The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America
by Michael Eric Dyson
Published February 2nd 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I finished this book yesterday. As an outsider/insider in many ways (I'm not black, and in the state in which I live, Latinos are the largest "minority," and I'm not Latino either), this was an incredible gift to read: Mr. Dyson wrote this unflinchingly, and yet generously, seeking to understand both his subject and his varied audience, seeking to wound nobody, but making his point without any apparent censorship of his analysis. He is critical but not unkind. And the last chapter, one about redemption, is breathtaking. I'm grateful.

Koayashi Issa

Recent poetry purchases. I added the cow because of this glorious Haiku in the little Dover anthology, by Matsunaga Teitoku:

That morning, how
Icicles drip! -- Slobbering
Year of the cow! 

(trans. Harold Gould Henderson)

Feed - Tommy Pico
The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology (Dover)
Book of Haiku - Jack Kerouac
Haiku - The Last Poems of an American Icon - Richard Wright

The Next Leg of the Journey

A few years have passed since my last post here.  Wanting to "start" a blog about my decision to follow the call to priesthood, after browsing different blog sites and struggling to come up with a new title, I decided to simply return to my old blog, change up some of the main page info, and get to blogging again.

I'm leaving all the past posts in place.  Dark Magnet has had a couple different legs.  The first group of posts was like a normal blog, sharing my thoughts and life events now and then. Then I neglected it for awhile, and came back briefly to write book reviews.

And now, I have a reason to write a blog.  Anyone who knows me well is aware I've had a long struggle with my cradle church, Roman Catholicism.  Last fall/winter I formally joined Christ the King Old Catholic Church parish in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It's part of the North American Catholic Ecumenical church.  I've put links on the left side of this page (not sure where it would show up on mobile devices) if you're interested in learning more.

Or hey, let's make it easy:

https://christthekingoldcatholicchurch.weebly.com/
https://www.northamericancatholicecumenicalchurch.org/

The church's home page states: "Christ the King Old Catholic Church is a Welcoming, Open and Affirming Church in the Catholic Tradition.  We welcome diversity and do not discriminate with clergy or laity in gender, age, marital status, employment, or sexual orientation.  The lgbtq community has a friend in Christ the King."

While I love and honor the Metropolitan Community Churches, and the MCC church in Albuquerque is vibrant, alive, and brilliantly Christian, I need the liturgical aspects.  My most powerful religious experiences have been rooted in liturgical paths: Catholicism, Wicca, Orthodox Christianity.  I had some powerful connections to God in Islam as well, but that was short-lived for other reasons.

I'm going to write a lot here, much about my own path, but also looking out at the greater church, both the Roman church and Christianity at large.  But I do consider myself a member of the Old Catholic tradition now, and I don't feel like I will "go back" no matter what changes happen in the Roman church.  As long as its members are expected to follow what they are told, and as long as that church refuses sacraments to people for refusing to live in accordance with its ridiculous dictates on perrsonal matters such as sexuality, health, and even the variety of possible religious expressions, then I consider the heirarchical and institutional Roman church to be a useless husk.

I went to a couple daily Masses a couple weeks ago, because the only folks who do Masses every day here are Roman Catholics.  It was helpful to my spirituality, but I was constantly reminded by that inner voice that I don't belong there.  Pope Ratzinger sealed that in by changing the words of certain prayers and responses to more clunky language.  But that's just a trapping.  I felt I was somehow doing it wrong when I slipped "It is right to give God thanks and praise." And then the voice. You don't belong here.

I will always love the Roman Church.  I no longer belong there.  

So hey, I'm openly gay, a Catholic, and have had a calling to be a religious since at least college, and probably much earlier than that.  To be an Old Catholic priest here is to be a working priest, with a day job.  And I have a ways to go.  I have a history of religious struggle, and I want to stay true to this calling.  Please pray for me.

Book Review
One of These Things First: A Memoir
by Steven Gaines
(Delphinium, 2016)

Publisher page: http://www.delphiniumbooks.com/book/one-of-these-things-first/

I started my own coming-out process at around 19, though nothing is ever sharply or simply delineated that way.  Maybe it began when it dawned on me that "gay" applied to me, or when I stopped telling myself that maybe there was a girl out there who would make me certain I was bisexual (never happened).  Or maybe it was in younger childhood, when I had crushes on boys but didn't have the conception that such a thing was possible.

