My Personal Tale:                                 
Reflections on Persecution of the Talented, Sensitive, and Unique; and Culture's Sick and Contradictory Purposes

Audio Rendition of "My Personal Tale: Reflections on Persecution of the Talented, Sensitive, and Unique; and Culture's Sick and Contradictory Purposes

Part 2:  How to Commit Soul Murder, for Dummies

by SillyMickel Adzema

My Personal Tale: 
Reflections on Persecution of the Talented, Sensitive, and Unique; and Culture's Sick 
and Contradictory Purposes
 Part Two: 
How to Commit Soul Murder, 
for Dummies

 by SillyMickel Adzema

It Started in Grade School

First we have to go back to grade school. I don't know when I got turned on to football, but I was young. And we'd play tackle football anywhere and everywhere -- with absolutely no helmets or padding, just the ball; and on any surface -- no playgrounds around but we had culm  banks to play on and ash fields for sports -- where we'd sometimes play baseball with sticks or limbs for bats and stones or pieces of coal or culm or shale for "baseballs"; nobody had any gloves either, which is probably good  because you're better off trying to catch a piece of flying stone or shale with your bare hands, you'd  never get the finesse needed to catch it with a bulky glove on your hand. So we played tackle football in the ashes too. It was better than the street, where -- though sure enough at times we tried tackle football on the hard macadam, it was just too iffy trying to protect yourself when you were coming down -- for the most part we were relegated to the poor substitute of touch football. To me it never compared to the pure pleasure of a clean tackles or that of a perfect run, body making split second subtle movements, as if time had stood still, to avoid tackles, grabs, to spin around grabs and have them sailing away with you spun right and still going, then head fakes having you run right past the tackler who's grabbing air where he was sure you were going, to make it cross the goal line.

I was a phenomenal runner and tackler. My friends could not believe that someone as small as myself would throw their entire body directly into the body of a runner two feet taller, with no thought of harm to my body, and fully concentrated on getting my arms legs and whatever around him to bring the big lunk down like he'd been split-second spider tied. On the flip side, no one could bring me down. When the goal line was in sight there was no one could catch me. When there were bodies all around and piled on top of me, I'd make some instinctive shrug and find myself free and they'd be behind me collapsing to the ground and wondering where I'd gone. It was pure instinct. I now know that my birth prepared me for this. Being delayed, and oxygen-starved, and yet finding the energy to come exploding out of the womb with a feeling that I had to do it all myself as my mother wasn't helping, well, I just could not stand being brought down, "suffocated" that way, and the flight to open air was to me the sweetest thing and the strongest motivation, with a life or death feeling about it which I think accounted for my phenomenal running. I'd play football with people who didn't know me, and they'd hog the ball and keep it within their clique for three quarters of the game. They'd be behind at that point, and the whole game I'd be saying, I can run, let me run one; and they'd say, ok, but not now. Then behind and in the fourth quarter, I'd get this, "ok, let's see what you can do."

"They'd  get me the ball and I'd run right through the tacklers, descending down on me all at once, and all they'd see is me coming out the other side, there to evade a few more tacklers, spinning, down goes another, I'm still going. Pickup; 30 yards. I'd get back to the huddle; and they'd be laughing like crazy. "Where the hell'd that come from?"

"Just give me the ball. I told you I can run."  Laughing hysterically they'd hike and hand me the ball, almost like they wanted to see what I could do with them just watching, not doing much in the way of blocking, they just couldn't belief how piles of tacklers hanging all over me would not bring me to my knees. But I didn't care, I was in heaven with that football in my hand and up against any number of tacklers; it was my chance to show them what I knew about myself, there's no way I could be brought down. And I'd show them again. No blocking.  "Pickup; 20 yards." 

They're still laughing when I get back to the huddle. Gus, I remember your laughing the most. You were captain of our team this one time that this sort of thing happened. And you were a ball hog, Gus. But I'll give you credit for wanting to win, because, when you saw what I could do, you laughed as if you'd been sitting on top of gold and just discovered  that and realized how funny that was not to see it. But once seen , it not too late, you were laughing like you'd won the lottery. "So what do we do now, " you'd say, "you need a break?"

