I want to keep digging into the messiness that is my relationship to race, as well as sexuality, as well as the napping rhino at the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York. I’m working toward a language that’s accurate about and embracing of the kinds of joy I feel, the kinds of sorrow, the kinds of emotion not visible to the white gaze. I want to say, this poem starring a napping rhino is an Asian American poem; in fact, despite it not being about how hard it was to immigrate, it is the most Asian American poem I have ever written.
“Baldwin depicts sexual alterity and the human struggle for self-love and communal acceptance without abandoning his commitment to a critique of social asymmetries of race and class.” - Aliyyah I. Abur-Ramun in ‘Simply a Menaced Boy’: Analogizing Color, Undoing Dominance in James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room
from “Emotions in the Christian Tradition” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Robert Roberts
“Perhaps the most prominent of these attitudinal phenomena is joy (chairein, chara, and to a much lesser extent agalliasthai, agalliasis). It is especially prominent in the writings of the apostle Paul, who includes joy in his list of the “fruit of the [Holy] Spirit” in Galatians 5:22–3. The idea seems to be that when joy is a fruit of the Spirit, it is about what God has done, God’s identity or attributes, or the believer’s relation to God. That is, the “content” of the joy is a theological belief. Strikingly, the object of joy sometimes includes suffering.”
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Teresa in Santa Maria
From St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography:
“It pleased our Lord that I would sometimes see this vision: very close to me, on my left, an angel appeared in human form... In his hands I saw a golden spear and at the end of the iron tip I seemed to see a point of fire. With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them out with it, and he left me utterly consumed by the great love of God.
The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused me by this intense pain that one can never wish it to cease, nor will one's soul be content with anything less than God."
To which a French diplomat reputedly responded: ‘If this is divine love, I know all about it.’”
from Spinoza’s Ethics:
“We see, then, that the mind can undergo great changes, and pass now to a greater, now to a lesser perfection. These passions, indeed, explain to us the affects of Joy [laetitia] and Sadness [tristitia]. By Joy, therefore, I shall understand in what follows that passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection. And by Sadness, that passion by which it passes to a lesser perfection.”
from Mia McKenzie’s “Black Girl Dangerous”:
“Alice Walker wrote that resistance is the secret of joy. I think this is true for people of color, for queers, for all of us whose lives are deemed less valuable in a hateful world run by evil people. Resistance comes in many, many forms. It comes in the throwing of bricks, but not only in the throwing of bricks. It comes, most often, in quieter, less media-worthy ways.”
I think I listened to “Into You” over 20 times today. I’m starting to believe it’s a found poem. She lifts some lyrics from Elvis’s “A Little Less Conversation,” Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body,” and SWV’s “I’m So Into You,” or Tamia’s “So Into You,” among others. In fact, if I wrote a song with “I’m so into you” as the chorus, I would probably have to title the song “You.” It’s freaky friday after all and I’m listening to an 18-month old song like it’s new.
