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.

i don't think that i can read anymore political blogs

i swear

i used to love crooks and liars

but they have become terribly

one sided

especially nichole belle

who in my estimation is slightly (if not unintentionally)homophobic as well

i understand that they love obama

but the way this blog along with their readers

are attacking clinton goes beyond

unseemly to a rhetorical violence that can only

be described as pornographic (and i mean fox news pornographic)

they say it's over policy but i am not persuaded rather i think that

it really does scare people that a woman

could be president...they are that resistant

i need to take them off of my blog roll

maybe

winter may be breaking

well it has been

wicked cold

it snowed most of the day yesterday

and although

it was quite beautiful

i'm kind of ready for some

warmer weather

i woke up this morning

and i noticed

birds singing

i am taking this as

as sign

warmer times are

on the way

now if i can just get motivated

to work on one of the revisions to

my syntheses springtime

will have an even bigger

meaning for me

one of my dear friends just

finished taking comps

and although i am extrememly happy

for my friend

i can't help

but feel just a tad more

lonely...no partner in

the crime of procrastination

it's just me and

unfinished work that

if i don't start being a little bit

more proactive the wintertime of

my life will exceed well past

the boundaries of an actual

season change and although birds are

singing it will mean nothing

but for the fact

that i am still stuck in

snow

Let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see

1) my baby kangaroo

2) sunshine after a week of grey

3) the exact moment you know that you are getting better after a long illness

4) my mom's voice

5) knowing that you are loved by friends and family

6) max and chela purring in my ear

7) silence

8) revision

9) two quilts and a cold morning

10) that first cup of coffee

11) ever-expanding daylight

12) the slowly closing eyelids of dusk

13) really, really good gossip

14) poetic justice

15) the realization that just being with someone who is your friend is enough

16) the sound of snow falling

17) the moment just before spring finally arrives

18) realizing that to live is to fly

19) the exact moment in which we realize that yes we can change our minds

20) the moment that will come when gwb no longer is our president

poem for today

love is more thicker than forget

by e.e. cummings

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea


love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive


it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

New Beirut video- Postcards from Italy. Director Alma Har'el

Beirut - Postcards From Italy Lyrics

The times we had
Oh, when the wind would blow with rain and snow
Were not all bad
We put our feet just where they had, had to go
Never to go

The shattered soul
Following close but nearly twice as slow
In my good times
There were always golden rocks to throw
at those who admit defeat too late
Those were our times, those were our times

And I will love to see that day
That day is mine
When she will marry me outside with the willow trees
And play the songs we made
They made me so
And I would love to see that day
Her day was mine

progress....

the candle has burned down a bit....

three syntheses are out there

in the hands of my committee

professors...

i feel as if i'm being rhetorically

dissected

with devastatingly precise

movement.

poem for the week

Wood's Edge
by Brenda Hillman


Infinity lifted:
a gasp of emeralds.

I thought I felt
the tall night trees
between them,

no exactitude,
a wait not even
known yet.

I held my violet up;
no smell.
It made a signal squeak
inside, bats,

lisps of pride;

ah, their little things,
their breath: lungs of a painting,

they swept me
in four ways, their square
plans, as I have made
a good square saying,

you I
you not-I
not-you I
not-you not-I,

ritual of hope
whose weight
has not been measured—




From Cascadia by Brenda Hillman. Copyright © 2001 by Brenda Hillman.

writing by candlelight

so a very good friend of mine who shall be known as that awesome french woman alerted

me to a conversation that she had with a composition scholar about the writing

process

this comp scholar said that when she was writing her dissertation

she bought a candle to help mark her writing time

this is how it works

she bought a large candle in a glass container

the candle had a unique scent

before she started researching and writing she

would light the candle

the candle would remain lit for as long as

and only when

she was working

other ancillary activities that

presented themselves to her

such as, but not limited to,

checking e-mails, answering the phone, grading papers,

making coffee, etc

would require her to blow out the candle first

and then relighting it if or when she re-started

the gesture of lighting and relighting help structure the time and

the act of blowing out the candle is an outward sign of inward stoppage

just as the act of lighting is a physical acknowledgement that you are going

to work...to get things done...to become proactive

the glass container invites contemplation...it marks not only the passage of time

but the passage of work and testifies to a progression of labor

the scent of the candle (which should be unique to other scented candles that you

burn for relaxation, etc) cues you to the abstract territory of work-time

a boundary, if you will, that

announces itself in a blurry kind of way...

