We did not inherit the land from our ancestors, but we borrowed it from our children.
Blog
At Home in the Desert: Lawrence of Arabia and Me.
I am still think about El Lawrence today. A truly remarkable day! A day when, out of a clear blue sky, my oldest and dearest friend reappeared after decades gone missing, during which I could not even be sure she was still alive.
The other day, in my first post about Lawrence, I forgot to mention the poem that appears on the first page of his auto-biography, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Wikipedia describes this poem with these words:
“Speculation surrounds the book’s dedication, a poem written by Lawrence and edited by Robert Graves, concerning whether it is to an individual or to the whole Arab race. It begins, “To S.A.”, possibly meaning Selim Ahmed, a young Arab boy from Syria of whom Lawrence was very fond. Ahmed died, probably from typhus, aged 19, a few weeks before the offensive to liberate Damascus. Lawrence received the news of his death some days before he entered Damascus.”
Though understated, the love Lawrence had for Selim is clearly evident in the move Lawrence of Arabia. In the poem, it is more touching. Here is a link to a PDF copy of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which is now in the public domain. I reproduce the poem below.
Dedication To S.A.
I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.
Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near
and saw you waiting:
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me
and took you apart:
Into his quietness.
Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, our brief wage
ours for the moment
Before earth’s soft hand explored your shape, and the blind
worms grew fat upon
Your substance.
Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house,
as a memory of you.
But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now
The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels
in the marred shadow
Of your gift
Today, when I am so vividly reminded of what friendship can mean in a persons life, these words touch my heartstrings like a song.
A single spark
Some of you may know that between the ages of three and six (1968-1971) I lived in a Marxist-Leninist commune in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was home to student members of SDS and adult members of the Progressive Labor Party (the PLP, or just PL for short). Those who know their radical history will remember that, at a critical juncture in “the movement”, SDS split into two factions. One faction, which believed that the time for violent revolutionary action had not yet come, retained the name SDS. The other faction, held that the sheer scale of imperialist atrocities committed daily, both at home and abroad, not only justified but also required immediate action of every kind. The name chosen for themselves by the violent faction was the Weather Underground.
My parents were Communists. They were also academics and both were professors of Philosophy. Like most other academics, at least in the pre-digital age, my parents kept an extensive library of printed materials, even when we our living conditions were somewhat cramped. One day while I was in my freshman year of High School, on a shelf of dusty volumes from both my parents and my grandparents collections, I was delighted to find a little crudely printed book entitled Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism. Reading the book, I quickly realized that what I had found was a rare copy of the Manifesto of the Weather Underground.
Because I was young and foolish, not understanding the value of this rare treasure I had found and also wanting to show it off, I quickly lost my copy of Prairie Fire. Many times, over the years, I tried to find another copy via. used book searches and the like. I had no luck. Today, however, when I searched the internet for this book, I found a PDF copy online. I have now uploaded a copy of this document to this site for others to enjoy and learn from.
Also, in case you wondered, the title of the book comes from a quote from Mao Tse Tung, “A single spark can start a prairie fire.”
Click the link below to read Prairie Fire now.
Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-ImperialismAll men dream, but not equally.
For most of my life, my favorite movie was Lawrence of Arabia. The other day, I started reading Lawrence’s autobiography, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I immediately found the writing style compelling, despite all of Lawrence’s various prejudices, his self-absorption and his pride. I did not find much for pearls of wisdom in the opening chapters, but I did find this one gem of a quote:
“All men dream, but nor equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
By his own account, Lawrence dared to dream in the day. He dreamed of an Arab revolution and Arab self-determination, but he rued the fact that his limited success lead only to condemnation from those he had served under. “I meant to make a new nation, to restore! a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds, and made them play a generous part in events: but when we won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French Colonial policy ruined in the Levant.”
Ultimately, as depicted in the film, Lawrence saw his dream, at the moment of realization, dissolved back to a familiar status quo.
“In these pages the history is not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt. We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”
Nonetheless, I find all of this reminiscent another quote I have long loved, from the writings of Aleister Crowley. “None are truly happy, except for those who have desired the unattainable.”
