"So we beat on, boats against the current"

I will be four rows from the stage to watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway. You have no idea how much this means to me. I’m going home. HOME.

“I wish there was a star that meant ‘Fuck this.’”

I just signed up to take the GRE in New Orleans at 9 o’clock in the morning on October 26th, 2012. Though it’s a 4 and a half hour test, Bourbon Street and all of the Crescent City’s Dionysian glory is only a moments away from the Univ. of New Orleans, where I’ll be taking the test. It was the latest date I could get, seeing as Yale and Princeton would like my scores in around early December. That month and a half buffer should be enough time. 

So, that’s the future. Let’s see what’s happening down in the Present, and for that we turn to our weatherman, Matthew Germenis. Matthew, take it away.

….Silence….

Thanks, Matthew. Well, I’m here in the present and things aren’t looking to good for this week’s forecast. That 10+ page research paper on Deliverance that was due on Wednesday has yet to be started. A loaded work schedule and an emergency 5 page paper due on Friday, as well as some complications on the home front, saw to it that it would be turned in late. But this late? I’m afraid that this situation could turn out very poorly. The class on Southern Lit & Film was supposed to be an Easy A, but it looks as if, with the grace of some higher being, or at least the mercy of a professor, that there might need to be a settling for a B, should one be so lucky. It’s 12:47 am, and there’s work tomorrow from 10 to 4 pm. The 13 essays on Deliverance have not even seen a dent put into them. Stay tuned for an update, as we’re eager to see how this plays out. 

Of course, the folks down at Books A Million would schedule me for 30+ hours again this week. There’s no complaint about the work, this job is a godsend, but it’s clear to see how those 30 hours are making things tricky. On top of those 30 hours, there are still 20 hours of research left to for the independent history project taken on for the summer; looking up runaway slave advertisements in Antebellum Mississippi newspapers. Just another thing to keep an eye out for. 

A recent update is that a potential car might have been found. A 2007 Chevrolet Aveo LS, with less than 58,000 miles, 37 mpg on the highway/27 in the city, for only $9,000, which is by far the best deal that’s been seen. $144 monthly payments for the next 7 years. Doable, most definitely. 

The desire to be alone has never been greater. The desire to be with someone has never been stronger.

Like everything else, the stars refuse to deliver anything, fucking anything, that comes easily. 

Hope is a thing that teases, slides down into a crevice behind the eyes and eases its way to the base of the brain, silently, mercurially, preventing the deliverance from pain.

James Baldwin, the most important writer in my life, was born 88 years ago today. Never have I encountered a writer who used up every ounce of their energy and life to save the human race from their self-made sufferings. Never have I read the work of someone who shed every drop of love hoping that someone would cease to hate. Baldwin’s literature is an indispensable one, not only to American literature, or to African-American literature, but to the literature that we, this divided human family, have produced. My life changed when I first read Notes of a Native Son, and since discovering his work I have never been the same. Giovanni’s Room was the first novel to ever bring tears to my eyes. And there is an image from Another Country that is forever burned into my memory, serving as the epitome of desperation - the lowest of lows. I am forever indebted to James Baldwin, his sharp, beautiful mind with a skilled surgeon’s precision of finding exactly what ails our nation and race, and his loving, forgiving, and limitless heart, which never ceased to hope, even in its most bitter and violent moments, that one day we might just love each other.

Thank you, Jimmy. For everything. For your life. 

Love, 

MPG