Not for nothing

I woke up sucking a lemon. I had fresh squeezed oj for lunch and I still can't much fathom feeling unfettered. I looked to my horoscope, I looked to the bible but this time it might not be so easy. I was distracted from the malaise by this vintage interview with James Baldwin from Henry Lyman's Poems to a Listener public radio show. I am supposed to be buddy-passing my way back to the city of lights this June and I very much hope to venture down to Saint Paul de Vence where Baldwin intermittently lived and died. In life he was: his words*, the evidence:

From "Staggerlee Wonders"

They've still got influence with wind and water
Though they're in for some suprises with clouds and fire
My days are not their days
My ways are not their ways
I would not think of them one way or the other
did not they so grotesquely block the view between me and my brother

Here's more.

What is it that this people cannot forget
Surely they cannot be so deluded as to imagine that their crimes are original
There is nothing in the least original about the fiery tongs of the eyeballs, the sex torn from the socket, the infant ripped from the womb
Nothing orginal about Judas or Peter or you or me
Nothing
We are liars and cowards all
All nearly all
All nearly all the time
But we also ride the lightening
Answer the thunder
Penetrate whirlwinds
Curl up on the floor of the sun
And pick our teeth with thunderbolts
Then perhaps they imagine that their crimes are not crimes
Perhaps
Perhaps that is why they cannot repent

*Transcibed by me from the NPR audio so please excuse any errors.