poem for the week

Daybreak in Alabama

When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall tress in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.

--Langston Hughes

for obvious reaons, this poem reminded me of devon :-)

early sunday thoughts on chuck norris....

i cannot claim this bit of genius for myself...it comes from my friend courteney.

Chuck Norris Facts:

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

Outer space exists because it's afraid to be on the same planet with Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding.

Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.

There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.

When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down.

Chuck Norris is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.

Chuck Norris’ hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush. (side note: i don't get this one...)

There is no such thing as global warming. Chuck Norris was cold, so he turned the sun up.

Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.

Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.

Chuck Norris gave Mona Lisa that smile. (another side note...ewww)

Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.

Chuck Norris does not get frostbite. Chuck Norris bites frost.

Remember the Soviet Union? They decided to quit after watching a DeltaForce marathon on Satellite TV.

Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.

cold, snow, rain, hail, sleet, wind...

i am really starting to hate february

i have a new crush....

on a cultural geographer by the name of Yi-Fu Tuan. Thanks to Devon and Dr. Justice, I am now reading about cultural geography and the intersections that this concept shares with space, place, time, and narrative/narrativity. it is interesting for me to see the ways in which queerness is negotiated through shifting territories and the relationship that this theoretical position, in turn, discursively shares with temporality, space, place(ment), the role, or work, of boundaries, and the complex choreography that these concepts share not only with a process of bodily inscription but of embodiment. this all started with dr. kim's newberry library lecture series that i am taking this semester. in this seminar i am looking at the concepts of strange territories and monstrosity (read queer[ness]) and how they are constructed and (con)textualized within an anonymous anglo saxon text: the wonders of the east. not only is dr. kim letting me write about that text but i am analyzing it against (or with) the more contemporary novel lolita by nabokov. it seems like an over the top project for a short ten page paper but maybe i can get a good working outline going in hopes of a diss chapter....one can only hope (or pray).

gender outlaw is gender trouble

i had my gender in the humanities class read kate bornstein's gender outlaw this week and i'm kind of stumped. on one hand i really like this text because it is the first major text written by a transsexual person and she really does go into great detail about what transsexual and transgender issues really involve. i like this text because it assertively puts on the table issues of naming and the male/female binary...the emotional and psychological investments that we have in this binary and the consequences of transgressing the codes of identity that this said binary deploys. however, maybe it's too much of one thing....what i mean by this is that she really focuses on the transgender body as a site of queerness and silence in such a concerted way that other connections that could be made are not even addressed. i'm thinking here of issues involving race and socioeconomic positions. Bornstein is white and she was a male. she really does go into deep discussion over the problem of male privilege but does not identify its relationship to white male privilege. she discusses the implications and the issues of the ways in which the lesbian and gay communities oppresses transgendered/transsexual bodies but again intersections of race and socioeconomic positions are not really addressed. or if they are it is minimal. her discussion of male/female power relationship conflates this dynamic with class conflict....and i find this extremely un-nuanced and problematic. my class also had some trouble with this text as well. however, i must admit their criticisms were all very constructive and i didn't get closed-minded polemical garbage but i fear that my own trepidation regarding the text seeped into my teaching of the text and i am paranoid that my students went away with a somewhat skewed notion of what this text was really about (of course, can we ever determine what any text is ever about?). which is to say, i think that i might have been misread by my students. now nothing happened in class to give me this idea...i guess i'm just a little paranoid...which is something for me to look at a little bit more closely now that i think about it.

poem for the week

Asking for a Heart Attack

Aretha. Deep buter dipt, burnt pot liquor, twisted sugar cane,
Vaselined knock knees clacking extraordinary gospel.
hustling toward the promised land in 4/4 time, Aretha.
Greased and glowing awash in limelight, satisfied moan
'neath the spotlight, turning ample ass toward midnight,
she the it's-all-good goddess of warm cornbread
and bumped buttermilk, know jesus by his first name.
carried his gospel low and democratic in rollicking brownships,
sang His drooping corpse down from that ragged wooden T,
dressed Him up in something shiny, conked that Holy head of hair,
then Aretha rustled up bus fare and took the deity downtown.
They coaxed the DJ and slid electric untill the lights slammed on,
she taught Him dirty nicknames for His father's handiwork.
She was young then, thin and aching, her heartbox shut tight.
So Jesus blessed her, He opened her throat and taught her
to wail that way she do, she do wail that way don't she
do that wail the way she do wail that way, don't she?
Now every time 'retha unreel that screech, sang Delta
cut through hurting to glimpse been-done-wrong bone,
a born-again brother called the Holy Ghost creeps through that.
and that, for all you still lookin', is religion.