Axioms to Live By
I have found it useful to live by these principles
1. Always keep an open mind. As the writer Robert Anton Wilson famously wrote, “Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”
2. Don’t mistake forest for the trees, the image for the reality or the description for the thing described. Arthur Korzybski, the father of general semantics, wrote: “The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a ‘semantic disturbance’ is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.” Buddhism and Hinduism implicitly acknowledge this Great Truth in the concept of “Maya”. Most is most often translated as “illusion”, but a better choice would be “apperance”. This appearance is only illusion when we mistakenly mistake it for reality.
maya, (Sanskrit: “magic” or “illusion”) a fundamental concept in Hindu philosophy, notably in the Advaita (Nondualist) school of Vedanta. Maya originally denoted the magic power with which a god can make human beings believe in what turns out to be an illusion. By extension, it later came to mean the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real. For the Nondualists, maya is thus that cosmic force that presents the infinite brahman (the supreme being) as the finite phenomenal world. Maya is reflected on the individual level by human ignorance (ajnana) of the real nature of the self, which is mistaken for the empirical ego but which is in reality identical with brahman.
3. Don’t get lost in your head. Don’t panic. Don’t take yourself so seriously. The following quote is from the writing of Chuang Tzu (369?-286? B.C.), a leading philosopher representing the Taoist strain in Chinese thought.
Great knowledge is all-encompassing;
small knowledge is limited. Great words
are inspiring; small words are chatter.
When we are asleep, we are in touch with
our souls. When we are awake, our senses
open. We get involved with our activities
and our minds are distracted. Sometimes
we are hesitant, sometimes underhanded,
and sometimes secretive. Little fears cause
anxiety, and great fears cause panic. Our
words fly off like arrows, as though we
knew what was right and wrong. We cling
to our own point of view, as though
everything depended on it. And yet our
opinions have no permanence;
like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
We are caught in the current and cannot
return. We are tied up in knots like an
old clogged drain; we are getting closer
to death with no way to regain our youth.
Joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, hope
and fear, indecision and strength, humility
and willfulness, enthusiasm and insolence,
like music sounding from an empty reed
or mushrooms rising from the warm dark
earth, continually appear before us day
and night. No one knows whence they
come. Don’t worry about it! Let them be!
How can we understand it all in one day?
4. Hold space for others and for yourself.
“What does it mean to hold space for someone else? It means that we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control.” Heather Plett
5. Don’t be afraid to dream big dreams. Allow yourself to reach for things you cannot see. Attempt the impossible.
“Only those are truly happy who have desired the unattainable.” – Aleister Crowley
6. Timing matters. Be aware of the time and the season.
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late
– Pete Seeger
Site Updates
I’ve made a few updates. This mission statement at the top of the home page has been updated. Also, I’ve created a new “About” page with my intentions for the site, which reads as follows:
“My intention for this site is to define a safe and welcoming space for everyone, regardless of race, creed, color, ability or disposition, so long as they practice relentless kindness and compassion toward everyone while they are here. Personal attacks, hate speech and bigotry of all kinds are not allowed here. Open hearts, open minds and giving everyone the “benefit of the doubt.” are strongly encouraged. Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt means assuming that their intentions and motivations are benign, at least until proven otherwise. It means really listening, seeking clarification when needed and ,whenever possible, not taking things personally. It means not considering people who have a bad idea as bad people.
My understanding of tolerance is that we should be tolerant everything that is not intolerant. Except for the cis sexist pronouns, I concur with the definition of libery published in the 1789 French Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man. “Liberty consists in the ability to do whatever does not harm another; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man person has no other limits than those which assure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights.”
My understanding of compassion is that we should be compassionate towards everyone, especially to those who are uncompassionate.”
The first words of the Buddha’s teaching are “Hatred never ceases by hatred. Hatred ceases by love alone.” I invite all creatures, great and small, high and low, light and dark, having lived, now living or in the future and on all planes, planets and dimensions to practice with me in this way.
Big Ideas
I am just back from vacation and brimming with big ideas.
Here is one big idea I stumbled on this week that I really like: The Clock of the Long Now. While some might find this project frivolous or even wasteful, I find it inspiring, hopeful and strangely relevant.
I have a lifelong fascination with mechanical clocks and mechanical computers. Perhaps the most interesting of all such devices that I know of is the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek computer recovered from a wreck discovered in 1900 from Symi island. If anyone reading this who has had their interest piqued by the linked article also has two hours to spare for further study, here is a link to an excellent lecture on the subject: The Antikythera Mechanism: A Shocking Discovery from Ancient Greece.
The Antikythera Mechanism is so remarkable that Swiss watchmaker Hublot was inspired to create a wristwatch based upon its design, the Hublot Masterpiece MP-08 Antikythera Sunmoon. It lists for $333,000. At the lower end of the scale, there is this museum replica that retails for 440 euros a piece, but I am uncertain if is a working replica or not. In any case, like the original, it is not a wearable device.
