Like you I love love, life, the sweet smell of things, the sky- blue landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up and I laugh through eyes that have known the buds of tears. I believe the world is beautiful and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life, love, little things, landscape and bread, the poetry of everyone.
Como Tú
Por Roque Dalton
Yo como tú amo el amor, la vida, el dulce encanto de las cosas el paisaje celeste de los días de enero.
También mi sangre bulle y río por los ojos que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas. Creo que el mundo es bello, que la poesía es como el pan, de todos.
Y que mis venas no terminan en mí, sino en la sangre unánime de los que luchan por la vida, el amor, las cosas, el paisaje y el pan, la poesía de todos.
Okay, I may be a little obsessed with Lianne. But to be fair, so is Prince (yes, Prince), who called her to say congratulations.
Women and the genius things they make and do. Here are just a few.
I am not a Christian, so to my ears this recorded sermon by my friend Nichola sounded more like an arahant (enlightened one) elucidating the teachings of the Buddha. On this very night your life will be taken — by endless, cavernous craving. Tanha. I knew Nichola was brilliant, a student of Jesus, James Baldwin, and other pretty okay characters, but damn, I don’t think I had ever heard her preach before. At the time I was at a friend’s place in San Francisco, and once I started listening I was so captivated that I stayed huddled on the living room couch, rudely ignored my friend-hosts while they tested the day’s crock-pot soup in the kitchen. (That craving, that need, even for wisdom — like she says at the pulpit, it’ll make you ignore your loved ones if you’re not careful.)
I am not a poet, nor a scholar, really, but I know what I like. What makes me pause from internet “snacking” (a term I learned from web marketing experts studying cyber-habit-patterns) to recollect my breath. My friend Kim, on the other hand, is a scholar and poet and artist, and thank goodness. That piece will stay with me — and don’t miss the video she links to, minutes 3:45 to 7:54.
I am trying to become a revolutionary, but it’s less simple than it sounds, though thankfully also less cult-y (so far). In this arena, mother and self-identified manta-militant Berta will remain unlinked, as she is best experienced off the Internet, but she has been no less crucial to my week and my spirit. Berta torpedoes through this fearsome world with a cheerful pragmatism, a humble, no-bullshit incandescence. She makes being a revolutionary seem like the only sensible thing one could do with one’s life — and vows, smiling, to keep at it til the day she dies. I believe her.
And then there’s Lianne, who I mentioned earlier, and cannot stop listening to.
Ginger-chocolate cake made by Becca, Eliana, and Roxy
I won’t talk about my birthday, but I will talk about James Baldwin. Or, really, listen to him.
It is a pity that [Eldridge Cleaver and I] won’t, probably, ever have the time to attempt to define once more the relationship of the odd and disreputable artist to the odd and disreputable revolutionary; for the revolutionary, however odd, is rarely disreputable in the same way that the artist can be. These two seem doomed to stand forever at an odd and rather uncomfortable angle to each other, and they both stand at a sharp and not always comfortable angle to the people they both, in their different fashions, hope to serve. But I think it is just as well to remember that the people are one mystery and that the person is another. Though I know what a very bitter and delicate and dangerous conundrum this is, it seems to me that a failure to respect the person so dangerously limits one’s perception of the people that one risks betraying them and oneself, either by sinking to the apathy of cynical disappointment, or rising to the rage of knowing, better than the people do, what the people want.
Because it’s my birthday week and I do what I want, I’d like to argue for a broad definition of “artist” that includes those of us interested in wisdom. (Baldwin, as an artist, certainly was.) Which helps explain, maybe, some of the awkwardness and contradictions in the Buddhist-Marxist combo. One operates at the level of the person (or the non-self, existence, but framed in an individualistic fashion that was revolutionary at the time of the Buddha’s teaching), while the other concerns itself with the people.
Perhaps a similar tension also underlies the queasy slipperiness of identity politics — or identity, period. “Identity” (gender, race, ability, sexuality, etc.) is at once intensely personal, emotional, and subjective (our stories), and simultaneously collective, socially and historically determined (our position). I’ve written about this paradox before; maybe an unsurprising fixation for a mixed girl. ;)
My bad, friends: this was supposed to be a birthday post! I lead an extremely fortunate life amidst a blessed contagion of creativity and caring from those around me. No idea how we’re going to reconcile the person and the people, but I’m lucky to find myself in community that wants to try.
Thanks to everyone for the bornday love. And deliciousness!
To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.
—Raymond Williams
I like to think that many others have expressed this same sentiment in places I’ll never see, in times before mine, in languages I can’t read or understand.
Jacob Lawrence, “To Preserve Their Freedom” (1988); silkscreen
Even as we strive for liberation,
any truly emancipatory struggle must also be its own reward.
“To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. [They] must know [their] oppressor’s real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!” —Chinua Achebe (Nov. 16, 1930 – Mar. 22, 2013)
Bro-Dependency is a new Comedy Central miniseries of shorts about two dumb bros, and it’s brilliant. I, a reluctant TV watcher (so addicting! nothing else in my life gets done), have so far replayed the first video, “Tacos,” three times. For me, the show could intellectually, culturally, and humorously rival Awkward Black Girl. From the casual racism and misogyny lying around like dirty gym socks (a mess both subtle and potent), to the obnoxious yet painfully fragile hetero-masculinity of its two heroes dudes, BD’s pitch-perfect acting, strong writing and sharp editing capture those ineffable qualities of bro-ness immediately recognizable to anyone who’s ever attended a frat party and felt like strangling themselves with a resistance band.
For example. On first look, Anderson’s laugh-cry (which was so effective in “Tacos” that it seems to have become a running joke for the series, with somewhat diminishing returns) might just seem to paint him as hollow and shallow. But I think this is more about nurture than nature: the sociology of bro-ness, beyond individual vacuousness. These guys spend so much time mocking and belittling what’s painful to others (like harassing the young man on the bike, or — personal-experience beef — laughing off feminism and spouting constant rape jokes) that when something deeply painful happens to them, they have ZERO IDEA how to handle it gracefully.
And although the idiocy is clear, it’s not so absurd or totalizing that we can write these people off. We, too, have our own avoidance maneuvers. Whether our veneer consists of sarcasm or spiritual materialism, when we focus overmuch on commanding, controlling, and dominating what’s around us we become kinda clueless in the face of internal crisis.
More thoughts later, maybe, but for now, can’t wait to see where this show goes. Mad potential, yo.
Jacob Lawrence, from the Toussaint L’Ouverture Series, “To Preserve Their Freedom.”
i don’t begrudge my friends and family their joy, but since 2008 i have lost my belief in a patriotism dressed up in charming blackness.
instead, may blackness continue to serve as an impetus toward universal freedom, fundamentally challenging all harmful power structures (including the u.s. government).
may blackness fill us with the vision, love, and spiritual strength necessary to fight for a classless society, a society of equals, where leaders are not idolized but trusted — and directly accountable.
much gratitude to all who have struggled and are struggling for real, worldwide liberation.
so humbling and exciting.
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Top: “Steeped in African American history while growing up in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, Jacob Lawrence launched his career at age 21 with a 41-panel series about an important black hero, Touissant L’Ouverture, who led the slave rebellion to liberate Haiti from French rule. Years later, he reprised the series in screen print, including the dramatic ‘To Preserve Their Freedom,’ 1986, a reminder that American blacks were still not liberated.”
Kloncke 