Jun 13, 2019
These Boots Were Made for Walkin’ Away from Oklahoma
There was nowhere to go back to. Oklahoma was out of the question, always out of the question. But then, where was home?
There was nowhere to go back to. Oklahoma was out of the question, always out of the question. But then, where was home?
Home means that you’re anchored in something deeper than second-hand nostalgia, that you miss your country because it is a part of you.
Fortunately, the recession did not affect the prices of alcohol in the way that the price of shaving cream and school fees had nearly tripled.
It’s not my job to absorb every feeling a man has. In my classroom, I am the one who decides whose feelings get airtime, and how they are shared.
France is famous for its commitment to authority and order, but every so often the top blows off the mountain and you’re left with a volcanic cauldron of revolution.
People will tell you the Marlins suck, that no one likes the Marlins. “Marlins fans?” they’ll joke, because everyone knows that Marlins fans don’t exist. Except they do, we do.
Writing was just something I thought happened to people naturally, that whatever wasn’t written was eventually forgotten. And I wanted to remember everything.
I chose to treat myself with ease—to not resist my natural response, but to sit with it, allow it to manifest, and reflect on why so many of us felt this way and what it could teach me.
If you’re lonely, you can spot another lonely person a mile off. The lonely can recognize kin.
Others began to intrude in what had once been a mom-and-pop operation. The conversion from hobby to profession had been made.
I am a Kenyan, an African, someone from the ‘global south.’ It is my job to prove I deserve to travel. It doesn’t matter how talented or smart or wealthy I or others like me are; we need a good passport.
As a child of many cultures, I wasn’t sure I could lay claim to one. But I learned that identity can grow and stretch, widen and encompass more than a single country or language.
There will always be liars in the focus group, but Fred was never one of them.
It’s happened for the past three days now. A three-day streak definitely qualifies it as A capitalized Thing.
In France, universal (or socialized) health care is half-NASA, half-MacGyver. And it works. I have to suspect the main objection to adopting the best healthcare system on the planet is just that it’s French.
We were three single Americans with a whiskey handle. What reception would we wake to if we fall asleep on the wrong sand?
There is a special gesture in the analog, in putting love to paper, when everything is in code.
Miraci is being the one thing blackness has always been forced to be even when unwilling—political.
Moving home to Newark has been a surreal experience because I have had to mourn places that once were, but are no longer.
