“In the context of social death, everyday practices explored the possibility of transfigured existence and cultivated an imagination of the otherwise and elsewhere, cartographies of the fantastic utterly antagonistic to slavery.
[…]
At secret meetings and freedom schools, hidden away in loopholes of retreat and hush arbors, gathered at the river or dwelling in the swamp, the enslaved articulated a vision of freedom that far exceeded that of the liberal imagination. It enabled them to conceive other ways of existing, flee the world of masters and invite its fiery destruction, anticipate the upheaval that would put “the bottom rail on top,” nurture a collective vision of what might be possible when no longer enslaved, and sustain belief in the inevitability of slavery’s demise.
[…]
The arrangement of stars in the night sky, the murmur and echo of songs traveling across a river, the revered objects buried near a prayer tree, the rumors of fugitives in the swamp or maroons in the hills nourished dreams of a free territory, or an existence without masters, or a plot against the plantation, or reveries of miraculous deliverance.” (SH, Scenes of Subjection)
“When we want to see blue, we look up at the sky. The Earth is blue to anyone looking down at it from the sky. Is blue in itself a color or merely a question of distance? Or a question of profound nostalgia? The unreachable is always blue.” Clarice Lispector, Too Much of Life.
“One of the tragedies that plot brings to light is the degree to which our inner lives and intentions can simply come to nothing—unrealized despite our best efforts, misunderstood and fruitless, as the story we played our part in generating goes on without us. It is only by elevating human choice that we can see how often our choices don’t matter, after all. Or maybe it would be better to say that our choices matter only unpredictably. There’s no way of knowing what will really count until later, and by then it’s too late. Better choose.”
You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking . . . ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”
The Scorpion and the Turtle. This earlier fable appears in the Anvaar Soheili, a collection of fables written c. 1500 by the Persian scholar Husayn Kashifi. via Wikipedia.
Love is too young to know what conscience is; Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: For, thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body’s treason; My soul doth tell my body that he may Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason; But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, He is contented thy poor drudge to be, To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. No want of conscience hold it that I call Her ‘love’ for whose dear love I rise and fall.
Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are loved of more and less; Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort. As on the finger of a throned queen The basest jewel will be well esteem’d, So are those errors that in thee are seen To truths translated and for true things deem’d. How many lambs night the stern wolf betray, If like a lamb he could his looks translate! How many gazers mightst thou lead away, If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! But do not so; I love thee in such sort As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
The spring has many sounds: Roller skates grind the pavement to noisy dust. Birds chop the still air into small melodies. The wind forgets to be the weather for a time And whispers old advice for summer. The sea stretches itself And gently creaks and cracks its bones….
The spring has many silences: Buds are mysteriously unbound With a discreet significance, And buds say nothing.
There are things that even the wind will not betray. Earth puts her finger to her lips And muffles there her quiet, quick activity….
Do not wonder at me That I am hushed This April night beside you.
As usual, Death sweetly slips her arm in mine— & we take a deep breath from the eucalyptus breeze. We both worked honestly at our jobs: all day Death destroyed traffic with wailing ambulances while I killed hours & lines on eight-&-a-half by eleven inch pages. We’re fast friends by now, Death much older of course, but there’s no hierarchy between us: we’re both taking a break from it all, glad to watch waves collapse on rocks & pelicans dive-bomb fish. I try to be sensitive to Death’s guilt: that whole pandemic disaster she can no longer control. She’ll soon betray me too—like she will you. I know. But today the gulls are silver angels etching great cursive blessings in a perfect sky—so Death & I make believe we believe that, & amble on.
“… crônicas do feed on a certain amount of friction—strange incidents, uncomfortable interactions with strangers, conversations with cab drivers (Lispector has a couple of very good pieces on this topic). […] The crônica demands a certain capacity for boredom, for being open to fleeting, small scenes of the quotidian.”
