The Wretched of the Earth
I don’t like to start my day off with the dreadful news.
I feel fresh and enlivened in the mornings and refuse to taint
this short-lived joy with the hideous happenings “out there.”
Instead, I turn to the artists, poets, and philosophers
—the true awakeners of the human spirit.
Black coffee, old books, and the music of Gustav Mahler
— the breakfast of champs.
Today, as the world continues to trudge along on its ruinous path,
I’m reading the essays of one of the most eloquent and profound
writers of the 20th century, James Baldwin.
He once reminded us:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented
in the history of the world, but then you read. It was
books that taught me that the things that tormented me most
were the very things that connected me with all the people
who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
The New York Times once labeled Baldwin “the best essayist in this country
—a man whose power has always been in his reasoned, biting sarcasm;
his insistence on removing layer by layer the hardened skin with which
Americans shield themselves from their country.”
by Writer Unknown
from Poetic Outlaws