frustration....or the absurdness of humanity

so i finally watched the documentary on derrida

and it is extremely frustrating to watch...not because of the

philosopher or the concept of deconstruction

but the absolutely stupid questions that people

(the "documenter" included) asked him

i must say derrida himself was composed, graceful, and patient

most of the answers he provided to these questions

spoke to their own impossibility

derrida, throughout this documentary, stated that he...himself...as

an articulated and inarticulated self, is skeptical of narrative acts

especially narrative acts of auto/biographical frames...

one constantly speaks about oneself but only in an always already limited way

because there is always something being withheld

always something suppressed or abjected

but we take these narratives anyway and hold them up as something

"authentic" and universal when, in fact, they are nothing more than specters

or phantoms...therefore, we are disjointed in our "being"

we reject the Other while also embracing it

we look and we touch and we remember

but what if we attempted to look at ourselves with the eyes

of the Other?

what would we see then ?

subjectivity, as derrida stated throughout, is an inescapable violence

many times rhetorical

often times physical

most times both

it's rather disheartening...to dispel or unravel the violent knots of being...

of i-ness...

and the utter masculinity that all of this is framed within

i also was extremely interested and saddened by a talk that he

gave in south africa regarding the "who" and the "what" in regards

to the concepts of "forgiveness" and "reconciliation,"

the role of love, and the conflicting terms of negotiation

that inevitably announce themselves in this type of analysis

i say interested because i see relevance and

saddened for the same reason...

but above all

my favorite moment in the film was also, ironically, the most absurd

an interviewer actually asked derrida if he was familiar with the u.s. sitcom

seinfeld...when he replied "no" she gave him a short introduction

to "what" it was via an anecdote then

she made a connection between this show and a process of deconstruction by the

insinuation that this show illuminates a deconstructive process...

i loved his answer:

"deconstruction can never be a sitcom"

loves it...

but i'm a drafter

"we write to taste life twice."
--anais nin

i was hanging out with my friend M yesterday and
like most grad school nerds we were talking about
academics...more specifically writing.

i have a very strange relationship with the process of writing
i love it
i hate it
i use it as an object to gauge my own self worth,
to determine the exact dimensions or specifications
of who i am as a writer
i realize that this is unwise
but i still do it nonetheless

in any event, back to my conversation with M
i was telling her about one of the comments
that i received (anonymously) from a reader
who, incidentally, passed me on the answer to the question...
anyway,
this reader basically scolded me for articulating my
ideas in "tortured" prose.
i must admit that this hurt my feelings
and i was pretty vocal about it

i'm not above criticism...and i,
more than anyone else,
realize that my writing can indeed be 'torturous' to read
because it is torturous to write
but i think that's the point

going over this comment and my adverse reaction to it with M
she looked at me and said:
"YOU'RE a drafter"
i thought about it and i sighed out an agreement
i am a drafter
writing is never, ever finished for me

my project and, consequently, my writing is and always will be
a draft
i write against language
i write against grammar
i write against the active
in an actively passive way...the paradox is torturous
but, for me, most necessary

while i disagree with the violent word of "torture" and
the various acts that it signifies i do realize that
my writing is a struggle
with knots
i untie them while at the same time making new ones
i look at the knots that i have made and i begin to untie
them and in this process creating newer ones
and so it goes

i am a drafter
an un-tier and maker of knots simply because
i hate the regulatory "nature" of language
with its power and its violent oppression
i will always write against it
because my life and who i am is reflected within the very
prose that issues forth from my clouded mind

i am a drafter therefore
my life and who i am is a draft and i
will continue to write
and rewrite my ideas and my life

at times, my stances will be cogent even if only in an instant...
at others
not so much (at least for the reader)
but ultimately i must be true (in a postmodern sense of 'true') to the conflict
that brews inside of me and work it out the best
way that i know how
which is writing
which is reading
which is interpreting and
ultimately unapologetic

