WHY WRITE ABOUT KIM ROTHSTEIN AND BICYCLE THEFT?

In Response to one Ron Pruitt, so-called

by David Arthur Walters

I have been studying and writing now for thirty years without material remuneration except for a small, unsolicited honorarium from the Catholic press in St. Louis for an article I wrote entitled 'Professor of Love' about Pitirim Sorokin, and then an unsolicited box of frozen foods , a box of clothes and a few dollars from Minerva Bloom, a Mexican poet who took my long essay, 'Reflections In The Well,' about my experience with postmodern dancer Deborah Hay, converted it into a booklet and went about selling it without my consent on the Internet and in bookstores. What's not to like with people like that in the world?

I retired from a promising career and literally wrote myself into poverty, presently surviving well below the poverty line on Social Security. What the Beghards called Lady Poverty is a great friend of mine, just as Saint Louis would be if only I were a submissive author. I submit to no one: I publish my work on internet sites that are compensated for the provision of their platforms.

So pray tell, why do I write? I am, first of all, a Curious Man inasmuch as I am curious about everything I happen to encounter. I love to learn, and I learn by organizing my thoughts in writing, leaving open the question as to the difference between words and thoughts.

So my objective is a selfish one, I suppose, yet I, like Sartre, flatter my existence by thinking that I write for spiritual freedom; that is, to free others by freeing myself. The word that comes to my own mind for this noble endeavor is "edification," a constructive process of enlightenment, motivated, one might say by vanity, an emptiness that strives to be fulfilled by something, a process that is perhaps much ado about nothing.

Indeed, I am urged to leave an edifice of self-enlightenment behind, an edifice built up on the Internet, and I fear it will not be preserved by my heirs, that the virtual tombstone I have built shall be lost even to the search engines one day. I am compelled to persevere, nevertheless. For what else can I do but do what I was impelled to do even during those early days in grammar school when we juvenile delinquents experimented with foul words and the bottle of spirits we found in the alley? I do my very best to avoid what idealist philosophers also deny in the name of Reality, something our parents called "reality." Alas, smoking cigarettes in its attic after sneaking out of a Boy Scout meeting in its basement, we almost burned down Grace Cathedral, a most popular Episcopalian edifice.

I am a social being because of and despite what my father called my "conflict with authority." At least my weapons, my words, are abstract, all created by Man, not by me but for a few neologisms. The more I strive to use words differently, the more general I become and all the more like the Man I conflict with. And then I regret the conflict, our fight with one another in one way or another, a battle said to be necessary for the progress of our race. Oh, how I would be Eternal Love if only I could rid myself of awful ambivalence. Only Jesus and 'god' spelled backwards love me unconditionally, and Jesus is not in this world despite what the Death-of-Godders say.

Mind you that writing for nothing material and submitting nothing for rejection by editors in hopes of being the greatest author ever or never known has had its spiritual rewards in the form of a few people who have kindly encouraged me, all complete strangers in the beginning except for my poetic father. "Like father like son" is true , but not entirely.

I found some salvation of my self-taught craft in the accepting editors of the Honolulu Star Bulletin and Advertiser, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, and West Hawaii Today who published many of my letters. A free newspaper naturally called The Sun ran my long piece about the mystical experience I had in a Waikiki used book store. I received many flattering rejection slips from magazine editors before I stopped  submittingmy work for rejection slips when the Internet came along. The now defunct Miami SunPost published many of my articles in hardcopy, without compensation except for the pleasure a writer gets in seeing his work circulated in print. The city attorney of the City of Miami Beach warned the SunPost owner to stop publishing my exposition of city affairs, and she did. My paper copies are all yellowed now and I seem to be saving copies as credentials that nobody will ever care about.

Of course the advent of the public Internet was a great boon to writers who felt they were ignored and would become famous if not rich without editors, and even rich if they could get a dime for each click on their articles, as one platform tried before it went down in flames as fraudsters posted trash and created automatic systems to click on them. The best site has survived over the years, Authorsden.com, thanks to the dedication of its owner to the cause.

Yes, internet sites were aflame with aspirants to fame and/or fortune, and many were those given to "flaming," using "handles," fake names, to make scorching attacks on their fellows. I received plenty of insults and a couple of checks for my traffic, but the checks did not amount to much since I wrote for the reasons given, and my posts were so long few people came back for more. Too long? Life for me is one long page, and my art is art for the sake of Art, take it or leave it, no way to make money.

The exceptions who liked my work were Sara Mosher, a Canadian writer and toastmaster; Cathy Dellinger, a poet and artist ensconced in Maine; Theresa Jodray, living in North Pole, Alaska, a former rock-band musician turned ghost hunter who found my mother's unmarked grave in Phoenix. And there was Richard, a retired FBI analyst and anti-feminist who loved to critique my love of women in general, and his great Canadian friend, Helga Marion Ross, a lover and publisher of everything Southern including the Civil War. Edith Runner of Honolulu recently critiqued many of my pieces but got bored by my Miami Beach reporting. I do not blame her. News is an ephemeral thing that has distracted many authors. Still I miss her.

Fortunately for a writer who needs positive feedback, I met a woman on the Metro Mover in Miami who appreciates my intellectual endeavors, one Betty von Houser of Tennessee, and we became real-world friends.

That is not to say that I do not appreciate the hateful criticism I have received over the years. I use some of those self-portraits for characterizations in novels and novellas. Some of intentionally insulting criticism actually flatters me.

For instance, one Ron Pruitt, so-called, was so moved by an article I wrote about Kim Rothstein, the former wife of the infamous Florida fraudster, Scott Rothstein, that he found my email address and offered this portrait of himself from behind his keyboard:

"I just read your July 2016 Miami Mirror piece about poor Kim Rothstein. Although there is significant competition among bloggers for stories that distort facts and use gender politics to nullify reality, I must congratulate you on producing one that is undoubtedly a stellar representative of that genre. I trust by now you have moved on to other things besides writing for a living. I'm sure that's for the best. P.S. Mea Culpa. I see from pursuing your recent work, you are advocating change to Miami Beach bicycle theft policy. I'm impressed that you are involved in such important social dynamics."

I was so flattered that this poor soul, whatever his name is, who probably loves sports, has had issues with women, and is most likely a wealthy city commissioner or even a self-loathing reporter, took the trouble to look me up and provide me with his self-portrait in an attempt to insult me, that I kindly responded as follows:

"Thanks, Mr. Pruitt. I have never written for a living. I am retarded, I mean retired to "poverty" to do what I love to do for nothing but pleasure. I'm more interested in general management than particular content. A lady friend of mine loves bicycling. I have not been on one since I was 12. She had four bikes stolen. Of course I was sympathetic. The handling by the police department, as usual, and the commission, as usual, interested me. Regarding gender and genre, I'm glad you noticed that. My pieces were satirical responses to a colleague who covered the scandal for a major. He laughed so hard he almost cried. Regards, David"

That good reporter was Paul Brinkman, then with the South Florida Business Journal. He was a colleague in respect to our interest in the Rothstein Affair and our mutual discourse with Kenneth Lawrence Marvin, then head disciplinary counsel with The Florida Bar.

The fact that "Ron Pruitt" has brought "poor" Kim Rothstein up in such a flattering manner inspires me to bring some little attention yet again to my pieces on the subject in hopes they have more value than the ephemeral news that consumes so many poor people nowadays.

LADY ROTHSTEIN'S SHOES