we are the fat of the land, and we all have our list of casualties

I want nothing left of me for you, ho death
except some fertilizer
for the next batch of us
who do not hold hands with you
who do not embrace you
who try not to work for you
or sacrifice themselves or trust
or believe you, ho ignorant
death, how do you know
we happened to you?
wherever our meat hangs on our own bones
for our own use
your pot is so empty
death, ho death
you shall be poor

Judy Grahn from "a woman is talking to death"

things fall apart

things have gone bad

things have remained the same

i don't exactly know what is going on

1,200 miles away

in any event

i have been called home

and it's raining today and

i am sitting here numb

note to self

remember to smile

just a little bit because

two syntheses have been approved

and directives for the revision of the third

were received today

some postitive news

my father had his ct scan

in which brain waves were

registered

his pupils also dilate when the dr

shines a light into them

he was also moving his head

toward voices in the room

the breathing tube will hopefully

be taken out by wednesday and

although his kidneys have not improved

they haven't gotten any worse

and i'm still here and

not there

trying to schedule my comps

and worrying about him

waiting for the phone to ring

and yet hating to answer it

i'm not a good multi-tasker

note to self

remember to breathe

deeply

memory and remembrance

my father is in the hospital.

he has a breathing tube and a blocked heart in which a

machine, that has a little balloon, is helping his heart to keep on

beating.

the drs can’t do anything until he starts breathing on his own.

my heart too feels blocked.

it hurts.

and my breathing is shallow

labored

hollow.

empathic.

i’m always living with (in) my memories.

memories are absent yet in their absence

they are present.

most of the time, memories for me are blurry…

many voices speaking at the same time

like a stream through a forest.

i can pick out threads or noises

and identify them

hook them up with a picture in my mind

and say to myself

“yes…i know what this means”

or, better yet, i can start to remember.

remembrance and memory

although tied together

are two different acts

that we read simultaneously but

i know that i can have memories without

the narrative act of remembrance.

for my father, remembrance is odd

after i was told that he was in the hospital and

i began the familiar yet infuriating

process of waiting and gathering

i kept picturing a memory

a noise that i could isolate into

a snapshot

and then narrate

into something more solid more

than just sound.

my father is retired from the

florida department of transportation.

he was a state road inspector.

one summer his job site was close to our

house and for most of that summer he came home

for lunch.

he usually ate blts and drank iced tea

while sitting at our slight yet welcoming

kitchen table.

i remember many times watching him eat his lunch

usually in silence. all or nothing:

my father carried around his authority in either silence

or with terrifying utterances that would cut

right through you leaving you no other choice but

to remain docile

but mostly, it was his silence that was

present…almost embodied.

i would usually be coloring at that time of day.

florida heat was too oppressive even for an

eight year old

so i would color and watch him eat.

as is my usual modus operandi i was

impassive, not really thinking that

this particular moment would be renarrated

many years ahead

but in this renarration what i remember best

is the sound of my crayola against the page

the waxy smell of color either

minding or transgressing the lines of the image

that mixed

with the lingering scent of bacon

and the sound of ice cubes hitting the side

of the glass

my heart is aching right now.

the paradox of substance

I would really like to have slipped imperceptibly into this lecture, as into all the others I shall be delivering, perhaps over the years ahead. I would have preferred to be enveloped in words, borne way beyond all possible beginnings. At the moment of speaking, I would like to have perceived a nameless voice, long preceding me, leaving me merely to enmesh myself in it, taking up its cadence, and to lodge myself when no one is looking, in its interstices as if it had paused an instance, in suspense, to beckon me. There would have been no beginnings: instead, speech would proceed from me, while I stood in its path--a slender gap--the point of its possible disappearance.

--Michel Foucault, "The Discourse on Language"

note to self

pedagogy synthesis has been signed

celebrate for five minutes

and then continue working on the

other two syntheses

note to self

write a list of all the "problems"

within my field of study that people

tell me

(people who have no idea what this field is all about or even WANT to know)

and then proceed to line

my cat's litter box with it.

still life with geometry, trees, and snow

triangles

rectangles and the

occasional square

speaking together

with trees

and snow

a blue sky

as backdrop

the language of geometry

the language of nature

note to self

today

it is snowing

and although the flakes are fluffy

and i do appreciate the beauty of its falling

i must also

make sure that enough time is

given for

throwing a tantrum

and screaming at the top of my lungs

note to self

for tomorrow:

pick up the mail early in the a.m.

before the mail carrier comes by...

with that day's mail

because it's too early in the game

to start slacking

YAY for getting work done

so i spent most of the day yesterday

working on revisions for my synthesis

i actually turned in the revisions to my professor

today

for as much fretting and beating myself up as i do because

i resist writing these synthesis statements i certainly

do feel better after i am done (at least in part...until i have to revise again)

one would think that this elated feeling

would motivate me to keep on working but

somehow

it doesn't

well thank goddess for

small favors in the very least....

