ml and d came to visit out of nowhere
although they did call me Thursday to say they were coming
i'm realizing how much teaching, working, and writing papers all at once, with very very little social interaction is driving me to the brinks of insanity
and how much i enjoy talking to people, and living with people in the short term at least
i'm looking forward to this summer; the plan so far is:
1. work for may/june
2. attend nelp-like course for 2 weeks
3. spend 2 more weeks in indiana with my friend s
4. go to michigan for tbird's wedding, maybe stay there until august, when i need to meet up with b and figure out how to meet up with r at some point
in short, busy, wonderful, etc
although i'm hoping i get to go to boston with the rentals this july instead of sitting around michigan or bton
and i'm gonna finally get around to writing/drawing the graphic novel....as well as hopefully a weaving project i've thinking about doing for weeks now
what are you up to?
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
sprung
"spring is super in super markets
and the strawberries prance and glow
nevermind that they're all
kinda tart and tasteless as strawberries go
meanwhile, the wild things are not for sale
anymore than they are for show
so i'll be outside
in love with the kind of beauty
it takes more than eyes to know
just show me a moment that's mine
that's beauty shinging and unsurpassed
and i'll forget every moment that went by
and left me so half-hearted
cuz i felt it so half-assed"
ani difranco - half-assed
and the strawberries prance and glow
nevermind that they're all
kinda tart and tasteless as strawberries go
meanwhile, the wild things are not for sale
anymore than they are for show
so i'll be outside
in love with the kind of beauty
it takes more than eyes to know
just show me a moment that's mine
that's beauty shinging and unsurpassed
and i'll forget every moment that went by
and left me so half-hearted
cuz i felt it so half-assed"
ani difranco - half-assed
you had time
today i said that the way to address human rights while recognizing that what we, as researchers, see as a problem may not be in fact a problem
is
to provide the tools for change, to give people the insights and the knowledge to make things better, but not to take the action ourselves unless specifically asked and given that it's the only way to do it
because people are people, t hey control their own destinies, and the emotion has to be there for change to be made
but i don't know that i really felt it
i wish i could dive head first into an anlysis of human rights theory and problems with cultural things like female circumcision and other stuff.....but i just don't have it in me
i don't feel it because our generation in general has so little hope
Where former generations could look to the American Dream, or to the ability to move up in social standing, or the ability to go somewhere else and start over again, or the potential for leavin the country and coming up, or the potential for apprenticeship, the power of knowledge, etc
we are left with only one option: join the work force or perish
Academe is no longer safe, if it ever was. More and more schools are changing the structure of departments so that only non-tenure-track positions are available---their reasoning is that more efficiency and better products can be produced by minimizing pay/etc. for the workforce. And people are so fatalistic that few rebel, while everyone bitches. Sure it's a problem, but why should i have to deal with it?
Given 1: One must find a job or else face poverty, homelessness,e tc. Or attempt to find a life outside of the mainstream, which becomes more and more of a problem since so few exist there, and the lines across have been mostly cut off or blocked by corporations that benefit from cheap, desperate, drugged labor.
In the meantime, one could at least hope that by advocating chagne in daily life, with one's friends, aquaintances, and students that change could be accomplished. Even if the world isn't made better in my generation, at least the next could do something better.
So all my teachers in grade school and undergrad passed the torch that is hope for the future to me and my classmates, which leads us to the problem that is Given 2.
Given 2: People are idiots. We have all been trained to care as long as something is not immediate or directly affecting us. Even if it is immeidately affecting us, television and everything else tells us not to care, that our life is more important, that it's not our responsibility.
We are not responsible, so let's just enjoy the ride.
Thus, my students claim that arguing for an issue doens't matter cuz no one can do anything. My father tells me he can't change his diet becuase he will die anyway. I tell myself that I am inherently broken so I don't have to feel bad about not being an activist.
Someone else will pick up the slack.
BUT THEY WON"T.
Given 3: EVERYONE is lazy, even the active, impatiently energized people in the world. No one does anything beyond what is necessary, as even what is necessary (assignments, etc) can only be the lowest rung to be reached, else daddy's little sorostitute wouldn't be able to get anywhere in life but the brothel.
So jobs become less about skill and mroe about connections. Real skills are downplayed in favor of bullshit. Politicians generally know little to nothing about the world, only about their need to get higher up so they can continue their job.
We didn't help people in Rwanda during the genocide because we didn't have to. It wasn't our responsibility.
Given 4: The world is in pain. We have shat on it, poured nuclear waste into the atmosphere and soil, pissed emissions into the air, dumped our stinky cheese-like trash into dumps, leaking every bit and piece of acid and paper into the rest of the world. Animals that are not us are dying. People in not the U.S. and people who are not-us are dying, suffering, watching children suffer from genetic problems, healthy issues.
