I M Still Here 2010 Quotes

The storms the wind, the rain have met me once again
And interrupted blue
The sky turned gray, turned cold, turned winter once again
And interrupted blue

But I'm here for now
Yes, I'm here

Though storm, though wind, though rain have met me once again
And interrupted blue

I'm still here ~ Christa Black

Come over early tomorrow morning," Marlboro Man asked over the phone one night. "We're gathering cattle, and I want you to meet my mom and dad."
"Oh, okay," I agreed, wondering to myself why we couldn't just remain in our own isolated, romantic world. And the truth was, I wasn't ready to meet his parents yet. I still hadn't successfully divorced myself from California J's dear, dear folks. They'd been so wonderful to me during my years of dating their son and had become the California version of my parents, my home away from home. I hated that our relationship couldn't continue despite, oh, the minor detail of my breaking up with their son. And already? Another set of parents? I wasn't ready.
"What time do you want me there?" I asked. I'd do anything for Marlboro Man.
"Can you be here around five?" he asked.
"In the evening…right?" I responded, hopeful.
He chuckled. Oh, no. This was going to turn out badly for me. "Um…no," he said. "That would be five A.M."
I sighed. To arrive at his ranch at 5:00 A.M. would mean my rising by 4:00 A.M.--before 4:00 A.M. if I wanted to shower and make myself presentable. This meant it would still be dark outside, which was completely offensive and unacceptable. There's no way. I'd have to tell him no.
"Okay--no problem!" I responded. I clutched my stomach in pain.
Chuckling again, he teased, "I can come pick you up if you need me to. Then you can sleep all the way back to the ranch."
"Are you kiddin ~ Ree Drummond

I replied with an Avenian accent. "Is the priest of this church still here?"
"No." He squinted at me. "Never seen you before. You from out of town?"
"I've never seen you before either," I said. "So maybe you're the one from out of town."
That amused him. "My name is Fink. Well, that's not really m name, but it's what everyone calls me."
"What's your name, then."
"Dunno. Everyone just calls me Fink."
"Don't you have anywhere else to go?"
"Not really. Why d'you want the priest?"
"A doctrinal question. What punishment does the Book of Faith recommend for a kid who's being too nosy? ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

Tone policing takes priority over listening to the pain inflicted on people of color. People of color are told they should be nicer, kinder, more gracious, less angry in their delivery, or that white people's needs, feelings, and the thoughts should be given equal weight. ~ Austin Channing Brown

It's so easy to believe the pretty pictures on the website filled with racial diversity, to buy in to the well-crafted statements of purpose, to enjoy being invited into the process of "being part of the change." The role of a bridge builder sounds appealing until it becomes clear how often that bridge is your broken back. ~ Austin Channing Brown

In the end, what matters is this: I survived. ~ Gail Honeyman

We had something real," Nobley said, starting to sound a little desperate. "You must have felt it, seeping through the costumes and pretenses."
The brunette nodded.
"Seeping through the pretenses? Listen to him, he's still acting." Martin turned to the brunette in search of an ally.
"Do I detect any jealousy there, my flagpole-like friend?" Nobley said. "Still upset that you weren't cast as a gentleman? You do make a very good gardener."
Martin took a swing. Nobley ducked and rammed into his body, pushing them both to the ground. The brunette squealed and bounced on the balls of her feet.
"Stop it!" Jane pulled at Nobley, then slipped. He put out an arm and caught her midfall across her middle.
"Here, let me…" Nobley tried to give her a hand up and push Martin away at the same time.
"Get off me," Martin said. "I'll help her."
He kicked Nobley in the rear, followed by some swatting of hands. Jane planted her feet, grabbed Nobley's arm, and pulled him off. Martin was still swiping at Nobley from the ground. Nobley's cap fell off, then his trench coat twisted up around Martin, who batted at it crazily.
"Cut it out!" Jane said, pushing Nobley back and putting herself between them. She felt more like a teacher stopping a schoolboy scuffle than an ingénue with two brawling beaus.
"M-m-martin's gay!" Nobley said.
"I am not! You're thinking of Edgar."
"Who the hell is Edgar?"
"You know, that other gardener who always sm ~ Shannon Hale

In their book Radical Reconciliation, Curtiss DeYoung and Allan Boesak unpack why this happens. They write, "reconciliation is revolutionary, that is, oriented to structural change." Which means, reconciliation can never be apolitical. Reconciliation chooses sides, and the side is always justice.

