Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Forty

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

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img_0354I started thinking about turning forty a few months ago, mostly because people started to ask me about it on a semi-regular basis. I was told that it was a meaningful milestone and an ordinary day, that I would feel unchanged and newly mortal, and that I would reflect on my past and think about the future. I was urged to do something fun, novel and extraordinary.

I spent a happy thirty minutes talking about travel with my brother, who is one of those people who always makes sure to do something interesting for his birthday. He was the one responsible for my last big birthday trip to Las Vegas about eleven years ago.

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That was a different version of me, a much younger Jamaal with locs who smoked cigarettes.img_0112

That version of Jamaal wasn’t quite sad, but very far from happy. He was starting to have trouble imagining his future. Things turned out pretty well. He found a new job (and was laid off, but quickly found another and was later promoted into one that was a perfect fit). He proposed to his long-term girlfriend and the two were married three years after the Vegas trip. Six years after Vegas, he welcomed his son into the world and learned what it was like to feel overwhelmingly happy and terrified on a daily basis. It didn’t take much effort to imagine the future anymore.

I also started thinking about turning forty because I mentioned it to people on a semi-regular basis and was hoping to find a way to figure out how I should feel about it. November is a very busy month in the life of the Thomas family, between my son’s birthday, a wedding anniversary and the tumult of Thanksgiving, and it’s extremely easy to distract myself by attending to the needs of others. I didn’t plan my son’s party this year (my wife was the mastermind of that one), but I did take every opportunity to bury myself in work and routine and story reading and writing practice and chores and games of Tayo the Friendly Bus.

Whenever I did find time to think about my fortieth birthday, I felt a sense of joy and peace. I haven’t come close to accomplishing what I thought I would’ve done in terms of my career, but my life outside of work is far more fulfilling than I ever would have imagined. That feeling dissipated when I thought about doing something for my birthday. It made me feel uncomfortable, like I haven’t done enough in my life to merit a celebration. I don’t actually believe that, but there are definitely moments when I compare who I am to who I could have been, and feel like I’ve fallen short of my potential.

So I didn’t jump out of a plane or throw a big party or go on a fun adventure. Maybe I should have. I just took a day off from work, took a walk, listened to a great talk from a journalist who covered some of the most terrifying conflicts of the last three decades and did some writing. I saw a little bit of the Criterion Edition of Terrence Malick’s New World and had lunch with my wife. I plan to see some old friends this weekend. I would like to say that I felt like I did enough, but I’m still uncertain. I genuinely believed that I would reflect on my past and plan for my future, but it felt more like I found ways to distract myself. I still have some time (hopefully!) to figure out how I feel about turning forty.

A few things I do know – I’m an older Jamaal who cut his locs (and is slowly losing his hair), who stopped smoking over a decade ago, has a pretty great wife and kid, and who’s not always happy, but pretty far from sad. As of yesterday, I’ve lived in this world for four decades. I’ve had a lot of love in my life (I’m lucky). I’ve spent the vast majority of my career helping people and organizations (who are in the business of helping people). It may not be a lot, but it feels like something.

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Here are some of the things I want to do (over the next year and beyond)

  • Write more.
  • Slow down.
  • Learn to drive. (Don’t @ me about this one – I grew up in New York and live in a small town (yeah, I said it) where a car is important, but not strictly required)

There are other personal and work related things that I won’t share (your boy’s got plans), but this is a start.

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Thirty Nine

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Sometimes My Heart Gets Heavy (Cell Therapy Two)

Black Panther Take Three: T’Challa Is Not Excellent

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The Carter: Weezy Never Takes A Day Off

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Sometimes My Heart Gets Heavy (Cell Therapy Two)

16 Tuesday Oct 2018

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The last few weeks have been exceptionally challenging – from the Kavanaugh hearings and the New York Times’ coverage of the Trump family’s efforts to preserve their family fortune to work related things (it’s fulfilling, but it can be emotionally draining).