you can smell it when it's lit but the scent fades while you work

you can certainly smell it after you have blown out the flame thus attesting to

a momentary end to a strenuous intellectual activity which signals a certain kind of

rest...so

i say to myself

it's worth a try

so me and my awesome french woman friend visit

the yankee candle store to buy

our writing candles...to which i chose black cherry

and to add to my pleasure i was told by my friend that

my candle was part of my birthday gift from her!!! adding yet another

layer of significance....

thank you my awesome french woman friend!!!

and

i have been faithfully using this candle

i think that it might work with and for me

coffee with the graduate director

i'm trying to motivate myself to finish

and here's how it breaks down

if i don't get on the ball

finish my syntheses

and take my comprehensive exams

i will not be able to write my dissertation by may of 09

thus i will not get my ph.d.

thus i will not be able to work

meaning publish and teach

as a scholar (which is what i want to do)

my funding will be gone

i will have to adjunct until i am 90 years old

i will live like a graduate student for the rest of my life

or much worse

which is a possibility but

i'm choosing not to think

about that

for now

i need that hour

of bliss

from yesterday

to last longer

what i like about winter...

as far as the winter weather in illinois is concerned

today would not be considered "beautiful" by any

far stretch of the

imagination

i woke up this morning

it was 35 degrees

it was raining

and

snowing

i dutifully braved

this mess of water and icy sludge

to teach my 10 a.m. class

however

when i left fairchild hall and was walking back to my car at

11 a.m the icy snow-rain was gone

the wind ceased and it this absence

the most beautiful snowfall that i have ever

witnessed

materialized...

big...no HUGE fluffy flakes were

falling all around me like a gauzy curtain and since

there was no wind the cold seemed

tolerable

i walked slowly across the quad

taking it all in

it seemed for just one moment

that i was the only person on earth

and the only sound was the very

soft static sound of the snow as

it landed

this snow only lasted for roughly an hour

before the nastiness returned

but it was in that ghostly silent

beauty that i felt some kind of peace and

grace

if only for a moment

and for me it is within and between these moments

that keep me going

well, i did my part

i voted for hillary clinton today...after much thought and talking it

over with a good friend

but at the back of my mind

as i was filling out the bubbles

this mantra kept endlessly looping:

wwjd? (i.e. what would jimmy [carter] do?)

then i saw ann coulter trip

over her high heels

as she made her way to the voting

booth

Headzup: Ann Coulter Endorses... Hillary Clinton ?

super tuesday is tomorrow

and i still haven't decided on clinton or obama...i like them both for different reasons.

actually the person that i wanted to vote for dropped out (kucinich)so now i'm still weighing my options and trying to think all of this through.

i really can't believe (or maybe i can) the amount of misogynistic and racist critique levied against both of these candidates

clinton is, perhaps, more seasoned and i do believe that her intellect exceeds that of obama's.

however, obama, in terms of rhetorical sexiness, is far better than clinton. any time

that i have heard him speak i find myself "having" hope...and maybe that's what we need.

some say that he is comparable to jfk...i find that reasonable.

some say that he won't be a good president because he is "new" and "inexperienced"

but

maybe that's what this country needs as well...fresh eyes that aren't shaded by years

of political choreography and conditioning.

both candidates seem to flip flop when it comes to lgbt issues...and issues of

difference(s) per se.

(hetero)normativity still holds sway even with the most "liberal" candidate...

also

i do feel a bit of unease with the christian undertones that both candidates seem

to resonate with...disavowing "family values" and avowing it at the same time

makes me sigh with a sadness that i know

i will probably carry with me to the grave

but i digress

i want jimmy carter

botero

this is an astounding painting by botero concerning the prisoners in abu ghraib.

the hyperbolic representation of the prisoners' bodies...the gaze of the viewer from

the other side of the bars...

torture as spectacle

that implicates we the viewers within this process.

the blindfolds on their faces not only tells us that they are blind

but the power of vision has been taken as well as physical gesture by

the binding of hands

piled as they are, subjectivity is stripped away

we as the viewers have the priviledge of sight and gesture

we are implicated

botero's powerful critique through the creation of this image

is stunning

in a conversation with deleuze, foucault stated (and i am summarizing at this point)

that we can never pinpoint the exact "place" or "origin" of power; we can only

know its movement by those who wield it

and those who don't.

by replicating trauma...we are guilty of the same crimes.

