La Haine

“Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: “So far so good… so far so good…” How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land.” & “I’m fuckin’ sick of the goddamn system! We live in rat holes, you do fuck all to change things! Neither do you! You’re my homies, so I’ll tell you: If Abdel dies, I hit back. I’ll whack a pig! So they know we don’t turn the other cheek now! Forget it, Vinz. You’re out of your league. If Abdel dies, we loose a friend? If a cop dies, do all cops go away? You’re just one guy. You can’t blow them all away. Who made you a preacher? You know what’s right and what’s wrong? Why do you side with the assholes? Who’s the asshole? In school we learnt that hate breeds hate! I didn’t go to school, I’m from the street! Know what it taught me? Turn the other cheek, you’re dead motherfucka!” & “Nothing like a good shit! You believe in God? That’s the wrong question. Does God believe in us? I once had a friend called Grunwalski. We were sent to Serbia together. When you go to a Siberian work camp, you travel in a cattle car. You roll across icy steppes for days, without seeing a soul. You huddle to keep warm. But it’s hard to relieve yourself, to take a shit, you can’t do it on the train, and the only time the train stops is to take on water for the locomotive. But Grunwalski was shy. Even when we bathed together, he got upset. I used to kid him about it. So, the train stops and everyone jumps out to shit on the tracks. I’d teased Grunwalski so much that he went off on his own. The train starts moving, so everyone jumps on, because it waits for nobody. Grunwalski had a problem: he’d gone behind a bush and was still shitting. So I see him come out from behind the bush, holding up his pants with his hands. He tries to catch up. I hold out my hand, but each time he reaches for it he lets go of his pants and they drop to his ankles. He pulls them back up, starts running again, but they fall back down, when he reaches out for me. Then what happened? Nothing. Grunwalski froze to death. Good day.” & “Know the one about the guy falling off a skyscraper? On the way down he says to himself: “So far so good… so far so good…” I heard it with a rabbi. Like us in the projects. So far so good, but how will we land?” & “Look at those sheep in the system. They look cute in their fancy leather jackets. But they’re scumbags. They ride escalators, carried by the system. They vote far right, but aren’t racists. They can’t move without escalators. The worst.” & “It’s about a society falling. On the way down it keeps telling itself: “So far so good… so far so good…” How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land.”