#your first kiss with the man you were talking about maiming eddie

[eddiediazdefensesquad]

okay so I know 7x04 is from Buck's POV, so the characters are a little off to reflect Buck's feelings and perceptions. But rewatching it today, why did it feel like Eddie was the only one that was vastly different from his normal self? To the point it was a little disorienting. Even some of the line delivery (like the trivia/babysitting thing) were not how Eddie typically delivers things. Like yeah I get that everyone is a little different in Buck's mind, but the more I watch it, the more I realize that Eddie's character shifts more as the episode goes on and Buck sinks deeper in his jealousy. And while the episode focused on Buck, Buck is focused on Eddie. So it felt like the obvious differences to his usual mannerisms were highlighted.

[texasbama]

don't know why I decided to throw this together but here it is anyway lol

under the cut, I collected little snippets from the recent Ryan interviews that were just...*chefs kiss*

because as much as we claim to love Eddie Diaz and the Buck/Eddie dynamic? Ryan loves them even more and I could listen to him talk about these characters all day

As far as [Eddie's] sexuality, I think it's pretty clear that he's tried to fill in this motherly, this wife type role—that's all he knows," Guzman explained. "And he's a man [that] first off, he's Catholic. Second off, he's from the military. So those are very straight-edge kind of lifestyles that don't offer too much of exploring. But through the 118, he's had this epiphany each year, like, 'Well, maybe I don't know as much as I thought I did. And maybe I should be exploring a little bit more and maybe I should understand myself a little bit more and even seek a therapist,' which is something new for Eddie. So I feel the representation is reflective of the inclusivity that Ryan Murphy's show likes to have and Tim Minear likes to write. (source)

I think the ultimate goal was to show that the connection between Buck and Eddie will remain, and that is going to be stronger than ever...Because now we’ve unveiled this new vulnerable side of Buck, and last season we got to unveil this new vulnerable side of Eddie. So the connection is just that much more simpatico. (source)

So it doesn't matter what he said at that moment. Eddie was going to be there for Buck. And it just happens to be something Eddie had never even thought of. So the initial reaction towards Buck is that of where did this just come from? I didn't even see this. And then the next reaction is, oh, my friend just did something extremely brave. I need to give him all the comfort and safety to know that he can do this for however long he wants to do this. Share with me, come to me. Which I think shows how amazing their friendship is. The whole process, I think, for Eddie is just welcoming Buck into his new obstacles. (source)

And the way Eddie navigates that is just kind of a no, that's just who he is. And nothing ruffles my feathers. Even if you break my ankle or maim me, it's fine. That's who he is, and I love him either way. And there's no competition for Eddie. Watching Buck trying to compare himself to so many people rather than just seeing how special he is. And that's a lot of the messages that Eddie's been giving Buck.He's like, 'No, man. You are an incredible individual. You're worth all the love in the world. And you need to stop doing certain things. And I'm not going to tell you how to do what you got to do for your life, but allow yourself to be great.' And I think that's the evolution of this relationship. It's just kind of being there for each other and allowing each other to feel vulnerable and work with each other. (source)

I think this idealization of replacing Shannon has really stagnated his relationships. So, him giving himself the opportunity to kind of step back and understand that a little bit more before he moves in with another individual and starts the whole process all over again, is a sense of growth for Eddie, and I'm here for it. Because he needs it (source)

[ladyjessmusic]

TONI MORRISON TRIBUTE PROJECT AT THE SCHOMBURG :: UPDATE I

After days of procrastination, days of research-laden procrastination...

I have finally managed to at least outline, through excerpts, how I’m going to structure this tribute piece to TM. From the minute I was asked, I’ve been planning. It has been overwhelming, to say the least. How to put together something about someone who means so very very much to me? How to represent that in the most fitting way possible? ..shuddering at the idea of gaming the queen from wherever she is observing in the afterlife...

SO HERE, HERE IS THE QUOTE OUTLINE I HAVE CONCOCTED:

___

MAVIS (pg 21): 

The neighbors seemed pleased when the babies smothered. probably because the mint green Cadillac in which they died had annoyed them for some time.