it's funny, this same reviewer rattled off a litany
of scholars that i should read...(about 8)
6 of them i have read and
hindsight causes me to chuckle
because when i reflect on this list
i have very specific reasons for NOT using
these suggested writers
and i chuckle even more when i think
that if i ever attempted to copy or emulate the ways in which
they write or, more specifically, how they work out their ideas
within their writing i would never have
been accepted to grad school and certainly would never have
passed three comprehensive exam questions

from now on
i will be unapologetic with my writing
it has to be honest (if only temporarily)
and it has to be
re-written

i am a drafter
i would not want or have it any other way

note to self

pat yourself on the back

for passing your comprehensive exams

(but only for about 5 minutes)

then start writing your proposal

and freaking out over a dissertation.

is "fag hag" empowering? and the "colonizing" mother

i presented a paper at the children's literature association's international conference this month and (like most conferences that i go to and present at) i either love what i hear or hate it...a binary i know but i very rarely find gray areas at these events.

for the record i am not specializing in children's literature...my ethos to this field is through english studies via rhetoric...i am transdiscipinary which means that i feel a certain amount of responsibility to verse myself (if only incidentally) to the major intersections of critical discourse where text and culture intersect.

with this said i listened to two papers that were absolutely horrible if not disturbing. one paper was given on a panel that i was chairing. the panel was devoted to issues of colonization and (to some extent) the future of postcolonial studies.

one of the papers (given by a recently graduated "master's" student) analyzed the relationship between illustrations in a picture book and the words on the page. although i am all for cross pollinating concepts in order to parse through dense theoretical connections i sat there wondering what any of this had to do with colonization? i mean, i was making connections in my mind but as far as listening to the direction of this person's paper i was coming up short in constructing some kind of intellectual relevance. then she started talking about colonization.

the picture book being analyzed is entitled _the water tower_. essentially it is about two white boys who are around 9 to 10 years of age. the speaker then proceeded to talk about how these two boys were colonized by their mothers. or more accurately, how one boy was colonized because he had a mother and the other wasn't because his mother was absent. i suppose in her theoretical context fathers are unable to or just don't 'colonize' their spawn? i was dumbfounded. what did the speaker mean by colonization? acts of discipline imposed from one body onto another? althusserian interpellation? i am not persuaded. in fact this is what happens when students (and i am still a student) are given carte blanche to any half baked idea and consequently thinking that they are being "original" or "subversive". this student's mentor (a supposedly "big name" in this field) was there as well...and i kept on thinking to myself that this "mentor" approved this garbage and that she should know better.

the paper was not only terrible, it was dangerous. this paper is dangerous indeed because it downplayed the very real material presence of colonization (and its after-effects). colonization is local but it is also cultural...it deals with hegemony and the violence of the hegemonic struggle in a very "real" sense. it is traumatic and violent and it reifies this trauma on bodies and cultures mimetically (even after this said colonization or the colonizing agent has extracted itself from the cultural landscape). the power of discipline from a mother (or parent) to a child is many things. for instance, it creates subjectivity...it proves itself problematic insofar as insuring the proliferation of white male heteronormative power (in western society) is kept in place. many, many theorists have written about this power dynamic (adrienne rich or jessica benjamin, for instance) but in no way does this process even mimic a colonizing process. if anything this student's analysis downplays colonization...giving it license to hide itself in an irresponsible analysis.

furthermore, this student talked about the image of the water tower itself within the narrative structure of the book. she surmised that the water tower was/is a matriarchal (and colonizing) figure in the story. how so? well this student says that the boys went swimming in the water tower. the water tower was round (womb-like) and it contained water. my brain almost exploded. what about the shape of the water tower? is it not in some way a phallus? the fact that this womb was housed inside a phallus was absent from this critique therefore actively ignoring at least 50 years of feminist scholarship that addresses this very issue. what kind of work does this ignorance or short-sightedness do? could it be that the figure of the mother as womb is created within phallogocentrism? this student's problematic paper displaced the point of critique from the oppressive dominance of white male heteronormativity onto the body of the woman as mother using a non sequitor of colonization.

