Morning Reading

 The hip woke me before the alarm clock. I smoked a cigarette, ate an apple, and swallowed three ibuprofen. Sitting in the chair seems to help. I needed to finish what I had left from last night. My mind needed a distraction from the idea of going in late, if not calling in sick. Going on 6 am and I do feel better.

I read Jesmyn Ward's “She writes her way to hope”: Jesmyn Ward introduces “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler. I have been writing about Octavia Butler as a writer I want to read. Ward reinforces this feeling:

This is how Butler finds her way in a world that perpetually demoralizes, confounds, and browbeats: she writes her way to hope. This is how she confronts darkness and persists in the face of her own despair.

This is the real gift of her work, a gift that shines in Bloodchild: in inviting her readers to engage with darker realities, to immerse themselves in worlds more disturbing and complex than our own, she asks readers to acknowledge the costs of our collective inaction, our collective bowing to depravity, to tribalism, to easy ignorance and violence. Her primary characters refuse all of that. Her primary characters refuse to deny the better aspects of their humanity. They insist on embracing tenderness and empathy, and in doing so, they invite readers to realize that we might do so as well. Butler makes hope possible. That hope might be tenuous, and our lives might not be what we envisioned in these ruptured realities, but new ways of being are near. These are futures where we might turn from despair and build another family after a pandemic. Where we might elect to foster life and connection. Where we might wake every day and choose to breathe, to walk, to do work and heal ourselves and others even though we struggle with suicidal ideation, with nihilism, with grief. Bloodchild is a template for how to survive, how to thrive, in broken worlds, and Butler’s work is ever prescient, ever powerful. Her voice: a rough balm.

Jesmyn Ward is also a writer you should read. I read her memoir Men We Reap in prison, an amazing writer telling a harrowing story. What I have read of her novels leaves me the feeling of her being a significant writer of America.

Another Chicago Magazine published a short memoir, “The Interview” by Elisabetta La Cava. This left me glad not to have been an immigrant, as it reminded the attachment immigrants have to this country.

"Speck" by Justin Chandler from Epiphany Magazine was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I like its strangeness, its emotional content. Would that I could write this.

Stick with me, and you will see several pieces about Tom Robbins. Prison gave him back to me. I do not know why I let him get away, but I did, and that was to my detriment. Despondency has its enemy in Tom Robbins' novels. To understand why I write this, for now, I offer: Tom Robbins is worth exploring. I cannot, will not, disagree with the headline.

6:07. Twenty minutes for the bus. I may be calling it close.

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