"Nope. Just getting started. We don't got the touchdown do we?" And there you'd go laughing again.

"OK," laughing hysterically.  "I can't think of a play. Somebody else just make up something to put it in his hands. This is just too funny. They probably don't know what the hell has just hit them over there. This is going to be fun."

"How bouts I just make like I'm hiking it back to Gus," the Center might say, "And you're set off a little bit to the right behind me and just jump in front of the ball before it gets to him, and take off."

"Fine by me." And so it went. The touchdown was supersweet. I'd made it through all the other tacklers but one. They'd set Angelo down on the goal line, just standing there like a goalie in case I'd break free. And now it was only him and me. Instinctively I knew my strategy. I ran straight at him, as hard as I possibly could, making like I was going to try to run through him to get to the goal line. But also I was running with eyes and my whole posture intently focused on hitting him like a little to his left side, my going to the right. He saw that plan far off, and I played it to the hilt; that I was going to bowl into him to disrupt his tackle and glance off to the right into the end zone. He bought it completely, was waiting for his receipt and change, and meanwhile, being a bigger guy, was seeing himself clock me cold putting his entire bulk into my advance, directly head on.

I was a couple yards away, still playing that strategy with every movement and eye glance -- I never once took my eyes off that right side, it was like I was an arrow on its way to only one possible bulls-eye. At a full gallop, and  a yard, yard and a little away, I cut to the left, he was already coming forward to meet me on his right, my left. My sneakers slid in the mud in his direction and under him a little, but I was cutting with all I could to my left and leaning.  He was in the air then, but my upper body wasn't there, just some sneakers sliding in g in the mud below him. In another nanosecond, I was now moving to right myself and get my feet under me, off a foot and a half to the left of his body; his body meanwhile about to hit the ground, his arms grasping thin air.  I heard him hit the ground; my cut had brought my full-throttle run to a near complete stop.

So, hearing him hitting the ground, not having even touched me, I just kinda made a step forward, and I was in the end zone. I looked back at him and smiled. He smiled too. He said, "Ya got me. I was totally convinced . I never thought you'd cut." Angelo was a good sport.

So that's the kind of thing I experienced. I never owned any more gear than a helmet -- several sizes two big,  Philadelphia Eagles.

But I knew of this skill and my love of the game, much younger. I loved fall days. I loved fallen leaves. I watched TV and watched Jim Brown run; I'd think I could do that too. That's what I want to do. I know what it feels like to do and move like he moves. I can't wait. I'd watch old movies about Notre Dame and football. I developed a vision, a powerful overwhelming desire that saw my future at a big college that had ivy all over the campus buildings; and playing football; and then on to the NFL. This all while I was in grade school. I remember lying down with the football on an autumn day, when there was no one available to get up a game, just kicking it around and throwing catches to myself for a while, but then lying down in the soft mown grass on the side of a hill, smelling the autumn air, and the scent of the pigskin I was cradling like it was my best friend, under my right arm. Under my right arm where I envisioned it spending many glorious moments as I would clutch it on the way to touchdowns and glory in the future. I could not see anything upsetting this dream.

I lie there euphoric, envisioning this glorious life, this chance to use my talents and to show the world what I could do.  I couldn't  wait. My life was going to be great. Sure, I was smart, but I also had a phenomenal talent, and using it was something that gave me so much joy; so much that I was able to forget my unloving, mean, draconian father.

I would  have to make some sacrifices. I went to a Catholic grade school, and we knew each other - about 40 of us -- from first grade and had seen each other grow each year and we knew each others experiences -- the bad ones -- with the mean nuns and felt sympathy for each other. I loved those forty kids -- the guys and the gals -- and they were like a second family -- one where there wasn't all the screaming and hollering like at home. But this school continued right through junior high and high school and had only one sport to go out for. Basketball. How many times I had the thought that I wished they had football.

But my desire to play football was all-important. And with my whole family knowing and signing the papers and all that -- my parents would have to do that sort of thing -- I switched from the Catholic school to the local public school in Seventh Grade, which was two years before you could go out for the foot ball team, but I both (1) wanted to be established there, and (2) hoped that somehow they would  let me go out for the team, wouldn't have to play, just to practice and perfect my skills and get the joy of playing in practice, was all I'd expect.  So I switched school with a heartache for the friends I left behind, who I've never forgotten to this day, and never stopped loving either, and  also an anticipation of a joy of following my life's dream. I was on my way to being somebody, and I had to do this.