Dare you question her several shoulders, the soft stairsteps
of flesh leading to her shaking chins, the steel bones
of a corseted frock eating into bubbling sides,zipper track etched into skin,
all those faint scars,
those lovesore battle wounds?
Ain't your mama never told you
how black women collect the world,
build other bodies onto their own?
No earthly man knows the solution to our hips,
asses urgent as sirens,
titties familiar as everybody's mama
crisscrossed with pulled roads of blood.
Ask us why we pray with our dancin' shoes on, why we
grow fat away from everyone and toward each other.

© Patricia Smith. Online Source

This is also an insteresting websource

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets.htm

ok...kind of creepy

so my mother is really into genealogy...which is cool and sometimes i will do research on the computer to help her out. well, slow night and not feeling like doing a ton of work for school i decided to "look" around as it were. now my family is from the columbus, ohio area and many of my deceased relatives are buried in one graveyard...which makes it kind of easy when one is trying to locate names but also kind of creepy as well because you are literally surrounded by dead loved ones. the cemetery where many of my relatives are buried is called "silent home" which i guess is an appropriate name since the occupants no longer talk...or move...or whatever. well i came across a website that #1) lets the reader know that it is not associated with the cemetery and #2) documents the occupants of this said cemetery by taking pictures of their gravestones. well my grandfather's gravestone is among the group of pictures and since i share his name...well let's just say it's kind of creepy to see your name on a gravestone.....





so yeah, like i said...kind of creepy

boston bound

well, dev and i are going to boston to read our respective papers for the national convention for the american culture/pop culture association. i have never been to boston before so i'm excited more for the new city experience than the reading of a paper. i actually have to go back to boston a month later to read another paper for the american literature association as well so i'm really going to get to see this town. but for now aca/pca is first...the plane tickets have been purchased and the hotel room has been reserved...now about that paper...

two excerpts from Kushner's _Angels' in America: Part Two Perestroika_

HANNAH (speaking to Harper): At first it can be very difficult to accept how disappointing life is, Harper, because that's what it is and you have to accept it. With faith and time and hard work you reach a point...where the disappointment doesn't hurt so much, and then it gets actually easy to live with. Quite easy. Which is in its own way a disappointment. But. There.

Act III; Scene I

********************

HARPER: [....] Was it a hard thing crossing the prairies?

MORMON MOTHER: You ain't stupid. So don't ask stupid. Ask something for real.

HARPER (a beat, then): In your experience of the world. How do people change?

MORMON MOTHER: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.
God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges as filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

HARPER: And then get up. And walk around.

MORMON MOTHER: Just mangled guts pretending.

HARPER: That's how people change.

ACT III; Scene VI

"No love.....or the other thing" a poem....for (anti)valentine's day

excerpt from Mina Loy's poem "Love Songs to Joannes"

Spawn of Fantasies
Sitting the appraisable
Pig Cupid
His rosy snout
Rooting erotic garbage
"Once upon a time"
Pulls a weed
White star-topped
Among the wild oats
Sown in mucous-membrane

I would
An eye in a Bengal light
Eternity in a skyrocket
Constellations in an ocean
Whose rivers run no fresher
Than a trickle of saliva

There are..........suspect places

I must live in my lantern
Trimming subliminal flicker
Virginal........to the bellows
Of experience

................Coloured glass

********************

The skin-sack
In which a wanton duality
Packed
All the completions
Of my infructuous impulses
Something the shape of a man
To the casual vulgarity of the merely observant
More of a clock-work mechanism
Running down against time
To which I am not paced

My fingertips are numb
from fretting your hair
A God's doormat
On the threshold of your mind

********************

We might have coupled
In the bedridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spilled on promiscuous lips

We might have given birth to a butterfly
With the daily news
Printed in blood on its wings

********************

...

