Category Archives: Literature

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston

“Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston

“It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning… Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself “Why?” afterwards than before.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston

“Love is like the sea. It’s a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston

“It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston

It feels like America is on Her way back. God I hope so. 

The amazing poet Amanda Gorman gave voice to this magnificent and challenging day. 

Her delivery is as powerful as her words:

The night is darkening round me

By Emily Bronte

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Excerpts from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving:

Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley among high hills which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook murmurs through it and, with the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks the uniform tranquility.

Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power that holds a spell over the minds of the descendants of the original settlers. They are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions.

It is remarkable that this visionary propensity is not confined to native inhabitants of this little retired Dutch valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by everyone who resides there for a time. However wide-awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins, haunted bridges and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman. But if there was a pleasure in all this while snugly cuddling in the chimney corner, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homeward. How often did he shrink with curdling awe at some rushing blast, howling among the trees of a snowy night, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian of the Hollow!

From ‘The Fire Next Time’ by James Baldwin… because even in summer some things are not to be taken lightly:

It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. One can give nothing whatsoever without giving oneself – that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free…

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior. And this human truth has an especially grinding force here, where identity is almost impossible to achieve and people are perpetually attempting to find their feet on the shifting sands of status…

Furthermore, I have met only a very few people – and most of these were not Americans – who had any real desire to be free. Freedom is hard to bear. It can be objected that I am speaking of political freedom in spiritual terms, but the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation. We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international levels. Privately, we cannot stand our lives and dare not examine them; domestically, we take no responsibility for (and no pride in) what goes on in our country; and, internationally, for many millions of people, we are an unmitigated disaster…

It may come as a surprise that in elementary school the subject that I hated most was ‘Language’ ~ that’s what we used to call English or grammar. It was the subject in which we would have to write, and I loathed it. Math came much more easily to me, and science was much more interesting. Words and grammar were too abstract and dry for me to grasp. While it was a chore, I usually excelled at writing, and like most things we initially fight against and reject, it eventually became my cherished love. That didn’t happen until high school, however, when we finally got to read some good shit, starting with ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and, later that freshman year, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’ I didn’t realize that it was a love of language and words and how adroitly they could bring us into other realms that was working its magic ~ I simply loved the escapism of a book or play. Whenever I would lie awake in bed at night worrying about the next day of school, I could open a book and escape, albeit briefly, into a different place where I only had to observe and experience. I didn’t have to talk to anyone, I didn’t have to engage, I had only to watch and feel and travel safely as spectator. Wracked by social anxiety and depression, I found safety in the world of the written word. It didn’t even matter that so much of those words escaped my notice, that so many layers of meaning went unnoticed and unprocessed by my young mind. It was enough to simply exist somewhere other than within the reality in which I found myself.

It was fantasy.

It was play.

It was survival.

When the brutality of being a fourteen-year-old gay boy became too much ~ and simply existing in those days sometimes felt like too much ~ the words of a writer like Tennessee Williams called to me, beckoning me to keep going, to keep pushing into a world that might one day offer succor and salvation, even when it felt like no one was there to help.

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” ~ Tennessee Williams

“You haven’t said a word about my appearance… Daylight never exposed so total a ruin.” ~ Tennessee Williams

“Some things are not forgivable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the most unforgivable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.” ~ Tennessee Williams

“When I was sixteen, I made the discovery — love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that’s how it struck the world for me.” ~ Tennessee Williams

“These are love-letters, yellowing with antiquity, all from one boy…..Poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can’t! I’m not young and vulnerable anymore.” ~ Tennessee Williams

“…most writers, and most other artists, too, are primarily motivated in their desperate vocation by a desire to find and to separate truth from the complex of lies and evasions they live in, and I think that this impulse is what makes their work not so much a profession as a vocation, a true calling.” ~  Tennessee Williams

“Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – I have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow! Increase with the years!” ~ Tennessee Williams

{See Part One here.}

“In the end, as in the beginning, all they had were the stories. The stories they told about one another, and the stories they told to themselves.” – Melanie Benjamin

It feels like there’s a resurgence of swans in my life, and with it all the complicated glamour and ferocity of their species. From this emotional rendering of ‘Swan Lake’ to this unexpectedly devastating book ‘The Swans of Fifth Avenue’ by Melanie Benjamin, the equally celebrated and maligned bird is emblematic of all the complexity and beauty of life around us. Ms. Benjamin proffers an embellished story of what might have gone on behind the painted faces of Truman Capote’s temporary coterie of swans along Fifth Avenue, and the demons and conflicted journey of Mr. Capote himself. It’s a tale of human connections torn asunder by decadence, betrayal and the binds of society that seem to pull more tightly the higher one ascends in social strata. It’s a view of the precarious threads of friendship, how delicate such a thing can be, even after years of thinking you know someone. It’s also the story of beaut, and how we always seem to want more, even when entirely immersed in it. Because that’s when it’s hardest to see.

“But there was always more. More beauty to be seen, more places to travel, more acclaim to be won. More love to earn, to barter, to exchange or withhold. To miss, always. Outside, looking in. Why did he always feel that way, every moment of every day?” ~ Melanie Benjamin

There is something very sad and almost sinister about the way the world works to challenge certain people. There’s an element of chance and luck that doesn’t always dole itself out fairly, a sliver of destiny that almost dares us to believe, if only for a moment, that we have some sort of say in the trajectory of our lives, that we have some bit of control. It’s a tease. It lends a delicious tension to whatever events flutter about us, a tempting but ever-elusive golden ring for which we reach over and over, grabbing and grasping in desperate, pathetic attempts at snatching it. The wiser ones among us take joy in trying, in going through the strenuous motions. They understand it’s all for naught, and they relax and let go, allowing themselves happiness in the simple act unto itself. The rest of us go through life thinking it is possible to reach it, to foolishly believe that others have reached it, that others have found happiness upon reaching it. In the end, it’s not something you can grab or hold. It’s not something you can ever reach. It exists always a little ahead, or perhaps a bit behind, but never close enough to touch. To some it’s a green light, to others a diamond ring. To all, a desire – a want – and it makes us feel alive.

Now there were no more stories to tell, to soothe, to comfort, to draw strangers close together; to link the hearts and minds.

To wound, to hurt. To destroy the one thing they each loved more than anything else…

Beauty. Beauty in all its glory, in all its iterations; the exquisite moment of perfect understanding between two lonely, damaged souls, sitting silently by a pool, or in the twilight, or lying in bed, vulnerable and naked in every way that mattered. The haunting glanced of a woman who knew she was beautiful because of how she saw herself reflected in her friend’s eyes.

The splendor of belonging, being included, prized, coveted.

The loveliness of a flower, lilies of the valley, teardrop blossoms snowy white against glossy green foliage. Made lovelier because of the friend’s hand tenderly proffering the blossom, a present, a balm.

The beauty of understanding tears in an understanding face.

The beauty of a perfectly tailored shirt, crisp, blinding white, just out of the box.

The beauty of a swirl of taffeta, the tinkling of bells, diamonds, emeralds; a pristine paper flower.

Beauty. 

~ Melanie Benjamin