Yes, in fact, while I was still in seventh grade I did go to the football coach and ask if I could go out for the team. Coach Wasliewski didn't take me seriously (I always felt that if I could only have expressed how important it was to me, that maybe he'd give me a break; but at that age I didn't have such words, or such confidence to express myself). Of course, I'll never forget what he said. He smiled and grabbed the bicep of one arm, saying "Why don't you wait a couple years till you got some meat on those bones?" Now, I was strong as I'd been working out with weights, and such, to build myself up and to be all that I could be, going well back into grade school. Still, I took his words to be code that the protocol would not be broken; it just wasn't something that they'd consider doing.

So for the next two years, while going to school, and getting my good grades as usual; I took every spare moment I could find to read books on football, play football, find any games I could on weekends and show up. I'd generally play both Saturday and Sunday. There'd usually be games on the park, the side of the river, up to the dike, and I'd overcome my shyness and play with these strangers who'd show up. And if there wasn't a game there I'd go into Kirby's park looking for one. Most of the time I found one. If I didn't I'd work out or run or something.

(Cont'd, top of next col.)

My Personal Tale, cont'd

(Cont'd, from bottom of col. 2

So, two long years. I did a lot else. Growing up. Being attracted to girls. First dances. First kiss. First girlfriend, second, uh , third, don't remember. And every spring I'd fall in love with Nickie, though Ernestine was my first love, and my secret love, the one I always regretted breaking up with. She was the only female who "got" me, and this was in seventh grade, often during the lunch period. And by this I mean she seemed to understand who I was,  to see a certain specialness in me that I was trying to hide. The next person to "get" me didn't come along until I was 40 years old, and she is my wife now. There were many girlfriends, but I don't believe I was really "seen" or "gotten" except for those two times. And both of them had this characteristic that I felt they were my best friend, that I could talk to about anything and never be misunderstood or put down, and that I would be supported in everything I believed and thought. It was also great to feel that they thought the things about me that were different, and which I aspired and believed in choosing to be different, were great. They even admired those things in me; where others would not be interested or would be confused or just not get it.

So anyway, despite my life at home, I was feeling like I was making my life's dreams come true, and I was happy -- a little lonely at times, especially in the beginning -- but generally happy, and then happier, as the two year waiting period was coming to an end.

Finally, in the summer of '64, I showed up for football and got the permission slip we all had to bring in, signed by our parents, before anything more could be done. What transpired is still hard to relate. But maybe now you'll understand why.

I took it home all gleeful, and happy, like it was the first day of a brand new life. I showed it to my mother, excitedly. To my surprise, she got very serious. She said something like, "your father and I have talked and we have to talk to you about this."

I'm sensing a problem, like, yep, it would be typical, what am I going to have to do, take out the garbage, plus, whatever, whatever, and help Dad paint the house next summer, and so on, and so on, so that you could  use your power to refuse like it was money. Yep, that would be typical.

Well, I had to wait till my Dad got home that evening. I'll skip the leadup, and just tell you what I was told. As I stood there unbelieving I heard the most outrageous crock of bullshit I ever had heard in my life. I knew immediately that my father was hating me and trying to crush me; and that was the reason for their refusal to sign. I heard them saying -- with my mother doing as much of the betrayal as my Dad -- that they'd heard you could get hurt in football, and that they would not sign because they didn't want me getting any injured.