___

GRACE (GIGI) (pg 65):

The man with the earring didn't come looking for her. She sought him out. Just to talk too somebody who wasn’t encased in polyester and who looked like he might smoke something other than Chesterfields. 

He was short, almost a dwarf, but his clothes were East Coast hip. His Afro was neat, not ragged, and he wore seeds of gold around his neck, one matching stud in his ear,

They stood next to each other at the snack bar, which the attendant insisted on calling the dining car. She ordered a Coke without ice and a brownie. He was paying for a large cup of ice only.

“That ought to be free,” Gig said to the man behind the counter. “He shouldn’t have to pay for the cup.”

“Excuse me, ma’am. I just follow the rules.”

“I ordered no ice. Did you deduct anything?”

“Course not.”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” the short man said.

“I ain’t troubled,” Gigi told him, and then, to the counterman: “Listen, you. Give him the ice you weren’t going to charge him for, okay?”

“Miss, do I have to call the conductor?”

“If you don’t, I will This is train robbery all right - trains robbing people.”

“It’s all right,” said the man. “Just a nickel.”

“It’s the principle,” said gig.

“A five-cent principle ain’t no principle at all. The man needs a nickel. Needs it real bad.” The short man smiled.

“I don't need nothing,” said the attendant. “It’s the rules.”

“Have two,” said the man, and flicked a second nickel into the saucer.

Gig glaring, the eagle man smiling, they left the snack bar together. She sat down across the aisle from him to expand on the incident, while the man crunched the ice.

“Gigi.” She held out her hand. “You?”

“Dice,” he said.

“Like chopping small?”

“Like pair of.”

___

SENECA

“The chauffeur had picked her up for Norma like a stray puppy. No, not even that. But like a pet you wanted to pay with for a while - a little while - but not keep. Not love. Not name it. Just feed it, play with it, then return it to its own habitat. She had five hundred dollars, and other than Eddie, no one knew where it was. Maybe she ought to keep it that way. 

Seneca hadn’t decided much of anything when she saw the first place to hide - a flatbed loaded with cement sacks. When she was discovered she was held against a tire, splicing his questions, curses and threats with mild flirtations. Seneca said nothing at first, then suddenly begged permission to go to the bathroom. “I have to go. Bad,” she said. The driver sighed and released her, shouting a final warning at her back. She hitched a few times after that but so disliked the necessary talk she accepted the risk of stowing away in trucks. She preferred traveling resolutely nowhere, closed off from society, hidden among quiet cargo - no one knowing she was there. When she found herself among crates in a brand-new ‘73 pickup, jumping out of it to follow. coatless woman was the first pointedly uninstructed thing she had ever done.”

___

DIVINE

“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good.

Love is none of that. there is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging of tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason ro motive except that it is God.

You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn-by practice and careful contemplation-the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. 

How do you know you have graduated? You don’t. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is only interested in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who share and understand that interest. 

___

PATRICIA

“What did Daddy say to you at that AME Zion picnic? The one held for colored soldiers stationed at the base in Tennessee. How could either of you tell what the other was saying? He talking Louisiana, you speaking Tennessee. The music is so different, the sound coming from a different part of the body. It must have been like hearing lyrics set to scores by two different composers. But when you made love he must have said I love you and you understood that and it was true, too, because I have seen the desperation in his eyes ever since-no matter what business venture he thinks up.”

___

CONSOLATA

“It was while Consolata waited on the steps that she saw him for the first time. Sha sha sha. Sha sha sha. A lean young man astride one horse, leading another. His khaki shirt was soaked with sweat, and at some point he romped his wide flat hat to wipe perspiration from his forehead. His hips were rocking in the saddle, back and forth, back and forth. Sha sha sha. Sha sha sha. Consolata saw his profile, and the wing of a feathered thing, undead, fluttered in her stomach.”

...

“Casually, perfunctorily, he looked her way. Consolata looked back and thought she saw hesitation in his eyes if not in his stride. Quickly she ducked into the sun-baked Mercury, where the heat emend to explain her difficult breathing. She did not see him again for two months of time made unstable by a feathered thing fighting for wingspread.”