And Time would be set back


********************

The wind stuffs the scum of the white street
Into my lungs and my nostrils
Exhilarated birds
Prolonging flight into the night
Never reaching---

********************

I am the jealous storehouse of the candle-ends
That lit your adolescent learning

Behind God's eyes
There might
Be other lights

********************

Dear one..........at your mercy
Our Universe
Is only
A colourless onion
You derobe
Sheath by sheath
........remaining
A disheartening odor
About your nervy hands

********************

Today
Everlasting passing apparent imperceptible
To you
I bring the nascent virginity of
--Myself--for the moment

No love......or the other thing
Only the impact of lighted bodies
Knocking sparks off each other
In chaos

********************

Seldom......Trying for love
Fantasy dealt them out gods
Two or three men......looked only human
But you alone
Superhuman......apparently
I had to be caught in the weak eddy
Of your drivelling humanity
...............To love you most

********************

We might have lived together
In the lights of the Arno
Or gone apple stealing under the sea
Or played
Hide and seek in love and cobwebs
And a lullaby on a tin pan

An talked till there were no more tongues
To talk with
And never have known any better

********************

I don't care
Where the legs of the legs of the furniture are walking to
Or What is hidden in the shadows they stride
Or what would look at me
If the shutters were not shut

Red.....a warm colour on the battlefield
Heavy on my knees as a counterpane
Count counter
I counted......the fringe of the the towel
Till two tassels clinging together
Let the square room fall away
From a round vacuum
Dilating with my breath

********************

Let Joy solace-winged
To flutter whom she may concern

********************
Green things grow
Salads

For the cerebral
Forager's revival

Upon bossed bellies
Of mountains
Rolling in the sun
And flowered flummery
Breaks
To my silly shoes

In ways without you
I go
Gracelessly
As things go

********************

Shedding our petty pruderies
From slit eyes
We sidle up
To Nature
.........that irate pornographist

********************

The prig of passion
To your professorial paucity

Protoplasm was raving mad
Evolving us

********************

Love----the preeminent litterateur

grade inflation?

i recently came across a syllabus by a phd student instructor who put a clause in his/her syllabus regarding "grade inflation". basically this person was telling her/his students that because there is a "problem" within the academy today regarding the easiness of getting an "a" in a course s/he will be grading the class "strictly", i.e. don't expect an "a" in this course. i find this disturbing because it seems as if these students are being punished because of a systemic problem within the academy that has nothing to do with them...a problem that i personally don't see as concrete or material but more or less self congratulatory on the behalf of the instructor for teaching a "tough" class...but that's just me. in no way am i saying that we should just give out "a"s to students just for showing up or for any other such reason that maybe considered "non rigorous" by current traditional standards but why is grade inflation these students' problem? why does this instructor feel the need to couch her/his terms in this manner in order to justify their own strict approach to grading and thus shoring up the already problematic issue of static abstractions?....just grade them...isn't that a power dynamic enough to deal with without adding to the ethos of an already existing position? it's hard enough getting the students to actually read and engage with the learning process. i find useless power plays regarding strict grading as somehow more academically rigorous than an "easy" class absurd. it also takes away from actual teaching (which may be the point). as you can tell i hate grading in general...it is a commodity that the students expect to get (because they have issues of entitlement which are extremely problematic) but it is also a commodity that instructor's tend to think that they can possess and distribute through insane power plays that surface in language that, in turn, attaches itself to academic performance and, inevitably, intelligence. i read such rhetoric as an instructor assuming the gatekeeper position not only in the classroom but also in the academy (a position that is also a static abstraction) and thus telling the students from the very beginning of the term that they actually are 1) assuming that they are getting an "a" (which many are not) and 2) because of that assumption or presumption they will not get the desired "a" because they're not serious students anyway and that they don't belong in the academy. i guess i'm more concerned with my students actually learning something rather than trying to figure out how they need to manipulate a power dynamic in which they will get an "a". it all becomes about getting SOMETHING from the instructor and this "SOMETHING" has nothing to do with learning at all but rather getting the first letter of the alphabet and its corresponding points tallied and printed on their transcript.

