Happy Martin Luther King Day
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
--M.L.K., 1963
...blackness and whiteness did not matter; to believe that they did was to acquiesce in one's own destruction. Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
--James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
However Many Sins
I've demonstrated a few shameful truths about human nature in my day, make no mistake about it. I have absolutely no idea what the seven deadly sins are --or even, in fact, if there are seven, or if I am perhaps confusing them with the voyages of Sinbad-- but I will hazard a guess that however many and whatever they are I've trespassed on their territory on more than a few occasions. I've coughed and sneezed at the same time and seized up like I thought I was going to die. I've curled up to sleep in the bed of a spanking new pickup truck that was parked at the tip-top of a car carrier on a freight train that was churning south along the Mississippi river in the fog, the engine whistle booming at every lonely road crossing. I cried in a telephone booth in Omaha when I heard the news that D. Boon was dead. One time in Chicago I traded a Swiss Army knife for a loaf of bread and a pack of cigarettes, and on another occasion I spray-painted "God" on the shell of a big snapping turtle and turned him loose in the Rock River. I once spent the night in the middle of a mini-golf course in the Wisconsin Dells, and awoke to the sounds of a father explaining away my misspent life to his young son. I used to go into this place up the street from my house in Orlando, old dusty store that had been there forever and sold shoes and greeting cards. The absolute worst, cheapest shoes, five-dollar Asian sweatshop black market shoes. Other big things, vinyl, that had never been in style. The greeting cards all looked like "Get Well," and "Dear Grandmother," fuzzy, washed-out, in-your-face flowers, old things you'd picture propped up on a bedside table in a nursing home. The ornery old bastard who ran the place was clearly a bookie and used the shoe/greeting card angle for a front. I'd go in there all the time because they had a very cool baseball arcade game in the back, and a pop machine that sold bottles of Grape Crush. Every time I'd stop by there the old bastard would be propped up on a stool behind the counter, talking on the phone, chain smoking Camel straights, and pouring wine into his face straight from a bottle. I wish like hell I could tell you that any of this amounted to a hill of beans. I wish like hell I could tell you I was lying, but I can't.
7:44:14 PM 
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