OK, so we got here parents that beat me with a strap when I was so small that I could be picked up by my father with one hand and held by one leg to be whipped. Parents that said not a word about us playing football in the street or on ashes or coal with no pads or even helmet whatsoever. These were parents that let my brother and I, he 2 and 1/2 years older, go hitchhiking on the highways up to go camping when  I was only in second grade, him in like fifth, even hitchhiking up to the amusement park, both still in grade school. These are parents that knew of my hopes and dreams since grade school, who signed the papers for me to switch schools, after sixth grade, knowing the one and only reason I asked to do that. They were aware of my working out since grade school, playing football on weekends. They knew I believed I was gifted and that I hoped to have a life playing at a big university and then going onto pro football, because I talked it up at every opportunity; and they saw me walking around with paperback books in junior high about how to play football and plays and strategies, and so on, books that I studied along with my schoolwork. So I'd been preparing my whole childhood since maybe second or third grade for this moment. It was the meanest thing that anyone had ever done. I felt like they were out to kill  off any chance of happiness in my life, so that I could be as miserable as them. And that was largely the case. I begged, I pleaded, I cried, I screamed. My younger brother remembers it more clearly than me. He said to me, after we were well grown up, Yea, I remember you crying, screaming, begging, holding it out and pleading "sign it, sign it, please sign it. Please, please, and so on." Your face was red. It went of for days.

Yes, it did. There was not crack in their position. My Dad was determined to keep me from doing anything that would be a reminder to him of his lot in life. He was determined to drag me into his hell hole with him. Me and all my siblings. His self-esteem was so pathetically low, that he could only feel he had done good in his life by stepping on the crushed souls of his children, hoping  they would not shine very brightly and would not make him feel worse about his miserable life.

What does all this have to do with Michael Jackson? As  you read what I have to say about his life and what was done to him, you will know that I have more than "book knowledge" on this subject; you will know that I have intimate knowledge of the workings of both his mind and those of his detractors.

But  it wasn't till he died, and I focused again on him, also heard a little more on TV about him, the kinds of things that were not being told, that were being left out during his time of persecution, that I reflected more, then more, and even writing this today was totally unplanned, as my writing led to reflection, which I wrote as the realizations came to me.

Yea, I know a little bit about this subject. I know it enough to hate it; to hate the way that people scapegoat those that make them feel inferior; the way they try to crush people with talent and sensitivity because it makes them feel bad about themselves. 

Considering  the fact that there are people in the world like my Dad, and the Santa Barbara prosecutors of Michael Jackson, as well as al l the talk show haters, and Joe Blow pilers-on to his persecution, I am more convinced than ever that Michael Jackson was totally innocent, and that what was said about him was concocted in the minds of people more "pervy" by far than Michael. And I mourn his persecution, which eventually took his life, more strongly. And I am more motivated to do what I can, like these articles, to spread the word about these evil workings in the social- cultural rituals of peoples all over the world; these rituals by which sick people find innocent people who by their goodness make them realize their inferiority, but since they have evil others to share their hatred with, they can  impress  sickly twisted views into the populace, which, vociferously upheld and drilled home by other twisted souls who feel inferior in the face of talent, and they have to feel like they are gods, for some reason, will do anything it takes, including lying to bring down the object that brings up their truth about themselves.

The Wrapup You Didn't Expect

So that's my story. And I should say, you know, I mean.... sad story.

I'm much older now and it's not like I've forgotten it...Like I said, I've been through primal therapy.... I don't want to forget it.

But, you see, having gone through Primal... experiencing it, along with the other ways I've been screwed over... I've accepted it; and it doesn't affect me, or push me, or anything.

I've learned to appreciate my Dad; even to love him later in life...and my mother...seeing them as poor souls who had it so bad that.... I'm just glad I didn't get their lot in life.

Oh sure, as a kid... as a kid I just hated; I was so mad, I hated.

But you see, I didn't know two things -- that I learned in my life -- but it took a lot of life experience and Primal and so on.... 

I had to learn...that cruel people do cruel things not knowing they are being cruel; and not being able to help it.... They're driven...by cruel things that have been done to them.  It's always: "There but for the Grace of God go I."

If we're fortunate enough to be able to change our ways, to not be so cruel, to be kinder, gooder... to help people... that's why we should!  Because not everybody can. Some people are just too crushed inside, more crushed than me.

And the other thing is..."OK, so that was football, y'know... but I had other talent....

And I realized in life that it's not . . . . Who is really in charge of this life is not my parent. I began to realize that nothing happens, not even a blade of grass moves... in the wind...unless by the will of God.  I surely believe that... Because I've seen it... in my life. How many times I've planned things, I went to have; something else happened that was better for me.

