A Professional Writer Is A Joke. You

People Think If You Describe Someone With Glistening Brown Skin You're Writing About Race, As If The Whole Of The African Diaspora Is In Someone's Brown Skin.

I Swim In A Shaft Of Light, Upside Down, And I Can See Myself Clearly, Through And Through, From Every Angle. Perhaps I Stand On The Brink Of A Great Discovery.

But No Longer Could I Aks God What To Do, Since The Answer, I Was Sure, Would Not Suit Me. I Could Do What Suited Me Know, As Long As I Could Pay For It. 'as Long As I Could Pay For It.' That Phrase Soon Became The Tail That Wagged My Dog. If I Had Died Then, It Should Have Been My Epigraph.

But Some Natives--most Natives In The World--cannot Go Anywhere. They Are Too Poor. They Are Too Poor To Go Anywhere. They Are Too Poor To Escape The Reality Of Their Lives; And They Are Too Poor To Live Properly In The Place Where They Live, Which Is The Very Place You, The Tourist, Want To Go--so When The Natives See You, The Tourist, They Envy You, They Envy Your Ability To Leave Your Own Banality And Boredom, They Enjoy Your Ability To Turn Their Own Banality And Boredom Into A Source Of Pleasure For Yourself.

"race." I Really Can't Understand It As Anything Other Than Something People Say. The People Who Have Said That You And I Are Both "black" And Therefore Deserve A Certain Kind Of Interaction With The World, They Make Race. I Can't Take Them Seriously.