poem of the week

i am going to make an attempt to blog more consistently...i think i'll start posting the "poem of the week" again...low pressure for me but all in all i think that it helps me work things out...especially in regard to teaching

i also took some great pictures of a botero sculpture while i was in st. louis visiting my significant other that i want to put up...it's a great piece of artwork. i want to work on some potential articles regarding botero's work...scholarly articles are few and far between which is odd because to me his artwork is intellectually rich and provocative.

i really like this atwood poem...i think that i am going to bring it in to my advanced exposition class as a tool to get them thinking about sign systems and (the arbitrariness of) language






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.

what to do

it is a snow day here in bloomington/normal illinois and in many ways i feel as if i

have won the lottery

an extra day

all to myself

but not really

there are many things that i should be doing

for instance

i should be sorting my dirty clothes

and, more importantly,

washing them

i should be working on three comp syntheses so

i can actually move forward toward graduation and

a job (if one really exists for me)

here's the problem as i reflect upon the various liabilities that are attached

to my character

i resist

even when things are going well i always feel that i am

walking under water against a current

slow, exhausting

i don't make descisions and

in this act of not making them they, in fact, are made

for me

by me

i haven't worked on my comps or my laundry because maybe

i don't want to get a ph.d.? or wear clean clothes? no

that's too simple

i can't think of anything else in this world that i do want to do

than to publish and teach at a university

and to also have clean clothes

but also

i can't think of anything else that i don't want to do either

i see myself being able to and not able to get through this program or

to go to the laundromat

i see myself being able to secure and not secure a job or a chore (if and when i finish)

at the same time

my limbs are inert but

my mind races

it's existential (which drives me crazy)

and material

at the same time

reactive and inertly proactive

wanting to speak and yet

having aphasia

maybe i have had too many traumas

or maybe i have

been let down or

abandoned too many times

wanting to live and die

at the same time

so i attempt to make sense of all of this

by writing a blog entry?

A Vision of Students Today

This is a great video and there are a lot of possibilities for some really, really good critique.

silence

El niño mudo

El niño busca su voz.
(La tenía el rey de los grillos.)
En una gota de agua
buscaba su voz el niño.

No la quiero para hablar:
me haré con ella un anillo
que llevará mi silencio
en su dedo pequeñito.

--federico garcia lorca





The little mute boy

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.

--federico garcia lorca

Freaks and Geeks - Jesus is just alright

along with abbie...i want to meet the writers of this show

The Dresden Dolls 'Shores of California' music video

brilliant...

yeah...about that....

no writing right now....words are the worst...especially when you have been written out of someone's life.

quote

Water won't ever accomplish the end. No matter how much you cry. Flood's not the answer, people just float.

Haper Pitt to Joe Pitt in Angles in America Part II: Perestroika

is the world coming to an end?

it snowed last night....i woke up to a dusting...this is exceptional weather.

my trip to boston

wow, what a great city. i loved the old buildings and the sense of history that seems to be embedded in everything...from the architecture to the narrow roads that weave around the skyscrapers and the brownstones. i spent some time in cambridge as well. i walked around harvard and bought a couple of books at a very cool bookstore. the only thing that i wished was different was the weather. it was very cold and damp and i wasn't prepared. i guess i could have been but i am so sick of the cold weather that i was in a very sad denial.
i also thought that my presentation went fairly well. all of the speakers on my panel brought invigorating ideas and work to the table. we didn't get a lot of questions though but i figure since it was near the end of the conference people were tired. in any event it was a great conference and i am glad that i went. i only hope that when i go back there next month the american literature association's conference will be as good. needless to say, i will remember my camera this time.

poem for the week: keeping it in perspective

There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

From The Language of Spring, edited by Robert Atwan, published by Beacon Press, 2003.

poem for the week

since devon and i will be traveling to boston this week to read papers at the aca/pca national conference i thought this poem by rita dove (pictured above) was most appropriate. beautiful poem; beautiful mind. sigh.

Vacation
by Rita Dove

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.

sunday afternoon lyrics

well, i am not technologically savey so at this time i cannot incorporate music on this blog...hopefully one day i will be able to. until then i'm introducing lyrics. the lyrics to the song "something that you said" is sung by one of my favorite groups of all time _the beautiful south_ from their album _0898_. for you eighties music junkies _the beautiful south_ is made up of former members of _the housemartins_ another one of my favorite groups that i like a lot (anj, i remembered the space between the "a" and the "l" this time lol). anyway, words are important...while many people privilege the music over the words i thought i would mix it up a little and do the opposite...not that the music is any less important...it's just a matter of emphasis.

