Since the launch of my initial website 3,151 days ago (10/5/2012) to the unveiling of my new site today, I calculate I’ve taken @10,000 steps a day—discounted by 10% for sick days and 2 foot surgeries, but add back 10% to account for the up and down of 53 stair steps on the cliff at my previous residence for 3 years—for a total of 31,510,000 footsteps along the way—from there to here.

My more ethereal math tallies the glow of 95 full moons (accounting for 13 a month in 2 of those years) under which I cavorted with my demons & the primal. You see, hand carrying 80 blog post images that didn’t co-operate in the website tech migration, immersed me in a 9 year revealing retrospective of my musings.

Plenty of times I aimed too high, slimed too low, stayed too long, left too soon—and fell for it deep. Spirited away to seedy & exotic spots, I slithered when I should have walked, frolicked on a transatlantic high wire (in both directions) and red-eyed to an array of tropical hideaways. I bought and sold my wares, traded up and traded down & swapped one obsession for another. I purged possessions like a monk, hoarded sentimental junk & conquered disappearing tricks. And under each full moon, I nestled in the wild cocoon of night teasing the invisible—the ripple of a shoulder, flex of limbs, the tremble of a touch—searching for the sanctified.

I’ve lost count of all the strangers (who weren’t), emergencies, liaisons (per chance), warnings I failed to heed, intrigues I invited, risks I took, goodbyes I whispered—some ‘til then & a few forever. Not to mention a collection of illusions, spectral sightings & dead ends that opened up.

Contemplative, I wandered through multi continent deserts, left strands and footprints in miles of Caribbean sand, scoured windswept moors for clues linked to a former past, beat city streets from Amsterdam to Cape Town, missed planes, missed a kiss & barely dodged a cobra lurking in my path. From eclectic angles, I’ve worked the limitations (undercover) to uncover the lost & found.

I’ve closed doors and opened locks, reassembled broken pieces— revised, restored, transformed—& sought magicians deft with a sleight of hand.

So now, after a 5-month hiatus from creating blogs, I’m back with this inaugural post to my updated version.

Welcome to my new website made possible by the creative and technical expertise (and patience) of my website guru Mark Frankel Arroyo Design, my brilliant logo designer Eva-Lena Rehnmark and my photographer friend Kari Kliman. Please take a tour—peruse my offerings & let me know if I can guide you to your goals.

More footprints to follow.

Who would think I’d find myself (this holiday season) loitering, masked on the tracks, (probably holding up trains) while holding back a migraine – for fun!

Unlike my extrovert friends, I don’t miss crowded holiday parties drenched with glasses overfilled with empty chitchat. I don’t miss my favorite restaurants in the holiday season, waiting an hour and a half to be seated. Now I order ahead, take it & go. I don’t miss the bustle of shoppers at Bloomies or the hustle of opportunists offering opioids. Although festive in color, I don’t miss miles of red tail lights backed up on the freeway. I don’t miss the gluttony and excess of holiday frenzy or assumptions gilded in gold.

Instead I’ve taken a liking to my collection of masks. And I realize with distance, all the times in my life when I could have masked up – to save face. Oh, if only you knew those transformative tales!

Silence is more eloquent than words.
– Thomas Carlyle

Under the current stay-at-home order, my gregarious acquaintances shun the joys of solitude. But you see I once spent a week in the desert in silence – with monks at a Monastery – even cleaning latrines with the Benedictines. Expected to rise with the tolling of bells before dawn (to consider my ways), I still prefer the darkest of indigo nights for enlightenment. But the frugal surroundings and fathomless skies at daybreak can (on occasion) heighten the glow.

I don’t miss wedging shoulder to shoulder at concerts or sticky venues. I don’t miss shaking hands with strangers or friends – such an odd thing to do. I don’t miss packed boarding gates and late arrivals at overbooked hotels. But I miss the freedom to fly to exotic locales. I miss the buzz of spontaneity. I miss adrenaline ventures into the steamy unknown. But now, with security lines and passport control mutated into fast lanes for spread, I’ll give airports a miss this season – I hope you will too.