The there is this place, Opus 40, in New York’s Hudson Valley. Per Wikipedia, “Opus 40 is a large environmental sculpture in Saugerties, New York, created by sculptor and quarryman Harvey Fite (1903—1976). It comprises a sprawling series of dry-stone ramps, pedestals and platforms covering 6.5 acres (2.6 ha) of a bluestone quarry.” The Wikipedia article also says Brendan Gill, of Architectural Digest, called Opus 40 “one of the largest and most beguiling works of art on the entire continent,” and also “the greatest earthwork sculpture I have ever seen.”
Opus 40 is truly a work of art that took a lifetime of love and patience to create. I’d really like for my own life to be that, a work of art, even if I leave no trace, no footprints when I go.
My first shave
I’ve been thinking about the old days. Really, I have never stopped thinking about the old days. Anything can prompt a trip through my memory drawer. A song not heard in some time can do it. So can a smell not recently smelled.
Often, shaving makes me think of my first shave. It was the summer of 1983, early August, and I was in Denver, Colorado. I was all of 17 years old. A few months before, in April, I had dropped out of High School and moved out of my parents house. Although I had not gone to court, I was effectively an “emancipated minor”, though that phrasing does seem a bit ironic.
As Janis Joplin sang, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
I had spent June and July on the street in lower Manhattan, sleeping in abandoned buildings or on park benches and getting what little money I had each day from doing Tarot card readings on the sidewalk of 10th street, between First and Second Avenues. Then, in late July, I got a call from my best friend, Steve Hurley, who told me he was living in a tent on the side of a mountain outside of Boluder, Colorado with a bunch of hippies from the Rainbow Gathering. Steve asked me to come out and see him.
So, the next day, with five dollars, a pipe and a small ball of hashish in my pocket, I hitched a ride to Philadelphia, then to Chicago and, after an adventure in the Quad Cities of Iowa, on to Boulder. I arrived in Boulder with $1.50 to my name and my hash all used up. I remember going to a super market and buying a large box of raisins with all the money I had. I ate so many I got a stomach ache.
I made my way to the town commons and took out my sign, which read “Tarot Card readings: barter, trade or free”. By evening, I had enough money for a hamburger and some fries. While I was eating, Steve appeared, his red hair longer than I remembered and his irrepressible good nature on full display.
I was so happy to see Steve. We wandered about together as the twilight darkened into night. At some point, we wound up sitting on a bench by a parking lot and making out. As we were kissing, distracted, we were approached by three or four locals in Western-style clothing. They were clearly loud, belligerent and homophobic. We stood and faced them as they came into earshot. Both Steve and I were rather small and effete, while I remember each of them as large, red faced and hairy. I think their intent was to fag-bash us.
The biggest, meanest looking one, who was front and center, snarled “You two look like faggots!” Steve replied, without thinking, “Yeah, well you look like my mother!”
The rednecks (our word for them at the time) just froze. We saw confusion on each of their faces. I imagine they were tying to work out whether Steve had just insulted them, his mother, or both. In that moment, we ran, as fast and as far as we could and when we looked back they were gone.
We laughed and laughed and kissed some more. Then we headed to the edge of town, the road to Nederland, where we were able hitch a ride up the trailhead that lead to the Rainbow camp.
Weeks passed, magical, glorious weeks. I climbed mountains. We visited the Buddhist temples in Boulder. We spent hours hanging out with the rainbows. We were happy, but were also broke. It was difficult to make any significant money reading Tarot in Boulder, even more difficult for Steve to do so by panhandling.
One morning when the air was crisp and cold and hinted at the coming of fall and winter, Steve left camp before I got up and he did not return that night or the next. On the third day, when he did return, he had several hundred dollars and a new story to tell. Steve had gone into the city, to Denver, and there he had for the first time experimented with prostitution, selling blowjobs for twenty or forty dollars a pop at a sex arcade. Steve was happy, excited, even proud. The way he conceived his recent experience, he had recaptured the magic of the temple prostitutes from ancient Rome.
That was one of the things Steve and I shared, from the day we met to the day he died. We both experienced the world as magical, meaningful. Places and experiences that other people found scary or even distasteful we found to be elevating, enlightening, so long as we met them on the roads we had freely chosen to walk.
