2. Come back one day to haunt you

Hello,

I ran fourteen miles this morning on a trail that had chunks of redwood–light pink insides–blown all over it, and piles of disturbed dirt, and swathes of cleared land and a lot of eucalyptus looking down on me while I breathed hard up shallow hills. I want to say I love this trail. What I do is run on this trail so that I can be near trees, some of whose friends and neighbors have been blasted to make room for me.

I was listening to such a sad audiobook as I ran, and I'm not going to tell you what it was. I also listened to this song a few times, because it's one of my favorite songs, and thought as I always do when I listen to Traci Chapman about how much Alice Walker loved her.

I was thinking then about The Color Purple and about how many black people who love these movies don't or won't know that the book is, primarily, a love story about Celie and Shug. Not euphemistically! Two black women talking about how to give each other orgasms and how men ain't shit, in bed or out. I couldn't believe they gave Shug a father she needed to please in the Spielberg movie. Come on.

Anyways, I'm not actually talking about Alice, I was talking about Traci, and then I wanted to talk about Toni Morrison, because I am thinking so much about bodies and words these days. Specifically, about Jazz, which I re-read this year, and is, with Paradise and Song of Solomon, my favorite Morrison novel.

Here's part of the reason why, when the nameless narrator has the novel's last words:

"I envy them their public love. I myself have only known it in secret and longed, aw longed to show it–to be able to say out loud what they have no need to say at all: That I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to you and nobody else. That I want you to love me back and show it to me. That I love the way you hold me, how close you let me be to you. I like your fingers on and on, lifting, turning. I have watched your face for a long time now, and missed your eyes when you went away from me. Talking to you and hearing you answer–that's the kick.

But I can't say that aloud; I can't tell anyone that I have been waiting for this all my life and that being chosen to wait is the reason I can. If I were able I'd say it. Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now."

I love what different things make me feel, but the things we love have desires too. Running on trails makes me feel so good. But it also makes me feel like I'm watching The Bluest Eye not knowing about the lesbian love story. It feels so good not to look. These trees are looking down at me.

Until tomorrow,

Endria