also, another alarming aspect to this student's talk was her use of "marriage". she constantly reiterated a marriage between the image and the text; marriage between oppression and the body. yet again, i am reminded of how very pervasive white male heteronormative dominance can be in that it manipulates and hence reifies itself under a rubric of a critique that supposedly does the opposite. meaning, her paper was not a critique but an excurses based upon a very well hidden apology from the dominated to the status quo.

the second paper that i had the "privilege" to listen to was given by a new master’s student. if not for the fact that i had to read my paper right after her, i would have left the room. she proposed through her paper that the term "fag hag" is empowering. she used an adolescent text to make her point. in this text a young woman finds out her boyfriend is gay (through, i am assuming, his disclosure). they break up. this break up does not lead to animosity but rather to friendship...this young woman becomes in this text a "fag hag." the reader of this paper then tries to say that this is empowering...that fag hag is not what it used to be but it is something different. she also used several examples from pop culture to illustrate her point (seinfeld, will and grace, and sex and the city, etc.). i kept on thinking to myself (while biting my tongue and trying to keep blood from shooting out of my nose): really....Really.....REALLY???????? not once did she theorize the term. not once did she rely on any of the critical feminist and queer theory scholarship that challenges this term. furthermore, she didn't even historicize the label as a pejorative.

i am all for reclaiming a name...i do this with 'queer.' but unlike this reader i try to always question the terms and the work that 'queer' does. queer in my lexical and theoretical usage is grounded in strangeness...it functions on ontological, phenomenological, and ultimately epistemological registers. queer looks at race, gender, ability, sex, and class in terms (and not despite) of normativity (in a juridical foucauldian sense). however, i must never forget what this word still can do. i must always remember that it functions for many as and only a pejorative. it still does work that i critique against. this word is still rhetorically VIOLENT. i must never forget this. the same goes with "fag hag."

never once was the question raised by this student...can "fag" ever be empowering? what about "hag"? both have very long histories. both have been critiqued together and separately through countless pages of scholarship. i am not persuaded that these terms can ever be empowering...maybe i'm wrong but unlike queer this term was created solely for very specific reasons. it is a raced term...it is gender specific and points to a solid demographic (self identified straight white women who hang around white gay men). "fag" in this sense is being used as a label by white gay men to lay claim to the "hag" or, more specifically, the body of the straight, white woman. therefore, "fag" is a term of empowerment and melancholy for white gay men over white straight women. it is a move that signifies not only a claim to bodies but a claim to power. so my question is who is being empowered by this term? how is the term "hag" functioning? is it empowering? for whom?

during the q & a time i tried to bring these questions to the fore. i attempted to get people discussing the inherently misogynistic work this term is still "doing" within culture...is will and grace subversive...what about sex and the city? what specific images are being attached to the term? how is this term working? no one wanted to talk about race or class or gender in this way. they just wanted to sit around and talk about how "fag hag" is empowering. this, like the previous paper, is dangerous. the term is still used as a pejorative...unnuanced and under theorized by the people who want to claim it as an excuse for doing "cutting edge" work.

i have said this before and i will say it again (even though it is problematic). anytime (white) straight people/scholars attempt to discuss the lesbian/gay/transgendered/transsexual bodies within culture and cultures through what they think is substantive critique they (9 times out of 10) fuck it up. thus "open minded" and/or liberal/progressive self identified straight (white) people are always reassuring their listeners through their words that they as normative bodies are still the unquestioned paradigm and thus, unintentionally, admitting that although normativity should be questioned it is only questioned insofar as their fear of implication allows them to go.

a rough couple of days

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

--e.e. cummings



i couldn't understand my mood

these past couple of days

then i remembered that it was

father's day on sunday

and all of the heaviness

started to make sense

grief is tiring because

it is heavy

and mourning is like a movie screen

that plays memories

in no particular order

so you sit with your grief in the darkness

of this theater

watching the glow of the past in

illuminated gestures

breathing slowly and just wishing for

that time back.

