James Baldwin

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns, and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death – ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

Shadows

Just like in Peter Pan, the summer I turned twenty-seven, I lost my shadow. He hopped on a train headed east, said he was flying out to France because he heard the women there were pretty. I was ashamed of how shallow my shadow was, who had, or so it seemed to me, been birthed from my body. But that changed things for me, for the rest of the summer, I only went out at night, avoiding light as others sought it out. I wandered the darkest alleys and began to appreciate the shades of darkness in a new way. I could see that darkness had all sorts of tones, and the large black mass of a trash can was somehow darker than the asphalt as were the branches of a large tree still hung with sickening yellow leaves. I realized that the darkness gathered in places just like the light, and I thought to stay that way forever, far away from my shadow, chasing the darkness, a decision, I have rarely regretted. 

Winter

Sometimes in late winter, I feel myself sinking as the leaves do, beneath a thin veil of water. And I try and pull myself up by smiling at everyone I see during the day. This morning on the bus, I smiled at an elderly woman toting groceries from the Wal-Mart that's just around the corner from my place. She looked away, and I looked away. I felt that we'd actually connected, not in the moment that our eyes locked, but when they turned from each other, watched the tattered remains of leaves in the trees, the street skimming by like memory. We spent the rest of the bus ride just like that, not looking at one another at all. I've never felt so close to anyone. 

It has been a while

Tonight I am certain that I don't have a writing bone in my body. I think instead of a crow, dark feathers ruffled by the wind, digging round with its velvet beak in search of flies, as I am in search of words, digging and digging.

I haven't written anything in weeks. I keep imagining that something will happen, like ice thawing, on a warm spring day, and words and ideas will come spilling out of me in a torrent.

But tonight I am tired again, and I can't imagine successfully stringing together words on a page, thoughts on the quicksilver surface of the mind, which is more like a small puddle, reflecting branches and sky, than an instrument of logic and grace.

I'm not that different than you, I think, sometimes in the dark. My daughter asks why there is a flashing light in my room. "Tell me a story," she says, "about a time when you were hurt or sick. Or someone else was hurt or sick."

I remember a different story I told her years ago, when she was three and sleep was lapping at the darkness in the bedroom. In that story, I was, as I often seem to be, tired to the bone, and she wanted to hear a story, so I started talking in that dream like way that happens just before sleep. I said that I was an octopus and that she was a fish. I told her that the fish and the octopus were swimming down and down, into the dark, dark sea. I told her about the kelp and ship wrecks, the rays of light scattering on the ocean.

And in that state, I kept saying that the fish and the octopus were going further and further into the dark. Finally, the fish gets tired, I told her, though I don't remember now if her eyes were closed. And I said, well I said something that you only say on the verge of dreams, when sleep rocks you in its gentle wake. I'll tell you that story another time though, when this scattershot mind has the grace to turn it from a story about sadness into art. 

Saturday nights

This was the year
that I grew tired
of arguing with
children after
bedtime.

When I feel
somehow
the weight
of the day
pressing on
me like darkness
through the window.

Even if the day
has been fine,
slight.
Even if we've spent
the afternoon
gathering service berries
purple-stained fingers.

Still, in the evening
it's all I can do
after nine to not
scream as loud as
I have ever have
that I want
everyone to be asleep.

Even the dogs,
who would otherwise
be sending up a call
about Dalmatians
across London.

But I don't
want to read
that story, nor any
story, but the one
I'm telling
right now,
in the dark
on the computer
while the children
shout and play
games well past
nine. 

When I was a child, I was scared of the dark

In my dream, we were galloping across the countryside, small hills, clefts of valley covered in lacy flowers. We were chasing a train and steam was rising from the train and steam from the flanks of the horses. It was a silly dream because in my actual life I'm afraid of horses. In fact, I'm afraid of nearly everything. As a child, I used to sleep with the lights on, terrified that I'd be taken by a monster in my sleep. I'd crawl into my brother's bedroom and sleep at the foot of his bed.

My mind was so active then, shadows were always nefarious, and the slight groans of a house settling were always, at least to my mind, a hand jiggling at the doorknob, someone walking along the yard checking the windows. That no one ever broke in, did nothing to dissuade my panic that someone would. I slept with pillows over my head. I lay completely still for hours, trying to hide the fact of my breathing, certain that someone was standing in the doorway of my room, checking to see if there were inhabitants. I lived my evenings and bed times in an intense. state of fear.

In early February, the United States carried out a raid in Yemen, which resulted in the death of an American solider and nine children under the age of 13, seven of whom were under age eight. I wonder, as you might now, what sorts of shadows those children saw, what they imagined hid in the dark recesses of their room, what sifnificance there was in the way the curtains bent in the window. But maybe that's exactly what it's like to be a child in Yemen, dreaming that the man in the doorway will not be a monster, but someone with a rifle. I wonder if they sleep at all, or if they lie, as I did, very still, for hour upon hour of the night, waiting for the man in the bedroom door to pass.