This is why white American churches remain so far from experiencing anything resembling reconciliation. The white Church considers power its birthright rather than its curse. And so, rather than seeking reconciliation, they stage moments of racial harmony that don't challenge the status quo. They organize worship services where the choirs of two racially different churches sing together, where a pastor of a different race preaches a couple of times a year, where they celebrate MLK but don't acknowledge current racial injustices. Acts like these can create beautiful moments of harmony and goodwill, but since they don't change the underlying power structure at the organization, it would be misleading to call them acts of reconciliation. Even worse, when they're not paired with greater change, diversity efforts can have the opposite of their intended effect. They keep the church feeling good, innocent, maybe even progressive, all the while preserving the roots of injustice. ~ Austin Channing Brown

There was major u.s. imperialist support for Italian, Spanish and German fascism before and even during World War II, as opposed to support for fascism at home. Fascism was distinct from racism or white supremacy, which were only "as American as apple pie."
Neither the ruling class nor the white masses had any real need for fascism. What for? There was no class deadlock paralyzing society. There already was a longstanding, thinly disguised settler dictatorship over the colonial proletariat in North America. In the u.s. settlerism made fascism unnecessary. However good or bad the economic situation was, white settlers were getting the best of what was available. Which was why both the white Left and white Far Right alike back then in the 1930s were patriotic and pro-American. Now only the white Left is.
The white Left here is behind in understanding fascism. When they're not using the word loosely and rhetorically to mean any repression at all (like the frequent assertions that cutting welfare is "fascism"! I mean, give us a break!), they're still reciting their favorite formula that the fascists are only the "pawns of the ruling class". No, that was Nazism in Germany, maybe, though even there that's not a useful way of looking at it. But definitely not here, not in that old way.
The main problem hasn't been fascism in the old sense – it's been neocolonialism and bourgeois democracy! The bourgeoisie didn't need any fascism at all to put Leonard Peltier away in m ~ J. Sakai

NIGHT OF LOVE
The moon has left the sky, love,
The stars are hiding now,
And frowning on the world, love,
Night bares her sable brow.
The snow is on the ground, love,
And cold and keen the air is.
I 'm singing here to you, love;
You 're dreaming there in Paris.

But this is Nature's law, love,
Though just it may not seem,
That men should wake to sing, love,
While maidens sleep and dream.
Them care may not molest, love,

Nor stir them from their slumbers,
Though midnight find the swain, love,
Still halting o'er his numbers.
I watch the rosy dawn, love,
Come stealing up the east,
While all things round rejoice, love,
That Night her reign has ceased.
The lark will soon be heard, love,
And on his way be winging;
When Nature's poets wake, love,
Why should a man be singing? ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

Whatever he had lost, be it his money, his friends, his reputation, his self-respect, his inner joy and peace - one or all - he still remained his father's child. And so he says to himself: "How many of my father's hired men have all the food they want and more, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men." With these words in his heart, he was able to turn, to leave the foreign country, and go home. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