saturday night wordle

i follow the example of the greatness that is devin because

i too created a wordle...


title="Wordle: Untitled"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/Untitled_365"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"
>


you can create a wordle too....

http://www.wordle.net/

hump day video with better than ezra

Juicy

Here We Go
I got with somebody's date
You're like a soap Opera cover
My lover self-automates
Juicy
Aw, Juicy

You say a-somebody say
You're like a salve for a leper
You're sweet for somebody's pain
Juicy
Aw, juicy
Aw, juicy

Yeah, you got to live for your own
You say you got all the sordid details
Check-out retail
Watch it sell
Now juicy
Aw, juicy

I gotta delay...

Mothers, children on the street
Can't get enough to eat
Off the record, dishes fly
Don't know the reason why
Meet me in the check out stand
See who can be the lover man
Conscience bleeding in a song
Guilty as the day is long
Goodbye

Yeah, you got to live for your own
You say you got all the sordid details
Check-out retail
Watch it sell
I got to see that lie
You say what you're going to say
You got to know it's a bitter poison
Sapping all of your soul away

Yeah, aw juicy
Juicy
Aw juicy
Aw juicy
Aw, ooh, aw, ooh, yeah yeah yeah
Juicy

the-world-as-it-really-is(n't)

124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom. The women knew it and so did the children.

Toni Morrison

Derrida insists that the problem of reference admits of no solution. Language is not the 'house of Being' with the potential for leaping the gap between culture and 'nature.' Language will never become a transparent window to the-world-as-it-really-is.

The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

wondering where i am

i always thought that i was getting to know
myself better the older i got...
i definitely have changed since i was younger
but this new middle age me is still as perplexing
as the me in my 20s and 30s

i have more aches and pains than ever before
aleve has become an important part of my diet
i play "trombone" with the books that i'm reading
i think more about death now than ever before

the last point is more complex than just the anxiety
of fretting about whether there is an afterlife or not
a heaven or a hell
or if i'm coming back as another person
or a fly

this anxiety is over loss
which means i'm not anxious over my death
but the death of those around me
paradoxically, it seems that i'm not afraid
of death after all but
i'm afraid of living
living through loss

i am the youngest of my siblings
theoretically, i will outlive them all
because i am significantly younger than they are
i am so used to following
i am so used to being the one who trails along
being told what to do
being loved and loving

i was re-reading _the return of the king_
in this book there is a scene in which sam
is trying to resuscitate frodo after he was bitten
by the spider shelob
sam yells at frodo telling him not to go
indeed, he says to frodo "don't go where i cannot follow"

i feel that i will replay this scene for the rest of my
life
the people that i love
that i follow will leave
and i cannot follow them
one of my sisters is having this issue
right now with the loss of my father
because just like her oldest daughter
passing away some 12 years ago
my sister is reminded once again of
the inertness of her position
of the imposed 'stillness' of life

i felt it too when i was beside him
when he took is very last breath
and i felt the numbness creep
from my brain to my feet

i'm sure some scientists somewhere
will tell me that it is all chemicals
a "natural" and "evolutionary" development
to help me cope...to get by...to keep on living...
to deal with the idea of not following
there is little comfort in that for me
to be reminded that i am only soft tissue and
that my longing is just gray matter
and neurons firing
that not being able to follow is natural
because it secures survival
because for these scientists...that's what
it's all about anyway

not for me
never for me

but the concept of god or an afterlife
is hardly any better...
people have concocted some wild theories and stories
that we take to be true
leaving one group of people yelling
at the other
it's noisy being in the middle of all of this
ideological dissonance
it still doesn't feel "good" or reassuring
because the longing to follow and yet
not being able to is there
and will always be there

i didn't want him to leave
and i miss him
i don't want my mother to leave
nor my sisters
nor my brother
my friends
my partner...if only he thought of me this way...which i am unsure of
and much too afraid to really ask

