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A message for the season
You matter Always You are not just significant but magnificent You are the embodiment of Love Especially when it doesn’t feel that way You belong Always You are not just embraceable but irreplaceable You are indispensable Especially when it doesn’t feel that way In you, I find myself Through you, I know myself With you, I am whole Always Especially when it doesn’t feel that way by Raphael Cushnir
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May your force be with you
My friends were over last night and left me with an Argentinian saying – algún culo va a sangrar. Translation: someone will get fucked in the ass. Yes, you may say, tasteless. My friend recoiled even mentioning the saying – she said it always repulses her, but you have to admit, it is one of those sayings that pretty much needs no interpretation. We were speaking about college suicides, university sex scandals, taking a lover…
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Bayou Bard 2014
Santa’s Little Helpers ‘Twas the night before Christmas in Bayou St. John Where no creatures were stirring, on-shore or beyond. As they nestled together all snug in their beds Bungled passes and missed tackles danced in folks’ heads And if anything hung from the chimneys with care It was hope, clinging onto a wing and a prayer. With a final Hail, Mary and sad Good Night, Moon The ex-senator crashed as the whole city crooned…
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Like that
Tin has a book called The People Could Fly, which are American Black folktales. In one of the stories, a lion keeps jangling everyone’s nerves because he keeps beating his chest exclaiming, “Me and Myself, Me and Myself” until one day Bruh Bear and Bruh Rabbit get him to meet Man whose gun teaches He Lion a lesson in humility. The cadence of these stories reminds me of the first time I read a Toni…
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Viva La Revolución!
I was born a child of the revolution. Conceived in Havana to my Sephardic father and my Louisiana mother, I was briskly flown to Miami to be born because Fidel Castro had marched into Havana in March 1959, two months before my due date. For 55 years, I’ve lived in a country that has refused to recognize the suffering of the Cuban people and instead upheld an embargo to make sure they suffered even more…
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Happy Hanukkah
Hanukkah The story of Hanukkah is the story of religious freedom. In 168 BC King Antiochus (pronounced an TIE uh kus) the 4th, who inherited his kingdom from Alexander the Great, set up an idol in the Jewish temple and ordered Jews to worship it. He was a zealous Hellenist and wanted all people to follow Greek ways. A revolt led by Mattathias and his son Judah the Maccabee to overthrow Antiochus raged with the…
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Basquiat and the Boys
Evan Christopher, Tin’s godfather, composed songs as interpretations of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings on display at the Ogden Museum for Prospect 3. We went to the Ogden last night to hear Evan and his band play and we were treated to one after another phenomenal arrangement. The night provided a good bridge to Tin’s nascent interest in both music and art – he told me later he expected to have his own gallery where he would…
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The Leisure of a Lover
I said to a younger friend the other day that there will come a time in her life when she will be through looking for the perfect partner, the husband, the boyfriend, the man who will ask her on a date, or the end all be all that is supposed to arrive with all the answers. Instead, she will open her arms to a lover. I’ve watched my lover up close and from afar –…
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Strand(ed)
I can never finish my Sunday New York Times so I have just gotten used to the fact that I will read it all week. It’s the product of having a young child (and a puppy). So today, Friday, I learned from last Sunday’s Times that Mark Strand had passed at 80 years old. And I’m just sitting with that right now. Lines for Winter Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from…