For me and for you, 2020 spritzed us an insidious virus. So the quaintness of last year’s Christmas no longer applies. Pre-Covid Codes all expired with global transmission. But it’s the season of blessings and counting them, so here’s what I’ve got. 

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
– Lao Tzu

Shift your horizon. Blessings lie inward – yet crisscross the heavens. Near the top of my list I count the blessing of creativity and its ineffable spirit. But the blessing of lovers and loved ones gleams from the brightest of stars.

For this silent Christmas of all Christmases, you’re not out of options. You can mask up and distance – or Zoom party all night. You can fill Santa’s sleigh with a windfall of online promos all tied up with labels for shipping and a sanitized bow. You can augment your home screen with new apps galore – order from a menu of delicacies delivered to your door. You can even wallow in nostalgia for more social times past. But you could also toast this year’s holiday retreat. Figure out what matters to keep.

And on the subject of keeping, I won’t keep you long. You see I’m busy with loitering and I know you have plenty to do. But in the end (which may be the beginning) I say sift through the lost and add up the found. Count your blessings and distribute a few. But first, indulge Promo Code: JOY 2020 wherever you are – whatever you do. (No cash value) – just a gift of joy from me to you!

P.S. Instead of 2020’s lethal spike proteins and the alternative reality showcase of evil, perhaps the convergence of Saturn & Jupiter on the Winter Solstice bodes well for the alignment of starlight and planets – and change – as we glide into 2021.

Beneath the glow of a Hunter’s Moon swarm ghosts of All Hallows’ Eve
Skeletons & spiders’ venom vie for poisonous pleasures
Dripping decadence – cavorting with their demons
Brewing bat wings & black cats as omens
Aiming to terrify – stir us a fright
Creep & crawl as they may
Or haunt as they might
Madness delights
2020.

2020 unleashed a coven of witches with aerosol fingers
Dispensing droplets of virus lethal to the ether
Engulfing the earth – yet embraced by evil
Demi-gods who malign and define
With viral lies, violence & hate
Assassinate the planet
Mutate our ways
And cling to
Power.

2020
Grim reaper’s call
Cloaked in a sickle of ruler’s infection
But 2020 doesn’t have to end like a Nonet poem
Disappear into the void. It’s not over yet – every vote counts
You & I can halt the devastation & discrimination – stabilize the nation
Heed the scientific warnings – ensure a future with a vision, not incite division
Restore democracy & decency – exorcise the despots & their desperado schemes
Let truth rise like Lazarus to reclaim our dreams & dance in the glow of each Hunter’s Moon.

Head tilted (or is it the earth?) you and I slip into the mercurial creep. Lurking in the shadows of perception, you and I connect or dissect – test the tides of fate or the fate of tides. Plucked unpolished out of context and left to mingle, you and I will tangle or beckon – reinvent anew. Askew? I know I do – or will. And you?

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
– Virginia Woolf

Is 2020’s launch of twisted viral limbo an apocalyptic warning – a poisonous trajectory aiming to take us down?

Every burst a dystopian bouquet for us to catch & carry – take your pick:

– A global pandemic fueled by maskless throngs of the unenlightened
– An inferno of scorching temperatures, lightning strikes & virulent wildfires 
– Ash rain & lethal hurricanes
– Herds of climate deniers dangling in the vortex & clouds of hoax promotion
– A plague of infectious ignorance & exponential violence
– Malignant disinformation disseminated by the demonic
– Racist policing, systemic racism & the stench of white supremacy
– Radioactive lies & the annihilation of integrity
– Desperado bullying & glowing corruption
– A sci-fi proxy reality & manifest destruction
– Social proximity (of the unconscionable) toasted with Kool-Aid fervor  
– And a whorling funnel of twisted viral limbo

This is Not a syllabus for Fiction.

