24: 107 words. Remembered Black Spartacus and started rereading Schwarz.
25: More Schwarz.
26: More Schwarz, and reached 134 words–finishing the paragraph.
27: Some more drafting, da Silva and Schwarz-thinking. Total finished word count is 2,026 now.
I need to understand or articulate more about the short-circuits.
28: A bit of editing. Also, Dad died today.
29: Nothing.
30: A bit of editing. I have reached 180 words since this log started.
July 1-3: Nothing.
July 4: Realizing I will ideally read more of Schwarz and also Machado de Assis.
July 5: On the instability of Independence: if there is not freedom for all, freedom for anyone is unstable.
July 6-17: Really lost track of things.
July 18-20: Still lost track.
July 21: Got a hundred rough words or so.
July 22: Nothing.
July 23: Found some worthwhile notes, and found this article by Virginia Whatley Smith on New Orleans literature that I have always wanted to find and read.
July 24-26: Looked at it each day, and finally started reading Walker (Mongrel Nation). The US really wanted to be white. Is Villaverde using US standards (“one-drop rule”) when he judges Cecilia for being Black? And on me: the breathwork goals, with the opening of my spinal column, may be a/ to feel that my work is mine, that I have work; and b/ to remove from it all the horror I have transferred onto it.
June 27-28: Walker. So: the US wanted to be white and Lat Am constructed itself as mestizo from the beginning. The first chapter of Walker is the interesting one, talks about sexual frontiers (to set whites off from Blacks), other theoretical issues, and does have information on Latin America but this book is very largely an essay about the US and its interesting rejection of its own “mongrel” origin.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 