Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

 "It takes me awhile to notice, but the woman is actually creating something on the wall behind her. She has three different colors of Post-it notes, and is positioning them with the most meticulous precision I have ever seen. 

"And the longer I stare at the wall of Post-it notes, the more I begin to understand that I'm not just staring at a wall of notes. I'm staring at something greater than that. 

"The post-its blend and bleed into one another, slicing out the silhouette of a castle--Gothic and grand-- perched upon a cliff ,dangling ovwer a breaking sea. Violet sky. Ebbon stone. A salty sea of paper and dye fluttering in the blow of an approaching storm.

"It's a glorious thing. An honest-to-God work of art. And I wonder if anyone else can see it. These kinds of things go unnoticed by too much of the world, in my opinion.

"I sit there with Renny at my side and all of Renny's alcohol in my blood stream and I stare at the Post-its. How many hours it must have taken to create such a thing, I can't honestly say. Anything worthwhile takes time. Maybe that's what time is for: to give meaning to the things we do; to create a context in which we can linger in something until, finally, we have given it something invaluable, something that we can never get back: time. And once we have invested the most precious commodity that we will ever have, it suddenly has meaning and importance. So maybe time is just how we measure meaning. Maybe time is how we measure love."

"Only certain tax brackets get the luxury of knowing something'll kill you, and being able to choose not to do it." 

"It's amazing how much you can get used to the intolerable, right up until the moment when you realize you have to pass it on to some pair of bright eyes that have no choice but to be dimmed by it."

I envy this minister. I envy the way he’s able to give solace to these people and what they are going through, while I’m only able to come here and watch and worry about the fact that my second book is due soon and I’m still not any closer to getting it written. Yes, there are better things in the world to be worried about. Yes, there are tragedies, and shootings, and rapes, and violence, and starvation, and human trafficking, and all those other things and I have found the way to ignore them is simply by thinking about myself. I like to think that’s what the minister is talking about when he talks about the ability to look past things and still be happy. The only problem is that I can’t honestly say that I’m happy. For sure, I’m something, but I damn sure wouldn’t call it happy.

Despondent, maybe. Confused, certainly. Horny, without a doubt. But happy? No. I’m not sure Black people can be happy in this world. There’s just too much of a backstory of sadness that’s always clawing at their heels. And no matter how hard you try to outrun it, life always comes through with those reminders letting you know that, more than anything, you’re just a part of an exploited people and a denied destiny and all you can do is hate your past and, by proxy, hate yourself.






I know why your mom taught you to be invisible. She wanted to protect you. Being who we are . . . it’s hard. We get shot or put in jail. It’s all we see. It’s all we know. Our whole story is about pain and loss, slavery and oppression. It defines us. It seeps into our skin. We bleed it even as we’re covered by it. All we want is to be something other than the pain that we have been born into. All we want is to be known for something else. We want the great history we see in others. And all we’re ever given is the story of being in pain and being forced to overcome.

Your mama, she wanted to protect you. Protect you from bullets. Protect you from cops. Protect you from judges. Protect you from mirrors that you would look into and see something less than beautiful. She wanted to protect you from the black skin that you should adore and be proud of, but that you’re going to spend your whole life trying not to hate. You’ll hate it in yourself and in anyone who looks like you. You’ll secretly see other Black people and hate them for not solving the riddle of the self-loathing you’ve been taught. It’ll follow you through everything in your life. You’ll be angry and not know why. And the anger won’t ever go away, not really. It’ll hang in the back of your mind. It’ll hang in the back of your world, haunting you, guiding all of your decisions. And when you get tired of being angry, it still won’t go away. It’ll just change into something even worse. You’ll take that anger and turn it on yourself and it’ll call itself depression. And, just like anger, it’ll take over your life. It’ll live with you every day. You’ll look in the mirror and hate what you see. You’ll tell that person in the mirror—with that skin that looks so dark—that it’s broken. You’ll tell that person that they deserve less. You’ll tell that person that the good things in this world are not for them.

And then, rarely, you’ll try to break out of that. The pendulum will swing in the other direction. Maybe you’ll take a stab at being an optimist. You’ll say that race doesn’t matter. You’ll say that everyone is treated equally and you’ll try to live that life. You might even say that you don’t see color. You’ll hide in not being as Black as some other Black people. You’ll look at Black people who don’t behave the way you do as doing it wrong. You’ll divide yourself up. You’ll make fun of the way they talk, the way they dress.

But all you’ll really be doing is making fun of yourself.

But, for a little while, it’ll feel good.

And then, when you’ve been optimistic for long enough, you’ll turn on the news and someone who looks just like you will have been shot and killed. And maybe the optimism will hold for a while. Maybe you’ll be able to say to yourself, “Well, that’s just one case. A freak accident. It doesn’t mean that the world is like that.”

And then—and this part won’t take long—you’ll see another case. You’ll see another person who looks like you that’s been shot. And then you’ll see another. And another. And another. And maybe you’ll stop reading the news. You’ll retreat into books or movies. But then you won’t see anyone who looks like you. Or, if they do, they don’t act like you. They act like those stereotypes. They act like those Black people that you always thought you were better than, those people who use the language you don’t. Those people that dress the way you don’t.

And then, eventually, you’ll come to understand that you’re all the same person. You’ll finally come to understand that you’re a part of it all. That they’re you. And that’ll break your heart and make you proud at the same time. And the anger and depression will cycle back through again and again and the only way to escape them is to pretend that you don’t see how broken the world is. It’ll be that way every single day of your life.

And then, you’ll have kids one day, and you’ll want desperately to protect them from all of that.

I walk over to The Kid and open my arms and he looks frightened for a second, like he doesn’t know what I’m doing. But he knows exactly what I’m doing and he’s afraid of it. Hell, so am I. But I’m also tired of being afraid. My whole life I’ve lived afraid. My whole life I’ve been afraid. I’ve been running. I can’t remember anything else. Same goes for him. And I know it because he and I are the same. Me and everyone who looks like me are the same. We all carry that same weight. We all live lives under the hanging sword of fear. We’re buried under the terror that our children will come into all of the same burden and be trapped, just like we were. So we stay put, running in place. Most of all, people like me fear that we can’t do anything to break the cycle.

And I don’t know if we can or not. I just know that we have to try.

That I have to try.