Instead of spiraling to implosion – Mask Up, Speak Up, Take a Knee, Raise a Fist & Take a Stand. Heed the cataclysmic signs.

You and I can make a Choice!

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
– Ursula K. Le Guin

Black lives have always mattered – to black people.
Lest you forget. Lest we forget to remember.
Africans shackled for white man’s greed – bound for black man’s hell & death knell.
Caribbean cargo charged to cutlass the cane.
Kept like nameless fine chattels – souls bundled and sold.

Lynchings & lies – muscle & bone strung up & lashed by the robed.
Inequality & poverty enhanced by the stench of self-righteous denial.
Viral profiling – glistening like sweat on a back – & clear, clear
Evidence of police brutality – pummeling profiles in the courage of fear…
Silenced. First by the bit – now by twisted oppressors strangled with hate.

Mothers bled red & fathers riddled with shot – children’s collateral. No more!
Asphyxiation with zero justification – choke held by ignorance & rage. Never again!
Time –– Oh it’s time – it’s way way past time – to
Take a knee to take a stand (I know I am). Let’s 
Energize & mobilize. Join me – & all the rest (with the youthful unrest).
Raise a fist – repeal, reform & replace! Because Black Lives Matter!

Imagine if you could bleach a lie – if truth went viral – and testing and tracing and treatment accompanied it.
Imagine if we could have a leader like Jacinda Ardern.
Imagine if we could convince the overly social to go the distance.
Imagine a fleet of potent anti-bodies.
Imagine if we could crack the code spinning in the wind.
Imagine a vaccine.

What’s invisible to us is also crucial for our own well-being.
– Jeanette Winterson

Imagine if you had no iPhone, no iPad, no iTunes, no iMac – no Wi-Fi?
Imagine (now screen less) no Door Dash, Instacart or UPS?
Imagine the collapse of social media – no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter?
Imagine if quarantine, masked & gloved, shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders were medically induced terms in a Netflix sci-fi trailer?

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
– Thomas Merton

Imagine how in pre-pandemic time you imagined all the things you could do – if only you had time.
What if you imagine isolation not as anti-social incarceration but a looking glass for the lost and found? A multi-faceted crystal for time travel – an orb for innovation.

Imagine the invisible. Imagine!

I’ve come at this from all directions – steeped myself in videos and lore, passing(s)and replays, lower level seats (1x), glimpses on the street – glances at the gym. I’ve puzzled proximity and ineffable connection. “I’ve got this,” I want to say. But I’m only beginning. I don’t want to rehash or re-litigate what experts espouse about the legendary #28. From my solo vantage point, I want to honor Black Mamba for the inspiration and illumination he gifted me. I want to torch the vague and vagaries – eliminate excuses. Pick a focal point and focus. I also want to run as fast as Usain Bolt.

These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess.
– Kobe Bryant

“I’ve got this,” I want to say. But this phrase will forever belong to Kobe’s daughter Gianna (#2).

In a 2018 interview on Jimmy Kimmel, the father of four daughters smiled and laughed recounting the question fans often ask – if he wished he had a son. “Gianna will be standing next to me, and it’ll be like, ‘And you gotta have a boy. You and V gotta have a boy, have somebody carry on the tradition, the legacy.’ She’s like, ‘I got this. No boy for that, I got this.'” He also talked about coaching his daughter’s basketball team – Gianna aspired to one day play for the WNBA.

An advocate for women’s sports and a tennis fan, he named Serena Williams “The GOAT (Greatest of All Time)” in a tweet after she won the 2017 Australian Open final – one Grand Slam away from reaching Margaret Court’s record of 24. In collaboration with the fiery Williams and author Annie Mathews, Kobe created Legacy and the Queen, a Young Adult fantasy about a girl who must win a tennis tournament to save the orphanage run by her father and help her best friend, who faces factory work instead of school. He wanted his daughters and all young women to realize, “that your sensitivity is where a lot of your power, your inner magic comes from.”

