i’m very busy and bad at juggling several projects at once, so that’s why things have been silent around here. been discussing boston bombing conspiracies with backpackers in assorted hotels and hostels, changing rooms every two days or so. i’m ghostwriting a book on the slowest virus-infected laptop on earth, in a place where WIFI is indeed a four letter word. but i’m just whining. to make up for the lack of things to say, i’ve stolen some things junot diaz has said, which are 1,000,000 x better than anything i could write right now.

“In a ‘post-race’ country like America where nothing and no one is racist, where people are more likely to believe in UFO’s than in institutional bias, which does back flips to obfuscate the operations of white hegemonic power and therefore ensure its continuance, anyone seeking to expose white supremacy or battle it is in for some serious uphill. You will be attacked. You will be censured, usually by your own community. People will say that you are obsessed with race and that even mentioning white people in the context of white supremacy is itself racist. These days the average person doesn’t even have to be taught not to bring up white supremacy. Here in our country, as in Mordor, everybody knows not to say the dark lord’s name.”

“If you’re not lost, you’re at a place that somebody has already found. If you’re comfortable or familiar, you’re in mapped territory. If you feel like you know where you’re at, somebody’s already done it. So if you want to create something new, you need to get completely lost.”

“A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”