We kissed for two hours. Eventually, I led him into my bedroom and pulled off both of our shirts. He stopped me.
"This might sound weird; it's not typical guy response." I froze, suddenly awkward. "I mean, if I didn't feel the way I do with you I would be all for it, but I kind of think maybe it would be good to wait. I've rushed into sex, and had it be a mistake." He shrugged apologetically. "I mean, if it's safe to assume you are experiencing the same date that I am, then I think we will have time."
I was a little flabbergasted and more than a little embarrassed. How could I explain that the idea sounded like a huge relief to me, that I didn't quite understand where the impulse to start taking my clothes off came from? I had had the same experience. I rarely enjoyed first-time sex with partners, largely because I usually did it before I really knew or trusted them. Here was where the difference between what I knew and did remained wide. The shame I felt wash over me was tinged with that hatred of my own innocence. Was I still so green? So unconfident? Had I gone straight out of the extremity of sex work to the innocence of my adolescence? Where was my self-knowledge? Still, I was relieved.
"Of course. I agree totally." I clutched my T-shirt to my chest and smiled at him. "And yes, I am on the same date you are on."
"I thought so," he said. "I mean, I don't think you can feel like this when it's not reciprocal."
He left at 2:00 A.M. and called me at ~ Melissa Febos

I don't know what to do with what I've learned," she said. "I can't fix your pain, and I can't take it away, but I can see it. And I can work for the rest of my life to make sure your children don't have to experience the pain of racism."

And then she said nine words that I've never forgotten: "Doing nothing is no longer an option for me. ~ Austin Channing Brown

I hate you for all the years I 'll have to live without you. How can a heart hurt this much and still go on beating? How can I feel this bad without dying from it?
I 've bruised my knees with praying to have you back. None of my prayers have been answered. I tried to send them up to heaven but they 're trapped here on earth, like bobwhites beneath the snow. I try to sleep and it's like I 'm suffocating.
Where have you gone?
Once you said that if I wasn't with you, it wouldn't be heaven.
I can't let go of you. Come back and haunt me. Come back. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I see you have no need of a sword."
"Very difficult, these days, to get them through security," she pointed out without changing expression.
"You're extremely accurate with that weapon."
"With all weapons. My father was an exacting man."
"You're a very dangerous woman, Azami Yoshiie." Sam meant it as an admiring compliment.
One eyebrow raised. Her mouth curved and she flashed a heart-stopping smile. "You have no idea how dangerous." She said his own words right back to him and he believed her.
"And you're as adept with a sword as you are with your other weapons?" he asked curiously.
"More so," she admitted with no trace of bragging - simply stating a fact. "I said so, didn't I?"
Sam turned on his heel and strode toward her purposefully. "I'm about to kiss you, Ms. Yoshiie. I'm fully aware I'm breaching every single international law of etiquette there is, and you might, rightfully, stick that knife of yours in my gut, but right at this moment I don't particularly give a damn."
Her eyes widened, but she didn't move. He'd known she wouldn't. She was every bit as courageous as any member of his team. She would stand her ground.
Thorn moistened her lips. "It might be your heart," she warned truthfully.
"Still, I have no choice here. I really don't. So pull the damn thing out and be ready."
She felt her body go liquid with heat, a frightening reaction to a woman of absolute control. "If you're going to do it, you'd best m ~ Christine Feehan

Finally, let me share a feeling of mine, I hope it will not be misinterpreted as pride. I am seventy four now. But still, if they give me a duty in the wooden hut where I used to stay when I was a mentor long years ago, I will gladly run there and try to fulfill that duty. Perhaps, some of our friends can see that task as a simple and trivial one. But I have not underestimated this duty and would never do so. Even today, some people may consider our having lessons with the small circle of young scholars here as a simple and trivial job. However, in my opinion, this is the most important occupation that can take human to the highest levels. ~ M. Fethullah Gulen

THE RELIABLE WAY OUT OF OBESITY IS VIA PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. This point has been lost on the hundreds of folks who have railed against my arguments for food addiction in periodicals, so I"m eager to make it here: No one but me put the food in my mouth. Even if I had grown up imprisoned in a crawl space under the basement stairs (I wasn't), even if tragedy has befallen me every 15 minutes since (it hasn't), I"m still responsible for what I eat. If my food is out of control (it was), then I'm responsible for finding, requesting, and accepting the help I need. ~ Michael Prager