Something That You Said
(heaton/rotheray)

The perfect love song it has no words it only has death threats
And you can tell a classic ballad by how threatening it gets
So if you walk into your house and she’s cutting up your mother
She’s only trying to tell you that she loves you like no other
No other, she loves you like no other.

The only emotions that I know are love and hate
And she’s chopping & she’s changing & it’s making you afraid
I said close your eyes and imagine that I’m nice
She’ll kiss you or she’ll kill you but you’ll just have to wait

Because some things that I do make you go blue
And something that you said made me go red

The perfect love has no emotions, it only harbours doubt
And if she fears your intentions she will cut you out
So do not raise your voice and do not shake your fist
Just pass her the carving knife, if that’s what she insists
Insists, if that’s what she insists

A hate tattoo on my brain and a love one on my heart
I'd love to hate you, like I love you
And just tear your dreams apart
I said close your eyes and imagine that I’m nice
Cupid’s arrow looking more like cupids poisoned dart

Because some things that I do make you go blue
And something that you said made me go red

Because some things that I do make you go blue
And something that you said made me go red

The perfect kiss is dry as sand and doesn’t take your breath
The perfect kiss is with the boy that you’ve just stabbed to death

Is with the boy that you’ve just stabbed to death
Is with the boy that you’ve just stabbed to death

politics of nothing(ness)

ok, so the question that has been on my mind lately is the relationship between politics and subjectivity. as i have been reading about politics and overt political agendas in the media lately i have really been bugged at the overt political act of separating a personal space and speech acts that aren't considered political to public spaces that are expected to be framed as a politics as such. i know it's not a new issue and at the very heart of my inquiry is "the personal is political" mantra. but isn't the "act" of separating personal and political acts in and of itself political? i grapple with "the personal is political" on an almost daily basis. i used to think that politics were very much separated from personal acts and that politics informed decisions and that the discursive relationship between personal acts and political acts were pointed and strategic. however, i don't think that this is the case anymore. especially as i teach, i find myself attempting to disengage my politics in the classroom in order for my students to reach their own conclusions. they maybe young and immature at this point in their lives and they may still be encased within the political views of their parents but they are adults and they are capable of making informed decisions. however, this is dangerous territory. i create this space in my classroom and on some level i'm expecting my students to adopt a very open-minded stance. but this does not happen in many instances. they choose ideological conclusions that i simply do not agree with. i find it extremely hard to hold back. this is why i admire compositionist and pedagogue peter elbow so much. his writing stresses the importance to let students come to their own conclusions even if those conclusions are not necessarily what we want them to settle upon. recently i have been reading some student writing assignments that i'm just absolutely floored by. i guess this is the importance of instructor commenting. i don't consciously try to change their mind on certain issues but i do question them on their assumptions and encourage them to think outside of the box...but this is difficult and dangerous...especially when it involves the privileged demographic of the typical isu undergraduate. some of them don't even know why they believe in something...they just do. many of them have never really read a newspaper or watch the news. i found myself explaining the recent firings of the us assistant attorney generals last week....many of them had no idea of the firings, most did not really care and felt that it did not pertain to them as citizens in this culture of the united states while the ones who did seem somewhat informed were extremely apathetic. hence the importance of my job...at least for an hour and fifteen minutes of their day two times a week for about 15 weeks they will at least think about these issues.

program assitant no longer...

well, i resigned my position of program assistant (pa) for next year. feel kind of happy about it but i also hate change...i guess i'll just see how this all plays out.

political points to ponder....

i have been re-reading some really great texts lately in my preparation for preparing for comps...i have also been reading alot of blogs that deal primarily on politics and i ran across a couple of quotes that really resonate with me and that i think are extremely important.

Politcized identity formation(s)

An identity is established in relation to a series of differences that have become socially recognized. These differences are essential to its being. If they did not coexist as differences it would also not exist in its distinctness and solidarity [….] Identity requires difference in order to be, and it converts difference into otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty.(64)

William Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.