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Here are some things that have been therapeutic:

Writing: There are few things that I enjoy more than thinking and writing about culture. The only reason that I don’t write about culture more frequently is that the things I love and value more than writing are also pretty time consuming. Over the last few months, I’ve managed to find the time (between family, work and volunteering) to write a few thousand words about a popular superhero movie. I have more to say (I always have more to say), but I think it’s time to branch off in a different direction. I have some ideas related to afro-futurism and black pop culture heroes, but I’m not sure that I’m going to have the time to do the topic justice. I’d love to do some more writing about pop culture, but with a full time job, a slate of volunteer commitments and a family, I’m always going to be behind the ‘discourse’ (is late 2018 too late for a Phantom Thread essay?). I have the beginnings of a comic book post in my head about how modern creators are finding interesting ways to reimagine the origin stories of Golden – Bronze Age superheroes. I have a series of posts about Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton that need to be fleshed out and edited. I also have a bunch of Funnybook Babylon and Between the Stations posts to finish editing/uploading to this site, but that’s not as fun as writing something new.

So what’s next? If I have the time (crosses fingers), a post about Sorry to Bother You and something about why the most meaningful hip-hop (and popular music) in 2018 has been created and performed by women. If I really have the time (e.g., a bout of the flu), I will finally complete the Hamilton posts.

Music: I’ve spent the last few weeks listening to Aretha Franklin concert mixes and Teyana Taylor’s recently released K.T.S.E. They are very different artists, but both lack artifice and can convey the feeling of finding joy in pain and chaos. Aretha was a genius in every way that a music artist can be one – a brilliant technician and arranger whose ability to evoke raw emotion was unmatched. Teyana doesn’t have Aretha’s gifts, but there was something unflinchingly honest about her performances on this album, from songs like Issues/Hold On to WTP. On Issues/Hold On, Taylor explores the intertwined anger, passion and uncertainty present in a tempestuous romance. She doesn’t just share the suspicion and other ugly emotions that can come when one feels vulnerable in a romantic relationship, she suggests that her uncertainty is rooted in her past experiences. She is self-aware, but the pain is still raw.

WTP is a very different kind of song (as you might guess after you listen to the hypnotic ‘work this pussy’ refrain), but there’s something deeply honest about her demand that a lover give her pleasure. The song is inspired by the Harlem underground ballroom scene created by black gay men, trans men and women, drag performers of all identities and orientations and other members of the LGBTQ community in the 1960’s. I always associated that scene with a heightened sense of fantasy, but Taylor’s assured delivery reminds me that the underlying desires and emotions can be very real.

During the last two decades weeks of the Kavanaugh nomination, I found myself turning to hip-hop. During other ‘our political landscape is enraging and terrifying’ moments over the last few years, I fell into the habit of adding more hip-hop tracks and playlists to my rotation. I usually added a mix of songs that were made when I was a young man or which sounded as if they were inspired by that music (my go to is one that shares the title of this post with tracks from Black Star, Yasiin Bey, Common, Lauryn Hill, Chance, Otis Redding, Amy Winehouse and Me’Shell Ndegeocello). This time I found myself listening to Tierra Whack’s Wack World, Noname’s Room 25 and Lil’ Wayne’s Carter 5.

