jules

“It was a relief and a horror to be known so perfectly”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“Whose little boy are you?” Now this, unbelievably, was precisely the phrase used by pimps and racketeers on the Avenue when they suggested, both humorously and intensely, that I “hang out” with them. Perhaps part of the terror they had caused me to feel came from the fact that I unquestionably wanted to be somebody’s little boy. I was so frightened, and at the mercy of so many conundrums, that inevitably, that summer, someone would have taken me over; one doesn’t, in Harlem, long remain standing on any auction block. It was my good luck—perhaps—that I found myself in the church racket instead of some other, and surrendered to a spiritual seduction long before I came to any carnal knowledge. For when the pastor asked me, with that marvellous smile, “Whose little boy are you?” my heart replied at once, “Why, yours.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“I hope you looked west while I was looking east, and that for a moment you met my eyes without knowing it. I know you never look away, ever when your eyes are closed, but I'm never certain you can see what's really there.
I miss you to pieces.
Yours Always
- J”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights