grumpy not so much....

modesty forbids me from elaborating anymore than this....

still grumpy but feeling a little better

well, i was walking around stv with, i'm sure, a very sour look on my face....some would even call it a smirk or scowl....until one of my former students ran up to me with a camera and took my picture. of course i had to fake a smile but nevertheless i played along. well i got an e-mail from her today...i've been added to her facebook? as a friend. it's kind of a nice feeling, kind of disconcerting...my face on someone's web page...but oh well...struggle on. i haven't seen this because i don't have an account...don't know if i really want one...this blogs hard enough to keep up with.

what a day

well, i must say that this is turning out to be one hell of a day for various reasons.
1) sick most of the weekend
2) really, really, really, not feeling comfortable with my body or image
3) my class (that i teach) seemed more than quiet today...and for some reason their silence bugged me to no end...trying to tell myself that this is not a reflection of me but that conversation with myself isn't getting anywhere
4) talked to my mother...she has a case of the shingles ON HER HEAD
5) my father's pissed that he didn't get my card i sent him for his birthday
6) both my mother and father are not very happy with me right now because i haven't been home since xmas 2005
7) feeling terrible about myself because I DONOT particularly want to go home right now and that really bugs me...no sense of place whatsoever (this can probably be related back to the body image thing...i don't feel comfortable in any place)
8) i have wonderful people around me up here who care deeply and i am lucky to have them in my life (you know who you are) and i would be in very sad shape without them but i still feel incredibly sad. btw: the random "christian" reader who stumbles upon this blog entry...please don't comment about how jesus is the way, blah, blah, blah...because HE isn't any way and i hold his church responsible for alot of this rant...so don't waste your time with a comment cuz i'll just delete it without reading past the first sentence (wow can that sentence be any longer?)
9) feeling kind of guilty about crying in my beer but sometimes the violins make the most excellent music and for anyone who thinks they are above this kind of self talk...well what can i say, i guess i'm not strong enough and you are...congratulations.
10) my apartment is still a mess and i'm sick of living in my own abjectness but i just can't seem to do anything about it right now...i'm not the person that i once was...not that that was an improvement but it was better than what i'm living now.
11) today i just want to disappear

poem for the week: on voice or the lack thereof

The Little Mute Boy

by Federico García Lorca
Translated by W. S. Merwin


The little boy was looking for his voice.
(The king of the crickets had it.)
In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

I do not want it for speaking with;
I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence
on his little finger

In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

(The captive voice, far away,
put on a cricket's clothes.)




From The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca, by Federico García Lorca, translated by W.S. Merwin, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1955 by W.S. Merwin.

poem for the week

For the young who want to

by Marge Piercy

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

william cook...whoever you are...you rock!

so, in my never ending quest to find new ways to procrastinate i found myself going through customer reviews of products on amazon.com. this adventure, as it were, led me to reviews of tony kushner's play made into an hbo movie: "angles in america." many of the reviews were really good and a lot of the criticisms seemed to me resonable. however, there are some insane people out there who wrote some pretty scary stuff. how can you rent (or worse, buy) a movie simply based on the cover...watch it over and over and then write a review saying that you wanted to puke? or complain the you were fooled by the cover and thought that it was about "angels"? the depth of humanity's utter stupidity amazes me sometimes (strike that..all of the time).
However, i did fine one comment in particular so great that i had to post it.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

It's Just a Title, June 8, 2006
Reviewer: William Cook (Cleveland, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

Reading these reviews, I was surprised by a number of the comments but most of all by those that rented/bought this movie believing it was somehow about "angels" and then had the nerve to complain that they didn't know what it was about or that there were no angels in the movie.

With that in mind, I'd like to offer some advice to those that may inadvertently rent/buy other movies:

There are no Cuckoo birds and no nests in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
There is no obvious wind in Gone With the Wind and what there was didn't blow anything away
There are few, if any, good fellas in Goodfellas
There are no lambs in Silence of the Lambs
Chinatown isn't set in a town in China
There is neither $1,000,000 nor a baby in Million Dollar Baby
You guessed it, no bulls in Raging Bull
The coats are made of denim or some such material in Full Metal Jacket
Paul Newman's body temperature is about 98.6 degrees just like the rest of us in Cool Hand Luke
There is little, if any, sleeping in The Big Sleep
The prison hallway is only a few feet long in The Green Mile
The African Queen is not about a gay black man
No waterfowl were hurt in the making of Duck Soup
The earth rotated as usual on the Day the Earth Stood Still
There are actually multiple conversations in The Conversation
The raunchy men's magazine does not appear in The Hustler
Nobody inherited the wind in Inherit the Wind. It still belongs to all of us
There is no discernible odor while watching The Sweet Smell of Success
All the President's Men is only about *some* of the president's men

I hope that some will find these simple reminders useful. If not, you may want to consider looking at the back of a DVD case, visiting your local library or going to one of the thousands of web sites that talk about every movie ever made.

As for this film, if you're not frightened by things that might be different than what you've experienced or that perhaps strike too close to home, and don't spend your time judging how everyone else lives, then there is much to love about this work. It may not be perfect, and there can be many legitimate gripes about it, but overall it's very, very good. Scan through the positive reviews here and you'll get a good sense of it. No need for me to repeat it all here. Unfortunately, most (but not all) of the negative reviews are just those with some sort of political/religious agenda to put forth instead of commenting on the film.

william cook...you rock!

"Nothing is lost forever"

Harper Pitt: I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see, because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired. Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there's a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that's so.

Angels in America
Tony Kushner

thoughts while in my composition seminar.....

I had to read these articles for class and "journal" them...what a better place to work all of this information out than right here on this blog...for better or for worse.

Janice M. Lauer, “Graduate Students as Active Members of the Profession”
Robert Boice, “Work Habits of Productive Scholarly Writers”
Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas N. Huckin, “Gatekeeping at an Academic Convention”
Deborah Mutnick, “Time and Space in Composition Studies: ‘Through the Gates of the Chronotope’”

I read the articles in the order that they are listed above. The first three worked well together while I conceptualized the Mutnick piece as an elaboration or discursive outgrowth of the Berkenkotter and Huckin article. The tenor of the first three articles centered on writing and its various processes in regard to publishing while the fourth articles proved to be an effective, if not extremely compelling, example. I definitely felt that I was the audience for these readings. As such, I also became keenly aware of that old and familiar tension creeping up into my chest. I have a tenuous relationship with writing because whether it is “academic” or personal it reflects part or parts of my subjectivity/subjectivities. In short, I am always writing myself into any text that I am working on/with.
I thought that Lauer's article pointed to the crux of the problem when she describes the notional space of being a student and attempting to publish. She disrupts the “publish or perish” claim that haunts many graduate students' nightmares by positing other ways to conceptualize what constitutes our developing professionalism and the extrinsic and intrinsic pressures that accompany this rhetorical situation. I myself have been told on countless occasions to fashion my scholarship to fit a particular academic discourse community. I have been told to “be a player” and to “network.” I have found that this does not necessarily work well for me or for friendships. Indeed, I understand the value of dialogue and of the valuable work that can be accomplished in contributing to a conversation and “being” part of a community. But the question that I ask is to what cost? To be more specific, how much does one have to tailor or, better yet, camouflage particular aspects of how her/his personality, clothes, academic work, etcetera in order to survive? I would like to know just how “necessary” this is and what are the costs?
Lauer gives no answers, she simply posits more questions. I can appreciate this because I don't think that there are any concrete answers to gravitate toward when it comes to how one negotiates her/his self as an aspiring scholar and professor. To be a player and to network raises red flags for me that point out the potentiality of a rhetorical violence. This violence, while on the level of language, is extremely damaging, indeed. I have seen too many graduate students involve themselves in this “proactive” behavior that fosters a competitive spirit which inhibits supportive and collaborative networks. Consequently, to be a player and to network means to isolate yourself as a struggling academic while at the same time comparing your successes to others' failures. It is for this reason that I found Lauer's discussion on an “ethics of care” (234) to be comforting and, at the same time, challenging. I like this concept because it disrupts a negative environment that stultifies collaborative work at the expense of individual achievement. Lauer asks “[i]s an ethics of care possible, probable, practical, especially for our students who strain to position themselves in the field?” (235). I do not know the answer to this question and, I suspect, no one else does either.
Although I have some methodological issues with Robert Boice's article I found his psychological research on scholarly writers interesting if not compelling nonetheless. I was heavily trained during my undergraduate training as a music therapist in the area of behavioral psychology. The field of behavioral psychology is useful and in many academic circles valuable in the acquisition of monies for various programs. However, the work of behavioral science, like almost all other sciences, establishes a self imposed importance through empiric observation. When being trained as a counselor at Florida State University, I was always told: “If you didn't see it [meaning a certain type of behavior] and document it then it didn't happen.” This practice ossified in my young mind the privileging of materiality and its relationship to writing and its processes. This is not to say that I disagree with Boice's research or his approach per se but I do wonder if writers and writing processes for that matter can be observed and categorized so easily.
My writing process is always changing that is why it was hard for me to “place” myself under the various rubrics in Boice's article. For the most part writing, is excruciatingly difficult but not in the sense of a writer's block. Rather, I have all of these ideas swimming around in my head like little fishes and when I attempt to grab them they just slip out of my grasp...schooling in some dark corner of my mind. I'm also completely astounded at the amount of knowledge that I do not know and that I probably, when all is said and done, cannot know. Consequently, I become overwhelmed. I read texts and I ask myself: “what can I possibly contribute to any conversation?” Nevertheless, I have a few questions about Boice's article: Why is passive always negative? Why is active seen as the exemplar? I do appreciate Boice's attempt to disrupt the binary between passive and active by distinguishing active and passive waiting. I see this as an attempt to make a conceptual change on the level of language (217-18). However, this type of approach still creates binaries. I find myself occupying all and, paradoxically, none of the categories that Boice outlines in his article.
One of the more compelling pieces to Boice's argument is his approach to emotion and writing. It is at this point in the article where he combines behavioral and cognitive approaches in his research (212). Boice tells “blocked” writers to start writing before she/he “feels” like writing or “before feeling ready to write” (220). He suggests that we make writing a habit. “The most reliable motivation comes in the wake of regular involvement in writing, not in advance of it” (220). I think that this point of entry is most important. For me, writing as habit detours the other concepts of waiting that enfold active or passive approaches. I also found his concept of “stopping” to be most valuable indeed. I remember when I was writing my master's thesis. I was working forty hours a week and I was taking a night class. I would get up at 5:00 a.m. and write until 7:30 a.m. In the evenings, I would read and prepare. In essence, I established a writing habit that Boice describes and I found it highly productive. However, I have changed since enrolling in a Ph.D. program full time. I have found myself caught between active and passive approaches to writing and my sense of self has been disrupted to the extent that I cannot find a “writerly” self to engage with in the actual process of writing. Hence, this is what I mean earlier when I stated that I could not find myself in Boice's article.
Berkenkotter's and Huckin's article reminded me of the arbitrariness of the academy. I thought that it was insightful because what counts as an “excellent” CCCC's paper presentation abstract depends upon who is in power. This is where Mutnick's article became most compelling for me, since her article was, in it's earlier stages, a CCCC's presentation paper. I just kept coming back to the same conclusion as I read these last articles. The academy through a language system can be tenuous and rhetorically violent. Bodies that move within the academy's purview are constantly under pressure to fulfill the terms of what it means to be not only a scholar but a viable contributor to the conversations that shape the emerging field of rhetoric and composition. Must then writing and, more specifically, subjectivity formation through writing (and publishing) be dialectical and seemingly violent? I think that each of the authors of the articles that are represented here are grappling with how to detour the inscribed ways in which current traditional ideologies have come to define the academy. I would hope that the current will change.

poem for the week

Coping

by Audre Lorde

It has rained for five days
running
the world is
a round puddle
of sunless water
where small islands
are only beginning
to cope
a young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch
when I ask him why
he tells me
young seeds that have not seen sun
forget
and drown easily.

poem for the week

The Weakness
by Toi Derricotte


That time my grandmother dragged me
through the perfume aisles at Saks, she held me up
by my arm, hissing, "Stand up,"
through clenched teeth, her eyes
bright as a dog's
cornered in the light.
She said it over and over,
as if she were Jesus,
and I were dead. She had been
solid as a tree,
a fur around her neck, a
light-skinned matron whose car was parked, who walked
on swirling
marble and passed through
brass openings--in 1945.
There was not even a black
elevator operator at Saks.
The saleswoman had brought velvet
leggings to lace me in, and cooed,
as if in service of all grandmothers.
My grandmother had smiled, but not
hungrily, not like my mother
who hated them, but wanted to please,
and they had smiled back, as if
they were wearing wooden collars.
When my legs gave out, my grandmother
dragged me up and held me like God
holds saints by the
roots of the hair. I begged her
to believe I couldn't help it. Stumbling,
her face white
with sweat, she pushed me through the crowd, rushing
away from those eyes
that saw through
her clothes, under
her skin, all the way down
to the transparent
genes confessing.




From Captivity by Toi Derricotte, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 1989 Toi Derricotte.

poem for the week

it seems that i am always attempting to "clean" up my life...cluttered and disorganized...i sometimes imagine what it would be like if i were "together." in any event, this is an ongoing process with me and one that i will probably never master...or want to for that matter. however, in this latest spurt to organize i have been attempting to file away papers, etc. in the really nice filing cabinet that i have. until now, it has stood next to my desk, empty. this leads me to the poem of the week. i found my poetry books and i was reading through them. i used to write poetry and short fiction all of the time but since i have been in graduate school i just haven't felt the interest...not that i think my poetry/writing is any good...quite the opposite but for nostalgic reasons i think that i will put up a poem that i wrote way back in 1993...wow, at the tender age of 25. here it goes...

applying for heterosexual status

"when the applicant comes in

make sure that he is properly dressed
absolutely no purple or pink...anywhere.

make sure he understands that
picking flowers is no longer an option
anymore and neither is holding or hugging
anyone except for the occasional girlfriend
or wife (and even then use discretion).

make sure he deepens his voice...
facial hair would be nice and advise
him to rape a woman (mentally or
physically) if he is certain that he can get
away with it.

make sure that he holds a job that
requires him to wear a suite,
construction clothes, or at least
a tie.

make sure that he does not lisp.

make sure he understands that truly
caring for anything should be avoided at all costs
and if, by chance, he does, order him
to kill it. Speaking of death, encourage
him to join the military or the NRA...it's manly
enough and very patriotic.

make sure he eats a lot of meat.
hunting and killing defenseless
life-forms should also be considered
an appropriate hobby to pursue...and/or golf.
populate, populate, populate, populate
this world and by all means express
to him the importance of setting an
example for future generations."

oaw (12/29/93)

i should've added something about church or religion...i think the populate, populate sentence does this but i can't remember what i had in mind. i don't know what prompted me to write this...i think i was fed up with "straight acting" white gay men.
also, if i were to revise this i would add something to the effect:
"make sure he incorporates the conjunction 'but'
it's a useful word because he will be able to qualify any
misogynist, racist, and/or homophobic utterance that he wants
to relay...for example:'let me say that i am a pro-feminist male but...blah blah blah." or
'i'm all for letting people live and let live but...blah, blah, blah."
'i've written and edited books on sexism and homophobia but...blah, blah, blah."

poem for the week: abjectness or something like it

A Reason for Moving
by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving
I move to keep things whole.

re: the gay games

ok, i know that the gay games are over in chicago but i'm thinking next year....i am really, really, really good at "beetle bomp" on yahoo games and i'm wondering if i should start a letter writing campaign to see if i could get this "sport" listed on the agenda because, quite honestly, i could get the gold.

meme

dev tagged me to do this meme, so here it is:


1. One book that changed your life:
Toni Morrison's Beloved

2. One book that you've read more than once:
Toni Morrison's Beloved

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
Harry Potter books! and Beloved

4. One book that made you laugh:
compilations of Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons

5. One book that made you cry:
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

6. One book that you wish had been written:
one more book by Audre Lorde

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Adolf Hitler's Mien Kampf

8. One book you're currently reading:
Moby Dick

9. One book you've been meaning to read:
Julia Kristeva's Black Sun

10. People you are tagging to do this meme.
Anyone else who wants to do this.

a compliment to dev's poem of the week :-)

You Begin
by Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

song/poem/lyrics for the week

this is an attempt to define my stance on religion as per a recent post and comment earlier today (please see below) that lead me to listen to some xtc. here's the lyrics to "dear god"; very apt words in today's world...

Dear god,
Hope you got the letter,
And I pray you can make it better down here.
I dont mean a big reduction in the price of beer,
But all the people that you made in your image,
See them starving on their feet,
cause they dont get enough to eat

From god,
I cant believe in you.

Dear god,
Sorry to disturb you,
But I feel that I should be heard loud and clear.
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears,
And all the people that you made in your image,
See them fighting in the street,
cause they cant make opinions meet,
About god,
I cant believe in you.

Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!

Dear god,
Dont know if you noticed,
But your name is on a lot of quotes in this book.
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look,
And all the people that you made in your image,
Still believing that junk is true.
Well I know it aint and so do you,
Dear god,
I cant believe in,
I dont believe in,

I wont believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners,
No devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
Youre always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
And its the same the whole world round.
The hurt I see helps to compound,
That the father, son and holy ghost,
Is just somebodys unholy hoax,
And if youre up there youll perceive,
That my hearts here upon my sleeve.
If theres one thing I dont believe in...

Its you,
Dear god.




now, what are we critiquing here? the notion of god that we have constructed in language and deployed through ideology or something else, beyond language. my guess is that it's the first and not the second.

how does one write one's life?

"Every three years I discover again
that No I knew nothing before.
Everthing must be dragged out,
looked over again, The unexamined life
is the lie, but still
must I every time deny
everything I knew before?"

Dorothy Allison, "The Women Who Hate Me."





i have been proofing a narrative project for dev and it's really stunning. she does a really good job in attempting to capture the essence or shall i say essences of her life. how we come to know ourselves as subjects is an enigma to me. as i was reading dev's narrative i was putting myself in the place of the author. how would i write my life...to me it seems like a psychic version of cleaning my apartment...overwhelming. hopefully one day, i will have the chance to try but right now i wouldn't know where to begin.
i know from experience that many gay/lesbian/queer/transgender/transsexual persons start with coming to terms with identity. to be sure, coming out stories are a really good place to begin because it seems that seeing at least through what appears to be dissonance is key to rooting oneself in "place" even if this "place" is extremely mobile or transient.
i thought to myself, where would i begin. would i begin at the coming out intersection. by comparison, my coming out was not so much surrounded by dissonance than by complicity. i never felt compelled to jump out of the closet...i just opened the door and sat down in the open. my mother pats me on the shoulder and kisses my cheek while my father tells me that there were a lot of "gay" guys in the marines and it is no big deal. i guess i feel fortunate...can one begin a story from a point of consonance? i don't know...so i look, i look for dissonance to begin a story.
i do remember when i knew that i was "different" from the other kids in my school. 7th grade for me was the kicker. i had a crush on john miller...i was also attending a very strict, fundamentalist, bob jones university supporting "christian" school. my social science teacher, mr. laws (i'm not joking that is/was his name) brought out an article where two men were "gay bashed" in our town by a group of sexually repressed skin heads. mr. laws told us that god didn't like violence per se, but he could understand why someone would want to bash in a gay person's head...and he balled up his fist as he said this and i felt as if i were a sheet of paper being crumbled up in a hand. as he went on about the job of rationalizing his feelings to make it fit with his christianity, i thought to myself, "wow, i better keep my mouth shut or else i will either get seriously hurt or killed." i can remember that moment as truly feeling what it meant to be afraid.
i never told my mom or dad. i graduated from this school, so it wasn't like this was the first time i would have to endure homophobic tirades or calls for violence upon difference. but i remained silent.
i grew up methodist and my parents were not religious fanatics. they put me in this school because they somehow knew that i probably wouldn't make it in public school...not intellectually but physically. this christian school was also known for its academics...and to be fair, i did receive a good education. by the time i graduated i had the equivalent of an a.a. degree from a community college. academically, my education helped me advance in the university setting. but the silence that i learned was and is most profound. the most valuable lesson that i learned in life was invisibility and silence...to walk into a room and not be noticed, to be gentle, to be kind but most of all be ready to run if i needed to. which, come to think about it, was why i probably liked track in high school...especially cross country...i could out distance most if not all of the jocks, i knew i could run for a long way and not stop...sometimes i feel as if i haven't stopped yet.
so maybe if i am to write about my life i need to write from a location of silence... or, perhaps, maybe that is why i can't.

poem for the week: contemplation

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)
by Edna St. Vincent Millay


What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

poem for the week

When a friend dies
by Marge Piercy

When a friend dies
the salmon run no fatter.
The wheat harvest will feed no more bellies.
Nothing is won by endurance
but endurance.
A hunger sucks at the mind
for gone color after the last bronze
chrysanthemum is withered by frost.
A hunger drains the day,
a homely sore gap
after a tooth is pulled,
a red giant gone nova,
an empty place in the sky
sliding down the arch
after Orion in night as wide
as a sleepless eye.
When pain and fatigue wrestle
fatigue wins. The eye shuts.
Then the pain rises again at dawn.
At first you can stare at it.
Then it blinds you.

to be or not to be...that IS the question

on my friend will's blog (http://www.rhetboi.net/sordid/)he wrote:

But the way I see it is this: I can go to Target at 10:00 a.m. when there are no lines, and that, to me, is a great thing. I can choose to work at 8:00 a.m. or 11:00 p.m., and I can choose to teach summer school or not (well, not really, since I need the money, but it's still technically a choice); I can do much of my work in this hotel room or at the local coffee shop and am not bound to my window-less office. I ain't got it bad, and that's good. But it could alway be better . . .

i don't think that i need to be reminded of this at a better time. it's near the end of the summer and it's that time where you're in between student loans and starting the teaching work load. i hate the concept of money. i quess i could fool myself by saying that it's a "marxist" thing but really its a "i don't like to so i won't manage my money" kind of thing. very frustrating, not only for me but for my family cuz the no money thing prohibits me from going home very often...which, to be quite honest, i don't loose too much sleep over cuz the family really stresses me out anyway.
but, back to the topic at hand. i have often found myself wondering "what in the hell am i doing?" i quit a really good job (that i was getting burned out on but that's neither here nor there) to pursue a career in the academy. upon further reflection, i don't even think it's that. i think this was a way for me to get back to chicago. i mean, when the opportunity presented itself i thought "wow, this is great." what i didn't consider was the drastic change in life style. i'm entering my third year in this program and i still haven't gotten used to the life of a fulltime grad student (money issues aside). i mean, i can't even seem to manage my time. writing, for the most part, is excruciatingly difficult...not in the sense of a writer's block but in that i have all of these ideas swimming around in my head like little fishes and when i go to grap them they just slip out of my grasp...schooling in some dark corner of my mind. i'm also completely astounded at the amount of knowledge that i do not know that i probably, when all is said and done, cannot know and i become overwhelmed. i read texts and i think to myself what can i possibly contribute to any conversation.
i don't know what kind of ideal i had coming into this but, at this point, i can't see myself in the academic field....i can't see myself in anything at the moment. my therapist told me the other day..."it's ok to run away from something just as long as you have another something to run to." i think that's my problem, i don't think i have had anything in my life that i honestly wanted to run to.
but will's post did help me see that i could, at least if not temporarily, see the incredible amount of freedom that i will have in sculpting a niche in the academy that i would not otherwise have. perhaps, i need to create something to run to instead of looking for something to run to. i just hope that i will be able to do it.

poem of the week...the work of nostalgia

Michael Lassell's (circa 1985)

How to Watch Your Brother Die

When the call comes, be calm
Say to your wife, "My brother is dying. I have to fly
to California."
Try not to be shocked that he already looks like
a cadaver.
Say to the young man sitting by your brother's side,
"I'm his brother."
Try not to be shocked when the young man says,
"I'm his lover. Thanks for coming."

Listen to the doctor with a steel face on.
Sign the necessary forms.
Tell the doctor you will take care of everything.
Wonder why doctors are so remote.

Watch the lover's eyes as they stare into
your brother's eyes as they stare into
space.
Wonder what they see there.
Remember the time he was jealous and
opended your eyebrow with a sharp stick.
Forgive him out loud
even if he can't understand you.
Realize the scar will be
all that's left of him.

Over coffee in the hopsital cafeteria
say to the lover, "You're an extremely good-looking
young man."
Hear him say,
"I never thought I was good enough looking to
deserve your brother."
Watch the tears well up in his eyes. Say,
"I'm sorry. I don't know what it means to be
the lover of another man."
Hear him say,
"It's just like a wife, only the commitment is
deeper because the odds against you are so much
greater."
Say nothing, but
take his hand like a brother's.

Drive to Mexico for unproven drugs that might
help him live longer.
Explain what they are to the border guard.
Fill with rage when he informs you,
"You can't bring those across."
Begin to grow loud.
Feel the lover's hand on your arm,
restraining you. See in the guard's eye
how much a man can hate another man.
Say to the lover, "How can you stand it?"
Hear him say, "You get used to it."
Think of one of your children getting used to
another man's hatred.

Call your wife on the telephone. Tell her,
"He hasn't much time.
I'll be home soon." Before you hang up say,
"How can anyone's commitment be deeper than
a husband and wife?" Hear her say,
"Please, I don't want to know all the details."

When he slips into an irrevocable coma,
hold his lover in your arms while he sobs,
no longer strong. Wonder how much longer
you will be able to be strong.
Feel how it feels to hold a man in your arms.
Offer God anything to bring your brother back.
Know you have nothing God could possibly want.
Curse God, but do not
abandon Him.

Stare at the face of the funeral director
when he tells you he will not
embalm the body for fear of
contamination. Let him see in your eyes
how much a man can hate another man.
Stand beside a casket covered in flowers,
white flowers. Say,
"Thank you for coming" to each of several hundred men
who file past in tears. Some of them
holding hands. Know that your borther's life
was not what you imagined. Overhear two mourners say
"I wonder who will be next."

Arrange to take an early flight home.
His lover will drive you to the airport.
When your flight is announced say,
awkwardly, "If I can do anything, please
let me know." Do not flinch when he says,
"Forgive yourself for not wanting to know him
after he told you. He did."
Stop and let it soak in. Say,
"He forgave me, or he knew himself?"
"Both," the lover will say, not knowing what else
to do. Hold him like a brother while he
kisses you on the cheek. Think that
you haven't been kissed by a man since
your father died. Think,

"This is no moment not to be strong." Fly
first class and drink scotch. Stroke
your split eyebrow with a finger
and think of your brother alive. Smile
at the memory and think
how your children will feel in your arms,
warm and friendly and without challenge.

metal meets cello

so this morning i go to "crooks and liars" http://www.crooksandliars.com/ political blog to catch up on the news and i noticed that for the music selection they have posted videos of Apocalypitca: a quartet of men playing metalica songs on their cellos. the first one is slow and kind of pretty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSMXMv0noY4&eurl=


but the second one is where they let it all hang out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rej7o4x7BUg&search=Apocalypitca

i especially like the crowd surfing and the head banging from the audience members. those european kids are soooo POSTMODERN!
wow, i wasn't into metal when i was young...i find it quite interesting that metalica has given themselves a make over...cutting their hair, dressing up all gq style but still playing the same brash and edgy music that they always have. but these cellists seem to complicate this a bit...their hair is long (except for the one guy) and they look like what metal is supposed to look like (culturally speaking of course) while they play metal music in a refined, classical style. it's odd, these guys look the way metalica sounds like but play metal music the way that the metalica group members look like (aesthetically, that is). i think this is what we would call mixing up the signifier and the signified...now if only the twain should meet...or should they?

(long) poem of the week...or past weeks ;-)

Dorothy Allison


The Women Who Hate Me
Dorothy Allison

1

The women who do not know me.

The women who, not knowing me, hate me
mark my life, rise in my dreams and shake their loose hair
throw out their thin wrists, narrow their already sharp eyes
say "Who do you think you are?"

"Lazy, useless, cuntsucking, scared, stupid
What you scared of anyway?"
Their eyes, their hands, their voices
Terrifying.

The women who hate me cut me
as men can't. Men don't count.
I can handle men. Never expected better
of any man anyway.
But the women,
shallow-cheeked young girls the world was made for
safe little girls who think nothing of bravado
who never got over by playing it tough.

What do they know of my fear?

What do they know of the women in my body?
My weakening hips, sharp good teeth
angry nightmares, scarred cheeks
fat thighs, fat everything.

"Don't smile too wide, You look like a fool."
"Don't want too much You an't gonna get it."
An't gonna get it.
Goddamn.

Say Goddamn and kick somebody's ass
that I am not even half what I should be,
full of terrified angry bravado
BRAVADO.

The women who hate me
don't know
can't imagine
life-saving, precious bravado.

2

God on their right shoulder
righteousness on their left,
the women who hate me never use words
like hate, speak instead of nature
of the spirit not housed in the flesh
as if my body, a temple of sin,
didn't mirror their own.

Their measured careful words echo
earlier courser stuff, say

"What do you think you're doing?"
Who do you think you are?"

"Whitetrash
no-count
bastard
mean-eyed
garbage-mouth
cuntsucker
cuntsucker
no good to anybody, never did diddlyshit anyway."

"You figure out yet who you an't gonna be?"

The women who hate me hate
their insistent desires, their fat lusts
swallowed and hidden, disciplined to nothing
narrowed to bone and dry hot dreams.
The women who hate me deny
hunger and apppetite,
the cream delight
of a scream
that arches the thighs and fills
the mouth with singing.

3

Something hides here
a secret thing shameful and complicated.
Something hides in a tight mouth a life too easily rendered
a childhood of inappropriate longing
a girl's desire to grow into a man
a boyish desire to stretch and sweat.

Every three years I discover again
that No I knew nothing before.
Everthing must be dragged out,
looked over again, The unexamined life
is the lie, but still
must I every time deny
everything I knew before?

4

My older sister tells me flatly
she don't care who I take to my bed
what I do there. Tells me finally
she sees no difference between
her husbands, my lovers. Behind it all
we are too much the same to deny.

My little sister thinks my older crazy
thinks me sick
more shameful to be queer than crazy
as if her years hustling ass,
her pitful junky whiteboy
saved through methadone and marriage, all that
asslicking interspersed with asskicking
all those pragmatic family skills we share mean nothing
measured against the little difference
of who and what I am.

My little sister too
is one of the women who hate me.

5

I measure it differently, what's shared,
what's denied, what no one wants recognized.
my first lover's skill at mystery,
how one day she was there, the next gone;
the woman with whom I lived for eight years
but slept with less than one;
the lover who tied me to the foot of her bed
when I didn't really want that
but didn't really know
what else I could get.

What else can I get?
Must I rewrite my life
edit it down to a parable where everything
turns out for the best?

But then what would I do with the lovers
too powerful to disappear, the women
too hard to melt to soft stuff?
Now that I know that soft stuff
was never where I wanted to put my hand.

6

The women who hate me
hate too my older sister
with her many children, her weakness for
good whiskey, country music, bad men.
She says the thing "women's lib" has given her
is a sense she don't have to stay too long
though she does
still she does
much too long.

7

I am not sure anymore of the difference.
I do not believe anymore in the natural superiority
of the lesbian, the difference between my sisters and me.

Fact is, for all I tell my sisters
I turned out terrific at it myself:
sucking cunt, stroking ego, provoking
manipulating, comforting and keeping.
Plotting my life around mothering
other women's desperation
the way my sisters
build their lives
around their men.
Til I found myself sitting at the kitchen table
shattered glass, blood in my lap and her
the good one with her stern insistence
just stanidng there wanting me
to explain it to her, save her from being
alone with herself.

Or the other one
another baby-butch wounded girl
How can any of us forget how wounded
any of us have to be to get that hard?
Never to forget that working class says nothing
does not say who she was how she was
fucking me helpless. Her hand on my arm
raising lust to my throat, that lust
everyone says does not happen
through it goes on happening
all the time.

How can I speak of her, us together?
Her touch drawing heat from my crotch to my face
her face, terrifying, wonderful.
My saying, "Yeah, goddamn it, yeah,
put it to me, ease me, fuck me, anything..."
til the one thinkg I refused
then back up against a wall
her rage ugly in the muscles of her neck
her fist swinging up to make a wind,
a wind blowing back to my mama's cheek
past my stepfather's arm

I ask myself over and over how I
came to be standing in such a wind?
How I came to be held up like my mama
with my jeans, my shoes locked in a drawer
and the woman I loved breathing on me
"You bitch. You damned fool."

"You want to try it?"
"You want to walk to Brooklyn
barefooted?"
"You want to try it
mothernaked?"

Which meant, of course, I had to decide
how naked I was willing to go where.

Do I forget all that?
Deny all that?
Pretend I am not
my mama's daughter
my sisters' mirror.
Pretend I have not
at least as much lust
in my life as pain?

Where then will I find the country
where women never wrong women
where we will sit knee to knee
finally listening
to the whole
naked truth
of our lives?

what does YOUR birthdate mean?

so i found this neat little website from a random blog that i visited...i thought it was kind of nifty. here is what my birthdate means:

Your Birthdate: January 22

You tend to be understated and under appreciated. You have a hidden force to do amazing things, doing them your own way. People may see you as strange and shy, but they know little. Your unconventional ways have more power than they (and even you) know. Your strength: Standing up for what you know is true Your weakness: You tend to be picky and rigid Your power color: Silver Your power symbol: Square Your power month: April

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

here's the link in case you're interested

http://www.blogthings.com/whatdoesyourbirthdatemeanquiz/

love is a dangerous angel

so, i am in this adolescent lit class this summer and i have to write a paper and, even more so than usual, i don't know what i'm going to write about and i have to decide quickly because it is a summer class after all so the paper is due really soon and, to put it very mildly, i'm at a loss.
luckily my instructor for this class is not only a brilliant children's lit scholar but an equally superb teacher. she recommended that i read some of the books in a series called the weetzie bat books by francesca lia block. the first one that i read was the first one in the series entitled weetzie bat
it's a fairy tale, its wonderful, its profound and i wish that i had something like this to read when i was an adolescent. anyway here is weetzie's take on love:

Weetzie's heart felt so full with love, so full, as if it could hardly fit in her chest. She knew they were all afraid. But love and disease are both like electricity, Weetzie thought. They are always there--you can't see or smell or hear, touch, or taste them, but you know they are there like a current in the air. We can choose, Weetzie thought, we can choose to plug into the love current instead. And she looked around the table at Dirk and Duck and My Secret Agent Lover Man and Cherokee and Witch Baby--all of them lit up and golden like a wreath of lights.
I don't know about happily ever after....but i know about happily, Weetzie Bat thought.


i was so overwhelmed when i read this. this short book is like one long sigh.
for anyone who is reading this and knows this book all i have to say is that buddy was my duck, i let him go and some part of me is always sad about that, always mourning. that's probably why i haven't found another duck.

oh, and dev---in the above quote that says "love and disease are both like electricity" i thought of your paper and of the work you are doing with shelley's Frankenstein

a recapitulation of father's day...

so here's how father's day sounded like. i called my parent's house on sunday to actually talk to my mom and inquire about how my father's "special day" unfolded as well as to make sure that my card arrived on time. you may be wondering why i would talk to my mother rather than my father. well, my father has hardly any hearing whatsoever and so he doesn't like to answer the phone. however, he does have hearing aids that work just fine only one of them is broken so he's waiting on the va benefit to repair it (hopefully that will take place before 2015) or get him new ones...i can't remember. anywho, i call and my father answers the phone and it goes something like this:

"HELLO? HELLO?"
"HEY DAD, IT'S ME!!"
"HELLO? HELLO"
"IT'S ME, DAD...DAD IT'S YOUR YOUNGEST CHILD"
"HELLO?" (indistinct mumbling away from the phone)"HELLO?" (mumbles away from the phone again saying something to the effect that he thinks someone's on the other end of the line but he can't find the volume control on his end)
"DAD, IT'S ME!!!!! DON'T HANG (click) up"

so i call back again (praying to whatever higher power there is to place my mother at the receiver)

"HELLO? HELLO?"
(damn, i say to myself) "DAD, IT'S ME!!"
"HEY, WHAT CHA DOING BOY?"
"I'M CALLING TO SEE HOW YOUR DAY IS GOING"
"RAINING...NO WE HAVEN'T GOT ANY RAIN YET"
"IS MOM AROUND?"
"YOUR MOTHER? YEAH, SHE'S RIGHT HERE...SHE'S BEEN SICK THOUGH...I'LL LET YOU TALK TO HER."

(thank you higher being)

"hey ma, you're sick?"
"yea, i don't know what i have but i feel terrible"
"can you tell me what's been going on?"
"well, my body hurts, i haven't been able to eat, and i just broke a fever"
"sounds like the flu to me"
"you think?, i haven't been around anybody with the flu"
"i don't think that you have to be around anybody mom, because you can pick up all sorts of stuff"
"well, i'm fixing myself some tea...i'm feeling a little bit better"
"good, you should probably try an eat some toast or something"
"well, i sent your father to walgreen's to get some pediasure to drink. i even wrote down the name for him but he came back with pepcid instead. i swear he's been bitchin about taking care of me" (i know my mother is sick because she doesn't really cuss)
"well tell him to suck it up"
"yeah, i think i will. listen honey, i better let you go, i am still really tired"
"ok ma, tell dad that i hope he had a nice father's day"
"oh, he did, he went over to your sister's house for lunch. he also got your card."

(thank you again higher power)

"great, well get some rest and i will check up on you tomorrow"
"ok honey, love you"
"love you too, talk to you later"


TADA!!!!!
welcome to my crazy family
i love them so much

poem of the week because it has been one of those days

really crappy day today and i don't know why, exactly. however, this poem by thom gunn made me giggle...sometimes a giggle is all you need....







Thom Gunn

Courage, A Tale
by Thom Gunn

There was a Child
who heard from another Child
that if you masturbate 100 times
it kills you.

This gave him pause;
he certainly slowed down quite a bit
and also
kept count.

But, till number 80,
was relatively loose about it.
There did seem plenty of time left.

The next 18
were reserved for celebrations,
like the banquet room in a hotel.

The 99th time
was simply unavoidable.

Weeks passed.

And then he thought
Fuck it
it's worth dying for,

and half an hour later
the score rose from 99 to 105.

a pattern of this blog...very floral

a cool site you should check it out

http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

poem for the week: the difference between poetry and rhetoric

Audre Lorde


Power
by Audre Lorde

The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being
ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.

I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds
and a dead child dragging his shattered black
face off the edge of my sleep
blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders
is the only liquid for miles and my stomach
churns at the imagined taste while my mouth splits into dry lips
without loyalty or reason
thirsting for the wetness of his blood
as it sinks into the whiteness
of the desert where I am lost
without imagery of magic
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction
trying to heal my dying son with kisses
only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.

The policeman who shot down a 10-year-old in Queens
stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood
and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and
there are tapes to prove that. At his trial
this policeman said in his own defense
“I didn't notice the size or nothing else
only the color.” and
there are tapes to prove that, too.

Today that 37-year-old white man with 13 years of police forcing
has been set free
by 11 white men who said they were satisfied
justice had been done
and one black woman who said
“They convinced me” meaning
they dragged her 4'10” black woman's frame
over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval
until she let go the first real power she ever had
and line her own womb with cement
to make a graveyard for our children.

I have not been able to touch the destruction within me.
But unless I learn to use
the difference between poetry and rhetoric
my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold
or lie limps and useless as an unconnected wire
and one day I will take my teenaged plug
and connect it to the nearest socket
raping an 85-year-old white woman
who is somebody's mother
and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed
a greek chorus will be singing in ¾ time
“Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.”

doors

"Always in the long corridors of the psyche
doors are opening and doors are slamming shut"

Marge Piercy from "Song of the Fucked Duck"



friday evening i was hungry and restless with worry. i was caught between my desire to leave because of hunger and my longing to stay where i was...because of this same hunger. i went out...the desire fueled by my hunger won...trumped, as it were, the excuses to stay put...to eat the words of the book that i was reading at that moment. actually, both desires drew a compromise that involved take-out.
waiting, waiting for my food i noticed a woman sitting in a dark corner of the restaurant. i know this woman, not by name but by recognition. she walks. she walks around town most of the time. i have only ever seen her walking so it took me a while to place her in the restaurant because she was sitting.
i heard her get up. i heard her ask the server about time: she wanted to know what time darkness settles in. i tried to answer the question in my mind...to myself and i didn't even know the answer. the server told her something...i think she said 8 but i'm not sure, i was still calculating. what time does it get dark?
my food came up...handed to me in styrofoam and plastic. i paid. i turned to leave and the unfamiliar-now-familiar woman was standing next to me. she knew me. she has seen me around with other people that she's noticed before. i was familiar to her. she wanted to know something so she asked me a question...a question that i could not answer for her...a question that required walking...perhaps even walking in circles. she thanked me for my time. she said goodbye. i went to my car, with very heavy feet and my plastic bag of food, cell phone, and cigs absurdly hanging off of my body--useless ornaments, swinging. she kept walking, the other way. i felt like saying goodbye and i also wanted to tell her that i understood. goodbye is easier but the other understanding is beyond words...it only recognizes.
some say that this woman is a poet...a remarkable poet, a tragic poet. i say that she is a walking poet. others say that she has a psychiatric condition...i say that that assumption is relative...it depends on who is doing the diagnosing and it's usually a doctor who is sitting down in their own dark corner of some dingy restaurant, and who has no idea...no idea at all.
i heard the other day that dreams about houses are pictures of the psyche...i believe that because i believe in basements. i also believe in basements under basements as well. you are in your house you walk downstairs and you realize that the stairs stop. the room under the house is dark, a little cool and there are no windows. most don't see the elevator that leads to a deeper room, cooler and darker. some do...i did (or, rather, still do) but even if they do get further than most and ride the elevator down...still most don't see the door in this basement's basement. it beckons anyway. in a certain kind of silence, you can hear it...like the gentle static sound of snow falling. not only have i seen it, i have had my hand on the doorknob a couple of times, i have even turned it. something tells me, however, that once it is opened and i walk through there is no coming back. the inside of that door has no knob.
so i know the temptation. i know what the walking means. i know this woman and she is brave, to walk between two worlds and yet be unable to distinguish between the two. to only be recognized by the vision of others who have either been at the door or have themselves trampled through. walking makes it better. it eases the pain of the door with no knob slamming shut.

poem of the week

dev used a rilke poem on her blog a couple of weeks ago...mediocrity follows greatness so here's my rilke poem

"I Live My Life"

I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still don't know if I am a falcon,
Or a storm, or a great song.

--Rainer Maria Rilke
from _Book for the Hours of Prayer_
trans. Robert Bly

meme

i found this on dev's blog:


Pick a quote of one or more paragraphs from something you've read, in print, over the course of the past week. (It should be something you've actually read, and not something that you've read a page of just in order to be able to post your favorite quote.)
2. Avoid commentary beyond a couple sentences, create a context or caption for the text rather than a discussion.
3. Quoting a passage doesn't entail endorsement of what's said in it. You may agree or you may not. Whether you do isn't really the point of the exercise anyway.

i just reread toni morrison's Beloved this week for the umpteenth time and here is my selection. given number 2's directive this is beyond any context or commentary that i could give...it points to a place beyond language really. This passage is on pages 322-3 in the new edition of the text.


"There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.

Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separated parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away.

It was not a story to pass on.

They forgot her like a bad dream. After they made up their tales, shaped and decorated them, those that saw her that day on the porch quickly and diliberately forgot her. It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her fallen in love with her, to forget, until they realized they couldn't remember or repeat a single thing she said, and began to believe that, other than what they themselves were thinking, she hadn't said anything at all. So, in the end they forgot her too. Remembering seemed unwise. They never knew where or why she crouched, or whose was the underwater face she needed like that. Where the memory of the smile under her chin might have been and was not, a latch latched and lichen attached its apple-green bloom to the metal. What made her think her fingernails could open locks the rain rained on?

It was not a story to pass on.

So they forgot her. Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep. Occasionally, however, the rustle of a skirt hushes when they wake, and the knuckles brushing a cheek in sleep seem to belong to the sleeper. Sometimes the photograph of a close friend or relative--looked at too long--shifts, and something more familiar than the dear face itself moves there. They can touch it if they like, but don't, because they know things will never be the same if they do.

This is not a story to pass on.

Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there.
By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss.

Beloved."

a ramble

well, i hardly write anything personal on this blog. many reasons and a lot of excuses keep the words muted like a degas chalk drawing. i guess that it all has to do with light and seeing. i remember when i was visiting the d'orsey (spelling?) in paris and the museum had the degas chalk drawings in a special room with special lighting because regular light faded the colors...would keep them quiet or silence them altogether. that's what i am tentative about with personal writing...the light will fade them after being extracted from the blunted or muted and darkly comfortable recesses of my mind....taking these long narratives from one type of silence and giving them voice. however in this process i am not only letting them become exposed to the open air and to song but also risking voice and word to a violent erosion...of being muted again with another type of silence that accentuates itself with shame.

yesterday, i received an e-mail from a former mentor of mine. this mentor has now retired, lives in seattle and is taking art lessons. i am extremely happy for this person but i am also somewhat distressed as well. how can one retire from what we do? i am plagued by my thoughts and now i feel a bit more lonely in the world because this was not only a mentor but an ally. maybe it has been all of the changes within my life that have occurred in this past semester that have exacerbated this "mood" (for lack of a better term)or maybe it's just change in general...mine and others. being left with my thoughts yesterday was extremely painful and not to mention discursive. i thought to myself "i'll go for a drive....maybe get something to eat even though i am not hungry." i drove not unlike one of my infamous run on sentences...thinking and driving...pulling out into the air the conversation that i had milling and coiling around in my brain. i drove for over twenty miles around bloomington and normal...wide circles, concentric and fluid...no sense of direction except the motion of inside to outside and back again blurring the boundary of that stupid binary until i couldn't tell the difference. "how does one retire?" "how does one say this is enough and i don't want to do it anymore?"

video + image + song=amazing

i found a link to a video of sia's song "breathe me" and it's quite amazing. check it out
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8KO18daM89I&search=Sia%20Breathe%20Me

end of the semester musings and reflections

well, since i have "all of this time on my hands" before summer classes start i have been left alone with my thoughts. as an aquarian, and dev can proabably attest to this, being alone with one's thoughts can either be a good thing or a discursively circular thing.
i have been thinking about loss lately...loss and potential loss...maybe because i watched a six feet under marathon...maybe because i am always thinking about change and waiting for the other shoe to drop (and not necessarily in an overly dramatic way either). regardless, i tend to read in order to get away from myself which i should know by now doesn't actually do that but the opposite...nevertheless i forge onward. i picked up the 5th harry potter book again and started reading...i came across an exchange between harry and luna lovegood that stimulated my analytical processes to start turning...not to mention a familiar sadness. now for those of you who are not familiar with the characters, luna is somewhat of a strange bird...queer if you will. however, in her exchange with harry she describes to him the meaning of loss and recovery that i thought was extremely profound...i know how luna feels and i think that she describes life from a queer perspective that confounds the borders of marginal and normative bodies to be insightful and, forgive the word, "true."

"[Harry] turned the corner toward the Fat Lady's corridor when he saw somebody up ahead fastening a note to a board on the wall. A second glance showed him it was Luna. There were no good hiding places nearby, she was bound to have heard his footsteps, and in any case, Harry could hardly muster the energy to avoid anyone at the moment.

'Hello,' said Luna vaguely, glancing around at him as she stepped back from the notice.
'How come you're not at the feast?' Harry asked.
'Well, I've lost most of my possessions,' said luna serenely. 'People take them and hide them, you know. But as it's the last night, I really do need them back, so I've been putting up signs.'
She gestured toward the notice board, upon which, sure enough, she had pinned a list of all her missing books and clothes, with a plea for their return.

[....]

'How come people hide your stuff?' he asked her, frowning.
'Oh...well...'She shrugged. 'I think they think I'm a bit odd, you know. Some people call me Loony Lovegood, actually.'

Harry looked at her and the new feeling of pity intensified rather painfully.

'That's no reason for them to take your things,' he said flatly.
'D'you want help finding them?'
'Oh no,' she said, smiling at him. 'They'll come back, they always do in the end. It was just that I wanted to pack tonight.'

[....]

'Are you sure you don't want me to help you look for your stuff?" he said.
'Oh no,' said Luna. 'No, I think I'll just go down and have some pudding and wait for it all to turn up...It always does in the end.
...Well have a nice holiday, Harry.'
Yeah...yeah, you too.'

She walked away from him, and as he watched her go, he found that the terrible weight in his stomach seemed to have lessened slightly." (862-4)

Loss and issues of queerness and it's implications to (hetero)normativity are really resonating with me right now. One could argue that this is a textual example of either melancholia or perhaps the work of grief and mourning. I tend to move toward the concept of "working through" (ala Kelly Oliver in her book _Witnessing_) that attaches itself to a processes of grief. Is it the lost object or something else that we are mourning? If the object actually comes back the mourning could start to begin its work. However, what if the object never comes back? Does it necessarily mean melancholia? Is melancholia always a negative thing?
Like i said before...i have too much time on my hands right now.

breathe me

i just watched the final episode to "six feet under" this weekend. it was a long time coming because i don't have cable now that i'm a grad student...which, in some ways sucks but in other ways kind of nice in that i've rid myself of an addiction (for now anyways...i'm sure it will come back). in any event, anyone who is into metaphor will appreciate this show's final scene...probably the best icongraphic framing sequence ever. what a great show, smart and way ahead of its time. my friend m was asking me the other day if i had any ideas on why the show only ran for five years. i had to think about it for a little bit but i have some ideas. this show more than any other disrupted our notions of narrative...it questioned the way in which we structure our-selves in culture...how we come to know ourselves and others. in this way the show was subversive. but i have observed that subversiveness can only last a certain amount of time before it becomes assimilated. this is where i am in 100% agreement with dick hebridge. we've seen it with the punk culture, the goth culture, and other counter cultures...its the work of ideology. i respect alan poul and alan ball for stopping the show before it became assimilated...before it stopped being subversive and just controversial...because those are two different things. this was one of the very, very few shows that resonated on an epistemological register and that can only go so far...the shelf life for subversion then is probably five years. i just hope something else comes along to continue the work.
here are the lyrics of the song that was playing at the end of the episode. the song is called "breathe me" by sia. it is as beautiful as it is haunting. ususally, and i think that i have said this before, contemporary music and artists don't touch me the way music used to touch me when i was younger...probably because i feel like i have heard it all before.... but this song touched me, it described me on many different levels that i cannot enunciate...it just is. Maybe it was this semester but my suspicions tell me that it probably runs much deeper than that...so here are the lyrics i wish i had the brains to link it to the music and image.



Breathe Me
by Sia


Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
I Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found,
Yeah I think that I might break
Lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

In an other's words

I have issues writing on this blog...but yet I feel it necessary to write something. I have no words really of my own at this moment so I will rely, yet again, on someone else's. This time by Constanta Buzea:

I'm not here...never was

I am reminded of the vestment
I meant sometimes to throw
around the trees in winter

my son's asleep
and his sister quietly paces
over runners not to wake him

at the other end of the world I am torn
between the dusk at home
and the midnight all around

my nightmare
is full of pure sounds
as distinct as feuds

in vain

I am not here never was
I am only sick and on this earth

like a twig stuck in a snowman

Being haunted again by poems.....

Song of the Fucked Duck
by Marge Piercy

In using there are always two.
The manipulator dances with a partner who cons herself.
There are lies that glow so brightly we consent
to give a finger and then an arm
to let them burn.
I was dazzled by the crowd where everyone called my name.
Now I stand outside the funhouse exit, down the slide
reading my guidebook of Marx in Esperanto
and if I don't know anymore which way means forward
down is where my head is, next to my feet
with a poket full of tokens.
Form follows function, says the organizer
and turns himself into a paperclip,
into a vacuum cleaner,
into a machine gun.
Function follows analysis
but the forebrain
is only an owl in the tree of self.
One third of life we prowl in the grottos of sleep
where neglected worms ripen into dragons
where the spoilt pencil swells into an oak
and the cows of our early sins are called home chewing their cuds
and turning the sad faces of our childhood upon us.
Come back and scrub the floor, the stain is still there,
come back with your brush and kneel down
scrub and scrub again
it will never be clean.
Fantasy unacted sours the brain.
Buried desires sprout like mushrooms on the chin of the morning.
The will to be totally rational
is the will to be made out of glass and steel:
and to use others as if they were glass and steel.


The cockroach knows as much as you know about living.
We trust with our hands and our eyes and our bellies.
The cunt accepts.
The teeth and back reject.
What we have to give to each other:
dumb and mysterious as water swirling.
Always in the long corridors of the psyche
doors are opening and doors are slamming shut.
We rise each day to give birth or to murder
selves that go through our hands like tiny finsh.
You said: I am the organizer, and took and used.
You wrapped your head in theory like yards of gauze.


and touched others only as tools that fit to your task
and if the tool broke you seized another.
Arrogance is not a revolutionary virtue.
The manipulator liberates only
the mad bulldozers of the ego to level the ground.
I was a tool that screamed in the hand.,
I have been loving you so long and hard and mean
and the taste of you is part of my tongue
and your face is burnt into my eyelids
and I could build you with my fingers out of dust
and now it is over.
Whether we want or not
our roots go down to strange waters,
we are creatures of the seasons and the earth.
You always had a reason and you have them still
rattling like dried leaves on a stunted tree.

Theory Journals

Theory Journal Week Six
Eric Lott, “Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of American Whiteness
A complex article to be sure but one well worth reading! What I thought was extremely compelling about Lott's piece was it's contribution to a practice of queer theory in a cultural studies framework. Applying concepts of performativity and ventriloquism, Lott maps out the psychic processes of domination through white supremacy that endcode themselves upon the bodies of African-American males through the performance of black face by white men. Lott parses through the distinctions between the social and psychic constructions of race through the material practice of minstrelsy (253). Relying on Fanon, Lott states that within the performative aspect of black face, “'White skin', [...] is here obliterated by 'black mask'” (252). In a move that resonates with Judith Butler's critique of the sex/gender distinction, Lott posits that within the interstices of race relationships based in domination and white supremacy, “whiteness itself ultimately becomes an impersonation” (254).
I must admit that my very feeble understanding of psychoanalysis (esp. Freud and to a much more intense degree, Lacan) I felt a little inept reading this article. I would like to re-read it after I have done some more in depth research into psychoanalysis. But, in any event, the oscillation between whiteness and blackness (or non-whiteness) creates discursive moments where the assumed naturalness of racial categories are placed into a critical flux.


Theory Journal Week Five
Dona Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto.”
I don't think that this article could have come at a better time in the semester. With my questions regarding blogs and technology, Haraway's article is more than germane to this inquiry. I have read this piece several times throughout my academic career and upon each re-reading I see something new. Truly, it is one of those germinal pieces that changes shape and color not unlike the turn of a kaleidescope.
What I focused upon with this re-reading was 1) how does this piece fit within a cultural studies model of analysis and 2) how can this further my own research interests. As far as cultural studies is concerned, I think that one of the major claims in the text is the negotiation and re-negotiation of subjectivity within a technological age. As her title suggests, Haraway envisions this negotiation to take place within a cyborg space.
[A] cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point. Single vision produces worse illusions that double vision or many-headed monsters. (276)
This fractured identity is part and parcel to reconceptualizing politics and political identity formations within cultural discourse. Haraway sees identity as changing shape into a space of recognition that encourages “affinity, not identity” (277). Incorporating Chela Sandoval's concept of differential and oppositional consciousness, Haraway suggests that membership within discourse communities should refuse stability offered to them by (un)naturalized categories such as gender, race, sex, or class (277). Rather affinity is negotiated and fluid. This reconceptualization reminds me of Williams' call for the re-metaphorization of the base-superstructure model within Marxist theory. This then plays into my interest in queer(ed) poetics as not only a way of reading texts but of also re-conceptualizing the body within language and how it discursively moves throughout cultural discourse(s).
I also think that blogs can provide a way for this affinity to be fostered. How does one negotiate their subjectivity within cyberspace. How can bonds of affinity be formed from the mediation of a computer screen and keyboard? The possibilities are endless.



Theory Journal Week Four
Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies, 71-181
As I blog these journal entries I am struck by the way in which Turner talks about methodology within cultural studies. Indeed, I thought the his discussion of textual analysis and of Stuart Hall's endcoding/decoding article provocative I thought that this discussion was important in various ways. By observing the way in which Hall's concepts of audience reception of information (especially through media forms) and Brunsdon and Morley's case study of Nationwide he draws attention to the fact that his type of analysis is highly selective (79). Therefore, this case study (in tandem with other media case studies outlined in the chapter) demonstrates how notions of “'objectivity', 'neutrality', 'impartiality' and 'balance'” are ideological tools that shore up assumptions about cultural constituents that may not necessarily be an accurate portrayal of cultural trends. Since, certain other(ed) groups within the wider population are not at all accounted for a cultural studies approach would look at issues of legitimacy and voice In other words, what counts as an audience and who gets to decide.
The same is true as I blog this entry. What is the function of blogs in the first place. What kind of work is this doing, anyway? These questions only further other questions that bounce around in my mind. For instance, what does blogging tell us about access to technology? Is this a class/socio-economic phenomenon? Can spaces of resistance be created that challenge and/or critique social practice? Is the phenomenon of blogging an indicator of community practice(s) or communities of practice? If so, how? In what ways is power and knowledge being disseminated through the cultural work of blogging communities? These are also issues that I think can be linked to issues of queerness (and a queer[ed] poetics) within language and subject negotiation.


Theory Journal Week Three
Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, 95-135
One of the major points that I see Williams making in Marxism and Literature is the inadequacy of Marxism's metaphor of the base-superstructure. In this chapter, Williams is calling for a re-metaphorization of base-superstructure as it pertains to cultural analysis. Part of this re-metaphorization requires us to look at culture as a fluid process that cannot (or will not) be constrained by strict lines of demarcation. So instead of turning the base-superstructure on its head perhaps we should turn it over on its side. To look at how both sides of the metaphor discursively rely on each other and that one (typically the superstructure) organically emerges from the other (meaning the base).
I am really interested in Williams' project of re-metaphorization within Marxist study because not only is culture as a whole re-conceptualized but the way in which we examine bodies within culture are also seen differently. Instead of seeing the body inertly embedded within culture it can, instead, be seen as moving on a continuum. By continuum, I do not mean a straight line rather a discursive movement that stops, starts, rests, and meanders (for lack of a better word). This reconceptualization of the base-superstructure metaphor is part and parcel to theoretical considerations of queerness and how queer(ed) bodies are marked within culture(s). I also think that this is a way of reading texts that resonates with my overall project of a queer(ed) poetics.


Theory Journal Week Two
Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies, pp. 1-37
The first chapter in this book compliments the During piece of last week. Turner gives the reader an overview of what the field of cultural studies entails while also touching upon some key theoretical ideas that underpin its epistemological make-up. However, it was in the last section to this chapter that I thought was most valuable. Looking at the political figure of the Taliban leader Hamid Karzai, Turner shows us how a cultural studies approach frames this object of analysis intertextually. How this person dressed and how he was represented in the media shapes cultural perceptions of how a First World Western society defines non-Western otherness. Indeed, these perceptions are based upon “both difference and similarity” (29).
With both the Turner and the During pieces, I am beginning to frame within my mind how a cultural studies approach would benefit my project of queer(ed) poetics. I can see how issues of queerness, communities of practice and ways of reading texts subversively can shape themselves into a praxis of cultural studies. However, I just don't know the (theoretical) specifics yet. Some questions in my mind reflect this dissonance. What kind of practices are cultural studies? Do other theoretical approaches such as psychoanalysis or deconstruction appropriately fall under the purview of cultural studies? Turner talks about Saussure's influence on cultural studies but how does language and rhetoric figure into the cultural studies scenario?


Theory Journal Week One
“Introduction” by Simon During in The Cultural Studies Reader
I thought that this introduction was an excellent source in the contexualization of cultural studies. I must admit that I had a very limited view of just what cultural studies involved. What struck me as deeply profound was the way in which During described the field of cultural studies and the intellectual and political work that it is capable of doing.
Cultural studies can provide space for, and knowledge of, the multiple audiences and communities who, in various combinations, vote, buy records, watch television and films, etc, without ever fitting the “popular,” “ordinary,” or “normal.” This is another reason to examine the techniques by which social values, attitudes, and desires are measured, as well as to demystify the political uses of representations like the “silent majority” and “ordinary American.” In this way, cultural studies can begin to intervene on the cultural market's failure to admit full cultural multiplicity —particularly if (going with cultural populism) it accepts that, in principle, cultural markets can provide a variety of products, pleasures, and uses, including transgressive and avant-garde ones. (20)
This gave me a deeper understanding as to why some of the articles that were included within this reader were present. I had a hard time trying to conceptualize how Donna Haraway or Judith Butler would be considered cultural studies work. But, in my interpretation of what During is telling me, the body/subject within culture is embedded within many fields of cultural discourse (21) that not only examine popular culture or media studies, but the way in which all aspects of culture weave themselves throughout our (now) global landscape. So it would make sense to me that Butler and Haraway would be included within a cultural studies reader because they sift through the various ideologies that embed and inscribe the body through the dissemination of knowledge and power.

the memory of songs

Well, along with Devon, I made an appearance on Will's blog! The topic of the conversation was songs from the 80s...particularly songs that were not really mainstream. When I think about the 80s (and early 90s) I feel grateful that I was queer(ed). I feel that I had access to this great community of outsiders (gothic, punk, new wave, etc) that listened to great music that, in its time, was very much contercultural. I see the undergrads walking around campus sometimes sporting a mohawk or gothic wear (that I'm sure they purchased at the local mall) and I am reminded once again how things do not remain the same...they change and morph into a fad that is only a former shell of the protection and confirmation of idenity that it once was...the creation of the audience has, finally, been materialized. Things change in many ways and, as old as I am now, I should come to expect it. But I still am nostalgic but what is troubling is that even the nostaliga that I hold onto is, in itself, being commdified...it seems that capitalism knows no bonds. I was walking around in target and I saw shirts that were clearly made to look as if they came from the eras of the 70s and 80s...shirts with logos and pictures, etc. These looked exactly like the shirts that me and my friends would purchase (at say, 50 cents to a dollar at most) at the local Goodwill or Salvation Army. It is sad that cultural memory has been coopted, slapped on a t-shirt and sold for a lot of money. Better yet, I saw a young guy the other day wearing a Pixies concert t-shirt that (the concert) took place in the 80s....he wasn't born yet! I just am saddened by these artefacts that are being sported around today as fashion and the wearers have no idea as to context...it just looks pretty. One thing that I feel has not changed is, to a large extent, me. I still feel like I'm on the outside watching...just watching all these people running around in circles..."I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad." I found the lyrics to Tears for Fears' song "Mad World" a song from my youth....It's funny, I can still remember dancing to it with my pink/eggplant colored hair, black clothes, doc martins, and a huge nose ring surrounded by a community were I very much felt at home. Now we have advanced degrees, babies, partners, etc.

Mad World

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tommorow, no tommorow

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you’cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you’cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world

Is it a choice?

It was hinted to me by a fellow TA the other day to come to her class and speak on being gay. First of all I have certain misgivings about that...not that I have a problem with my sexuality or the fact that the entire world knows...but sometimes I feel such academic discussions lead to a sort of tokenism. Anyway, I politely declined for the simple reason that the class is at 8 in the morning. Seriously, who's gay at 8 in the morning?

untitled

today is the day that i clean up my life for
the voices that tell me otherwise i have stowed
away in urns upon the mantle like fingers pointing to the
ceiling in my mind where cloaded and dark my
thoughts circulate in storm systems that spell out a language
written in a glowing electicity
yes today i will clean up my life by
extracting the tirednesses that cling to and color my body
i unfurl them with a snap
cuting into fragments the halo of stale, smoke-filled air while
throwing out into the spaces that remain
the smell of linen and bleach then
folding them neatly into drawers designed for waiting
waiting
unitl i retrieve them once again
to make a bed
in which i will sleep

"Wotcher, Harry!"

Yes, I admit that I have read all of the Harry Potter books. Certainly there are issues with the books that upon further investigation, from a critical point of view, one would find very problematic. They are works whose aesthetics are firmly grounded within white, male heteronormativity. However, Rowling does work with the narrative in ways that subvert the aforementioned master narrative. Hermione is a character that the author seems to struggle with because Rowling created her as a strong female. However, as the books progress there is this tension created by Hermione transgressing traditional roles of femaleness that Rowling seems to avowal and disavowal at the same time and Hermione's resolve seems to be dissolving slowly...the disavowal becomes stronger ( I note this particularly within the fourth book). Ginny is another strong female character. The fact that she comes from a family of men seems to give her a sort of rebellious agency...she definitely is more assertively vocal in standing up for herself in terms of male dominance than Hermione. Professor McGonagall is also an extremely strong female character who creates resistant space that, despite fulfilling some types of stereotypicality, exerts an autonomy that has not yet been (to this point anyway) compromised.
Professor Snape, Tonks, Luna Lovegood, and Neville Longbottom are really good examples of sites of queerness. It is interesting indeed how these bodies negotiate their "I-ness" throughout the series...especially within the fifth book. Professor Snape is probably the most complex character within the Harry Potter books. I think Rowling did an excellent job in portraying how one negotiates a marginal body so that the readers' perception of right/wrong and good/bad are problematized on many different levels. Snape is a character that actively challenges binary construction and he, more than the others, disrupts our typical notions of the dominant narrative that the author is working with/under. He also is a character that subverts the subject(ivity) negotiations for the rest of the characters...with the exception of Dumbledore and, perhaps, Hermione. Tonks is also a fascinating character. Her greeting to Harry: "Wotcher, Harry" is telling because the word "wotcher" is classed. It is a word that essentially means "what's up?" or "hello" and is used throughout the working class discourse community in Britain. Furthermore, I also like the fact that Tonks has the ability to morph her body. She can shapeshfit physical features such as her hair color and/or face. It is a rare gift and looked upon positively. Again, Rowling's depiction of the fluidity of the body and how it can transgress normativity at the site of gender and class is, indeed, provocative.

The fifth book is probably my favorite thus far. I think that it has the most complex storyline and Rowling's development of the characters seems to go beyond typical notions of reader expectation. In some ways, this is typical of a "good" story but I argue that it is the character of Snape and his subject position(ing) that gives this text its edge. To add to this, the character of Dolores Umbridge is also an extremely interesting character in the fifth book. The site of the ideological deployment of education and how it inscribes itself upon the body is clearly seen in her punishment of Harry. I immediately think of Foucault and Althusser in this instance. I think that the "detention scene" in the fifth book is particularly telling in its depiction of how a body is inscribed by ideology.

Finally, I think that as a reader of these texts, I find myself making comparisons from the text to material life. I think as readers we all do this. The text mediates how we negotiate our subjectivities within the culture/discourse communities that we are apart of. For instance, I can point out in my life someone who acts out or plays the role of Dolores Umbridge and someone who fulfills the role of Cornelius Fudge...hence making my existence in life at this point almost intolerable. But, please don't assume that I think of myself as Harry! I think that of all the characters in the books, I am more "Snapish." I guess this is a good example of how, as a reader, I am making connections between a story and its reflection within the material world...the world that I live in...and how I too am negotiating and renegotiating my own subjectivity/subjectivities...too bad we don't have spells though.