaven is...  This could be another hundred things list.

I tried to cuddle with Daniel on the beach.  He was not in a cuddling mood just then.  Suddenly he turned toward me, and with his arms around me, I fell back on the sand with Daniel on top of me, hugging me.  At the same moment, I looked up and a shooting star flashed across the night sky.

Heaven is a moment.


 

wednesday.

There that's better.

35.  I do not believe in hell.  I believe in love, and therefore I believe there can exist an absence of love.  Every representation of hell, in literature and lore, is an incomplete effort to describe the hell that is love's absence.
36.  I believe in heaven, and have been there. 
37.  I love pasta, with garlic, olive oil and parmesan cheese.  I eat it almost every day.
38.  I had a boyfriend who hated garlic and onions.  I missed garlic then.  I don't miss it anymore.
39.  I love to blow my nose.
40.  Lost in Space was once my favorite TV show.
41.  My life is more than half over.  I could be wrong.
42.  I love to dance.  With women, with men, with strangers...
43.  I do not know how to be an adult around children; I know how to be a child around adults.
44.  Sometimes I think I am really quite profoundly insane.
45.  I like to laugh.  I laughed all the time when I was a baby.  I laugh when I am nervous.  I do not like to cry, so I almost never do.
46.  I started shaving my head right after Michael Stipe did.  He still has not noticed.
47.  My back is hairy.
48.  I think most people do work that does not suit them, and that we spend most of our talents dealing with our boredom and dissatisfaction.
49.  I do not contribute to National Public Radio; I contribute to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace.


26.  I hate Noah Adams' voice, and everything about Neil Conan.
27.  I take medication for epilepsy.  I took an antidepressant once for a little while.  All it did was improve orgasms, so I stopped taking it (see No. 3).
28.  I tend to fall in love with men who are ten years younger than me.  These days I could go twenty (that would make him 23), but most men that age are not so badly in need of a relationship that they'd be willing to scale my emotional Everest for one.
29.  I believe that HIV does not cause AIDS.
30.  I like Robert Siegel's voice.  My clairvoyant intuition is that Robert Siegel can be trusted, while the former two cannot.
31.  I procrastinate.
32.  I do not procreate.
33.  I know little of the world around me, and I need to look up references that people make to popular movies.  I know too much of the world inside me.
34.  I feel guilty because I am editing this post, which is time-tagged 1:20 PM, and it is actually 8:50 PM.


Here's a hundred things we don't know about me.  She inspired me.  Blame her. 

They won't be all together—like compiled and then posted—because I come when I come, and I write when I can, and life is not a test. 

1.  I like Dire Straits, the Eighties and the late Seventies.
2.  I am the youngest of five.  My oldest sister is dead
3.  I like sex more than I like relationship, and I feel I should change this. 
4.  I used to be a firefighter.  I delivered two babies, both girls.
5.  I hate my job.
6.  I usually hate myself; I was suicidal once.
7.  My father took me and my siblings to see the Sound of Music when I was in second grade.  We told the school that I was going to a doctor's appointment.  I still feel guilty, and I still am grateful.  He was a tremendously good man.
8.  Most days I sleep til noon.  Some days, I go to bed at dawn. 
9.  I have a switch on my doorbell, and it is usually off.
10.  I like vodka martini's with three olives.
11.  Garlic and olive oil are my friends.
12.  I want love more than anything.  I try to hide from it in sex, but I want love more than anything. 
13.  I'm not sure, but in the third grade, my best friend and I were in love, I think.  I never went past the sex.
14.  I am a writer.  This is a lie and I still don't know what the truth is.
15.  I have never smoked.  My last date was over two years ago.  He smoked exotic little cigarettes that smelled delicious.  We dislocated my shoulder having sex.  We had only the one date.
16.  My uncle did something to me when I was not quite three.
17.  I listen to classical music like I live life; they are both rich with meaning, and I give little attention to either.  But I keep them both close, just in case.
18.  I drink coffee like a fiend, and eat chocolate (dark chocolate) like an addict.
19.  My penis is shrinking.
20.  I don't drive or own a car.  I ride a bike (bicycle) 52 weeks a year.  I'm stuck somewhere between thirty years ago and now, and I can't find me.
21.  I have no contact with my family.  I have no contact with my family.
22.  I sleep on a futon that I fold up every morning, while the coffee brews.  The frame I salvaged off the street.
23.  If someone rings my doorbell, and I have not disabled it with my switch, then I flee into the bathroom from where I can peer out, unseen, through tiny spaces in the blinds and see the would-be visitor reflected in the windows next door when he finally leaves.
24.  There is a whole huge hell of a lot that I don't know, so if a computer crash irretrievably kills a post that I've been slaving over for hours just moments before I post it, then half of the time I will thank the spirit who saved me from an unforseen embarrassment; the other half of the time I will smash a coffee mug into a thousand pieces.
25.  I once threw a coffee mug through a TV screen.  Up til then, I had always wanted to do that.  That was almost ten years ago.  It was my last TV.

Stopping for now.  Got further than I planned to go.  That's nice on hikes and dates.  And on a 'things list' like this.


 

tuesday.

discovering america

And why should we believe that this is true? Why should we believe, just because they say they're going to close the propaganda office, that they actually are going to close the propaganda office?  "We have decided not to lie.  Honest."  It's like an Escher engraving—the hand drawing itself.  The act of drawing, and its result, are both part of the two dimensional image produced by an unseen artist. 

I'd like to think that I can see everything there is regarding the intrigues and deceits of government, and on a warm summer night near the shore under stars I can believe anything anyone tells me.  But in the harsh light of a cold dawn, my overlooked suspicions have often been confirmed. 

We are not a noble nation.  We are not a righteous people.  Least of all are we fearless.  We tolerate pronouncements of assassinations and kidnappings for the sake of, what, peace?  safety?  in the name of 'truth' and the American way?  After they float those balloons successfully, we have the gall to squirm with discomfort when they tell us they are going to lie.  (!)  What is it exactly that bothers us about this Office of Strategic Influence?  That it promulgates and disseminates lies?  Hardly.  We take those easily, with tea and lemon. 

Institutionalizing the culture of deception which exists in government lays bare something raw and sore—our collective conscience.  That's the only problem we have with the OSI.  Just give them an out of the way office, bury their budget within another, and for crying out loud, do not outright tell us about it! 

Myth precedes reality.  Joseph Campbell taught us this.  The myth of a New World preceded its discovery.  On an uncharacteristically optimistic note, I'd like to suggest that the myth of America will one day become a reality, too.  It will be a nation of free people gathered under principles which affirm the significance of the individual, and promote the inclusion of all.  There will be diversity imbued with equality.  America then will hold as its only might the truth, and will have learned how to rehabilitate sophisticated thugs and power-mongers like our present day politicians, enabling them to participate productively in the collective soul of America.  We will then stand as proof of these wild imaginings, rather than stand as we do now, as proof that such things are nothing but wild imaginings.