this is not about being alone
this is about access
about a preemptive lacking
that i know will be coming
so maybe things haven't changed as much as i
have imagined
maybe age while dulling
my body like a river stone: smooth and rounded
sharpens my inner hearing
to what my mind and my body are trying to tell me
through voices that extend way past the box
of scientific discourse
and chemicals
and nature

the voices that only a young body can suppress
there is a spirituality
about all of this
about following
about the love that creates the desire
to follow
maybe that's what keeps us going
anticipation of not being able to follow
and waiting for a resurrection that we know
will never happen

note to self

try not to judge too harshly

people who choose to put bible verses on

their t-shirts;

we all have our own 'bibles' to read

because death is kind of scary

hump day poem

i thought that i would preface this poem with a quote from "why i write" by joan didion

in many ways writing is the act of saying i, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. it's an aggressive, even a hostile act.

Take the I Out
by Sharon Olds


But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and Cream
of Wheat, its curl of butter right
in the middle of its forehead, he paid for our dresses
with his metal sweat, sweet in the morning
and sour in the evening. I love the I,
frail between its flitches, its hard ground
and hard sky, it soars between them
like the soul that rushes, back and forth,
between the mother and father. What if they had loved each other,
how would it have felt to be the strut
joining the floor and roof of the truss?
I have seen, on his shirt-cardboard, years
in her desk, the night they made me, the penciled
slope of her temperature rising, and on
the peak of the hill, first soldier to reach
the crest, the Roman numeral I--
I, I, I, I,
girders of identity, head on,
embedded in the poem. I love the I
for its premise of existence--our I--when I was
born, part gelid, I lay with you
on the cooling table, we were all there, a
forest of felled iron. The I is a pine,
resinous, flammable root to crown,
which throws its cones as far as it can in a fire.




From Blood, Tin, Straw by Sharon Olds, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

the art of revision

i hate waiting for my comp results
sometimes i am ok with the pressure and
i attempt, in part, to write out a place
within myself that gives me a certain amount
of peace
because, i am really trying hard not to
narrate a worse case scenario

but still....

at the most odd times,
driving around town running errands, etc.
i'll get a flash of panic
and i think...omg, i've failed
everything that i have been working on
for the past four years is insubstantial...my scholarship has been built
with cards...flimsy, unstable
and then this moment goes away as quickly
as it came
leaving me tired...and scared...and depressed
imprinting a question mark on my brain
'am i a sham?'
'do i know what i'm really talking/writing about?'


this drives me crazy

at other times i think
i answered the questions the best way
that i knew how...
i was careful
i tried to be precise or at least
i thought that i was and sometimes
this is reassuring

but then the panic flashes again
like heat lightening or
an intense moment in a movie
where the villain jumps out of a corner
grabbing the unaware protagonist
and then i start narrating again

i narrate a future that is dismal
and ornamented with failure
i stop this writing
and begin again
i revise
i delete paragraphs and phrases
and i attempt to add a more healing prose
a prose that is comforting EVEN if
my worst fear materializes out of thin air
or from some dark corner
my revisions tell me to breathe
to be present
to close my eyes and most importantly
to remind me
to keep taking my meds

i thought that phyllis schlafly was dead...

apparently not because she just received an honorary doctorate from

the washington university of st. louis

this is controversial in that phyllis is/was a major voice in the

conservative movement...she fought against the equal rights amendment in the 70s

in a most eloquent way, she also told a reporter that the marriage contract is also consent for sex....

so if a woman claims that her husband raped her...according to phyllis

this would be inaccurate and, in most cases, a lie

she also stated that the pictures of pows taken at abu ghraib

showing our military personnel committing crimes against humanity

was a fantasy of feminists because that's how they (or i should say we)

want to treat men....

whatever

the justification for bestowing this honor on her by wash. u. basically came down

to this:

she is an important voice in the conservative movement

she is a "good" and "vigorous" debater

and she has contributed to the political discourse of the united states

to which i say: really? really? REALLY?