in other news...it's cold as hell outside

something

like 26 degrees when it was

53 yesterday

wtf

Cat Paws

i think that these guys have too much time on their hands (or paws)

but i still think they are completely made out of

awesome

sunday morning dream

ok

so i had this dream:

i'm in my plaid boxer shorts

with a black sweatshirt &

the students in my advanced writing class

are seated throughout my apartment

and i am assigning them readings

as i walk around my place...

i'm not sure what this means

discipline and mail or focault is laughing at me right now

ok i'll admit that i'm not the most

timely person when it comes to picking

up my mail.

so when i finally went down to my mailbox the other day

i noticed that i had no mail.

i went to the p.o. to see if i had been classified

as abandoning my residence....again

i hadn't so the man behind the counter says

that he will call my mail carrier

i got a call today from the p.o.

apparently there has been trouble.

someone in my building wrote a rather nasty letter

to our mail carrier in turn

the carrier thought that i wrote it

therefore she kept my mail.

the person i was on the phone with

then proceeded to lecture me on picking up my

mail EVERYDAY.

i apologized for my apparent delinquency and i also

tried to rebut in my defense that it was not i who wrote the nasty

note...i was not persuasive.

this person then informed me that the mail person will

deliver this mail to me today but she was going to do it

in person.

i was afraid.

very afraid.

i hear the knock on my door.

the mail carrier was standing there with a mail tub

i thanked her for keeping my mail

i also told her that i didn't write the nasty note

i again failed in persuading her (fully, because i think she might have thought

i was innocent for a moment)

i promised that i would pick up my mail every day from now on.

i don't think she was persuaded but in any case...i got my mail

along with my bills and several late payment notices.

luckily for me i have grad school student credit...which is to say

that it sucks.

moral of the story

pick up your mail

every (damn)

day.

an old argument

at 1:45 today i was walking to the stevenson building

to teach my 2:00 class.

on my way to the classroom

i noticed an "evolution vs. creation" table set up by the stairs

and instantly i became tired.

i am sick of this argument for many reasons

not simply because of the religious vs. secular

fight but rather the more obvious notion of

who's doing the fighting and i can tell you that it is

almost always white guys on both sides of a fence

battling it out,

trying to establish policy which in turn will regulate our bodies

as intellectual vessels that are thought to be depraved and which,

consequently,

need to be filled

either by believing the earth is 10,000 years old or 10,000,000,000.

what does this "knowledge" (if it can ever be truly attained) "do"?

i offer up and experience that

invovles one of my visits with j...

who, by the way, is studying to be an episcopal priest so

the intersection between god(dess) and science

is extremely complex and existential...

in any event, we were listening to a very outspoken

scientist/atheist who was commenting on npr about the ever persistent

debate between

science and religion (creationism)

and he said something interesting....and i am greatly simplifying

his argument...it was much more nuanced…

"why" questions are not worth answering

only "how" questions deserve our time;

why questions are "typically" asked by, in this instance, christians

whereas "how" questions are much more rigorous and tend to be

asked by scientists...

this drives me crazy....here you have this white guy,

upper class, who teaches at oxford university and assumed

to be heterosexual or heteronormative in the very least

telling the audience that there is only one mode of inquiry

and that, since god does not exist, the other type of question

is not even worth considering...

typical (typically male i should say).

i am not falling on either side of the religion/atheist or evolution/creation binary

in this post...that would be a book...rather

i'm just saying that the argument as it stands is being framed

like any other argument where power and policy are working

on bodies within culture vis-a-vis a representation of

two white guys arguing for/over power,

to tell us all how to live, and

what questions to ask...

for instance, i think why questions are extremely important

i want to know

why are people still dieing from poverty and disease?

why is there no healthcare for everyone?

why is there discrimination?

these "why" questions are not worth considering because

they implicate...

pointing the finger at real issues

instead of focusing on "issues" that are speculative,

that do not implicate and only require a body to speak from a

comfortable armchair, wearing a smoking jacket, and clenching a pipe.

someone

surrounded by

access and privilege

trying to figure out how old the earth actually is

or if there is life after death…

the answers to which do not feed or

help anyone.

furthermore,

arguments such as evolution and creation

distract and, worse, are simply circuitous…

because these two concepts need each other to survive,

they create a wheel that rotates

but doesn’t go anywhere

news flash...it's february in illinois and it is snowing!

wet...yes

cold...yes

messy...of course

beautiful...absolutely

poem for the week

Hum
by Ann Lauterbach


The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.

I know what days are.
The other is weather.

I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.

Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.

I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.

Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.

The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.

Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.

The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.

The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.

The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.

The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.

The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.

The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.

What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.

The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.

The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?

Here is the hate
That does not travel.

Here is the robe
That smells of the night

Here are the words
Retired to their books

Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings

Here is the bridge
Over the water

Here is the place
Where the sun came up

Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.

Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.