13 | April | 2014 | The Poesie of Igor Goldkind

YOU DON’T KNOW ME AT ALL

I just lost a friend of many years, a friend I had worked with, drank with, ate with and whom I admired dearly for his talent, his fortitude and his focus. A friend whom I had met when he was just embarking on his career and was gently hustling himself through the corridors of the marketplace, politely and humbly showing his ware and meekly accepting meagre earnings for great work.

I lost my friend because of my politics.

My friend was an artist, trying to work in comics.
He was a unique talent; who when he first started, could barely draw figurative forms.

It didn’t matter.

His vision and his execution were so unique, so crucially significant that he was admired by many even before he became a fixture on the professional landscape.

I will not name him here nor indicate his indentity because as of yesterday, we are no longer friends and can never be again. Ever.

And this hurts me so greviously, I cannot even weep for the loss.

My friend was and is a great talent and he changed the topgraphy of his marketplace not just once but each and every time he tried something new. He has had many imitators, many of whom remain my friends. He spawned imitators and admirers alike wherever and whenver he hooked his hat: be it as an artist, an illustrator, designer, animator, film maker, writer, aesthete, intellectual, gourmet or just plainly charming, nice man.

But he is no longer my friend.

He did not understand, he did not comprehend, he did not feel for why I have taken my stand against English bigotry, predjudice and racism; in the actions I have taken and that I continue to take described elsewhere.

Instead he chastened and condemned me for what he did not understand.

In the end, he was my friend for 30 years and HE DID NOT KNOW ME AT ALL.

I am aggrieved but I am accepting and I will move on.
I do not need such friends.

It was only the third time, the third disappointment I had endured from my friend in 30 years. He had come through for me on numerous occasions with his generosity and his giving of self, lending his reputation to my risky endeavors and he owes me nothing, nothing but the self-reflection he so blankly lacks.

But he has let me down for the last time, in word and in deed.
My friend as good a man as he is, could not keep his word.

And words are ALL that I have.

He is not a narcissist, (nor no more an egotist than am I); he is an Artist and… but … if not for his talent, not for his achievement,
the word ‘narcissist’ would aptly describe him.

Yeah, I know. I’m digging this grave and I will jump in after him when I’m done.

I invite anyone reading this, anyone at all to connect me with me, reach out to me; my heart and my mind are open and giving.
If you do not understand what I am doing, if you have questions, if you need to understand why; it’s easy:

Just. Ask. Me.

I am human, I make mistakes (many, many, many mistakes) and the confessional style of my Facebook pages are intentional; I mean, that I don’t alter the trail of my mistakes, I just correct them and then account for my corrections. This is life, this is human; and so I am.

Making mistakes and correcting them is what we do, it is our duty as human beings.

To not forgive a mistake, to not understand human nature to have no empathy for the travails of others whose motives or experience you may not at first comprehend is well, to be less than human

If you prick me, I *will* bleed.

DON’T JUDGE ME. JUST ASK ME.

I will take the time to tell you, to make you understand how my actions are not mine, they are not self-righteous rantings of a self obsessed fool (although easily and understandidly mistaken for such).

They are what I HAVE TO DO.

And if you do not understand, I will explain it to you.
Not here, but in private: ASK ME ANYTHING; ASK ME ANYTHING AT ALL

However, as with my friend, if you take personal offence at my condemnation of some of your national traits, of some of the sheen to your surface; if you are so jingoistic and loyal to your class, that you would rather offend me, injure me, and denounce my entreaties, then please, please un-friend me now. Really.

I DON”T NEED YOU AT ALL.

Please, either ask me why, what and wherefore or please, please bugger off.

I don’t need any more loss than I have already endured.

I don’t need to justify what I MUST DO, to you or to anyone.

If you to ask me I will tell you, But do not judge what you do not understand. Do not condemn me, do not accuse me of having a ‘melt down’, of being unhinged, of being ‘obsessed with racism’ of being ‘nuts Unfriend, me by all means, but do not condemn what you do not, cannot understand.

THOSE WHO CONDEMN ME HAVE MORE TO FEAR THAN HE WHOM THEY HAVE CONDEMNED~ Giordano Bruno (Google him, for chrissakes)

I will explain myself to you or anyone who will listen until the cows come home; that is my calling, my job as a writer. I will explain myself until you understand who I am actually doing this for:

PRIVATE VICTOR GOLDKIND (deceased), IVAN MOSCOWICH (survivor of Auschwizch, Belsen AND Dachau), PHILLIPE PETROV, EMMA GOLDKIND (perished in Auschwizch), PATRICIA GOLDKIND (Belsen), DAVID GOLDKIND (Belsen), UNKNOWN EX-SS OFFICER (Whom I met in a beer garden in Heidelberg waiting for my father and drank with. He would not stay to meet my father because he told me that it wasn’t right.) And for all the German people who were the most afflicted, the most injured by their own complacency, their refusal to look in the mirror and see that their own sense of social propriety had undone their morality.

THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE, THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE THEY CALL ISRAEL, THE AMERICANS WHO HAVE FORGOTTEN THEIR OWN GENOCIDE (that paled the Nazis in scale and cruelty), THE BRITISH PEOPLE WHO HAVE FORGOTTEN WHO DREW DREW THE MAPS OF THE ARAB WORLD,

THE PRISONERS OF BOTH CONSCIENCE AND PROPERTY. THOSE IMPRISONED BY THEIR OWN AFFLUENCE AND CONSTANT ANXIETY OF IT’S LOSS (You cannot lose what was never rightly yours.)

YES, J’ACCUSE. J’ACCUSE MY ENGLISH FRIENDS AS MUCH AS MY AMERICAN ONES.

IF YOU ARE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, IF YOU WILL NOT FACE HOW YOU ARE COMPLICT IN THE WORLD THAT YOU SEE BEFORE YOU,

THEN YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

Ultimately and finally.

I will briefly mourn the passing of my 30 year friendship, but like the long cold walk of 1944, sometimes you lose comrades who trip and fall over their own pretensions. If you stop to help them, you get shot, if you trip and fall, you get shot, if you extend your hand to help, you get shot. This is the real world. And in the real world people die and people lose friends.

So What?