I’m reading Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. And I swear, I had no idea it was “classic gay fiction” when I started reading it. (Though, if someone had told me, I might have read it sooner~) Sure, their relationship is destructive and akin to a trainwreck (because the narrator is an idiot), but it’s a good read nonetheless.

And every time I pause at a passage that I think I’d like to jot down, I see someone else has already dog-eared the page.

For I am — or I was — one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all — a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named — but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they are and the world are not.

                                               **

‘Somebody,’ said Jacques, ‘your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour — and in the oddest of places! — for the lack of it.’

If you’re bored and have or have not been following Chinese news, the heart-rending story of Chen Jian might be worth reading/watching.

The season finale of House seems to get sadder every season.