When there are no more words to say...

I was trying very hard to keep this out of my blog because I don't have a single positive thought left in my body regarding this, so instead of the long political rant and full blown academic essay I started and deleted about 20 times, I am just going to give up trying all together. I am now done discussing Trayvon and Zimmerman. I have been progressively getting more and more upset since Saturday and the words are choking in my throat. I am also losing respect for people and their ignorant comments; some people I never would have even considered would say such things. I have decided to now tread softly because the ignorant and those who choose to sleep to the truth are far too many and it really upsets me to the very bone. Ignorance is not bliss; ignorance is destructive and as we can clearly see....it kills. Simon Peter Andrew Martin, your #teamwakeup comment partially inspired this. We do need to wakeup, because ignorant sleepwalkers are all around us and they are so very dangerous.

Instead of going off the rails and ranting uncontrollably, I'm going to share the monologue I memorized for a recent audition. It is so suitable because it is a discussion of ignorance:

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me, they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me. Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It's when you feel like that, our of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's seldom successful. I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. I learned in time though that it is possible to carry on a fight against them without their realizing it [...] I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have been also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man."

                                                                   Ralph Ellison "Invisible Man"

#R.I.P.TrayvonMartin. Our thoughts and prayers are with you Martin family. I am so very sorry that this happened to you; this is something that should never happen to anyone.