J Adams Oaks (he/him)

On a writing retreat in Northern Wisconsin, took a stroll and managed to startle 3 snakes sunning themselves. Obviously irritated, they slithered off but this Chicago man forgot what it’s really like to take a walk in the woods.

Two blue pegs. The story of The Game of Life when my niece realized I was gay. Pride is a process. Love you, Livy.

#murderbot = the first series making fun of ‘perceived’ wokeness. Fascinating.

James Baldwin portrait

The First Homosexuals at @wrightwood659 is one the most amazing exhibitions I’ve ever seen about queerness and art

“Not for a moment, beautiful aged Walt Whitman, have I stopped seeing your beard full of butterflies” — Ode to Walt Whitman by Federico Garcia Lorca

<Ni un solo momento, viejo hermoso Walt Whitman, he dejado de ver tu barba llena de mariposas> — Oda a Walt Whitman por Federico García Lorca

The First Homosexuals at Wrightwood 659–one of the most powerful, timely exhibits I’ve ever seen.

Firefly + Serenity = perfection
“I swallowed a bug.” —River Tam

Stoop sitting season is in full swing here in Chicago—smoking, drinking, eating, chatting, people watching all from the building’s steps

A movie that you originally loved that you now hate?

Commute home from the Loop #chicago #loop #downtown #mysterious #shadows #litlife

New York street photographer Harold Feinstein circa 1940
#streetpics #nyc #photo #pic

OF THE EMPIRE We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

From a poetry collection by Mary Oliver, where after a hundred poems showcasing gentle observations on nature and animals, she hits you with this

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Do you know that hope sometimes consists only of a question without an answer?

Clarice Lispector

“Mungo’s capacity for love frustrated her. … It was a harvest no one had seeded, and it blossomed from a vine no one had tended. It should have withered years ago, ... Yet Mungo had all this love to give and it lay about him like ripened fruit and nobody bothered to gather it up.” —Young Mungo

My first poems in elementary school. I loved using my parents’ manual typewriter so much. The White Out. The round eraser with the little brush attached. #earlyworks #nascentwriter #poet

The worst curse you could ever put on a writer, especially one who loves a very particular pen. #writerscurse

A fascinating quote from Langston Hughes about what makes a great artist …
#langstonhughes #greatartist #biggestdream

Some of the best bathroom wallpaper in a #bookstore.
#litlife #books #pages

My current read…
#shortstorycollection