In 2018 Bryant won an Academy Award for Dear Basketball, a short animated film he narrated, illustrating a poem he wrote in 2015 as a farewell to the sport. The film features a score by John Williams. In the poem (a love letter), he recognizes his body can no longer meet the demands of the game and accepts his inevitable retirement.

 If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail.
– Kobe Bryant

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, Bryant played his entire 20 season career with the Los Angeles Lakers. Known for earning M.V.P. awards, 18 All Star Selections, scoring an 81 point game, winning 5 NBA championships and scoring 60 points in his farewell game, you don’t have to love or even care about basketball to be awed by such achievement. Driven, multi-faceted and focused, Bryant endured injuries and personal challenges that could have ended his career much sooner if not for his resilience. “Mamba mentality is a constant quest to find answers. It’s that infinite curiosity to want to be better, to figure things out. Mamba mentality is you’re going, you’re competing, you’re not worried about the end result. You’re not worried about what people may say. You’re not worried about disappointing others. You’re not worried about any of that, you’re just focused on being in the moment. That’s what mamba mentality truly is.” He also couldn’t process failure.

I don’t think limits.
– Usain Bolt

I know you wonder why I keep bringing up the Jamaican sprinter, eight-time Olympic gold medalist and world record holder in both the 100m and 200m, considered the fastest human in the world. I wonder too. I’m fascinated by the intensity and trajectory of the journey for athletes like Bryant and Bolt. For the sacrifices and rewards. I believe it’s a sense of wonder that fuels passion, sharpens focus, denies all limits – even sustains one through injuries to the edge of breaking down. How could a 6’6’ man with scoliosis be the greatest sprinter of all time? How could a man with a third degree tear in his Achilles tendon, get up and walk on his own to the bench, then make it to the free throw line after the time out – and net two free throws? For most athletes such a devastating injury could have been the end, but Bryant underwent surgery and a lengthy rehabilitation to play three more years before retiring in 2016.

I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‘My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.’ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.
– Kobe Bryant

So now you wonder why the title of this tribute. I wonder too. On a quiet night (in late January) at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, between the fountain and the Koi pond, a tall black man with a little girl walked towards me. I see the moment as clearly as if I filmed it. But I didn’t. I replay it now over and over in slow motion – Kobe and his 3-year-old daughter hanging out together – between the fountain and the Koi pond. In the morning hours of January 26, Kobe and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna (#2) died in a helicopter crash en route to her basketball game.

While Koi fish symbolize good luck and abundance, they are also associated with perseverance in adversity and strength of purpose – and the fountain – a symbol of joy and peace.

I’d like to say “I’ve got this Black Mamba” – but I’m not there. And I still want to run as fast as Usain Bolt. There’s so much to figure out. So in the coming weeks and months when I’m out walking in the moonlight, I’ll gaze up to your vantage point high above – with wonder. May your spirit forever soar – between the fountain and the Koi pond.

 ***

To engage with the pivotal events of Bryant’s life, check out his documentary Kobe Bryant Muse.

Philanthropy
You don’t need to be a Laker’s fan or even an athlete to be inspired by Kobe’s vision. Beyond his skills on the court, he coached young players, opened the Mamba Sports Academy (now renamed Mamba and Mambacita for Gianna), granted over 250 wishes to children battling life threatening illnesses for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, raised money for research and medical expenses for Stand Up To Cancer, gave motivational speeches and raised money for the LA chapter of After-School All-Stars, which serves 14,000 students of which 98% are youths of color. Kobe and his wife established the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Foundation to improve the lives of young people and their families and were founding donors of The Museum of African American History and Culture.