I don’t know why I downloaded Tierra Whack’s debut album. It may have been a recommendation from a friend online or an admiring tweet that floated by on my timeline. It’s a delightfully strange album filled with unexpected rhythms and exceptional rapping. Tierra’s songs contain some hard truths, but there’s a sense of joy and optimism at the core of her music that feels necessary in this political climate. We deserve to feel joy and “if you love somebody I promise that you should tell ’em”. I know exactly why I rushed to get Noname’s Room 25 when it became available – I’ve loved her work since I was introduced to her on Lost, from Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap mixtape. Her verse was brief but powerful – the closing line “the only time he loves me is naked in my dreams” was heartbreaking. Her debut is assured and brilliant. I loved her two collaborations with Chance the Rapper (Lost and Israel (Sparring)), but she sounds even more confident on this album. The verses are packed with meaning, but Noname is comfortable with adjusting the density of her rhymes to ensure the maximum impact on the listener – contrast the melancholic Don’t Forget About Me with the high energy playful vibe on Self. I haven’t seriously thought about Lil’ Wayne for years, since I was disappointed by the Carter 3 about a decade ago. I downloaded his album on a lark – I wanted to listen to some new music and saw that Wayne had finally released the Carter 5. I was surprised to hear an artist who had rediscovered his voice. Wayne is scattered (as he always is), but his flow is still incredible on songs like Dedicate and Mona Lisa. His rhymes are dense, profane and inappropriate, but they are also compelling. Sometimes. He’s still Lil Wayne, so we still get verses that are just terrible or feel exceptionally lazy, but even the less inspired verses are backed by impeccable production from Mannie Fresh (man, was it refreshing to hear some new Mannie!) and the team of R!o and Kamo.  I found myself turning to a playlist with my favorite tracks from all three albums to help cope with all the dark and dour news of the day on a increasingly regular basis over the last few weeks.

I’ve also been doing some reading, but more on that later. Here are some highlights:

  1. Giant Days – John Allison, Max Sarin
  2. Immortal Hulk – Joe Bennett, Al Ewing
  3. The Black Monday Murders – Tomm Coker, Jonathan Hickman
  4. The Rise of the Black Panther – Evan Narcisse, Javier Pina
  5. The Seeds – Ann Nocenti, David Aja
  6. Twisted Romance (Red Medusa on the Road to Hell) – Sarah Horrocks
  7. Black Bolt – Saladin Ahmed, Christian Ward
  8. Twisted Romance (Treasured) – Trungles, Alex de Campi
  9. Batman – Jim Aparo, Jim Starlin
  10. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles – Mark Russell, Mike Feehan, Mark Morales
  11. Twisted Romance (Invincible Heart) – Alex de Campi, Carla Speed McNeil

See you next time.

Book Quotes of 2017

31 Sunday Dec 2017

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At 2 East 70th Street the day-shift doorman recognized her—“That you, Mrs. Dyer?”—and with a certain amount of pride Isabel remembered his name—“Hello, Felix”—and chatted about family, his four children now all grown, the older two with children themselves, though time unarticulated was the truer subject, Felix following the doorman code and refraining from asking personal questions, but seeing Mrs. Dyer of the sixth floor gave him a passing awareness of the gap between when he was young and when she was old and how it had narrowed to a crack.
–& Sons, David Gilbert

if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn’t that true?”

–Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams

It was as if he had been assigned to take apart a fiendishly complicated alarm clock to see why it wasn’t working, only to discover that an important part of the clock was inside his own mind.

–The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis

You would not, I imagine, suggest that it is the task of botanists to devise more flowers? Or that astronomers should labour to rearrange the stars? Magicians, Mr Segundus, study magic which was done long ago. Why should any one expect more?”

–Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

The hero of a David Lodge novel says that you don’t know, when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. Some of the Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in 1932 no doubt understood that this might be the last meaningfully free election for some time, but most did not. Some of the Czechs and Slovaks who voted for the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1946 probably realized that they were voting for the end of democracy, but most assumed they would have another chance. No doubt the Russians who voted in 1990 did not think that this would be the last free and fair election in their country’s history, which (thus far) it has been.

–On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder

I laughed and grabbed his head as I had done God knows how many times before, when I was playing with him or when he had annoyed me. But this time when I touched him something happened in him and in me which made this touch different from any touch either of us had ever known. And he did not resist, as he usually did, but lay where I had pulled him, against my chest. And I realized that my heart was beating in an awful way and that Joey was trembling against me and the light in the room was very bright and hot.

Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

We shouted over the dinner tables and slipped away into empty rooms with each other’s spouses, carousing with all the enthusiasm and indiscretion of Greek gods. And in the morning, we woke at 6:30 on the dot, clearheaded and optimistic, ready to resume our places behind the stainless steel desks at the helm of the world.

