the Softest Places @thesoftestplaces - Tumblr Blog

I walked southeast, careful to pace my steps so that I was moving neither too fast nor too slow to keep the group synchronicity that would make it easier to track anyone who didn't return on time. Just in case. Our lives were a series of actions twinned with "just in case" reactions.

Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (46)

"Well," she said, "you may not be a stranger now. But you were once and I'm sure you will be again--many times." "If it comes to that," I said, "so will you be, for me." She looked at me with a quick, bright smile. "Will I?" Then: "But what I mean about being a woman is, we might get married now and stay married for fifty years and I might be a stranger to you every instant of that time and you might never know it." "But if I were a stranger--you would know it?" "For a woman," she said, "I think a man is always a stranger. And there's something awful about being at the mercy of a stranger."

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (117)

She was by nature forthright and impatient; she suffered when things were not clear; yet she forced herself to wait for some word or sign from me and held the reins of her strong desire tightly in her hands.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (114)

He smiled, "Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home." He played with my thumb and grinned. "N'est-ce pas?" "Beautiful logic," I said, "You mean I have a home to go to as long as I don't go there?" He laughed. "Well, isn't it true? You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you can never go back." "I seem," I said, "to have heard this song before." "Ah, yes," said Giovanni, "and you will certainly hear it again. It is one of those songs that somebody somewhere will always be singing."

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (110)

And I also felt, standing so close to him, feeling such a passion to keep him from terror, that a decision--once again!--had been taken from my hands... And yet even this was not as real as my despairing sense that nothing was real fo rme, nothing would ever be real for me again--unless, indeed, this sensation of falling was reality.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (104)

I was too old to suppose that it had anything to do with my walk, or the way I held my hands, or my voice... It was something else and I would never see it. I would never dare to see it... But hurrying, and not daring now to look at anyone, male or female, I knew what the sailor had seen in my unguarded eyes was envy and desire: I had seen it often in Jacques' eyes and my reaction and the sailor's had been the same. But if I were still able to feel affection and if he had seen it in my eyes, it would not have helped, for affection, for the boys I was doomed to look at, was vastly more frightening than lust.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (86)

Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these [American] faces, these clothes, accents, rudeness, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (84)

And the pleasure was never real or deep, though Giovanni smiled his humble, grateful smile and told me in as many ways as he could find how wonderful it was to have me there, how I stood, with my love and my ingenuity, between him and the dark. Each day he invited me to witness how he had changed, how love had changed him, how he worked and san and cherished me. I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes, I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it... Or I thought, but I am happy. And he loves me. I am safe... When it was over, I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the touch of hands, Giovanni's hands, or anybody's hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (83)

Giovanni's face, which I had memorized so many mornings, noons, and nights, hardened before my eyes, began to give in secret places, began to crack. The light in the eyes became a glitter...The sensual lips turned inward, busy with the sorrow overflowing from his heart. It became a stranger's face... Not all my memorizing had prepared me for the metamorphosis which my memorizing had helped bring about.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (71)

"Why no," he said, reasonably, and looked at his watch, "we can wait another hour if you like. We can become friends then. Or we can wait until closing time... Tell me," he said, "what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?" "Well," I said, feeling myself being led by Giovani into deep and dangerous water, "I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "In order to make sure!... It's clear that you are a true philosopher." He pointed a finger at my heart. "And when you have waited--has it made you sure?"

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (37)

I pretended not to see, though I exploited it, the lust not quite sleeping in his bright, bitter eyes and, by means of the rough, male candor with which I conveyed to him his case was hopeless, I compelled him, endlessly, to hope.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (28-9)

And the very last night she was here, the very last time I saw her, as she was packing her bag, I told her that I loved her once and I made myself believe it. But I wonder if I had. I was thinking, no doubt, of our nights in bed, of the peculiar innocence and confidence, which will never come again, which had made those nights so delightful, so unrelated to past, present, or anything to come, so unrelated, finally, to my life since it was not necessary for me to take any but the most mechanical responsibility for them. And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to watch, no penalties attached--it was this last fact which was our undoing, for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (6)

That was how I met her, in a bar in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, she was drinking and watching, and that was why I liked her, I thought she would be fun to have fun with. That was how it began, that was all it meant to me... And I don't think it ever really meant more than that to her--at least, not until she made that trip to Spain and, finding herself there, alone, began to wonder, perhaps, if a lifetime of drinking and watching the men was exactly what she wanted.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (6)

Out here stars were perforations revealing the bleached skeleton of the universe through a collection of tiny holes. And surrounded by these silent trees, beside a calming fire, I watched the bones dance. This was our medicine, these bones, and I opened up and took it all in.

Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (9)

Most of my writing usually feels to me like a bad idea, which makes it hard for me to know which ideas feel bad because they have merit, and which ones feel bad because they don't... But somewhere along the line, from my heroes, whose souls were forged in fires infinitely hotter than mine, I gained an outsized faith in articulation itself as its own form of protection.

Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (123)

But whatever I am now, or have since become, I know now that slipperiness isn't all of it. I know now that a studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure... The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one's work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again--not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.

Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (112)

I have never really thought of myself as a "creative person"--writing is my only talent, and writing has always felt more clarifying than creative to me. But in contemplating this defintion, I wonder if one might be creative (or queer, or happy, or held) in spite of oneself.

Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (103)

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

the Softest Places