Photographer Unknown, ….Bright as a Razor
“Being in trouble can have a funny effect on the mind. I don’t know if I can explain this. You go through some days and you seem to be hearing people and you seem to be talking to them and you seem to be doing your work, or, at least, your work gets done; but you haven’t seen or heard a soul and if someone asked you what you have done that day you’d have to think awhile before you could answer. But at the same time, and even on the self-same day–and this is what is hard to explain–you see people like you never saw them before. They shine as bright as a razor. Maybe it’s because you see people differently than you saw them before your trouble started. Maybe you wonder about them more, but in a different way, and this makes them very strange to you.”
—James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk
James Baldwin described that so well. i know exactly the sensations and ideas there. His novel JUST ABOVE MY HEAD actually had me developing more affinity with him than Giovanni’s Room. But i do want to read Giovanni’s Room again. It figures strongly in new novel i am reading called SWIMMING IN THE DARK and is by new novelist Tomasz Jedrowski.