–Rules of Civility, Amor Towles

“That’s not true. Of course you do. Denise would whisper to Sharon, and Sharon would tell her husband and her sister. You would come to the office and find them whispering, and after a few days, you’d begin to think that it was about you. After a week, you would start to think that people all over town were looking at you strangely. You would notice them trying to look directly past you when you ran into them in the grocery store and on the street. When Christmas came, you would have only half as many cards in your mailbox, and least once a year, junior-high boys would throw a half-dozen eggs at your window. “If you think they wouldn’t say anything, though, you’re right. They wouldn’t say a word. It would be rude and un-Christian to do so.

–All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu

She attracted attention not so much because of the qualities of her features but rather because of the naturalness and grace with which her expression moved.

–IQ84, Huraki Murakami

When you borrow a lot of money to create a false prosperity, you import the future into the present. It isn’t the actual future so much as some grotesque silicone version of it. Leverage buys you a glimpse of a prosperity you haven’t really earned.

–Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, Michael Lewis

Thirty Nine.

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

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39. Love. One of my favorite Tupac lines was always “last year was a tough one, but life goes on” – it always feels true. I turned 38 during a tough time in my life. My career was going well, my personal and professional relationships were solid, my kid was healthy and happy and my marriage was a good one. I should have been content. I was still in shock from a national election that seemed to foreshadow a dark future. It was a reminder that the past was not past.

I ran ten miles on my birthday that year because I hoped that I could outrun what was starting to feel like more than a standard post-election funk. There was a quote from an old Radiolab podcast that stuck in my mind – “if love and mercy are good things, why are they missing so much of the time?” I found myself listening to Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker on runs. When he referenced the binding of Isaac in the chorus “Hineni, Hineni, I’m ready Lord”, I was moved. I was ready to serve, but felt lost.

The running worked for a little while, but I didn’t really start to feel better until family came by for Thanksgiving. Cooking and talking to my extended family helped me feel balanced. I shared the story from the podcast with my family – how Robert Krulwich struggled with the meaning of the sacrifices that Abraham and Noah were asked to make in God’s name, about how much can be read into the silences of the Old Testament narratives. I told them that we all needed to find that love and mercy in one another. We were all we had. In the months that followed, the reactionary resurgence in this country was met by a wave of progressive activism led by an awe inspiring range of people from different backgrounds and cultures, with different experiences and gender identities, from a wide range of groups that could be defined as ‘left’. There have been a number of setbacks, but there have been some hopeful moments. I’m not under any illusion. The next few years will be extraordinarily difficult and we will all have to endure some challenging times. But we’ve got a chance.

I ran 11 miles this year for my birthday run. I originally planned to run to the veterans memorials on Long Wharf to briefly pay my respects, but I just felt compelled to keep going. I only stopped when my phone flashed a signal to inform me that it had 10% battery life and was going to shut down. It felt different this time. I felt content. I didn’t have anything to outrun.

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Cell Therapy (Or Am I Born To Lose, or is This Just A Lesson?)

The Nine

12 Thursday Oct 2017

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It’s hard to avoid thinking about legacy in Philadelphia.

I spent most of last week in the city, my second visit as an adult. I was there for work, to attend a professional conference for people in higher education who work on issues related to gender equity. I stayed in appropriately generic hotels in downtown Philadelphia that featured good room service, warm staff and chilly conference rooms. I learned and networked during the day and wandered the streets in the evening.

During my first visit, I visited the Liberty Bell and walked by the Christ Church burial ground and Elfreth’s Alley. The city is filled with reminders of Philadelphia’s role in early American history, nods to the men and women who fought and sacrificed to win their freedom during the Revolutionary War. I felt like I was surrounded by America’s origin myth. On my second day at the 2016 conference, I learned about about institutional betrayal and Prof. Jennifer Freyd’s betrayal trauma theory.

