on: toni morrison

and she was loved. 

lord knows i wasn't planning on my first "serious" post in months being about toni morrison's passing, but here we are. i saw the toni morrison documentary a few weeks ago and fell in love with her artistry all over again. not that i'd ever fallen out of love with her work, mind you. y'know how sometimes you're reminded of how incredibly awesome one of your favorite artists is and you realize that yes, you must continue to stan? it was one of those moments.

and she was loved.

a friend texted me this morning to check on me because they'd heard the news and knew i'd be upset. i hadn't actually seen or heard anything until i checked twitter after that text and i totally cried on the bus en route to work. i texted another friend to check in on them because i knew they'd be just as, if not more, devastated as i was in that moment. then i got to thinking about my circle of friends and twitter and how we check in on each other whenever things like this happen and i was kinda ok for a bit. i have a postcard of this 1974 image of toni morrison posted on my cube wall and it made me smile even though seeing it made me teary all over again.

and she was loved. 

then i got to thinking about her books on my shelf, including this recent find, and i cackled because what the hell else could i do in that moment? seriously, if y'all knew how much i paid for that first edition, you'd cackle right along with me.

and she was loved.

"paradise" came out during my senior year at northwestern. i remember sitting in the suite (o hai 2-red!) literally yelling at the book because it wasn't making sense to me. i was no stranger to toni morrison's work at that point, but this book was giving me fits. i was spending hours on sentences and paragraphs when, if left to my own devices and time and life permitting, i could finish reading a novel in a matter of hours. to be honest, i'm still not sure i understood all of "paradise." i remember wanting cliffsnotes for the book because i just knew that i was missing something. but that was part of the joy of toni morrison's writing - she could draw you in and keep you there even though you knew good and well that you were out of your league.

and she was loved.

toni morrison really was loved, y'all. by me and by so many others. i hope she knew just how much we loved her. appreciated her. owed so much of our reading and writing lives and habits to her.

and she was loved.

on: female friends

just finished reading this book and have spent a little time thinking about friendships between women off and on all weekend. the author discusses how making and maintaining friendships with other women used to be challenging for her, which, to be honest, is not something i can easily identify with.

i did appreciate that the author quoted a professor who pointed out that viewing friendships as an indulgence as opposed to a necessity, especially when you consider it along racial and socioeconomic lines. white middle and upper class women of a certain age were taught to focus their efforts on finding a husband and taking care of the family. friendships weren't seen as essential. for women who weren't as well off, though, friendships were a part of life. you had to have a network for helping with child care or job hunting or transportation or any other number of things.

that makes sense to me. i can't remember a time when i didn't have friends who are women (or who identify as women). looking back, i can't remember my mother or my sisters-in-law or any other women i grew up with not having female friends, either. after my mother died, i went to live with her best friend's family because daddy couldn't keep working and make sure i got to/from school every day. it was great for me because she had a daughter around my age and we were totally besties. there were always examples of friendships among women (particularly black women) for me to follow. while i heard all kinds of variations of "you need to be independent and be able to take care of yourself and not rely on any man to do it for you" growing up, there wasn't much discussion of how to manage friendships. maybe it was implied, based on how the adults in my world operated. of course you would have friends and spend time with them whenever possible and be there for them. that's just what you do.

i guess that's part of what made this book so fascinating for me. the notion of a woman feeling that friendships with other women aren't important or don't matter or are out of reach just does not compute. yes, i know there are plenty of "i don't like women" or "all my friends are guys" or "women are just too [insert adjective here] to be friends with" women out there. i wonder if they know what they're missing.

i also got to thinking about my female friends, and how they've navigated and continue to navigate various life changes (marriage, kids, deaths of family members or friends, moving, etc.) while maintaining the friendships that they've deemed worthy of honoring and respecting. how we've come to a point where we can identify the people who matter most to us and do what we can to make sure they know how important they are. it's not easy work by any stretch of the imagination, but we do it because the payoff is just so great. there are any number of women i could reach out to right now to chat about various things, both major and minor, and i hope they know they can do the same.