My clothes aren't going to get dried until you wash them. Which involves putting them in the washer, and that involves picking them off the floor." Marshell wiggled his eyebrows at me, then turned and stepped into the shower.
I did drool when I got a look at his ass. "Oh my…." Did I mention I was an ass man?
"Remi?"
"Uh-huh?" My vocabulary had taken a hike, it appeared.
"I can smell your desire. If you're still here by the count of five, I'm getting out and coming after you. One of us is going to get fucked in this awesome shower of yours, so…." Marshell said from the shower. "One."
The sound I made was a cross between a squeak and a growl, thanks to acres and acres of wet, glistening skin. I wanted to run my tongue over every square -
"Two….
"Three…."
I grabbed his jeans and ran. The softly whispered word "chicken" followed me out of there. I was halfway to the laundry room before I could take a deep breath. Then it hit me what I'd done. I ran out on him. Honestly calling me a chicken was too kind. I was a coward. The only reason I ran was because I was afraid to bottom.
I was a top. I always topped. I threw his clothes in the washer, tossed in one of those little pods, and turned it on. Then banged my head against it. What was I doing? Why was I standing here and not in the shower with him?
Yes, I topped because I was afraid to do anything else. My one and only experience with bottoming was an unmitigated disaster. A painfu ~ M.A. Church

It shouldn't have surprised me. I serve a God who experienced and expressed anger. One of the most meaningful passages of Scripture for me is found in the New Testament, where Jesus leads a one-man protest inside the Temple walls. Jesus leads a one-man protest inside the Temple walls. Jesus shouts at the corrupt Temple officials, overturns furniture, sets animals free, blocks the doorways with his body, and carries a weapon - a whip - through the place. Jesus throws folks out the building, and in so doing creates space for the most marginalized to come in: the poor, the wounded, the children. I imagine the next day's newspapers called Jesus's anger destructive. But I think those without power would've said that his anger led to freedom - the freedom of belonging, the freedom healing, and the freedom of participating as full members in God's house. ~ Austin Channing Brown

White people are notorious for trying to turn race conversations into debates, and then becoming angry or dismissive when people of color won't participate. White people believe this is because people of color haven't thought it through or are stumped by a well-made point. But the truth is, oftentimes people of color don't have the time, energy, or willpower to teach the white person enough to turn the conversation into a real debate. To do so would be a ton of work. ~ Austin Channing Brown

I determine to offer a challenge toward transformation. For most confessions, this is as simple as asking, "So what are you going to do differently?" The question lifts the weight off my shoulders and forces the person to move forward, resisting the easy comfort of having spoken the confession. The person could, of course, dissolve into excuses, but at that point the weight of that decision belongs to them, not to me. ~ Austin Channing Brown

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick ... When I came to him, he said to me, "Henri, here I am lying in this bed, and I don't even know how to think about being sick. My whole way of thinking about myself is in terms of action, in terms of doing things for people. My life is valuable because I've been able to do many things for many people. And suddenly, here I am, passive, and I can't do anything anymore."
As we talked I realized that he and many others were constantly thinking, "How much can I still do?" Somehow this man had learned to think about himself as a man who was worth only what he was doing. And so when he got sick, his hope seemed to rest on the idea that he might get better and return to what he had been doing. If the spirit of this man was dependent on how much he would still be able to do, what did I have to say to him? ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is rage inducing to be told that we can do anything we put our minds to, when we work at companies and ministries where no one above middle management looks like us. It is rage inducing to know my body is being judged differently at every turn - when I am late to work, when I choose to eat lunch along, when I am expressing hurt or anger. I become either a stand-in for another Black female body - without distinction between our size, our hair, our color, our voices, our interests, our names, our personalities - or a stand-in for the worst stereotypes - sassy, disrespectful, uncontrollable, or childlike and in need of whiteness to protect me from my [Black] self. ~ Austin Channing Brown

I've put down half a pitcher of water by the time she comes to take my order. She fills another pitcher and sets it in front of me, standing with her pen in her hand, distracted, waiting for me to order. It's early afternoon and well north of 100 degrees. Perusing the menu, I comment on the heat. "Man, it's hot out there."