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It was fascinating stuff, but everyone was too busy talking about the Presidential campaign. A recording of one of the candidates talking frankly about some of the awful privileges that come with power had surfaced, and everyone was either frightened about what might happen if the candidate became President or confident that this revelation would doom his candidacy. I wandered by the President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of A New Nation exhibit later that evening. It was a profoundly moving experience that I was eager to replicate on my second trip to the city.

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MotownPhillyRodin

09 Monday Oct 2017

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I spent some time in Philadelphia this week in order to think about gender equity in a time of uncertainty and regulatory change. I learned a lot, and left energized by conversations with brilliant colleagues who use their skills as educators and advocates to help make a better world.

The conference reminded me that this moment is an opportunity for all of us to demonstrate commitment to creating a welcome environment for people of all genders and to ending violence and harassment on our campuses.

The experience also helped me realize that the hard working folks in my field need to shift our focus from training models designed to help people understand policy and procedure (message: obey!) to a learning one where we help people learn about healthy relationships (with scaffolding strategies) and persuade people who aren’t inclined to care about our work or listen to us. It was a timely reminder that compliance isn’t enough – we have to get up off the floor and reach for the ceiling.

When I wasn’t doing that work (or dong other work), I used the time as an opportunity to sample some of the amazing cuisine and art in Philadelphia.

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The food was uniformly delicious – from Bridgid’s delectable trout to the oyster po’ boy at Beck’s Cajun Cafe and the bialy and lox at Hershel’s East Side – but the highlight of the trip was a lunchtime visit to the Rodin Museum in the Fairmount neighborhood. The museum is on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, on the path to the Philadelphia Art Museum.
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A replica of Rodin’s Thinker welcomes visitors and passersby at the entrance. I’m familiar with the famous sculpture, but I never spent much time thinking about it, except as a symbol/shorthand for deep contemplation. I marveled at Rodin’s ability to capture such a fundamentally internal process in a statue, but didn’t think about it as a representation of the human figure. When I stood in front of the statue, I found myself focusing on its physical characteristics – the knuckles, the tendons, the obliques, the body language.

The museum is located in a building that evokes ancient Greece. The museum’s website helpfully shares that it’s a Beaux Arts style building, a style of architecture from the 19th and early 20th century derived from France that blended ancient Greek and Roman designs with ones from the Renaissance and Baroque era. There’s usually a sense of grandness with buildings in this style, but the museum feels quiet and intimate. The garden and reflecting pool immediately outside the museum complements this effect – once you pass the two columns at the front of the museum, you feel like you’ve entered a different world.

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The museum features over 140 pieces of Rodin’s work scattered throughout the building and in the garden area, with samples from every phase of his career. I found myself drawn to Rodin’s hands and faces. I love the way that he depicts emotional extremes, from the anguish of the Burghers of Calais walking towards their death and the gates of hell to the passion captured in I Am Beautiful and the exuberance of Youth Triumphant.

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Rodin’s hands are expressive and beautifully rendered. They add layers of meaning to his sculptures. The hands of the burghers – both in the Burghers statues and in the Clenched Hand (an early study for the former) – complement the sense of hopelessness that one gets from Rodin’s faces.

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His Cathedral suggests an intimacy between lovers that is a quieter counterpart to the more demonstrative I Am Beautiful or the powerfully passionate the Damned Women.

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I was also struck by Rodin’s efforts to grapple with the ineffable through his Hand of God and Gates of Hell sculptures. The Hand of God draws a parallel between human and divine acts of creation, with God as divine sculptor, shaping humanity from a barren rock. The contrast between the hyper-real sculpture of a human hand emerging from a block of marble and the impossible image of the partially formed figures materializing from the rock is striking, almost magical. It’s a beautiful metaphor for the creative process.

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The Gates of Hell are a powerful monument to the human experience. It contains figures in agony and ecstatic abandon, along with images suggesting compassion and love (both sexual and maternal).

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The Thinker is perched near the top of the gates, surrounded by figures in all manner of embraces (some of which look passionate, others of which almost look torturous).