The tension between particularistic “I’s” and a universal “we” in liberalism is sustainable as long as the constituent terms of the “I” remain unpolicitized:indeed, as long as the “I” itself remains unpoliticized on one hand, and the state (as the expression of the ideal of political universality) remains
unpolicitized on the other. Thus, the latent conflict in liberalism between universal representation and individualism remains latent, remains unpoliticized, as long as differential powers in civil society remain naturalized, as long as the “I” remains politically unarticulated, as long as it is willing to have its freedom represented abstractly—in effect, subordinating its “I-ness” to the abstract “we” represented by the universal community of the state. This subordination is achieved by the “I” either abstracting from itself in its political representation, thus trivializing its “difference” so as to remain part of the “we” (as in homosexuals who are “just like everyone else except for who we sleep with”), or accepting its construction as supplement,complement, or partial outsider to the “we” (as in homosexuals who are just“different,” or Jews whose communal affiliations lie partly or wholly outside their national identity). The history of liberalism’s management of
its inherited and constructed others could be read as a history of variations on and vacillations between these two strategies. (56)

What if it were possible to incite a slight shift in the character of political expression and political claims common to much politicized identity? What if we sought to supplant the language of “I am”—with it defensive closure on identity,its insistence on the fixity of position, its equations of social and moral positioning—with the language of “I want this for us”? (75)

Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.

the reading...

well, the reading is over....and i don't know how i feel about it. i mean, i think that i did ok, speaking-wise except for the fact that my upper lip kept twitching which was annoying. i know now why i changed my major from piano performance in undergrad (which seems like a lifetime ago) because i hated the attention and the assessing eyes sitting in their chairs, listening to your words and deeming them something (either of worth or not or something in between). it's kind of funny because i don't feel this way when i'm teaching. i don't get nervous and i don't preoccupy myself with what i imagine people are thinking about me. oh well, needless to say, it's a bit of a downer this type of performing. it is also kind of fake. a lot of pretention and a lot of big ideas and let me see how "creative" i can be by saying words like "bitch," "cunt" or "dick." now mind you, i am the last person to criticize the use of language as a site of transgression and disruption but when the overall discourse uses words like the ones mentioned previously they cease being transgressive and start setting off boundaries of normalcy. these are words that we must use now in order for a piece to effectively and affectively participate within a "creative" project. it seems contrived to me but what do i know...i am not a poet nor am i a creative writer so needless to say i am stumped. i even asked for help from my creative writing friends who remained strangely silent...perhaps they were trying to spare my feelings, who knows but i was a little disappointed in them to say the least...oh well. if it were not for noah and beth being there to support me (and for marie and anj's helpful comments) i would be in sad shape...thanks guys :)

poem for the week

painting: Deconstructing the Ballerina by Paula Rego

Movement

__

I want to see a ballerina

with hairy legs

and underarms;

a fat ballerina

with huge breasts;

a ballerina who wears dreadlocks

one who's old and grey

in ordinary clothes

I want to watch

a ballerina stumble

and laugh or pirhouette

in a wheelchair;

I want to see her

clasp another woman

and lift her high.

Then I will be

moved.

__

--Amy Edgington

an experiment in narrative because i am not a poet

ok, at illinois state there is a journal called euphemism that is entirely run by the undergraduate students within the english department. most, if not all, of these students are english majors who are concentrating their studies on the field of publishing. the faculty advisor for this journal is a brilliant writer and scholar who i will refer to as dr. h. well, i received an e-mail from dr. h. requesting that i "read" something for this event. apparently they would like to have more men reading in the program.

problem no. 1: i do not fancy myself a creative writer...although i have written some poetry and short stories...i don't think that i have ever shown them to anyone.

problem no 2: i have five minutes to read something. now, five minutes may not seem like a long time but you would be surprised by how slowly the minutes drag by when one is reading written work. over five years of writing conference papers has taught me this much.

problem no 3: the event is next thursday...

problem no 4: did i mention that i am not a creative writer? oh yeah, i guess i did.

at first, i had a couple of poems from other people that i was thinking about reading and then i thought i should at least try to create something of my own. i mean i am a compositionist, in part at least, and i can look at this event as an "assignment." i can look at it as something that i would ask my writing students to do. so i have been working on a piece of narrative. it isn't a poem and the best i could describe it as is a fragment, an observation. i see it as an object that is reflected in the broken pieces of a mirror....disconnected and yet symbiotic and somewhere "out there" beyond the reach of an instantaneous signification these narrative pieces will meld. writing is exhausting...creative writing even more so....i would never call myself a poet but i can call myself someone who tried. finally, any suggestions or helpful comments would be greatly, GREATLY appreciated. here it goes...


