Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

128. SOME COCKAMAMIE RANT BY LINDY (nyc, 1978):

James Baldwin wrote a book called 'Another Country' and I read that pretty voraciously just as I read 'If Beale Street Could Talk' and 'Giovanni's Room' which was much of what I was indwelling 'it's a street thing blackness is a street thing (someone told me this on Great Jones Street on a wintry morning of ice and snow) it's the self-identification of the people on the street Bed-Stuy Harlem even Watts in L.A. - Harlem it's not so much the streetness of Harlem but it's more the history and the badness of the vibes and black is the baddest in the best sense I mean THAT'S where you have to go to make sense of the magic of existence and you pass through all that streetness and weight and terror and you come out a more dimensional person' and I said 'hey I'm white what do I know about black about blackness about BEING black how do I get into that?' and he said 'I can't put it into words' and I said 'well screw that then because you just started this whole shit with words and now you just try to drop it all because you say you 'can't put it into words' - what the hell's that ? some half-hearted cockamamie attempt to get away with something?' and I knew that was racist just in the saying of it but figured he wouldn't because you see there was a cock and there was a mamie and both of them together denote some plantation-era black stud back in the slave-quarters being claimed and solely by 'Mama' for his size and prowess - as in 'you see dat ! dat's the cock o' mamie' and every time this black stud got caught in the coming or going from mamie's shack he'd get out of it by weaving some 'cockamamie' story about where he'd been or why he was out and anyway 'it sure did beated de' troubles I cudda' got'.