Recline Into a Life

“The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man” by James Weldon Johnson was originally published anonymously in 1912.  Was this a proper autobiography?  If so, the author, who had made a reluctant decision for passing as white, must surely remain anonymous.  And fiction should be honored as such, but I kept wondering just what did Mr. Weldon look like.  The scene where he is traveling in the whites-only car, for example, where the staunch Confederate and the earnest northerner debate is achingly real with the narrator there, acknowledging the agile powers of argumentation, of a line of reason that is ultimately indefensible.   

Our “colored man” is a brilliant pianist, who can make ends meet and make the room jump with his extraordinary ragtime chops which he refines over time.  His remarkable patron leads him up and out of New York and into the world at large.  And though he is kept and comfortable, funded by this wealthy fellow, he ultimately parts with the benefactor and returns from Europe to pursue his passion for the African American music form. 

Eventually our narrator falls for a white woman and in the interest of her and his offspring he passes as white and decides to recline into a life of deception.  His magic chameleon quality is fine in fiction but when I considered the photograph of James Weldon one appreciates that this is indeed a fictive piece, and one is ill advised to ascribe too much of any fiction to the author himself, though when I finished I couldn’t help but look over to see just what Mr. Johnson did indeed look like.  One assumes that Mr. Johnson may have been many things in his life as a diplomat, a writer, and a leader of the NAACP, it is unlikely that he lived anything like the 'passing' life of is narrator the way Charles Chestnut or Jean Toomer might have.

I got close today.  It’s an arbitrary objective.  My plant identification had brought be up to two-hundred-and-ninety-nine specifically identified plants. A natural impulse I looked, in vain, for the three hundredth on my bike ride south today.  No luck, until I was departing from my visit to my stepdad, across the rather uninspired lawns they have there on the property when I spied a purple flower in the lawn that I didn’t recognize and, indeed, the Prunella Vulgaris, aka, Common Selfheal turned out to be my tricentennial observation. 

Tuesday, 07/07/20