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

Marge Piercy from "Song of the Fucked Duck"

doors: five narrative fragments

i

reading derrida on a friday evening i found myself hungry and restless.
i was caught up in a psychic paradox between my bodily desire to leave because of a hunger to fill up an emptiness and my longing to stay where i was...because of this same hunger.

i went out...the desire fueled by my physical 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.

ii

waiting, waiting for my food i noticed a woman sitting in a darkened corner.
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 temporarily rooted,
stationary.
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?

iii

my food came up...handed over to me like a precious thing wrapped in styrofoam and plastic.
i paid.
i turned to leave and was faced with the unfamiliar-now-familiar woman standing next to me.
she followed me outside
our movements were cadenced yet displaced
like awkward choreography
she said she knew me.
she has seen me around town with other people.
i was placed, a stationary point on a map.
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 for its response...perhaps even walking in circles.
i stood, anchored upon the sidewalk in my own absence
shrugging my shoulders and smiling into a void
she thanked me for my time and inability to answer.
we whispered antiphonic goodbyes.
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.
i stopped and turned as she kept walking the other way,
a vanishing point that expanded the muted territory between us.
i felt like saying something more than what my goodbye could offer her.
i wanted to tell her that i understood.
goodbye is easier though because this other understanding is beyond words...it only recognizes the grammar of movement.

iii

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 that is sitting down, rooted in a place without movement
in some shadowed corner of some dingy restaurant, and who has no idea...no idea at all.

iv

i read the other day that dreams about houses are pictures of the psyche...i believe in that premise because i believe in basements.
i also believe in basements under basements as well.
imagine that you are dreaming….you are in a house that is webbed in the gauzy reassembled pieces of memory and nostalgia in which you find yourself walking.
vision invites you to drift downstairs through an open door that announces itself as a materialized binary marked by its two knobs.
you accept the invitation…you walk through and down into darkness.
you realize (through intuition and touch) that at some point these stairs stop or cease to exist in another, deeper room.
this room under the house is dark, a little cool and there are no windows.
most who get this far don't linger long enough to see the passageway that leads to still a deeper room, as vast as it is profound.
but some do...i did (or, rather, still do, I know it’s there) the walking poet did so as well
but even if the dreamer does get further than most and follows that corridor down to this other room...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.
but unlike the woman who walks, something tells me, however, that once this door is opened and i cross over its threshold there is no coming back.
because the inside of that door has no knob.
i simply do not posses that courage.

v

so i know the temptation.
i know what her walking means.
i know this woman and she is brave,
to walk between two worlds and yet refuse to distinguish a line between them.
to only be recognized by the vision and grammar of others who have either been at the door or who have themselves trampled through.
or the ones that stare, that refuse to understand what her movement means
by hiding behind their own carefully selected rubrics of denial that thinly disguise their own basements with their own doors quietly singing like static snow
perhaps her walking makes it better.
perhaps it eases the pain of the door with no knob
slamming shut.

--oaw

spring has arrived

i saw my first robin today at 11:20 a.m.

i am smiling from ear to ear

poem for the week

from An Atlas of the Difficult World by Adrienne Rich

II

Here is a map of our country:
here is the Sea of Indifference, glazed with salt
This is the haunted river flowing from brow to groin
we dare not taste its water
This is the desert where missiles are planted like corms
This is the breadbasket of foreclosed farms
This is the birthplace of the rockabilly boy
This is the cemetery of the poor
who died for democracy........This is a battlefield
from a nineteenth-century war......the shrine is famous
This is the sea-town of myth and story........when the fishing fleets
went bankrupt....here is where the jobs were........on the pier
processing frozen fishsticks.....hourly wages and no shares
These are other battlefields...Centralia....Detroit
here are the forests primeval...the copper....the silver loads
These are the suburbs of acquaintance.....silence rising fumelike from the streets
This is the capital of money and dolor whose spires
flare up through air inversions whose bridges are crumbling
whose children are drifting blind alleys pent
between coiled rolls of razor wire
I promised to show you a map you say but this is a mural
then yes let it be....these are small distinctions
where do we see it from is the question

"a million miles away from home, fifteen from a payphone."


