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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 21, 1994)
ju s t out ▼ January 2 1 , 1994 ▼ 17 price of being alive. James Baldwin, a man of great perception, passion and humor, a man who sought connection, all too often found himself looking across the drawn battle lines of borders. He didn’t shun them; the battle lines were, as he might put it, the price of the ticket. James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket plays Thursday through Sunday, Feb. 3-6, at 7 pm; with additional shows on Friday, Feb. 4, at 9pm and on Sunday, Feb. 6, at 5 pm. Prices vary. Clinton Street Theatre, 2522 SE Clinton St., 238-8899. B a l d w in in P ii i n t n his introduction to Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin writes: “In America, the color of my skin had stood between myself and me; in Europe, that barrier was down. Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch. It turned out that the question of who I was was not solved because I had removed myself from the social forces which menaced me—anyway, these forces had become interior, and I had dragged them across the ocean with me. The question of who I was had at last become a personal question, and the answer was to be found in me.” an instant without you, with a skull more fragile than an egg, a miracle of eyes, legs, toenails, and (especially) lungs. It gropes in the light like a blind thing—it is, for the moment, blind—what can it make of what it secs? It’s got a little hair, which it’s going to lose, it’s got no teeth, it pees all over you, it belches, and when it’s frightened or hungry, quite without knowing what a miracle it’s accom plishing, it exercises its lungs. You watch it discover it has a hand; then it discovers it has toes. Presently, it discovers it has you, and since it has already decided it wants to live, it gives you a toothless smile when you come near it, gurgles or giggles when you pick it up, holds you tight by the thumb or the eyeball or the hair, and, having already opted against solitude, howls when you put it down. You begin the extraordinary journey of beginning to know and to control this creature. You know the sound—the meaning—of one cry from another; without knowing that you know it. You know when it’s hungry—that’s one sound. You know when it’s wet—that’s another sound. You know when it’s angry. You know when it’s bored. You know when it’s frightened. You know when it’s suffering. You come or you go or you sit still according to the sound the baby makes. And you watch over it where I was born, even in your sleep, because rats love the odor of newborn babies and arc much, much bigger.” Baldwin didn’t jump onto the easy name-call ing bandwagons of some of his contemporaries, Baldwin never stopped with simple answers. causing many to call him weak. The issue of race His writing and speeches reflected the complexity revealed a wealth of information, and towards the of his life, as he sought end, a glimmer of to make sense of the joy, as he writes in GO ^ ' The Price of the black/white polarity in the United States. In The Ticket, Collected Price of the Ticket: Col Nonfiction 1948- lected Nonfiction 1948- T E L L IT O N T H E 1985: 1985, Baldwin wrote: ‘The will of the people, or the State, “It is exceedingly dif M O U N T A IN is revealed by the ficult for most of us to State’s institutions. discard the assumptions of the society in which There was not, we were bom, in which then, nor is there, now, a single we live, to which we owe American institu our identities; very diffi tion which is not a cult to defeat the trap of racist institution. circumstance, which is, And racist institu also, the web of safety; virtually impossible, if fell pl tions—the unions, HI J 9 H | ,, ; ' ■> i tem or t he for one example, not completely impos the Church, for an sible, to envision the fu p , j W M a É K BAPT ® IS other, and the ture, except in those Army—or the mili terms which we think we tary—for yet an already know. Most of . / » » i i y f B other, are meant to us are about as eager to keep the nigger in be changed as we were his place. Yes: we to be born, and go I have lived through through our changes in a avalanches of to similar state of shock. kens and conces “Including this sions but white writer, of course, who power remains white. And what it appears to was far, however, years ago, from being able to forgive himself for being so irretrievably human. surrender with one hand it obsessively clutches in The power of the social definition is that it be the other. “I know that this is considered to be heresy. comes, fatally, one’s own—but it took time, and much deep water, to make me sec this. Rage and Sparc me, for Christ's and His Father’s sake, any misery can be a source of comfort, simply because furthcr examples of American white progress. When one has lived with rage and misery for so long.’’ one examines the use of this word in this most particular context, it translates as meaning that Although his childhood was distorted by terror those people who have opted for being white of his father and a perennially pregnant mother, congratulate themselves on their generous ability whom the children conspired to protect from the to return to the slave that freedom which they never father, Baldwin delighted in each new baby that had any right to endanger, much less take away. came along. In The Price of the Ticket, Collected For this dubious effort, and still more dubious achievement, they congratulate themselves and Nonfiction 1948-1985, Baldwin wrote: “I want to avoid generalities as far as possible; expect to be congratulated: in the coin, further it will, I hope, become clear presently that what I more, of black gratitude, gratitude not only that my am now attempting dictates this avoidance; and so burden is(slowly, but it takes time) being made but my joy that white people arc improv- I will not say that children love miracles, but I will lighter • «• say that I think we did. A newborn baby is an ing. extraordinary event; and I have never seen two , . , The collected .fiction and nonfiction .of Jumcs babies who looked or even sounded remotely alike. ' Baldwin is.well, worth revisiting for the strength, Here it is, this breathing miracle who could not live clarity and hope that he offers. 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