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
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Sunday, May 21, 2006
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."
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?"
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?"
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
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
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.
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.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
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
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
Monday, May 01, 2006
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
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
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