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“What do you know about truth? Truth is eating good, and sleeping good. Truth is living, Rachel. Be loyal to living.” (From The Convert by Lerone Bennett, Jr.)

It was clear that the people we had escaped on the beach were not following us; they were too concerned with being survivors. White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.

We scratched and clawed open a hole in the world and placed her inside it. As we began to cover her, Norman said, “I suppose we should pray.”
“Okay. Say it.”
“Lord, meet Sammy.” Norman opened an eye, looking at me as if to ask if that was enough.
“What more is there to say?” I asked.

“It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.” Easter laughed.

“How am I s’posed to know what good is?”

“Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good ’splained to ya, den ya cain’t be good. If’n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.”

“But the law says…”

“Good ain’t got nuttin’ to do wif da law. Law says I’m a slave.”

Using the term “racist policy” is more likely to be understood than using institutional, systemic, or structural racism. (Racism itself is inherently institutional, structural, and systemic).

We all have the power to discriminate but only a few have the power to make policy. Focusing on “racial discrimination” distracts from the core issue: racist policy/racist power.

The history of the Moriori/Maori was new to me and the story of Pizarro was interesting, but so far everything else could be learned by playing Sid Meier’s Civilization.

The gave with both hands. No doling out, no counting up. And so Estraven received what they gave us, as a lord among lords or a beggar among beggars, a man among his own people.

Estraven, however, was on the track of his luck, following what appeared to be a hunch or intuition, but may have been applied experience and reasoning.

“It’s found on Earth, and on Hain-Davenant, and on Chiffewar. It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness…how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.”

He smiled. “With luck we shall make it, and without luck we shall not.”

It was what he said from the start. With all my anxieties, my sense of taking a last desperate gamble, and so on, I had not been realistic enough to believe him. Even now I thought, Surely when we’ve worked this hard -

But the Ice did not know how hard we worked.

“Well in the Handdara…you know, there’s no theory, no dogma…maybe they are less aware of the gap between men and beasts, being more occupied with the likenesses, the links, the whole of which living things are part.” Tormer’s Lay had been all day in my mind, and I said the words:

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.

How does one hate a country or love one? … what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love for one’s country; is it hate for one’s uncountry?