PS: don't even get me started on plagarism statements!

snow day

wow, what a winter...the snow is coming down really fast and isu is closed again...the second time this new year....hmmmm what to do with the time that i have? procrastinate with yahoo crossword puzzles of course!!!

the best day so far in 2007

when i woke up on sunday morning and was contemplating my day over cigs, coffee, writing a blog post, and a yahoo crossword puzzle i had no idea my day would end the way that it did. after my morning rituals of procrastination i gathered up my various stuff and proceeded to the brand new coffee hound in downtown normal to study and read with stefanie. when i first walked in i saw dr. tolson and lauren reading and working. getting my coffee and setting my various bags and coats down i went over to where dr t. and lauren were sitting. it was at that point when dr. t. asked me if i was going to go hear angela davis' talk at iwu later on in the evening. it was as if i was struck over the head by a 2x4....what did she mean angela davis' talk? sure enough angela davis was in town....i did not even know...i felt my heart beating really fast and my palms immediately became sweaty. it was at this point lauren looks up at me and says that she not only has an extra ticket for the talk but also the ticked involved dinner as well...with angela davis...and she asked me if i wanted to go. i just looked at her for a couple of seconds and said "hmmmm...let me think about that YES" so two hours later i was sitting at a table between lauren and dr. t. looking directly at the gloriousness that is angela davis.
angela davis is the quintessential scholar for me...not only is she an icon for everything that i believe in but she is also history that walks and talks...a history that we are living and breathing...a history that is stunningly profound and yet is still alive and doing important work. for me angela davis demonstrates the important intersection between theory and practice. she is also a teacher...i am looking at a woman who influences todays innovative thinkers...chela sandoval and laura hun ye kang...i don't only look to her but i also look to her students.
her talk was phenomenal. she briefly talked about her reseach and intellectual investments in various critiques of the prison system in the united states but she spent a lot of time talking about the discursive formation of racism in united states culture. she spent time talking about meaning and language....what does "racial justice" mean...let's rhetorically analyze the construction of the emancipation proclamation and the 13th amendment...what are these documents actually saying and how have they inscribed themselves upon the consciousness of the culture in the united states. just how was (and is) the institution of slavery conceptualized....as the abolishment of compulsory labor? racism and xenophobia? or have we become blind to the work of racism through this language...how is race lived? where does racism discursively live and do its work? critiques on and the movement to rid the legal system of affirmative action as one way to illuminate the ways in which racism is still living today and doing its work was talked about by davis. the disappearance of affirmative action is no less a perpetuation of civil death...the work of affirmative action to empower subjugated communities has been superseded to focus on the individual and, indeed, propagate a civil death...to silence...to stop history...to make it conform to white male supremacy. it is all done with certainty...the discursive relationship between racism and certainty, davis reminded us, creates a logic that "ceases to announce itself" and that "hides in the grammar" that forms our very subjectivity negotiations between us (or our selves) and the world/culture.

i have three pages of notes...this was the best day of 2007 yet.

i never knew 21 degrees to feel SO WARM

your eyes are not deceiving you....a cheerleader lamp that you can buy on justtoocute.com! supplies are limited so get it while it's available.


it is really kind of crazy in a psychotic kind of way...but it's 21 degrees outside now and i can feel it. there is a big difference between say 3 degrees (with a wind chill of about -20) and 21 degrees above zero....i have become a cheerleader...jumping up and down with my arms and legs frantically moving and pompoms dangling from my wrists..."come on weather...you can do it...this cold is getting really old"

i'm going to start writing again...i promise...well maybe

ok so here i go again...took a little hiatus but now i'm back...well sort of.
i'm in the last year of my 30s and it's kind of freaking me out...i don't feel like i'm going to have a midlife crisis but one never knows. i do know that things start changing...the landscape becomes some how wider in scope i can look behind me and see somewhat of a trail...littered with bits and pieces of memories and of selves that i have either purposefully discarded or have accidentally lost along the way. landscapes are funny...they shift now more than ever or perhaps they always have but i was just unable to see or not able to notice...time also constructs itself differently...more fluid perhaps or maybe it is horizontal instead of vertical...a change in linearity...changes that i have never noticed before but now i'm noticing. i can't believe that i'm starting a new phase in my studies...i'm teaching my internship and i'm trying to figure things out. at the same time things that i thought were important seem trite and weary now....visions of significant others are losing their contours and shapes...becoming phantoms that lurk somewhere in the dark corner of my mind... do i want them to materialize or not? the flesh is willing but my mind tells me otherwise. i don't feel connected...arms outstretched in a kind of suspended animation...akimbo. friendships define and redefine themselves daily...subjectivity negotiation is difficult...nothing and i do mean nothing is stable...but then again has it ever been? maybe i'm waking up to myself or maybe i'm drifting closer to some psychic coma or psychic comma...being only half of a semicolon...and i don't realize it...maybe realization is impossible.