...

“They drove for what Consolata believed were hours, no words passing between them. The danger and its necessity focused them, made them calm. She did not know or care where headed or what might happen to them when they arrived. Speeding toward the unforeseeable, sitting next to him who was darker than the darkness they split, Consolata let the feathers unfold and come unstuck from the walls of a stone-cold womb. Out here where wind was not a help or threat to sunflowers, nor the moon a language of time, of weather, of sowing or harvesting, but a feature of the original world designed for the two of them.

Finally he slowed and turned unto a barely passable track, where coyote grass scraped the fenders. In the middle of it he braked and would have taken her in his arms except she was already there.

...

“He kisses her lightly, then leans on his elbow. “I’ve traveled. All over. I’ve never seen anything like you. How could anything be put together like you? Do you know how beautiful you are? Have you looked at yourself?

“I’m looking now.”

...

“Let your mind grow long and use what God gives you.”

...

“They had promised to take care of her always but did not tell her that always was not all ways nor forever. Prisoner wine helped until it didn’t and she found herself, full of drinker’s malice, wishing she had the strength to beat the life out of the women freeloading in the house. “God don’t make mistakes,” Lone had shouted at her. Perhaps not, but He was sometimes overgenerous. Like giving satanic gifts to a drunken, ignorant, penniless woman living in darkness unable to rise from a cot to do something useful or die on it and rid the world of her stench. Gray-haired, her eyes drained of what eyes were made for, she imagined how she must appear. Her colorless eyes saw nothing clearly except what took place in the minds of others. Exactly the opposite of that blind season when she rutted in dirt with the living man and the thought that she was seeing for the first time because she was looking so hard. But she had been spoken to, half cursed, half blessed. He had burned the green away and replaced it with pure sight that damned her if she used it.”

...

“Non sum dignus,” she whispered. “But tell me. Where is the rest of days, the aisle of thyme, the scent of veronica you promised? The cream and honey you said I earned? The happiness that comes of well-done chores, the serenity duty grants us, the blessings of good works? Was what I did for love of you so terrible?”

Mary Magna had nothing to say. Consolata listened to the refusing silence, more wondering than annoyed by the sky, in plumage now, gold and blue-green, strutting like unrequited love on the horizon. She was afraid of dying alone, ungrieved in holy ground, but knew that was precisely what lay before her. How she longed for the good death. “I’ll miss you,” she told Him. “I really will.” The skylight wavered.

...

“My child body, hurt and soil, leaps into the arms of a woman who teach me my body is nothing my spirit everything. I agreed her until I met another. My flesh is hungry for itself it ate him. When he fell away the woman rescue me from my body again. Twice he saves it. When her body sickens I care for it in every way flesh works. I hold it in my arms and between my legs. Clean it, rock it, enter it to keep it breath. After she is dead I cannot get past that. My bones on hers that only good thing. Not spirit. Bones. No different from the man. My bones on his the only true thing. So I wondering where is the spirit lost in this? It is true, like bones. It is good, like bones. One sweet, one bitter. Where is it lost? Hear me, listen. Never break them in two. Never put one over the other. Eve is Mary’s mother. Mary is the daughter of Eve.”

_______________________________________

These are the quotes I’ve chosen to use to frame the piece. These are the quotes that have struck me at my core, the pieces of this masterpiece that stick to my soul like glue (for lack of a better way to describe the intensity with which these vignettes travel my bloodstream). 

The plan is to structure cells that apply to each character. Within each cell, I will record an idée fixe that works for each character of the novel, each representing a different nuance that any black woman may or may not experience.  

This morning was the first time that I’d even conceived of using the cadenza I wrote to accompany the CSG Concerto in G. In lieu of a standard cadenza, I wrote my own. The work exits as a standalone piece as well, and I wrote it, contextually, from a place that gives consideration to the emotional profile of CSG’s mother, a free slave from Guadeloupe. It’s incredible how this writing, hundreds of years later, completely removed from the life of its author, or from my own, can serve as such a powerful link between cognizant realities.