Steve’s story inspired me. The next morning, before Steve awoke, it was my turn to hitch a ride down the mountain and into Denver. Denver, in the Eighties, was not nearly as big of a city as New York was, but it was vastly larger than Boston, where I grew up. I wasn’t really sure where to find the sex store that Steve had visited. I didn’t really know anything at all about Denver.
Somehow I found myself outside the State Capitol and while standing there on the sidewalk, I was approached by two boys about my age. I soon learned that they were also homeless, that they were “hustlers”, which is what boys who engaged in gay prostitution called themselves in those days. I let them know that I was interested in learning to hustle and they, quite generously, gave me my first lesson.
After a month of camping, preceded by several more months of marginal living on the road, I was incredibly scruffy looking, with long stringy hair and a sparse and unkempt beard and mustache. The hustler boys sized me up quickly and informed me that I had every bit the looks for hustling, but that I would have to shave first. They took me to a drug store where I bought the cheapest Bic razor that money could buy and then to a public rest room in the Capitol building.
There was only one knob on this sink and the water that flowed from the taps was ice cold. I had no shaving creme, only some liquid hand soap, to lubricate my face. I also had no idea what I was doing. It took some time and more than a few small cuts and scratches to get my face clean.
When I was done, they took me back to the sidewalk just down the block from the Capitol building and told me to make eye contact with any drivers who slowed as they past. Within minutes, a man stopped and I was on my way to selling my first blowjob. I don’t really remember anything about the man who stopped. I do remember that after I was dropped back in the spot where the man picked me up, I was happy, both with having more than a few dollars for the first time in recent memory and for the experience, which was not distasteful to me.
A few moments later, I was approached by two young men, very handsome and sharply dressed. I could see that they were gay and that they were lovers before they spoke. I don’t what I expected, but I was certainly open to almost anything.
These young men chatted with me for a few moments, sizing me up both visually and verbally. Then, one of them invited me back to their home for a threesome. I had the twenty-five dollars from my first trick in my pocket, which to me was more than I needed, and I thought that both of them were incredibly cute, so I went with them.
Back at their apartment, they told me some more about themselves. They had been together for a few years and were still in love, but they were very open. I told them about my single experience as a street hustler, just before I met them. They responded that I was took good looking and too well spoken for the street. Then they offered me a most unusual proposition.
They said that if I agree to spend the night with them, doing drugs and submitting to them sexually, even violently, then they would introduce me to their friend, Tiny. Tiny was actually an enormous man, gay but deeply closeted. They told me that Tiny’s public reputation was as one of the top ranked bounty hunters in the country, but that he was also the secret proprietor of the most exclusive gay escort service in Denver and that if Tiny liked me I could easily earn $200 or more for a single trick.
It wasn’t just the money and it wasn’t just the drugs. I was genuinely intrigued by these boys, so in love and so kinky, by their story about Tiny and by the fact that I had encountered them while, by my own account, following my path, my spiritual path. Over the next five or six hours, I let them tie me up, urinate on me and in my mouth, perform every kind of sexual act upon me. Then, we showered and all slept together in their big bed.
In the morning, they took me to brunch and then to meet Tiny. Tiny and I took and immediate liking to each other. He invited me to stay in his home for as long as I wanted to. He promised I would be able to earn as much money as I wanted to while living with him.
Two weeks, and a lifetime of experience later, I had $2,000 saved up. Fall was now coming on quite quickly and I did not want to stay in Denver for the winter or, really, in any one place for too long. I had become friends with one of my customers, a man named Don who I continued to correspond with for the next twenty years. Over lunch one day, I told Don that I was ready to leave Denver and that I wanted to go to Los Angeles to see my beloved maternal grandmother, who was already in her nineties, before she died. Don, who worked as a tour guide in different parts of the country at different times of year, told me he was going to be driving to Los Angeles the following week , because he had been invited to appear as a contestant on Jeopardy, his favorite show. He offered to take me with him and I happily accepted.
We spent four or five days on the road, taking our time. We stopped off at a ski cottage that Don had in Vail, and again in Reno to play the slots. We listened to music by Boney-M. We talked a lot.
Years later, when another friend introduced me to the Gillette MACH3, which for many years remained the finest razor I had ever tried, it was something of a revelation. By that point I had grown past my wildest years. I had achieved many of the symbols of maturity in white America; first I got a job, then I became a parent, then, at 36 years old, I graduated from college. The shave I got from the MACH3, with hot water and shaving creme to boot, was almost unimaginably far removed from my first rough shave in the Colorado State Capitol building.
