July 2023 in Review - Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

I don't know. Just did. Saw myself in a black man crying.

Read myself and then, not myself. My phrases, my turns. But not my framework. Maybe in a different world. But not here. I don't see those glinting shadows. Not really. They're not for me. Not destined for me. I wasn't given that fear at birth.

Except - and it's different yes - the fear of a woman. Which is like the fear of a black man but different. In a way, less complex. For it is without the film of yourself. Clinging to yourself. Unable to escape from yourself. For fear of yourself.

I don't share in that. But I see it better now. I hear it. I see it. Really looking now.

Reading places in the novel that rise outside my window, so recently, an estate. I read it better now. The noises, the lights, the small bird-like faces up above me waving down from the block I'm at the bottom of. Hi hi hi.

The smile of the tall black men giggling outside Peckham library, on the steps. Drenched. A make-shift running club? Or black men passing, seeing each other for a moment? Being home for a moment. Safe.

And I see it, and I'm running too. Soaked to the bone but grinning in the rain because it's ridiculous rain. And grinning, I see them, and they see me and there, the smallest of nods at our mutuality. Tentative. Only just. But we did it. To give and accept gentle eyes of love. Love for the living.

All that water, Open Water. Like I flowed from the flood on Rye Lane and Caleb was there in a paper boat. And I moved over, into the bath where for a moment I saw myself in a black man crying. And now here we are afloat.