coincidentally enough, the sex and the city movie was on as i finished reading the book. i've seen the movie more than once and when i turned in this afternoon, it was near the end. even though much can and has been said about how the characters from the tv show/movie aren't as relatable as some people would like them to be, i'm still struck by how they stand up for each other. that's what friends are supposed to do. it's amazing when it works and i really think that's why we keep at it. friends are awesome and i am definitely a better person for having y'all in my life. 💜

on: "a little life"

"You won't understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are -- not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving -- and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad -- or good -- it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well."

almost every book i read, and have read for at least the past 5-6 years, has come from a library. once in a while, i'll come across a book that i really love and will decide to add it to my personal collection. those are usually nonfiction or poetry titles, though.

"a little life" by hanya yanagihara is one of the best novels i've read in a long time. even before i finished it, i knew i'd want to re-read it. i want a copy of my own so i can highlight passages and maybe write some additional blog posts or journal entries about it.

this book made me cry at least twice and there are so many little gems, like the opening passage of this post, that i want to revisit and it is so well-written (in my opinion - obviously your mileage may vary) and i can't stop thinking about it. no, really. it's that good.

i think part of the novel's appeal for me is its focus on friendships and how much of ourselves we give and reveal and conceal and forgive of those we hold near and dear to our hearts. if you've been reading the blog for a while, then you know that this subject is an ongoing area of focus for me. i'm sure that's part of why "a little life" resonated so much with me. the conversations that these characters both on their own and as a collective are conversations that i've had with myself and with other people. how do we maneuver this world without losing ourselves? i don't have the answer to that one, but i'm glad this novel can help explore the question.

on: attempting to keep up the (good) work

PARTY TIP: True inner strength is not seeing any realistic way you're going to make it, but still knowing somehow... you will.

— ANDREW W.K. (@AndrewWK) July 13, 2015

if you follow me on twitter, then you already know that i retweet andrew w.k. at least once a week. this one particularly resonated with me because i've been mulling over the phrase "this is all part of the work" since yesterday. the phrase came to me while i was reading elizabeth alexander's "the light of the world" and having my heart broken into tiny pieces and yet feeling like she'd been spying on my life. i tweeted a few things from the book while i was reading, and then i had to jot down "this is all part of the work" and let it sit for a bit.

"if i cannot take a walk with you and talk my way to the other side of the dilemma, i am not enacting friendship." © @ProfessorEA

— eulalia (@queeneulalia) July 12, 2015

that's part of the work, i think - being able to walk with someone and talk our way through whatever's on our minds, or at least enjoying the silence while we're on our journey.

meeting people where they are and occasionally leaving them there, as i've been trying to be more conscious of this year, is part of the work.

meeting myself wherever i am and accepting myself flaws and all? part of the work.

i've said more than once that this empath/caregiver role is not an easy one for me, and yet i have to admit that the more i accept this path, the better i feel. i was at a friend's birthday gathering last weekend and she asked us all to check-in with how we were feeling physically, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. i said that spiritually, i was feeling as strong as i'd felt in a long while, and that i was sure it had something to do with no longer denying this caregiver position i'm attempting to play out. emotionally, though? i was wiped out. so many of us (self included) are going through so many things in our own lives, not to mention being impacted by events far and wide and closer to home and everywhere in between, and there were definitely moments where i had just had to retreat for a bit so i could try to get my shit together before being able to reach out to others.

this is all part of the work.

happy national poetry month!

one of the last books i read during the 1st quarter of 2015 was this volume of poetry. i found myself nodding in agreement in certain places, and jotting down verses in others. seriously - if you're into poetry, check this book out.

one poem in particular, Heaven is No Recompense, really stuck out for me. i think it's a piece that applies to quite a few of us right now, so i'm posting it here.