What I'm saying is:  There's your feeling of destiny, and your feeling of how it should work out... and then there's you know ... you may know your talents, but you don't know your goal.  You don't know what God's divine plan is for your destiny. In the end, I could just think that maybe I might have got football... and been a jock... and played Pro Football and everything.  I might've been one of those businessmen they always turn out to be; and become a Republican like they always turn out; and never gone and to school and gotten that passion for knowledge... that passion...for knowledge...to know...incredible things that the great minds have known for millennia... passion for knowledge....

And then to actually find out about the way of feeling my emotional scars, and to go into that and actually do it, and to get the benefit of that ... would I have done any of that if I had gone on into football?  

And who knows if I had gone into football if I might not have had something happen to me as a Pro where I might have had some kind of weird creepy accident or had my.... people have died on the playing field... I mean God only knows your fate in life and when something, some brick wall is blocking the way, even if it is your greatest desire -- and there's nothing you can do about it -- well, you gotta know, that God is protecting you there... from something that you know not what...

I found out, I found that out. I even had a house fire. I thought, "What are you doing, God, trying to kill me?"

I had a house fire that burned down all the books, all the books I had planned, for the rest of my life....

It took me ten years... well, nine full years for sure for me to realize that that was the greatest gift I could receive because it freed me from all those old books -- some of which are so important that I will bring them out in some form or other...

But it freed me to have a style -- not an academic style, but a style all my own. It freed me to write, to speak, be comical, to act ... to be me! In a much freer way than I would have been had I stayed with all those academic books that I was going to write -- trapped into academic kind of writing, which very few people would read.

Also, I realize now I got so much coming up; I got so much more material, and it's so much more... in some ways it's much better than before.  It's so much better than what I had planned. I wouldn't have come to it otherwise. 

Oh, and this is so much, this is so much....

My life?  I realize had to be exactly the way it was and even my father... You know I can forgive my father.  It was hard! But you know? It didn't kill me. 

It had it's blessings that I might have resisted. It helped me to know what's good, in family, in groups and stuff. It helped me to appreciate love. It helped me to understand love and to be even more sensitive because I knew my Dad had been miserable. So I was totally committed to being sensitive and to being all that I could be. Because I knew what it was like to be well, I guess, smaller... I knew what a small person looked like. Although for he, it was probably all that he could be.

He would be the inspiration for all of his children to be better, to do better, to raise their children better, which they all did.  My nieces and nephews are wonderful; they're beautiful.

Though my siblings and I all carry scars. They, my my brothers and sisters, carry more scars than me because of Primal.

Can you imagine, I'm going into realms I feel so happy about. You think I think about football?  Hardly.

My joy, my greatest joy; the things that's giving me joy now is the thought of helping somebody out; helping people out.  I can't think of anything better.

You see I've come from so much suffering, and still survived over and over again. A lot of it I did on my own, like my birth. 

And so I've born me. 

I went into Primal, and other things that I put in, coming out of suffering...

I know so many things; I mean I know things; I know I can help people, through the therapy; and I also know things that I can tell people that will, how you say, "ease their mind"? 

I know things that are true; that if only they know, you see, because it took me a long time to get to them... but they are true. And they can relieve the suffering that they're feeling unnecessarily.

I can't save everybody; but I know that my greatest joy is doing what I can for the people that God puts in my life, that God brings to me....

So, it's not a sad story. It's not a sad story at all. What the story is, is a story of authenticity. As I was talking about in "Message from Michael," -- it's a story of authenticity.  It is -- by bucking and defying culture -- which is exactly what I had to do.

So, that's the dilemma of culture, and, I thank Michael Jackson for the message of his life and for all the wonderful things that he's done.  As well, I thank him for his personal contribution to my understanding of me.

As I said at the end of "Message from Michael," this is no. this person is not lacking, this person's life was not a failure or tragic. He lived larger than life... He let himself be all that he could be to the umpteenth degree, surpassing everyone and no one surpassing him that could dance like him

And so I say, Is it the length of your life that's important? Or is it the richness of the LIFE that's in your life that's important. 

I think Michael Jackson is happy sleeping with the angels.  I think he's finally at peace.

Thank you, Michael.

This is SillyMickel Adzema.

That's my story.

END