Dear Dad,
They say—that looming invisible "they" who comprise our collective conscience, our moral breaking-in: do what you have to do but often I think some nobler essence stems from doing what you don't have to do, that the rogue soul shows itself and vanquishes hubris in the unfolding of such a graceless grace as superfluous will power like that. I'll try and save a few words for the war on saviors. The small things, the ones peeking through the melody of "Hello Dolly" when Louis Armstrong covers it, converts pop gunk to jazz incumbent like recombinant dna is his own invention. All the men in my line are named Jimmy but the white ones have always called themselves Jim and James. And then closer to his transition into the afterlife or postearth or eternal return cycle of crossfires, grandpa, mom's dad, called himself Jimmy in a stark breach of decorum, called your name when one of his live-in nurses asked him to identify himself. Before that I wondered if blackness was a sign of the disorganized soul or the reintegrated one. I fought with everyone over the difference, right there at his funeral and full of desperate stoicism in that manicured militarized zone, I fought him back home. A few weeks later it's father's day and orphan's everywhere are vague with pride. I didn't know where to start the celebration. I woke to a photo of the man I love djing at some club, sweat and scheme on his brow, sent by my oldest friend. I'd missed everything trying to cleanse my soul on another seasonal juice fast, the caption read in silence. I hadn't been ready. On the axis of preparation I had chosen the past and the future again and again and I could only love myself and I only do this effusive dance to express that love of pain (discpline unmasked) that is love of self that is confused with self-mastery, that is that. Then I thought, all these years since you died, all these unyearlike years I've called grandpa on father's day and done something shamefully vicarious but true no less, pretended I had a living father until I do. Now he's gone too and too close to reach like you were before, and I thought of my uncle, another Jimmy who still calls himself Jim and James and life has a tenuous grip on him too, his will jitters with some kind of disgust for his own excellence until it almost breaks. Anyhow, so I wrote him a quiet almost furtive email just around midnight when I could finally bring myself to stop reading Foucault's The Use of Pleasure for long enough to turn on Alice Coltrane's Walk with Me and cry into my gazes again like a bold colt running across a plains of melting ice. The fast is forcing me to feel the things I repress in the robotics of more popular rituals, like had I gone to that club last night instead of staying home to stretch and write, like had I married a music man before becoming his mistress. So I sent Uncle Jim a happy father's day note complete with the quote I'd read earlier this week, Ruby Dee discussing her role in Do the Right Thing: "See I don't expect to win a prize for stoic control and dignity during mourning time. Death deserves tantrums, beating back, shocked indignation, kicks in the groin, stones, classified unacceptable, not to be celebrated, not to be wooed, not to be conspired with, only then can music, dance, movies, plays, rap, be about life. Only then can life be cherished and adored." Sometimes I practically wince under the tentative gauntlet of my own sentimentality. It felt a little empty and a little complete to strike send and move on to the slumped glory of that minor accomplishment, saying happy father's to someone, anyone, until I really meant it. I don't believe like O'Hara did once, maybe flippantly but on the record, that sentiment gets in the way of form, I believe it just is form, your world takes the shape of your feelings, as in love is my form, the most ambivalent kind, on a perfect day sponsored by the Velvet Underground and that crazy nigga I'll always love. I bought a mound of rose quartz to soak in while I read more about the ethics of the flesh in detached awe. I can't always find my favorite thought but when I do it stays in my head like one of your songs at dawn, and paces me for a place in my soul and this letter is the process of that happening, that recurring miraculous black rhythm happening. I think I love men more than they tend to love themselves. Mom texted "how are you doing" hours ago, I don't know how to respond so I don't. Fabulous and despondent. Busy doing everything I don't have to do.