i would love to shake the idiot's hand who thought that this was

a good idea...

seriously there was NO ONE else that they could have honored? and again i say

really?

oh did i mention that phyllis is twice an alum of wash. U.?

did i mention that phyllis has a lot of $$$$$$$?

a major voice in political discourse...yeah, sure.

who are they going to honor next with a doctorate?

fred phelps of the westboro baptist church?

i mean he certainly fits the above criteria

it was nice to see a lot of the faculty and students

protesting this batshittery

if isu ever did anything that stupid...my head would explode

i tried to give my bk a hard time about it because he teaches there

but to no avail...i love how he puts up with me...

i don't know how he does it

poem for the week

My Mother Would Be a Falconress
by Robert Duncan



My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
where I dream in my little hood with many bells
jangling when I'd turn my head.

My mother would be a falconress,
and she sends me as far as her will goes.
She lets me ride to the end of her curb
where I fall back in anguish.
I dread that she will cast me away,
for I fall, I mis-take, I fail in her mission.

She would bring down the little birds.
And I would bring down the little birds.
When will she let me bring down the little birds,
pierced from their flight with their necks broken,
their heads like flowers limp from the stem?

I tread my mother's wrist and would draw blood.
Behind the little hood my eyes are hooded.
I have gone back into my hooded silence,
talking to myself and dropping off to sleep.

For she has muffled my dreams in the hood she has made me,
sewn round with bells, jangling when I move.
She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist.
She uses a barb that brings me to cower.
She sends me abroad to try my wings
and I come back to her. I would bring down
the little birds to her
I may not tear into, I must bring back perfectly.

I tear at her wrist with my beak to draw blood,
and her eye holds me, anguisht, terrifying.
She draws a limit to my flight.
Never beyond my sight, she says.
She trains me to fetch and to limit myself in fetching.
She rewards me with meat for my dinner.
But I must never eat what she sends me to bring her.

Yet it would have been beautiful, if she would have carried me,
always, in a little hood with the bells ringing,
at her wrist, and her riding
to the great falcon hunt, and me
flying up to the curb of my heart from her heart
to bring down the skylark from the blue to her feet,
straining, and then released for the flight.

My mother would be a falconress,
and I her gerfalcon raised at her will,
from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own
pride, as if her pride
knew no limits, as if her mind
sought in me flight beyond the horizon.

Ah, but high, high in the air I flew.
And far, far beyond the curb of her will,
were the blue hills where the falcons nest.
And then I saw west to the dying sun--
it seemd my human soul went down in flames.

I tore at her wrist, at the hold she had for me,
until the blood ran hot and I heard her cry out,
far, far beyond the curb of her will

to horizons of stars beyond the ringing hills of the world where
the falcons nest
I saw, and I tore at her wrist with my savage beak.
I flew, as if sight flew from the anguish in her eye beyond her sight,
sent from my striking loose, from the cruel strike at her wrist,
striking out from the blood to be free of her.

My mother would be a falconress,
and even now, years after this,
when the wounds I left her had surely heald,
and the woman is dead,
her fierce eyes closed, and if her heart
were broken, it is stilld

I would be a falcon and go free.
I tread her wrist and wear the hood,
talking to myself, and would draw blood.





From Bending the Bow, published by New Directions, 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Robert Duncan.

note to self

3rd comp turned in

time to sleep

note to self

two comps down

one in hand

this is killing me...

note to self

one comp down

two to go

and keep in mind that

even if you don't pass

at least you're taking them before

"delores umbridge" aka "the blooming onion" does...

which is, indeed, gratifying

in and of itself

your revolution

i was teaching my women's and gender studies class today

and one of my students was giving an oral presentation on

women in the music industry

this student's presentation lead to a general class discussion

over what it means to be a woman in an industry that is

insidiously white, male, and (big surprise here: heteronormative)

then the converstation shifted to not just issues of gender but

also race...what are the terms for women artists who are not white?