Heaven is No Recompense by Angela Jackson 

Who ever you love you will lose
Sooner or later. Even you.
And you will grieve for who
Ever is lost. Even you.
How can you lose unless you hold?
And how can you hold without
Touching, being touched.
Each stroke a stroke of luck
Pity us. And love the luck.

here's to a great month for all of us.

quote of the day

courtesy of the book i'm just about done reading:

"And lying on my back just like the girl I've always been, I watch the clouds drift and glow across the roof of the world, becoming newspaper headlines that tell the story of my life, the last one saying, Fuck you, I survive."

that just resonated with me and since it wouldn't fit in a single tweet, i decided to post it here. good night. :-)

connecting with "life itself"

i saw "life itself" last night. it was on my "must-see eventually" list as soon as i heard it was being released, but i missed it in theaters during its first wave. i could've rented it via on demand or on amazon, but i didn't for some reason.

when i found out "life itself" was playing at the siskel film center, some part of me knew that there's where i needed to go for this. thankfully my schedule wasn't super-crazy this week and therefore i could take myself on this journey.

more than once during the movie, i reminded myself that i was watching a film about roger ebert at the gene siskel film center. i felt like such a CHICAGOAN in those moments. i can't really pinpoint why. i mean, it's no secret that i have lived in and loved this city for what feels like forever, suburban sojourns notwithstanding. maybe my subconscious was having a particular 9/11 remembrance and without my realizing it, i was having a stronger attachment than usual to this city. 

i am attempting to write this w/o spoilers for those of you who haven't seen the movie and/or read ebert's memoir, but this piece kinda gets at what i'm trying to share: gene siskel's widow was talking about the tempestuous relationship siskel and ebert had. at one point, gene said of roger, "he's an asshole, but he's my asshole." i laughed through my tears on that one b/c that's how i feel about, well, a lot of you. (i use the term "asshole" with nothing but love and affection, obviously.) 

i think that's what struck me both in roger's book and in this film - that throughout his life, he wanted to connect with people. not necessarily people he agreed with, mind you, but people who meant something to him. maybe it's b/c he was an only child and i'm sure any psychologist worth their proverbial salt would say that ebert was creating a family of his own. (i am not a psychologist, nor do i play one on tv, so please don't accept this diagnosis as scientific fact.)

that resonates with me, as most readers of this blog have probably surmised throughout the years. the desire…no, strike that - the need, really, to develop and maintain connections, however tenuous. not to be popular, b/c clearly i am bereft of fucks to give about being popular, but to know that there's a circle, however big or small, of people you give a shit about and who, hopefully, give a shit about you.

seeing roger with chaz was on a completely different level of connection, though. i was digging through my twitter archive looking for things i'd written in response to roger's death last year. a lot of what i managed to say through my blubbering focused on chaz and roger. i may live to see 100 and i'm not convinced i'll see another relationship like the one they chose to share with us.

building and maintaining connections. it's not easy and yet roger and chaz seemed to work so well together that you'd forget that there was actual work involved. there were a couple of times in the film where you just knew chaz was nearing the end of her patience while roger was hospitalized, but then you'd catch them giving each other looks like "ok, fine, i'll stay, but only b/c it's you." that's a helluva connection.

and then (spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the movie) chaz talks about how, at the very end, she and some other loved ones were with roger and they were playing dave brubeck's music and everyone was holding hands and she found herself peaceful enough to be able to let roger go. that's another part of having connections, isn't it? knowing when it's time to sever a connection, be it through death or disagreement or something else.

as the end credits rolled, i just sat there for a moment, primarily b/c i'd cried enough to give myself a sore throat and i couldn't stop blinking residual tears away. i just kept thinking that my heart was so heavy and yet so very full at the same time.

hours later as i write this, i still feel that way - that my heart has been so heavy and yet so full simultaneously. not just today. not even just this week. hell, not even just this year, and lord knows there's been enough to cry/laugh/cry about already.

maybe it's remembering how powerful connections can be. i know i've felt more connected to chicago in the past few years than i probably ever have b/c of [reasons]. 

but i also feel like i've (re)established some powerful connections during that same time frame. i don't mean powerful in terms of clout or anything like that. but powerful more like…meaningful. i guess that's a more appropriate term. yeah, we'll go with "meaningful." that sounds good.

i think that the older we get and the more we realize that certain things in life really do have the capacity to suck for what feels like forever, the more important the connections we have with other people are. sometimes those connections are the only thing that gets us through. other times those connections are blocking us from whatever's next. the wisdom, one hopes, would be in knowing the damn difference.

