Thanksgiving Email - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 5:12 PM
“Tuesday? The Wednesday thread on a Tuesday? What are you, fῦcking st*pid?” According to my therapist, no – but my 1st grade teacher says otherwise. Ms. Ortiz of Red Oak Life School (a non-profit tuition-free charter school in the Dallas Metropolitan region) actually spoke to my mother at the time to ask if I was, and this is a real quote, “mildly retarded”. She said “no, he’s just going through a very tough time at home”. And that was true, but that quickly subsided through childhood; a typhoon hitting land might be a good metaphor. But that’s just life I guess.
I think about Thanksgiving. I’ll be holding a Friendsgiving on Wednesday evening with some friends, having turkey time – multiple friends from multiple strata, from the offices of Hollywood to the recesses of the streets to friendly neighbors to slick haired car-parking people. It’s an everyone at the table kind of thing. Reminds of me that 2003 movie Pieces of April. That’s Wednesday night. As for Thanksgiving day itself, it’s a nothing day filled with movies.
I should get the Criterion collection channel subscription filled with films from forever ago. Sounds timeless, yeah? It’s like 11 dollars, so if anyone wants to split, let me know.
Once in your life, you should watch a movie with a room full of characters. Sounds cool, right? Kind of like those Summer movies that are played in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. You bring a blanket and watch old 35mm films on a big outside projector screen. Sounds fun.
…
Below is a poem by Robert Hayden about being thankful for a parent’s sacrifice. If you had a good parent growing up, send them this (or… do what my 8th grade Texas bus driver once told me – “you buy two cards – one with the Hallmark message and one blank. Copy over the Hallmark message to the blank one and boom, everyone thinks you’re a poet”). Robert Hayden everyone:
Those Winter Sundays
By Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
In that realm of thankfulness and equality, here’s an excerpt ripped from his Wikipedia:
As a supporter of his religion's teaching of the unity of humanity, Hayden could never embrace Black separatism. Thus the title poem of Words in the Mourning Time ends in a stirring plea in the name of all humanity:
Reclaim now, now renew the vision of
a human world where godliness
is possible and man
is neither gook nigger honkey wop or kike
but man
permitted to be man.
Have a great Thanksgiving everyone, whether you’re with family, friends, or strangers. It’s important to be with people.