I want to tell you about the night of the shimmering red sequin dress – but the alchemy of rust keeps trying to lure me away. Timeless and progressive, rust seeps into sea walls, painting with its bony fingers, leaving fingerprints on shipwrecks and railings and skeletons on the coast. It disintegrates and replicates, crumbles and holds firm. Like a compelling story, fluid and forensic – rust never rests.

I want to render you an image of a woman wrapped in fiery red batik (with birds) inhabiting the shore at dusk – a reflection high above and deep below. But the illusive figure reconfigures in the mist – disappearing through a crevice in the craggy rock. 

I want to tell you about all the times I’ve strayed and found my way. About jumping ship in tropical islands and folding my tent in a Tanzanian crater to head for roads unknown. I want to tell you how under veil of darkness, I stormed out of a romantic hideaway to commune with fireflies in an enchanted clearing.

I want to tell you about trekking near headhunters high in the highlands, about banned drugs and red warnings – but I only remember flashes of my hallucinations.

I really want to tell you about the horse-trading coup I pulled off against the king of the cons. Ha! I love justice. But rust likes to trick me, sink me into the valley of losses and make me all maudlin. So I always keep watch – never swapping joy for a cheat.

I could tell you about a freezing road trip get-a-way with a cowboy in Canada, stranded in a whiteout on the prairies, and my slippery escape. I could sketch details of an excursion in Virginia with a Count I once dated (or dated once) who coveted his gun. But I’m leaning towards fleshing out a bartender under weather-beaten thatch – there’s so much more to that.

I could tell you about all the O.R.s and E.R.s (synesthesia and anesthesia) but who needs a tincture of trauma during the holidays. Still the angels of mercy who kept/keep me from madness deserve more than praise.

I want to tell you about the magician in the desert but I’m too superstitious. His sleight of hand, I guard with my life.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
– Blaise Pascal

I want to elaborate on a handful of rings and wrongs – although a few were just right. And I still hold the rings – intricate silver, intimate gold and earthy organics hand carved with love.

I want to tell you about the glorious red of the Masai shawl I’ve worn in high spirits (across three continents) on sinful occasions. Well not exactly sins –

I want to tell you how I fell in a tangle – wedged on the edge of the jungle next to the sea. Wrapped in the fieriest of reds as I wandered at dusk, he handled the current like silk in a dream. As full moons held vigil season to season, secrets humbled and tumbled cresting in waves. But that’s just the prologue –

Imagine the fleeting moments of red we encounter? Red skies at night and red skies in morning – whose desire and what kind of warning? Don’t you wonder about that eerie glow? Is red just for lipstick or the hourglass of black widows? What about carmine Campari and tasty crustaceans, red carpets for starlets and starlit casinos, red lights in districts and taillights ahead? Or red foxes and vixens? And gemstones like garnets and rubies and jasper? Amaryllis and anthems and red neon exits? Mixed berries with cherries – vendettas, poinsettias – scarlet blooms and Sancerre?

I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the everything change.
– Margaret Atwood

I don’t want to dye the holidays with a toxic shade of blood red but we can’t ignore red flags and sirens. We can’t allow a rogue wave of red to lead us into dystopia. Atwood’s Handmaids have warned us – red meat, red armies and red parties’ redlining. Graft fuels a Firenados tempest with temperatures rising, poisons the waters, melts all the ice, and pollutes the air we must breathe. Red hands of the timer count down to Apocalypse. We can’t let it happen.

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
– Banksy

Even the elusive British street artist Banksy falls prey to red. Last week a phantom added red noses to his homeless reindeer mural in the Jewelry Quarter of Birmingham. Banksy created a video, to the soundtrack I’ll Be Home for Christmas, of Ryan a homeless man, having a drink, positioning his bag for a pillow, then lying on a street bench in front of the mural to be transported by the reindeer in his dreams. (Three million views on Instagram so far!) During the filming, bench passers-by gifted Ryan a hot drink, chocolate bars and a lighter without Ryan asking for anything. Unlike most art drawing attention to the plight of the homeless, the anonymous street artist’s installation allows homeless people to represent themselves. The miracle of art!

