Thrash

I can talk about the book I'm reading: James Baldwin's Another Country. I've read two more by him previously: Just Above My Head and Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone. My mom and my brother introduced me to him and my brother left me this one the last time he was here. I got the cheap paperback version of Tell Me How Long. . . for like 2 bucks at a used bookstore in Salem, Oregon a couple summers ago and read it soon after. He's fuckin' ridiculous. A black guy born in Harlem in the 20s - of the same era as the beats and Bukowski, notably, but Baldwin was black, and gay. He makes any of The Beats' or Bukowski's resistance seem whiny. Their personal and/or cultural revolutions peddly. He was, and through his writing, is, impossibly transcendent. His stuff is ahead of our time. Nothing is dated in his writing, which is so amazing. On the back of Another Country there's a quote by Langston Hughes which is perfect: "Baldwin uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing. . . The thought becomes poetry and the poetry illuminates the thought." This book is an ocean, each paragraph a wave, and the weather changes, but Baldwin never strays far from the hurricane of how terrible love can be, never quite forgiving us, not letting us die, either.

N-i-c-e

Hey everybody: blah blah blah! Sun came out today in Baltimore. . .

Link to my new website

Here's the link to my new website: http://home.ubalt.edu/students/ub99o50/jonastheartist.html although depending on what computer you're using, it might look rough.

Chronology

I just woke up dreaming prose so I don't feel guilty about blogging. Perhaps it can be a guilty pleasure, a way of flushing the drainpipes. I'm trying to find the breeze here in my room, tonight, drinking tea at five in the morning - it doesn't seem that cold outside, but I'm trying to feel whatever it is. I'll tell you what's been on my mind, lately - and to the folks older it will definitely sound trite, but it always does. It's being 29, I suppose. I'll always remember 28 as a rough year. I was 27 when I came to grad school, 26 when I left Long Beach; 24, I believe, when I spent a magically rejuvinating summer in NYC; 22 when I left the girlfriend of two and a half years I was living with. Broke up with her on an U-bon train in Berlin. The ride back was not fun, but necessary. Right now I can imagine her reading this (it's actually possible through facebook), and not being so comfortable with me saying that, out loud. But we always did have differences in discretion. It's my story, too, and it's full of weakness - too. I can tell you a lyric that's been rolling through my head by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, their album Cardinology, their song "Evergreen:" be more like the trees / and less like the clouds, stop / roaming around. . ." Let's just keep letting ourselves in, and out, huh, how 'bout that?