This drawing is a rough sketch of a guy I saw at the Border’s Bookstore in Alameda. He was leaning on a display and chatting with a friend and I noticed him because of his super cool glasses. If they weren’t actual vintage ’60s frames, then they were a great imitation. Don’t tell anyone I was browsing at one of the national chains. I swear I didn’t buy a single book! I was only there to drink iced tea and use free wi-fi. Really!

8-Rock

I had to commute to San Francisco two days this week, and a young brother I saw on my Thursday morning BART ride made me stop and think about diaspora, Blackness, and difference. I think it was the way that he seemed — like so many African Americans — to wear on his very skin the complex historical relationship between nations and races and belief systems that has shaped what Black folks have become. So many identities and experiences and histories comprise how each of us comes to Blackness; and yet we are all more similar than we are different. It is our shared history of celebration and survival in the face of subjugation and displacement than brings us together worldwide. The things that divide us as people of the African diaspora are so very fleeting; under the sun, they are a insignificant as a speck of dirt.

8-Rock

Black nerds aren’t  just for Comic-Con. The numbers in the bottom right-hand corner are the first few digits of pi, including the final 70, the number of this drawing.

8-Rock