as my class was productively mulling over the issues related to race,

gender and the music industry i couldn't help but think of audre lorde

and the speech that she gave at medgar evers college in 1980 and the kind

of critique she was developing through her experience as an activist within

the civil rights movement...the struggles of being a woman, african american, feminist, womanist,

and lesbian that made her participation and even her subject negotiation within

the political formation of civil rights groups difficult and highly complex...

she spoke up to a heteronormative, male dominated paradigm that required her particpation

while at the same time demanding that she remain silent...to espouse as best she could

the violent restraints associated with that of an image of "straight woman, african american

woman"

she fought against this pressure

she established place within a third space territory

she was unapologetic for it as well

lorde was not concerned with just interested rights

she was concerned with the flow of power and the assignment of value

she wanted to change the ways in which we all consume otherness

she demanded oppression be addressed at all levels...not selectively

she demanded that perception change not just laws because laws are always

"interested"

this brings me to sarah jones

in the clip below you can hear her perform a spoken word piece entitled

"your revolution" from hbo's def poetry series...

fast forward through moss def's intro and cedric the entertainer's piece (although

his piece is worth a listen as is the interpetation of gwendolyn brooks' "we real cool" at the very

begining) and you will encounter the goddess that is sarah jones...



Sarah Jones “Your Revolution” lyrics


[Intro]

Yeah yeah, yeah this goes out to all the women and men from New York to

London to LA to Tokyo struggling to keep their self-respect in this climate

of misogyny, money worship and mass production of hip-hop's illegitimate child,

Hip-Pop.And this especially goes out to Gil Scott-Heron, friend, living legend

and proto-rapper who wrote "The Revolution will not be Televised." Much Respect.



[Verse]

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

Not happen between these thighs

Not happen between these thighs

The real revolution ain't about booty size

The Versaces you buys, or the Lexus you drives

And though we've lost Biggie Smalls

Baby your notorious revolution

Will never allow you to lace no lyrical douche, in my bush

Your revolution will not be killing me softly, with Fugees

Your revolution ain't gonna knock me up without no ring

And produce little future emcees

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

Your revolution will not find me in the backseat of a jeep

With LL, hard as hell, you know doin it and doin it and doin it well

doin it and doin it and doin it well, nah come on now

Your revolution will not be you smacking it up, flipping it, or rubbing it down

Nor will it take you downtown or humpin around

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

Your revolution will not have me singing, ain't no nigga like the one I got

And your revolution will not be sending me for no drip, drip VD shot

And your revolution will not involve me, feelin your nature rise

Or helping you fantasize

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

No no, not between these thighs

Oh, my Jamican brother, your revolution will not make you feel bombastic

And really fantastic

And have you groping in the dark for that rubber wrapped in plastic

You will not be touching your lips to my triple dip of french vanilla,

butter pecan, chocolate delux

Or having Akinyele's dream, m-hmm a 6-foot blowjob machine m-hmm

You want to subjugate your queen? uh-huh

Think I'm a put it in my mouth, just cuz you made a few bucks?

Please brother please

Your revolution will not be me tossing my weave

And making me believe I'm some caviar-eating ghetto mafia clown

Or me giving up my behind, just so I can get signed

And maybe having somebody else write my rhymes

I'm Sarah Jones, not Foxy Brown

You know I'm Sarah Jones, not Foxy Brown

Your revolution makes me wonder, where could we go

If we could drop the empty pursuit of props and ego

We'd revolt back to our Roots, use a little Common Sense

On a quest to make love De La Soul, no pretense

But your revolution will not be you flexing your little sex and status

To express what you feel

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

Will not happen between these thighs

Will not be you shaking and me *yawn* faking

Between these thighs

Because the real revolution, that's right I said the real revolution

You know I'm talking about the revolution

When it comes, it's gonna be real

It's gonna be real

It's gonna be real

When it finally comes

When it finally comes

It's gonna be real, yeah yeah

note to self

if you continue to freak out

over the start of comps on thursday

your head will explode

please for the love of all that is sane

stop and

remember that if you touch the ground

now and then

the world around you will stop spinning

it hardly seems possible

that a year ago today i made an early morning sunday

trip to stl and met my baby kangaroo

for the first time

we spent the day together and we talked

and now it's a year later

and i still breathe easier when he's around

poem for the week

Forgetfulness

by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

delays

comps had to be rescheduled for thursday

the person in charge of scheduling double booked the room

will i ever be done with this?!?

