Fantastically present

“Girls, only slightly older than I was, who sang in the choir or taught Sunday school, the children of holy parents, underwent, before my eyes, their incredible metamorphosis, of which the most bewildering aspect was not their budding breasts or their rounding behinds but something deeper and more subtle, in their eyes, their heat, their odor, and the inflection of their voices. Like the strangers on the Avenue, they became, in the twinkling of an eye, unutterably different and fantastically present. “

James Baldwin

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/11/17/letter-from-a-region-in-my-mind?mbid=social_twitter

There’s an inexplicable, deep loneliness I’ve never felt before in my bones

And I can’t shake it off