And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others. - Ralph Ellison

Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.

They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their own voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves and I'd help them. I laughed. Here I had thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men . . . For all they were concerned, we were so many names scribbled on fake ballots, to be used at their convenience and when not needed to be filed away. It was a joke, an absurd joke.

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.