I had a fantastic day today, though I didn’t do anything particularly special. I did buy tickets for my yearly fall holiday in London, so that certainly helped my mood. As did my taxi driver, Frank, a young Dominican man working hard to prepare for the arrival of his first child. We met two weeks ago when he drove me from Brooklyn to the East Village, and I loved his spirit so much that when I have to go somewhere in a hurry I call him. Today he got me to Prospect Heights in fine time without loud music or jabbering on his Bluetooth. This zen led me into my bi-weekly charter session w/ E. to keep my mind fighting fit. Leaving her office, the day was so achingly lovely as it filtered through the trees at Grand Army Plaza that I was smiling to myself. I must have been wearing contentment like a loud shirt because the bus driver gave me a big hello as I slipped my insufficiently funded Metrocard into the reader. He was cool, I was cool and I didn’t have to get off the bus. At Cadman Plaza, waiting for my second bus, I took this photo. It reminds me of a map, of the beauty found in cracks and borders; found in just enjoying a sunny day and lovely chats with good friends.

When I watched this video for the first time this morning, I was struck by how emotionally honest it seemed. And then right on the heels of that thought, I remembered Erykah Badu’s video for “Window Seat” and how that, even with all of its guerrilla film making and nudity, didn’t come within striking distance of my heart; I just couldn’t get pass the gimmick and the pretense of some larger statement. Pitchfork noted that Monae’s video borrows visually and emotionally from Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares to U” video, which I agree with. It also takes its coloring from D’Angelo’s “How Does it Feel” video, though it leaves the bitter “look at me sexy now” smirk at the door. But all of the aforementioned videos borrow from someone rather older: the brilliant director, Ingmar Bergman who used close up to generate breathtaking character depth and emotion. I don’t know if Monae’s tears are real, though I’m inclined to believe they are genuine given the line on which her eyes begin to brim: “I was trying to find my peace / but I was made to believe there was something wrong with me / And it hurts my heart / Lord have mercy, ain’t it plain to see?” Yeah, I’m feeling it too.

Video: Janelle Monae: Cold War [Wondaland Arts Society/Bad Boy Records] via Pitchfork.tv

I am fond of curves and undulating lines; they are as soothing as the ocean, as waves. It became a meditation. Each drawing would start from a fragmented phrase that popped into my head. I won’t pretend to not know what they mean. They are anxieties. My anxieties. By the end of the fourth drawing I was finally sleepy, as if just putting my thoughts down in these curves and fragmented phrases had freed me.

(Click on each image to see it larger.)

I loved him before I knew I was gay and fell even deeper in love with him once I acknowledged my own sexuality. Never in all of my voracious reading as a teenager had I encountered, up to that point, anyone who wrote about alienation, isolation, and loneliness so poignantly, honestly and beautifully.

I love him for being Black and out and loud and less than humble. I loved to watch old black and white videos of him speaking, deconstructing–with his big, expressive eyes, a hand at his temple as if to hold up his head with all these thoughts–the -isms that drove him to another country, where he was still lonely, isolated, and searching for peace of mind (thank you PBS.)

I love James Baldwin for giving me: Just Above My Head and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, two of my favorite books that, in language aching with grief and love, explore familial and romantic life without being sentimental or pretentious. I love him for writing something as impossibly insightful and gorgeous and painful as this:

There is nothing more to be said. All we can do now is just hold on. That was why she held my hand. I recognized this as love–recognized it very quietly and, for the first time, without fear. My life, that desperately treacherous labyrinth, seemed to fall where there had been no light before. I began to see myself in others. I began for a moment to apprehend how Christopher must sometimes have felt. Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it. However great the private disasters to which love may lead, love itself is strikingly and mysteriously impersonal; it is a reality which is not altered by anything one does. Therefore, one does many things, turns the key in the lock over and over again, hoping to be locked out. Once locked out, one will never again be forced to encounter in the eyes of a stranger who loves him the impenetrable truth concerning the stranger, oneself, who is loved. And yet–one would prefer, after all, not to be locked out. One would prefer, merely, that the key unlocked a less stunningly unusual door.

-From Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone

I love that in all of that searching he never stopped being himself or forgot where he came from. Listen to that preacher’s kid sing.

James Baldwin (August 1, 1924 – November 30, 1987)

Chronicling the lives of a doctor, a school teacher and her much richer secret lover, a fervent communist mother, an orphaned boy, and a rebellious daughter (all having defected to South Korea), Nothing to Envy takes its title from a children’s song taught throughout North Korea with the  lyric, “We have nothing to envy in the world.” From the opening chapter the irony of the song is firmly established. Not soon after, it becomes nearly impossible not to compare the direct, affecting prose unspooling before your eyes to George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984. There are all the tell-tale signs of totalitarianism: neighbors enlisted and entreated to rat out neighbors, the banning of all forms of art unsanctioned by the government, the secret police, the gray unmitigated stench of oppression and starvation, and at its core, a love story that moves forward and often trips over the figurative and literal darkness that is life in North Korea. It is a gripping read; detailed and unflinching in its parade of revelations about the resilience of human beings, as well as the effectiveness of propaganda, indoctrination and demagoguery. I literally only put it down to eat, shower and sleep.

Journalist Barbara Demick

Off the six accounts Demick researched over a ten year period, the journey of Dr. Kim–educated by the state in her profession–was the most affecting. Filled with gratitude with the opportunity to “pay back the Great Leader” for giving her the opportunity to practice medicine, Dr. Kim bears witness as her city’s functioning hospital crumbles under the weight of a famine that grips the country in the mid-1990s. Already barely able to serve the community with its lack of medicine, Dr. Kim is forced to helplessly watch small children in her care die of hunger. When asked if she remembers the children, she says, “All of them.”

Just as harrowing as the details of life under the demigod Kim Jong-sun and his equally despotic son, Kim Jong-Il, are the stories of flight and eventual settlement in South Korea. Our six eyewitnesses are wild-eyed, naive, and just as frightened when presented with freedom of choice as when they had none. The “overwhelming” is palpable and it comes as little surprise that some of them initially yearn to return to the familiar absence of independence.

When I finished reading Nothing to Envy, I was seized with a choking gratitude for my life as it is now. I climbed out of bed, having set my Kindle solemnly aside, and walked into my kitchen, opened the fridge and stared at the abundance of food that crowded it. I made a meal that did not need weeds, pine bark or stolen dog meat to stretch it. I sat in my spacious living room and marveled at my right to criticize the policies of my government without fear of being sent to a detention camp for the rest of my life; sat, grateful to my parents who did not have to cross a freezing river in the dead of night to get us here; sat, grateful for the luxury of my own boredom; sat, grateful for the freedom to walk to my desk, sit down, write and express anything I want and then share it with the world.