on: "let the fire burn" and "men we reaped"

i had all kinds of feelings about "let the fire burn" before i saw it at the siskel film center tonight. i found myself trying to remember when i'd first heard about move and the may 1985 raid. i think it was in college, b/c there's no way i would've learned about it in high school. and even in college, it must've been in a book or article i read outside of class, b/c i'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been covered in any of my classes. then again, it's been a bazillion years since my undergrad days, so i could be misremembering things and indeed learned about move from a professor, but i doubt it.

so i was having these thoughts of "ok, i know enough about move to know that this documentary is going to be powerful," and also thinking about my privilege w/r/t being exposed to information about move in the first place, and how there may or may not be a whole generation out there, both my age and younger, who have no idea about what was happening in philadelphia in the late 70s/early 80s, and how this movie would be a good thing for them to see, but that they probably wouldn't be exposed to it.

but then i walked into the theater and there was a row of young black boys with their father/uncle/male relative. my heart grew 3 sizes and i took the aisle seat nearest them. it just felt right, somehow.

throughout the film, i caught myself laughing and sucking my teeth in disgust and shaking my head, while also wondering about the reactions of other folks in the theater. what kind of background did they have on move before tonight? how had those young boys next to me been convinced to go see this movie instead of whatever other entertainment option may have been available to them?

(as you can see, one of the fun things about my quasi-ADD is that my brain comes up with all kinds of interesting questions while i should be concentrating on just one thing. it's a blessing and a curse, i tell you.)

i want people to see this movie, not because it has any particular artistic merit, but because it examines a slice of history that folks may not be aware of. i realize i'm making that statement during the opening weekend of "12 years a slave," which is another movie that folks are all "omg people need to see this because slavery was bad, mmkay?"

and i get that. i accept that. i am in no way saying that these 2 films, or any others, can not co-exist. they can and they should. hell, i will probably see "12 years a slave" w/in the next week or so, and i will again be viewing it from a weird privilege angle b/c i've read the book and also b/c, y'know, i'm all too aware of some of the effects of the slave trade.

i was surprised by my reaction, or should i say lack thereof, at the end of "let the fire burn." i wasn't angry or frustrated like i was at the end of "fruitvale station" or "amistad." i wasn't an emotional wreck like i was when the closing credits started on "hotel rwanda." i don't know what emotional reaction i was expecting from myself, but i just felt...resigned, for lack of a better term. like, "ok, this happened, and it's obvious that this shit was fucked up from the beginning, and therefore there's no point in getting pissed about it."

on my way home, i decided to break my usual rule of not reading while on public transit, and dove back into jesmyn ward's "men we reaped" b/c i was close to finishing it anyway.

y'all. the last chapter of this book knocked me on my ass. proverbially speaking, of course, since i was already sitting on the train, but holy fucking shitballs. i felt like someone had punched me in the gut. i wanted to curl up in the fetal position and just rock back and forth for a few minutes. it's that powerful. i don't want to spoil it for anyone who's planning on reading it and hasn't gotten around to it yet, but i have to share this:

"We who still live do what we must. Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach...We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die."

i recognize that this book resonates with me more than it might with others because i've also lost a brother, but i feel comfortable in recommending this book to every black woman who's lost a black man in their life - a father, brother, uncle, cousin, spouse, neighbor, boyfriend, best friend, homie from around the corner, classmate, or any combination thereof - b/c jesmyn's been where we've been. where some of us still are. i am seriously thinking about buying a copy of this book (b/c of course i got it from work) just so i can have access to this last chapter whenever i want or need to.

how the internet has changed the way i read

back in the day, i would read a magazine or newspaper and if i saw something interesting, i'd cut it out and save it for future reference. if i came across a word in a book or in an article that i didn't quite understand, i'd grab my dictionary and look it up.