So in the spirit of the season, I’ll tinsel you a dozen candy canes and sequin you a scarlet stocking full of love (or stories) – you decide. Still I want to tell you about that cryptic glow in the sky (invite you backstage) but it will take longer than the twelve days of Christmas. Maybe some day I’ll circle back. In 20/20 who knows what may transpire?

May your holidays be vibrant and radiate a glow. Fleeting moments last forever!

Ah, my cunning October, you month of change and chance. You deliver me birthdays and death nights, hail me on windswept moors and lure me with tropical gales. Under your widespread wings, I taste blood reds and hear the sound of cobalt blue. You revel in testing my mettle, unevenly weighting my Libra scales. You love to tip me off balance – see if I will catch the fall. But in the slant of sunset, eye on the wild – I go against the wind.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
– Marcel Proust

Ah, my inseparable October, under your leafy umbrella I’ve reclaimed loss and lost untold claims. I’ve lost a mother and an intercontinental lover to your arms – with all the fallout fall can bring. But I’ve unearthed immeasurable treasure as you turn your leaves from rust to gold. My deepest secret is the treasure of all our secrets. What about that rendezvous or two at once – or twice and some, so many Sanguine Moons and seas apart? What about those caves and coliseums, backstretch barns and barefoot bars? What about our rituals – and all those twists and trysts we wrangled? What about our latest vision?

In your autumnal glory, you delight to twirl the zodiac. A croupier spinning a wheel of fortune, you fling me into another month when I don’t conform to all your ways. If I balk at classical symmetry (because I find it static) you can’t figure out what to do with me. But often I’m more asymmetrically aligned – inclined. What’s the sin in ebb and flow – and windy gusts of chance?

That’s a good way to live, go against the wind.
– Bob Seger

Oh Octo, you tenth month of the year, you transitional – you always want me to reconnect and reconcile – but I prefer to resurrect and reinvent. Take flight. You know damn well pilots (and birds who want to soar) take off into the wind for better lift off. So go ahead, edge me up with your So Cal Santa Anas or freeze me with a blast of Canadian Chinooks. Frenzy me with an unexpected African Sirocco – entice me with eternal possibilities. I know fire and ice. And you know, I know ­­–

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.
– Amelia Earhart 

You seduce me with your deco mirrors reflecting a second chance. I planned to post a blog a month ago (technically in Virgo) but I held out beyond the cusp because I didn’t want to cheat on you. Now in the raptures of your October charms, I’m free to roll the dice. In the litany of our relationship (tangled and trusted), I’ve fallen under alchemy and taken over gigs – ones I never asked for, never dreamed of – some I never wanted. I’ve worn masks but bypassed all the masquerades. I’ve galloped victory laps and bit the dust. Risen with the Hunter’s Moon and tumbled in your glory. But I’ll never leave you. Your leaves have cast their spell.

So my intimate October – Happy Birthday! Parade your ghouls and skeletons as your last hurrah, I’ll take you on. Opal me a chunk of iridescence, filled with veins of mystic silver – striations of greens and rose and indigo snaking without end. I’ll drink your serum of illusion – equal parts of truth and beauty. Yet fair warning my love – this nocturnal Libra strives for equilibrium and harmony but when I vortex with my ruling planet Venus – all bets are off. It’s like the winds of chance!

I love silence ­– but never to be silenced. I love the spirit(s) of the night but never to be deceived by darkness. I cherish creativity – but it must always find positive expression. And as for love…

Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.
– Toni Morrison (Beloved)

Dedicated to the sixty million and more lost in slavery, Morrison’s novel Beloved slices open the raw truth. Inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, a runaway slave caught escaping from Kentucky to freedom in Ohio in the 1850s, Morrison reveals the atrocities of slavery. Rather than return her baby to the slave master, Sethe slits the throat of her 3-year-old daughter. Another slave at Sweet Home, silenced by a metal bit forced in his mouth, Paul D can’t even cry out when he witnesses a horrific act perpetrated on Halle. Haunted by the ghost of the murdered child, the last incantation of the novel will forever echo in our consciousness. “Beloved.”