redhouse painters

the day keeps getting more interesting as the hours slip by

well, i took max to the vet today and he has to go on insulin...yay...me and needles...how did they know that's EXACTLY want i wanted for me and my cat this year! it actually isn't that bad...they taught me how to give the shot and i practiced with some saline solution (sorry max). the doctor said that the insulin combined with the extremely expensive food may....MAY regulate his diabetes so that he can go off of the shots...but that is something that will be way down the road. well, we're used to routines around here so this is just another one to add to the list. on another note, i don't know if it is partly because i have just gotten over the flu or i haven't eaten yet today or the huge vet bill that i had to pay or a combination of all three but as i was getting max and his carrier out of the car i fainted. now i haven't fainted in years but i went down fast. i fell directly on my knees tearing the skin on my left knee through my jeans (so i must have fallen pretty hard) and my face crashed into the top of max's carrier. the carrier has a metal top so the noise more than the pain woke me up. i am just glad that i didn't bloody my nose or anything like that. max was terrified...i felt so bad for him but the carrier protected him so the fall didn't do anything other than scare him. my brain still feels all tingly but i really can't sleep so i decided to blog about this an make it apart of some record or something. well, i'm just glad that i snapped out of it immediately so i didn't look like a whack job sprawled outside of my garage on the concrete pavement for the neighbors to see. fun times.

now that spring break is almost over....

omg...i have been so sick during this spring break...but i'm finally feeling better today. this "flu" or whatever it was, was strange. although i had a slight fever my throat was really, really, sore. it hurt so bad that i couldn't even sleep...blaahhh. i was lying in bed thinking "omg, i have throat cancer...i think that i'm going to die." i kept checking to see if i had an infection or strep but my throat was only red not really swollen. see i can diagnos myself :-) that online medical degree i have really paid off. true, i probably should have gone to the dr's but i really, really don't like doing that. maybe it reminds me too much of my own mortality...who knows...we all have our issues.

poem for the week

image of stevie smith

coffee, cigs, and a great poetic mind...is there anything better?

i am so sick.....the flu finally caught up with me blah! but i must carry on...the poem of the week waits for no one!








Not Waving But Drowning



Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


--stevie smith

why do i do this to myself?

instead of studying for a translation test in old english tomorrow (or i should say later on today since it is 2 a.m.) i listened to the awful ramblings of the minister fred phelps from the westboro babtist church and another dude argue about god, love, and hate and of course why homosexuals are going to hell regardless of whether they "repent" or not. well i don't really care because even if phelps in some alternate universe does go to heaven i certainly don't want to be there because THAT would be my hell. besides, if we are going to hell why are you preaching then....just let us go to hell and call it a day ...that still doesn't negate the fact that i have comprehensive examinations near the end of summer....in any event the rhetoric that this old man was spewing was terrible and violent but yet i listened to it like some masochist...when i should be doing way more productive (and, in turn masochistic) things with my life, like studying for a test or writing a comp synthesis. it has been a week of ann coulter, rush limbaugh, and other nut jobs spewing hateful things without even thinking of the consequences of what they are saying. right now i am thanking the goddess for john stewart....he's at lest helping me keep it all in perspective. he is my own personal jesus.

but i can be kind of bitchy....

You Are 48% Bitchy

Generally, you're an average woman, with average moods. But sometimes... well, watch out! Sometimes, you let your mean side get the better of you. And you enjoy every minute of it.

How Bitchy Are You?

i am jennifer aniston

well, i took this test and apparently i am jennifer aniston and NOT angelina jolie. i think i can live with that...although i am not so sure about the "upbeat" part however.

You Are Jennifer Aniston

Girl next door with a free spirit.You're low key and naturally sexy.Sweet and approachable, people are attracted to your upbeat attitude.And even when life doesn't go your way, you always eventually turn things around.

http://ynr.blogthings.com/areyoumorelikejenniferorangelinaquiz/">Are You More Like Jennifer or Angelina?

poem for the week

War and Peace by Pablo Picasso

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



The Novel

All winter you went to bed early, drugging yourself on War and
Peace
Prince Andrei's cold eyes taking in the sky from the battlefield
were your eyes, you went walking wrapped in his wound
like a padded coat against the winds from the two rivers
You went walking in the streets as if you were ordinary
as if you hadn't been pulling with your raw mittened hand
on the slight strand that held your tattered mind
blown like an old stocking from a wire
on the wind between two rivers.
All winter you asked nothing
of that book though it lay heavy on your knees
you asked only for a shed skin, many skins in which to walk
you were old woman, child, commander
you watched Natasha grow into a neutered thing
you felt the pages thickening to the left and on the right-
hand growing few, you knew the end was coming
you knew beyond the ending lay
your own, unwritten life

1986

--Adrienne Rich , Time's Power: Poems 1985-1988

snowing, again

BELIZE: [....] Oh cheer up Louis. Look at that heavy sky out there.

LOUIS: Purple.