Earlier today, when I shaved with the even more wonderful Gillette Fusion 5 razor, I stopped a moment, remembering that first shave, 39 years and two thousand miles away. In truth, I stop and think about the same things every time I shave. At moments like that, there is a full range of emotions that arise along with the memories. Mostly, though, what I feel is lucky. I am lucky to have survived and I am also lucky to have experienced all of the things that happened to me. I still feel that the places I walked, with intention, with an open mind and heart that was truly young, even the terrible, scary and painful places, were the places I was meant to go. I am who I am because of who I was.
I still believe in magic.
I would not have it any other way. Thinking about my life, feeling about my life in this way is the only way I know to stay sane. It is the reason, after so much time and turmoil, that I can still laugh and I can still cry.
A better mousetrap?
I just killed my first mouse. I’ve caught mice before, in traps, mice that either died before I found them trapped or soon after I had removed them from my home.
Let me explain, we have mice in our apartment. Sadly, our landlord has made it abundantly clear that he does not care about this, or about maintaining the house we live in at all. Tomorrow, our downstairs neighbors are moving out. They told my wife that the landlords inaction on the mice problem was a main driver of their decision to live elsewhere.
So, knowing any solution would have to come from my efforts alone, I went to the store to buy mousetraps. I have had some significant issues with hand pain in the last year. As a result, I am very protective of my fingers and I didn’t want to use the traditional snap traps out of fear of one being triggered accidentally while I was setting it and catching one or more of my fingers.
Then there is this article I read recently about the American bald eagle. The American bald eagle is a true conservation success story. In 1963, there were only 417 know nesting pairs in the United States, down from an estimated population of between 300,000 and 500,000 in the early 18th century. With enhanced legal protection under the Endangered Species act, and especially as a result of the total bad put in place on the pesticide DDT in 1972, the US bald eagle population is once again estimated at over 300,000.
Unfortunately, not all of the bald eagle news is so rosy. Although no longer endangered, a recent survey of bald eagles in the United States found over 90% to have rodent poison in their systems.
Knowing this fact about bald eagles had me convinced not to consider using poison to solve my mouse problem. The remaining solution that I arrived at was glue traps. I had once previously used a glue trap and caught a mouse with it. That time I was so freaked out by the struggling and incessantly squeaking mouse I had in my glue trap that, in a panic, I simply scooped up the mouse and the trap into a trash bag, wrapped that in another trash bag and deposited the whole bundle in the trash bin outside our house. Cruel, I know, but as I said, I panicked.
This time, as I laid out my glue traps, I was determined to handle things better. So, an hour ago, when I first heard the telltale squeaks and then saw the glue trapped mouse with my own eyes, I did remain calm. This time there was also a new complication, the trapped mouse had managed to drag itself and the glue trap far enough across the floor to the point that half of its body was now lying over an extension cord, which was also glued to the trap.
I knew the first thing I had to do was kill the mouse. I got a large old volume from one of our many bookshelves, a book I would be willing to part with. In this case, I chose one titled “Emerson, Poet and Thinker” that I inherited from my parents. It was a hardcover book, large and heavy. I used it to swiftly club the little mouse to death, ending its suffering and my discomfort at its cries.
Then, realizing that there was no easy way to pry the extension cord from under the mouse corpse and that I already had a replacement, I put mouse, cord and trap into a trash bag as before, but this time silent, and took them out to the trash.
I am actually fairly certain that this is the first time I have ever killed a mammal with my own hands. I can’t say I am proud, but I am a certainly relieved that I reacted without so much panic this time.
We are unable to have a cat in this apartment, so I am left to wonder about a better mousetrap.
The Circle of Life
Every Saturday and many Sundays, my wife and I head to the nearby town of Lexinton, Massachusetts where we have the amazing good fortune to be friends with some suburban goat herders. When the weather allows it, and in every season, we accompany the goats and their human companions to the pasture to forage and to graze. Because in my mental picture of goats in pasture there should be music, I bring my flute and I play to them.
Yesterday, the weather was lovely but it had rained a lot overnight and the pasture was a mix of melting snow and mud, not much fun for goats or humans. Anticipating this the day before (Saturday), our friends invited us to visit the goats in their backyard barnyard. Meanwhile, a mile or so away another friend who also keeps goats was watching over one in the last stage of pregnancy and last night she gave birth to two beautiful and healthy baby goats, a boy who is all white and girl who is black and white.