Is this a coming-out memoir?  Basically, though more in its coming-out to oneself than to the world.  In Gaines' story, it is his own fear and disgust at his own gay identity with which he must contend.  He does this in the face of a certain Jewish conservatism, a less-understanding time, and pre-enlightened psychiatry.  We are fortunate to have this book, because it is a story of a man who came of age before homosexuality was removed from the list of mental disorders, and then spans the time afterward (briefly, in the final chapter). 

So real were the adolescent physicalities of desire that I instantly found myself present in mid-century Brooklyn, side by side with the author.  Chest-to-chest is a concept similar to my own painful yearning for other males as I was growing up.  I had my own lawnmower boys, some stronger presences in my mental obsessions than others, and the reaching out and the eventual crawling inward.  No, my life is not a mirror to Steven Gaines', but there are enough points of connection that this story spoke to me deeply.

I won't go into specifics of the story, as I too had very little foreknowledge of what I was going to be reading.  "Gay autobiography" is enough for me to open a book, and when the writing is as immaculate as this, I'm in for the full ride.  I wanted the book to go on longer, but perhaps that was not the story Gaines wanted to tell.  Or perhaps he'll gift us with another volume.  I'm on board should that happen.

New Kids on the Block's Hangin' Tough by Rebecca Wallwork (to be released 4/21/2016)

Odd, perhaps, to see a review from a 45-year-old man for a book such as this, but I'll offer my defense, should it seem necessary: at age 19, during the same year that the New Kids on the Block became famous with Hangin' Tough, I was beginning my journey out of the closet.  I was the same age as Jordan Knight, on whom I was seriously crushing.  I fell in love with these guys, knowing full well how cheesy their act was, and reveling in the shock people felt when I told them that I, a college-radio DJ into everything from Black Flag to Sonic Youth to Public Enemy to...well, hey, my tastes were quite broad.

Therefore, I figure, given how I wasn't able to explore my relationship stuff back in my early adolescence, there must have been some of that energy still going on for me.  I also learned that my very broad taste in music is tied to my complicated personality, but no need to get into that here.

I call it a defense jokingly, of course.  I'm not really shamed by it or embarrassed. I wouldn't have stooped to calling myself a "Blockhead," because I've always (perhaps to my detriment) resisted tribalism, especially silliness such as that.  I was even a more devoted Iron Maiden fan (kind of still am) but I never wanted to be called an "Iron."  Or whatever.

I bring all of this up because the most interesting part of this book is the cognitive science aspect of it, how music can have a dopamine-release effect on us humans, and how emotional things which happen when we are young teens are amplified for various reasons, and hence when we hear the songs we loved at that age we react more strongly than we might as an adult to a new song we hear and like.

We also get a bit of history of the band's development and of Maurice Starr, the band's genius founder and director, plus some quick fan-type reactions to the songs on the album and some discussion of fan/band relational reactions. 

I'm not sure we get a proper analysis of the music on the album, but that's okay.  It was an enjoyable enough read, if not entirely well-focused.  My three-star rating could be 3.5 just because I still have a bit of that fanboy in me, and no, I'm not embarrassed about it.

(With gratitude to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC for this review.)

Guapa by Saleem Haddad (2016)

I'm thinking about this book and my frustrating experience reading it, and it's difficult for me to shape a review for it. I guess I'll just plunge forward.

Strengths:
Saleem Haddad is very skilled in painting a scene's setting. My brain had no trouble filling in the details as Haddad provided everything necessary while never getting boring in his descriptions. In slums, checkpoints, fancy hotels, apartments, dorm rooms, campuses, diners, bars...I never once had trouble, and I have extreme respect for this skill.

Also, the sensual scenes between Rasa and Taymour were just lovely, leaving me wanting more. I mean seriously, but enough said there.

So what we have in Guapa is a story of injustices, power struggles between people, intolerance, governmental abuses, family tragedy, and the confusion of growing up different.

A very worthy endeavor.

We're served a journey in Rasa's mind, a journey in which he philosophizes and rages (though also illuminates with some very nice anecdotes throughout). At times, at least for me, I need to retrace steps to remember where the novel was in its present-time, which wasn't a problem, but it's also not ideal in the flow of reading to be right at a crucial point of action or dialogue but first get moved into another flashback. Lots of good material in the flashbacks but the execution felt messy and even sometimes muddled.

By the end I was quite weary of an endless parade of one-dimensional characters who served as examples of the types of attitudes Rasa encounters in his living. One horrible person after another, often delivering a self-righteous speech with very little context to trigger it. Many unresolved threads (Like I said, the book was frustrating for me) and a melodramatic, unsatisfying ending.

Saleem Haddad is an incredibly strong writer, and I'm hoping his follow-up is more successful than Guapa.

With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.