Invisible: Man

A Story by Abishai100

A 'memoir' of being/feeling a minority in the United States, with referential ideation(s) of 'real' distance(s).

An adaptation of Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison). Thanks for reading!

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I read the Ellison work in college (Dartmouth) and cursorily in high-school (New Jersey) and now live as an adult Algerian-American ethnic-minority/biracial man in Chicago (United States). The Ellison novel about the metaphysical political experience of 'feeling' like an ethnic-minority in the world affected my sense(s) of self-conscious intelligence and intuitions about social interaction(s) and the value(s) of 'being' democratic.

The circus came to town, and the challenging Windy-City of Chicago, home of the Bulls-Bears market, was host to the splendid colors and lights and wheels of the great traveling circus, with its fun and standard Ferris-wheel. I decided to wander into the circus on the first week of its operation(s), and I felt unusually 'romantic' and metaphysical about my own political-IQ that week. I'd played chess with a random African-American man in the Park that week and began ruminating on feelings of feeling human in the world of pluralism politics and ethnic-minority life, intuition, and even good humor(s).

I decided to think of myself as a wandering thinker. I'm an inheritor of fortunes and I made $15M on the NYSE with Ford Motor Company in the first decade of the new millennium and had been living off the 'flower' of this good-fortune. Mostly, I walk around Chicago and think about the existential qualities of being an ethnic-minority man, of Catholic faith/practice(s), and I like sports and the culinary-arts. I'm still single, and I'm a post-grad learning to mingle in this new-era of pluralism-IQ and street-politics/consumerism. I love cheeseburgers and Facebook-IQ.

That's the life-mind occupying my head when I encountered the 'vision' of a great ethnic-minority young woman at the Windy-City circus I walked into that 'momentous' week in my post-grad life. She had glasses (like me!) and struck me as quite beautiful, an African-American 'flower' of striking visage and charming smartness and self-aware confidence. I thought of myself as the protagonist in the Ellison-work/novel and wondered what this black lady's name was and thought about approaching her without any good reason (maybe to post a pic/selfie with her for Facebook-IQ).

GIRL: Just reading my race-comic (in my pocket!).

ME: You're beautiful.

We kissed and made love. I didn't see her until the following year, when I walked into the Windy-City WalMart. She was there again, and I'd still not asked her her name but she now knew mine. She smiled and waved at me, and I knew our 'moment' had passed so I continued to just proceed to the Health-section of the iconic American shopping-complex to get my Vitamin-C. I'm still an ethnic-minority man of course in the pluralism-symbolic United States.

CLERK: So you want this Vitamin-C info and how it pertains to 'ethnic-minority' nutrition/vitality today (suddenly)?
ME: I just feel 'ethnically' complicated today in this store (suddenly), you know (ha)?

Living in Chicago affords one a special sense of self-aware confidence, and I enjoy the life I live, and I'll never ever forget that lovely African-American woman I met at the Windy-City circus while feeling 'pensive' about the Ellison-novel that week in the big city of the United States. She made me think of the 'mortality' of being a minority and the 'romance' of curiosity of pluralism experience(s); and of the 'immortality' of race-politics consciousness and perhaps the stories it inspires (for anyone).

I got this Alien comic book and thought of the race-comics that lovely black-girl was reading at the Windy-City circus and thought about what she'd say if she discovered I was (suddenly) fascinated by sci-fi/horror stories/comics re-presenting our 'natural' Earth-IQ fantasies/paranoia about 'engagements' with odd consciousness or other-worldly existences. The Alien comic made me think of being Algerian-American, somehow a 'soldier' of fortune/democracy.