Free The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones by Amiri Baraka

the Pullman, those flat, dry sandwiches the railroad sold. But G.L. figured that
he
could sell some sandwiches too, for G.L., since it was free enterprise and whatnot. So he had my grandmother (and we helped too) make spiced ham sandwiches with cheese and mayonnaise, modest but colored-good. The whole kitchen table would be laid out with “G.L.’s sandwiches.” My grandmother turned it into a real cottage industry, and it was the focus of many family discussions. As to what and why I ain’t entirely clear, sometimes there seemed like there was some conflict about “G.L.’s sandwiches” but I can’t say. I just ate some. And figured as I got older that it was a hell of agood idea. Cause when the dry old RR sammiches give out (or before they give out) G.L. would slide Nana’s sammiches in there and take down the bux. I thought it was hip.
    One day much later there was a heated argument, evening to late evening, and stomping around and actual bad words. And my uncle was calling my father “a nincompoop.” It shocked me. “A nincompoop.” Goddam. Why he have to be all that? And not much later we had broke up, the Russ-Jones family connection had broke up and for a while we went different ways. That really turned me around, but that was later.
    Mao points out how we move from perception to rational knowledge to changing our practice, like the three levels of knowledge. And for much of our lives we are at the mostly perceptual level. We see and react, are touched by, moved, cry, scream, pout, taste, but that is all. So much moves just above us and we might call it anything. A lotta stuff go by we don’t even comment on, just turn our head or miss it as it moves, we are fundamentally baffled or it’s just too much too much what with the other stuff we got to walk with and be practically responsible for.
    But then we try to make theories out of our perception. We try to explain what was or is making repeated indents upon our senses, life. We rationalize and give something a name, a number, try to recognize a persistent quality to some element of sorrow, distance, feeling.
    Then we do something if we can. Based on that step up opening into higher consciousness, when this does come. Quiet desperation could sum up far too many in this sliver of world this sliver of time, passing, this dot of organism, part of the immensity of coming into being, development, going out of being, transformation. Ah well. From time to time we do reorder our lives.
    The world has changed so much since my youth, and I could lay it out to what degree in many surface ways. Even some important fundamental ways. And I want, more than anything, to chart this change within myself. This constant mutability in the face of the changing world.
    Childhood is like a mist in so many ways. A mist in which a you is moving to become another you.
    What the school says you learned and were responsible for is way off far away from what you came away with in a practical sense. The reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, social studies, shop, history, penmanship, gym we got was one thing. But learning about dicks and pussies and fags and bulldaggers. Seeing the reaction to cocksuckers and motherfuckersand sonafabitches and bastards. Understanding what fucking was and what it had to do with sucking. All these things and such as that.
    The games and sports of the playground and streets was one registration carried with us as long as we live. Our conduct, strategies, and tactics, our ranking and comradeship. Our wins and losses. (Like I was a terrible terrible loser and still am.) I would fight, do anything to stop losing. I would play superhard, attacking, with endless energy to stop a loss. I would shout and drive my team on. Stick my hands in the opponents’ faces, guard them chest to chest, or slash through the line from the backfield and catch them as they got the pass back from center. Or take the passes and cut