Setting her order pad down on the counter, crossing her arms, tapping the back of her pen against her lower lip, she looks out the window at my bike leaning there. Her eyes drift to mine with that look women can give men. You know the look, the one that says, "I'm wondering if you're trying to act dumb, or if you really might be that dumb." Not necessarily mean, just curious.

I smile sheepishly beneath the pressure of the question behind her look. Every man reading these words knows exactly what I'm talking about here. You get the look, so you know you've said or done something really stupid, but you don't have a clue what it is you've done or said that is so outrageously idiotic. Which just makes it worse.

She sees all this wash across my face, and a small smile plays at the corners of her face. Still tapping the pen against her lower lip, she brings her elbows down to rest on the bar, leaning in a little closer to me, as if letting me in on her secret. "Honey, it's June. It's the hottest month in the Sonoran Desert." Pausing, she looks again at my bicycle leaning against her window.

"You're riding a bicycle acro ~ Neil M. Hanson

White people need to listen, to pause so that people of color can clearly articulate both the disappointment they've endured and what it would take for reparations to be made. Too often, dialogue functions as a stall tactic, allowing white people to believe they've done something heroic when the real work is yet to come. ~ Austin Channing Brown

Where's the training ground?"
He thought he knew my reason for asking. "Oh no you don't," he said. "This isn't Sparta. You heard what Lord Oeneus thinks of women who act like men. You'll offend him."
"What offends him is women who do better than men," I said. "Don't worry, I don't want to do sword practice with any of them." I indicated the still-swaggering hunters. "If one of them beats me, he'll claim I had twelve arms, six heads, and spat poison. I just want to watch how you're all preparing for the hunt."
"Well, well, so you want to watch men exercising?" Castor snickered. "My little sister's growing up!"
I gave him a hard look. "The boar isn't the only pig around here."
That made him laugh outright. "Ah, Helen, I'm only joking. ~ Esther M. Friesner

Ultimately, the reason we have not yet told the truth about this history of Black and white America is telling an ordered history of this nation would mean finally naming America's commitment to violent, abusive, exploitative, immoral white supremacy, which seeks the absolute control of Black bodies. It would mean doing something about it.

How long will it be before we finally choose to connect all the dots? How long before we confess the history of racism embedded in our systems of housing, education, health, criminal justice, and more? How long before we dig to the root? ~ Austin Channing Brown

I believe the reasons we hang on to seemingly insignificant snippets of conversation, the smell of a particular pizza delivered by a particular guy, the shape of certain shadows on a particular wall, is that there may come a day when we are sitting in a hospital room visiting our mother as she lies on an uncomfortable bed, still recovering. And we are asking her questions and feeling nervous about what the doctor has said could be permanent damage caused by a blood clot the size of a pinpoint and we don't know if the way she is struggling to find the right words is a temporary exhaustion or the new reality and all we want to do is tell her we love her in a language no one has used before because we mean it in a way that no one has meant it before. And this will be a difficult time for us.
But then, in a break between the words, a commercial may come on the small television hung up in the corner of the room that we did not even know was playing. It may advertise some new drug, some insurance plan, and our mother will smile at the voice of the handsome actor standing in front of a green screen. She will then close her eyes and squeeze our hand, the one that she has been holding since we walked in, and say, "Oh, I used to have such a crush on him."
When she does this, our memory will be waiting.
Yes, yes, yes. It is love that we feel here.
This is the purpose of memory. ~ M.O. Walsh

I have, however, to live in an age of Faith - the sort of thing I used to hear praised and recommended when I was a boy. It is damned unpleasant, really. It is bloody in every sense of the word. And I have to keep my end up in it. Where do I start?