By creating a fictional microcosm of individual black lives, rather than a factual account of many, Morrison immerses us in an emotional and psychological experience, one that ensures a far more profound impact than all the history books on slavery every written.

And like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.
― Toni Morrison (Sula)

A tale of doubling, riddled with racism, and bathed in symbols of fire and water, the protagonist Sula acts on impulse with a blatant disregard for social conventions. The opposite of her obedient friend Nel, Sula defies traditional morality with her feminist independence. The town views Sula as the personification of evil – her strangeness symbolized by a birthmark “that spread from the middle of the lid toward the eyebrow, shaped something like a stemmed rose.” In an ironic twist, the town’s labeling of Sula as evil provides the community with the impetus to live harmoniously with one another. With Sula’s death, that harmony disappears. A complex novel of inversion, creativity and destruction, Sula poses unanswerable questions. An artist without an art form, Sula’s unexpected and unthinkable behavior will make your head spin. And challenge your expectations.

If you can’t imagine it, you can’t have it.
― Toni Morrison

Morrison’s work opens up the infinite power and possibility of words. Her novels taught me to be a better reader, a more critical thinker, a more acute listener. She challenged me to write about matters that matter – to investigate, to expose the truth. She showed me how to prioritize and synthesize. An artist and single mother, disciplined and driven, Morrison raised two sons writing her first novel (published at age 39) while her children slept before heading to her day job as editor at Random House where she worked for 20 years. There she performed her magic on the autobiographies of Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali, fiction by Gayl Jones and many others responding to the social and political times.

The first black woman to win the Nobel prize in Literature (1993), Morrison also received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for Song of Solomon, the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 presented by Barack Obama. “One of our nation’s most distinguished storytellers…Her writing was a beautiful, meaningful challenge to our conscience and our moral imagination. What a gift to breathe the same air as her, if only for a while.” (Obama)

In her eloquent acceptance speech for the Nobel prize, Morrison warned of the dangers of “oppressive language [that] does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge” and instead offered her vision of “word-work” which “makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.”

On hearing the news of her death, Margaret Atwood called Morrison a “giant of her times and ours …That her strong voice will now be missing in this age of the renewed targeting of minorities in the United States and elsewhere is a tragedy for the rest of us.”

A fierce feminist, full of verve and vision, her incantatory language lifts the often-violent subject matter off the page, as it simultaneously seeps into our consciousness, never allowing us to turn away. In times now contaminated by conspiracy theories, racist rhetoric and escalating violence, we cannot turn away. Let us celebrate the legacy of Morrison’s courage and creativity. Let us honor her life and life’s work. Let us keep her spirit alive. To soar!

You are your best thing.
― Toni Morrison (Beloved)

NOVELS & QUOTES

Morrison, “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” (The Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize)

THE BLUEST EYE (1970)
Love is never any better than the lover. 

 SULA (1973)
In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.

SONG OF SOLOMON (1977)
If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

TAR BABY (1981)
At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.

BELOVED (1987)
Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

JAZZ (1992)
Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.

PARADISE (1997)
Love is divine only and difficult always. 

LOVE (2003)
Young people, Lord. Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty.

A MERCY (2008)
We never shape the world she says. The world shapes us. Sudden and silent the sparrows are gone. I am not understanding Lina. You are my shaper and my world as well. It is done. No need to choose.

HOME (2012)
Misery don’t call ahead. That’s why you have to stay awake – otherwise it just walks on in your door.

GOD HELP THE CHILD (2015)
I don’t think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get.