moon

april snow...

it snowed today....

blah!

april has been really

disappointing me this year

poem for the week

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World

by Sherman Alexie

The morning air is all awash with angels . . .
- Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because

He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,

I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"
I say. "I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?" "It’s okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

comps

well, the comps have been set

they start on the 22nd of the month

and end on the 6th of may

the final leg of this ph.d. journey has begun...

i hope that i have the strength

to follow through and finish

annoying teenagers, going to bookstores these are a few of my favorite things....

well, i must say that i woke up feeling a tad bit sorry for myself



i was feeling weighed down



walking underwater



slow and labored



but only me



everything and everyone around me was moving



normally which appeared to be fast to me...



however as i was walking across the quad to teach my 10 a.m. class



i was surrounded by teenage joggers



yep...some intellectually gifted track coach must have thought that it



would be a good idea to set a bunch of teenage joggers loose on the



quad during peak time...



and these kids would hardly move out of the way



hogging up the sidewalk and expecting people to move



for them



i didn't move though because



1) i was annoyed



2) i was still feeling heavy



3) i was annoyed



although it did give me some kind of sadistic pleasure to make them



move...and i think some of them even pouted....nothing says

have a bright and sunny day than

a tennager's distain...



after class i was talking to a student



and i spilled an almost full dunkin donuts coffee



on a desk and consequently the floor...



fyi: that stuff is a bitch to clean up



after i finished up with that fiasco i decided to go to borders



bookstores always give me a sense of peace...i like them



i like to be surrounded by words...potential stories....



there is always a sense of discovery whenever i go into a bookstore



and discover i did



i found a memoir/illustrated book by chip kidd (the famous book designer)




while i was leafing through...taking in the images i saw this....


wendy brown's book!!! i love wendy brown and this book is not only an important piece

of scholarship it is also a book that changes lives

well mine anyways...

if i ever get published or better yet become the kind of scholar that

would get me chip kidd to design the cover of my book

i would be overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness of it

seriously...it wouldn't have to be that great of a text

because good or terrible, boring or pithy...

chip kidd would certainly make your text sound better

after i was finished browsing that book i meandered over to

the psychology...actually the death and dying section...

i know grief but i still feel lost...so i picked up this book:





and i read a little...

very practical and lois ackner's writing is quite good

but something in me was not interested in getting it or reading any further

dissatisfied...slow...labored

maybe another book will call to me

or maybe a poem...

i just don't know

comps

well it looks like my third and final comp synthesis will

be approved by tomorrow

and my comps will be scheduled by the end of this week

note to self

redefine my purpose

amidst the feelings of

pointlessness that now seem

to be weighing on my mind

i would like to be thankful that revisions for

the third synthesis have been sent and

a meeting tomorrow to work out the kinks has

been scheduled

i must be patient with my

self

because this i

has changed and

the grammar of which to organize

this rhetorical chaos so that this i can surface

is up

for negotiation

spring

i saw my first robin yesterday

i smiled and

then started crying

note to self

think of spring and try to smile

appreciate the love that surrounds you

find peace in a really good song

this is grief

how do you narrate grief?

do you start with the object...the material...the flesh and bone

and then follow its progress into the abstract and

disembodied? while crying?

where are the words for that kind of story?

what metaphor could you possibly construct?

derrida was right to critique

sassure...

language is more than just arbitrariness

it is inadequate and yet

there is nothing more adequate or less arbitrary

nor heart breaking

than this erosion

i will start to write this grief

but in the very act of my writing it

it is being rewritten

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.

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...