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As with the Hand of God, the title of the piece suggests a straightforward religious interpretation, but the sculpture feels like a tangible representation of a doorway to the human mind, complete with chaotic and contradictory emotions and experiences.

The statues are impressive in photographs and art books but gain a magical quality when viewed in person. The interplay of light and shadow over the curves of the statues spark the imagination and add layers of mystery and meaning.

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The hand in the Hand of God felt majestic and awe inspiring upon first view, but after looking at it for a few minutes in the midday light, it almost looked tender.

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New Haven Road Race 2015-17

05 Tuesday Sep 2017

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One of the first things I did when I moved to New Haven in the fall of 2014 was to sign up for races. I enjoy running, but due to time constraints, I usually do so in the early morning on nearly empty roads. Races are an opportunity to run with enthusiasts of all genders, ages and sizes. They are also a great way of learning the geography of a new town.

This is my third year running the New Haven Road Race. The first time I ran, I was following the crowd and hoping that I wouldn’t get lost. By the second, not only did I know where I was going, I knew the best place to get a post-run breakfast (the Pantry on Mechanic Street). Today, I ran through my neighborhood.

I’ve also become a better runner, which is pretty gratifying. I’ve made some real improvements to my time over the last three years (and have run progressively longer distances when running alone).

Faxon Law New Haven Road Race 
Year Overall Overall w/in age group (30-39) Time  Time (net) Time per mile 
2015 292/3062 29/179 22:00 22:29 7:15
2016 256/2655 26/154 21:33 21:55 7:04
2017 156/2736 15/150 21:00 20:42 6:46

Next Year: 20K!

August 2017 Runs 

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East Rock

02 Wednesday Aug 2017

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img_0195For the last two months, I’ve lived in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven. It’s a leafy area filled with one and two family houses that looks like a blend of a stereotypical college town and Park Slope in the early aughts. Lots of turn of the century homes, quirky coffee shops, artisanal ice stands, and earnest young people having the kind of earnest conversations that only young people can have.

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East Rock has a reputation for being a Yale neighborhood. You can find people from the extended Yale community everywhere in New Haven, but some Yalies are slightly more conspicuous in East Rock. There are slightly more grad students working on their papers at coffee shops or blowing off steam with a beer on their front porch, more bleary eyed residents stumbling home from overnight shifts.

Other members of the community are slightly less present. Students may be Yale’s key (and most visible) stakeholder group, but the University also employs thousands of New Haven residents as faculty, administrators, technicians, custodians, health care providers, cooks and in a wide range of other academic and support roles. When I lived in Wooster Square (a historic middle income area in New Haven), I became accustomed to seeing my colleagues from all levels of the university walking to and from school and work. I was as likely to run into a custodian or accountant walking home as I would a law student or young assistant professor.

I haven’t had that experience in East Rock, but I have encountered people with a wide range of backgrounds from all walks of life. There is some truth to the neighborhood’s reputation as a community dominated by Yale (it’s the residential neighborhood best served by Yale’s shuttle system), but there are plenty of non-Yale folk here who’ve lived in the area for generations.

The best thing about East Rock is that it’s a neighborhood of runners. I don’t think that I’ve ever walked a block in East Rock without passing a person jogging, running, or engaged in some purposeful brisk walking. Some look like they’re training for a race, while others are just having some fun exercise with a loved one or a dog.

The second best thing about East Rock is the East Rock itself, a trap rock ridge at the far end of the neighborhood (and about five blocks from my house). It’s about 1.4 miles long and 366 feet high and a nice occasional addition to my jogging route. It’s surrounded by a 425 acre park filled with trails and playgrounds and partially bounded by a local river.

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The relaxed vibe of the area is contagious. I find myself taking aimless relaxing walks through East Rock to clear my head at the end of a hard day, listening to a worrying podcast about politics or the playlist linked below. Sometimes I take those walks in the morning to prepare myself for a challenging day ahead. I’m probably not going to live in East Rock forever, but for now it feels like home. It’s a nice feeling.

 

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