BELIZE: Purple? Boy, what kind of homosexual are you, anyway? That's not purple, Mary, that color up there is (Very grand) mauve. All day it's felt like Thanksgiving. Soon, this...ruination will be blanketed white. You can smell it--can you smell it?

LOUIS: Smell what?

BELIZE: Softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace.

LOUIS: No...

BELIZE: I can't help you learn that. I can't help you, Louis.
You're not my business. (He exits)

Tony Kushner, Angels in America Part One: Millenium Approaches, Act III, Scene II.

well, it is snowing again today, but the flakes are fluffy and they sort of look like delicate, white butterflies or fairies flying around in some suspended animation. there is a little bit of wind but considering that it is not below 10 degrees with a windchill of -25 to -30 below zero, i am not complaining. I am re-reading tony kushner's two part play angels in america because i will be teaching it after spring break. i really like the image that the character belize uses in describing snow...soft, compliant, filled with grace and forgiveness. it falls upon the ruination of tragedy and memories...it has a static song. i love listening to the sound of snow falling. you have to be in a place that is almost entirely free of noise...even traffic rumble. if you are quiet...and i mean the type of quietness that lets you listen to gentle pumping of your heart you can hear the snow as it falls to the ground. it sounds like gentle static...like the white noise on a radio that is turned down really, really low. to hear this music you have to become contemplative...to stop moving, to control your breath. it's very calming for me, this snowy music....it coats everything in a softness that is crisp and gentle. it is like forgiveness or grace or love...softly falling whether we want it to or not. it hides tragedy but does not get rid of it...it softly changes the landscape...let's us create new meaning out of old ruins; a new territory in the same place.

in heaven, i'm in heaven

one of the most awe inspiring events to date...angela davis and me. i was so nervous that i could hardly even speak to her. thank you lauren for taking the picture and sending it to me!

the persistence of narration

I used to be lunatic
From the gracious days
I used to be woebegone
And so restless nights
My aching heart would bleed
For you to see
Oh but now...(I dont find myself bouncing home whistling Buttonhole tunes to make me cry)
No more I love yous
The language is leaving me
No more I love yous
The language is leaving me in silence
Changes are shifting outside the word

--Annie Lennox




this isn't sophistry, a plea for understanding, or even voice. recently, i have had contact with a past love. actually he was my first love. i have known him since the 8th grade. i have been narrating him for so long and hard in an attempt to write him out of my life that i have inadvertently stitched him into my being. a psychic tattoo that i try to rub off...but my efforts only seem to create and recreate more words, more narration, more dark circles of melancholy sutured to memories of the past that somehow follow me into my future... skipping ahead of me, even. and i follow like some stupidly naive puppy. i know better. i should know better. i can recognize this for what it is but still it does not stop me from continuously, somehow, loving him. my heart is rooted in this soil. my brain is somehow disconnected from the rest of my body....it tells my body one thing but my body doesn't listen. i use the tools available to me. i use anti-depressants, i use sex and other significant relationships, i use kristeva, i use butler, i use derrida, i even use foucault (although he could care less) and on occasion i have even used the/a goddess but still my heart's roots insist upon this anchoring that is terrible and mean.
i do not like this kind of love. i do not wish to narrate it anymore. it is obsessive and cruel. it clothes itself in an unrequited-ness, always incomplete yet circular and mimetic. i have always been caught within this web. it is a disappointing love that you get used to...which in its incompleteness creates a different kind of disappointment....not new, or easy but instead a disappointment of a much deeper kind. this love reflects back to me and also reflects itself within my other relationships. it is jealous and difficult; this love is dark red and it flows still. i do not want this love anymore but there is a resignation that is stained by its flowing. this love is one sided and it has really nothing to do with him and, at the same time everything to do with him. it casts a deep shadow that is mingled with nostalgia and memories that i try to name and make real so that i can exorcise them from myself, to cast them away, to abject them..but yet they still remain unnameable, solid, and insistent. a boomerang that i throw away from myself but returns, always. i see this love in my other relationships. i try to stop it but the same scenario announces itself clothed in the same nuances that i can recognize...that i am alone and waiting, in the dark, for this love to return. this love leaves me tired and broken, it sabotages my other relationships so that i am solitary; this love is not for sharing, it is "thick" and suffocating. how do you rewrite that? this isn't just an object, lost or otherwise, but the nature of the object...it's physics...how do you renarrate that? how do you rewrite a law? when the boomerang completes its circle how do i not occupy the space of its destination? i have never had the chance to start over.

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