now? i can barely flip through a magazine w/o having my laptop handy so i can look up things as i'm reading. if there's a book or article mentioned that i want to investigate, i research it right then and there. i have a folder of articles that eventually i will print out and read b/c they're just a little too long for my a.d.d. tendencies to tolerate reading in one sitting. a good chunk of the books i read are from reviews i've read online, or from recommendations via twitter and other folks' blogs/tumblrs/etc. if i'm reading a book and see a word/phrase that's new to me, off to the laptop or to my phone to look it up.

and let's not even get into how teh interwebz have changed the way i cook. i have a metric fuck-ton of recipes saved on my computer, thanks to reading magazines and cookbooks and being able to copy/paste and/or save pdf files. whenever i'm ready to try a new recipe out, i do a search of my folder first, and then i dig through the folder of hard-copy recipes i have stashed. that's not counting the binders of recipes that are packed away in a box somewhere. i may or may not have a problem.

so, yeah. remember when folks were worried about the internet having a negative impact on reading habits? not for me! i definitely read more, i think, and my reading material has become more varied/diverse. thanks, al gore! :P

books!

i just happened to glance at my pile of "waiting to be read" books a few minutes ago and, after my initial moment of squee due to some of the titles (nate silver's book, the most recent oprah's book club pick, a new cookbook, and a new book of poetry from bell hooks, among others), i realized that i didn't close out 2012 w/r/t the books i read. according to my spreadsheet, i read 146 books during 2012. that's down from my 2011 total of 209 books, but let's keep in mind that i was in nanny/mother's helper mode for the first 9 months of 2012, and that i started my job in june of 2012. holy hell i've had this job for a little more than 6 months now.

my spreadsheet also tells me that every single book i read in 2012 came from the library. i'm probably more impressed by that than i should be, but i am. libraries are awesome, and anyone who knows me knows that i've held that sentiment for way longer than i've held my current job.

so, yay for books! and now i will leave y'all with the video for "read a book" b/c it still makes me laugh. :-)

sometimes i think the internet is spying on me

when i see something like this, i immediately think "you don't know my life!" and then realize that yes, the internet does know my life sometimes. sigh.

reading romance shouldn't be this difficult

yeah, yeah, i read romance novels. i've read them for years. i follow some of my favorite authors on twitter. i'm number 200-something on the library's waiting list for a book that doesn't come out until damn near thanksgiving. judge me all you want.

[note: the rest of this post will have all kinds of triggers about sexual assault/abuse, so if this is a sensitive topic for you, please stop reading now. kthx.]

i've been reading a romance series by susan mallery and, much to my delight, there have been some new titles this summer. i finally got my copy of the most recent one, "all summer long," last week from the library and started reading it a couple of days ago. normally, i can get through a romance novel in a couple of hours, tops, and in even less time if i'm able to read cover-to-cover w/o being interrupted.

this one, though, took me a while to get through. not because it's a bad novel, but b/c the struggles of the main female character brought back a lot of memories/issues. once upon a time, i wrote about some "bad touching" that happened to me when i was 8 or 9, and how i'd repressed that memory until i was in high school, and how the husband of my then-favorite cousin decided it'd be a good idea for us to watch some pr0n when i was 16 and while his wife and sons were in the other room, and how i ran out of the room and locked myself in the bathroom for as long as possible and how i didn't tell anyone in my family b/c i knew daddy or james or any other male relative would've done time for (attempted) murder even though i'm sure someone must've figured out something b/c i never ever went to that cousin's house again.

ok, so maybe i didn't previously write about that last part.

anyway (consider this a spoiler alert if you actually plan on reading this book), charlie, our heroine, was raped in college and has had a challenging time establishing intimacy. i'll spare you the details, but the process she goes through definitely has some parallels to what i went through (and at times still go through). it's heartbreaking and ultimately gratifying, to say the least. i can't tell you the last time i cried while reading a romance novel, but i definitely shed a few tears over this one.

i am so very thankful to susan (hey, i follow her on twitter, so i feel like i can be on a first name basis even though we've never met irl) for treating this subject with dignity and respect. if i was inclined to write reviews on amazon, i'd post this there, but i'm not and therefore it's here. susan, if you somehow manage to read this, please know that i've been a fan of yours for a few years now and i will be forever grateful to you for sharing charlie's story in such a powerful way. thank you.