With personal relationships. Here is something comparatively solid in a world full of violence and cruelty. Not absolutely solid... We don't know what other people are like. How then can we put any trust in personal relationships, or cling to them in the gathering political storm? In theory we can't. But in practice we can and do. Though A is unchangeably A or B unchangeably B, there can still be love and loyalty between the two. For the purpose of loving one has to assume that the personality is solid, and the "self" is an entity, and to ignore all contrary evidence. And since to ignore evidence is one of the characteristics of faith, I certainly can proclaim that I believe in personal relationships. ~ E. M. Forster

I nearly swallow my tongue when Cash pops up from behind the bar. "You must be Olivia."
"Holy mother of hell!" I say, grabbing my chest to still my racing heart.
He laughs. "With a mouth like that, you'll fit right in here."
If I weren't so surprised, I'd probably take exception to that comment. Instead, I laugh.
"You bring out the worst in me. What can I say? ~ M. Leighton

We have not thoroughly assessed the bodies snatched from dirt and sand to be chained in a cell. We have not reckoned with the horrendous, violent mass kidnapping that we call the Middle Passage.

We have not been honest about all of America's complicity - about the wealth the South earned on the backs of the enslaved, or the wealth the North gained through the production of enslaved hands. We have not fully understood the status symbol that owning bodies offered. We have not confronted the humanity, the emotions, the heartbeats of the multiple generations who were born into slavery and died in it, who never tasted freedom on America's land.

The same goes for the Civil War. We have refused to honestly confront the fact that so many were willing to die in order to hold the freedom of others in their hands. We have refused to acknowledge slavery's role at all, preferring to boil things down to the far more palatable "state's rights." We have not confessed that the end of slavery was so bitterly resented, the rise of Jim Crow became inevitable - and with it, a belief in Black inferiority that lives on in hearts and minds today.

We have painted the hundred-year history of Jim Crow as little more than mean signage and the inconvenience that white people and Black people could not drink from the same fountain. But those signs weren't just "mean". They were perpetual reminders of the swift humiliation and brutal violence that could be suffered at any m ~ Austin Channing Brown

My whole point," I said, "is that what they teach here, what they believe, if you don't trust it, if you doubt it at all, then you're told that you're going to hell, that not only everyone you know is ashamed of you, but that Jesus himself has given up on your soul. And if you're like Mark, and you do believe all of this, you really do - you have faith in Jesus and this stupid Promise system, and even still, even with those things, you still can't make yourself good enough, because what you're trying to change isn't changeable, it's like your height or the shape of your ears, whatever, then it's like this place does make things happen to you, or at least it's supposed to convince you that you're always gonna be a dirty sinner and that it's completely your fault because you're not trying hard enough to change yourself. It convinced Mark. ~ Emily M. Danforth

I am not a priest for the white soul. ~ Austin Channing Brown

So anyway," he continued.
That's when we heard the loud knocking on the pickup window. I jumped through the roof--it was after 2:00 A.M. Who on earth could it be? The Son of Sam--it had to be! Marlboro Man rolled down the window, and a huge cloud of passion and steam escaped. It wasn't the Son of Sam. Worse--it was my mother. And she was wearing her heather gray cashmere robe.
"Reeee?" she sang. "Is that yoooou?" She leaned closer and peered through the window.
I slid off of Marlboro Man's lap and gave her a halfhearted wave. "Uh…hi, Mom. Yeah. It's just me."
She laughed. "Oh, okay…whew! I just didn't know who was out here. I didn't recognize the car!" She looked at Marlboro Man, whom she'd met only one time before, when he picked me up for a date.
"Well, hello again!" she exclaimed, extending her manicured hand.
He took her hand and shook it gently. "Hello, ma'am," he replied, his voice still thick with lust and emotion. I sank in my seat. I was an adult, and had just been caught parking at 2:00 A.M. in the driveway of my parents' house by my robe-wearing mother. She'd seen the foggy windows. She'd seen me sitting on his lap. I felt like I'd just gotten grounded.
"Well, okay, then," my mom said, turning around. "Good night, you two!" And with that, she flitted back into the house.
Marlboro Man and I looked at each other. I hid my face in my hands and shook my head. He chuckled, opened the door, and said, "C'mon…I'd better get you home ~ Ree Drummond

But dialogue is productive toward reconciliation only when it leads to action - when it inverts power and pursues justice for those who are most marginalized. ~ Austin Channing Brown