Watch as your child pukes blood, watch the tumors grow on the toes of the earth, the poor, the threatened, the endangered.
It's okay, modern medicine and politics will just cut the toe off. We can make a new one, one made out of plastic that will kill you even more, until your whole leg is plastic, until we are gone, leaving plastic and metal everywhere where once there were stories and songs and birds singing and lizards eating flies and blood pouring into the heart of something.
Result: No one does anything and we die.
WRONG
As a panel on the future of the planet stated recently "people can't be that stupid".
Or can they?
Will you do anything differntly, or will you hold up your hands and say " hey, i gotta go finish more important things"
and forget your recycling in the trash
and leave the battery on teh ground
and buy books and cds with your money
and spend time chatting on aim rather than sending emails to elected officials
and leave me with acid in my mouth
so do we have the smarts to do the right thing? will we use the tools to change things or let our planet die beneath our feet, let ourselves die, let people be murdered, covering it all up with bullshit and excuses?
i'm tired
i'm bored
i'm spiritually exhausted
and i have no hope
so give me some...
is
to provide the tools for change, to give people the insights and the knowledge to make things better, but not to take the action ourselves unless specifically asked and given that it's the only way to do it
because people are people, t hey control their own destinies, and the emotion has to be there for change to be made
but i don't know that i really felt it
i wish i could dive head first into an anlysis of human rights theory and problems with cultural things like female circumcision and other stuff.....but i just don't have it in me
i don't feel it because our generation in general has so little hope
Where former generations could look to the American Dream, or to the ability to move up in social standing, or the ability to go somewhere else and start over again, or the potential for leavin the country and coming up, or the potential for apprenticeship, the power of knowledge, etc
we are left with only one option: join the work force or perish
Academe is no longer safe, if it ever was. More and more schools are changing the structure of departments so that only non-tenure-track positions are available---their reasoning is that more efficiency and better products can be produced by minimizing pay/etc. for the workforce. And people are so fatalistic that few rebel, while everyone bitches. Sure it's a problem, but why should i have to deal with it?
Given 1: One must find a job or else face poverty, homelessness,e tc. Or attempt to find a life outside of the mainstream, which becomes more and more of a problem since so few exist there, and the lines across have been mostly cut off or blocked by corporations that benefit from cheap, desperate, drugged labor.
In the meantime, one could at least hope that by advocating chagne in daily life, with one's friends, aquaintances, and students that change could be accomplished. Even if the world isn't made better in my generation, at least the next could do something better.
So all my teachers in grade school and undergrad passed the torch that is hope for the future to me and my classmates, which leads us to the problem that is Given 2.
Given 2: People are idiots. We have all been trained to care as long as something is not immediate or directly affecting us. Even if it is immeidately affecting us, television and everything else tells us not to care, that our life is more important, that it's not our responsibility.
We are not responsible, so let's just enjoy the ride.
Thus, my students claim that arguing for an issue doens't matter cuz no one can do anything. My father tells me he can't change his diet becuase he will die anyway. I tell myself that I am inherently broken so I don't have to feel bad about not being an activist.
Someone else will pick up the slack.
BUT THEY WON"T.
Given 3: EVERYONE is lazy, even the active, impatiently energized people in the world. No one does anything beyond what is necessary, as even what is necessary (assignments, etc) can only be the lowest rung to be reached, else daddy's little sorostitute wouldn't be able to get anywhere in life but the brothel.
So jobs become less about skill and mroe about connections. Real skills are downplayed in favor of bullshit. Politicians generally know little to nothing about the world, only about their need to get higher up so they can continue their job.
We didn't help people in Rwanda during the genocide because we didn't have to. It wasn't our responsibility.
Given 4: The world is in pain. We have shat on it, poured nuclear waste into the atmosphere and soil, pissed emissions into the air, dumped our stinky cheese-like trash into dumps, leaking every bit and piece of acid and paper into the rest of the world. Animals that are not us are dying. People in not the U.S. and people who are not-us are dying, suffering, watching children suffer from genetic problems, healthy issues.
Watch as your child pukes blood, watch the tumors grow on the toes of the earth, the poor, the threatened, the endangered.
It's okay, modern medicine and politics will just cut the toe off. We can make a new one, one made out of plastic that will kill you even more, until your whole leg is plastic, until we are gone, leaving plastic and metal everywhere where once there were stories and songs and birds singing and lizards eating flies and blood pouring into the heart of something.
Result: No one does anything and we die.
WRONG
As a panel on the future of the planet stated recently "people can't be that stupid".
Or can they?
Will you do anything differntly, or will you hold up your hands and say " hey, i gotta go finish more important things"
and forget your recycling in the trash
and leave the battery on teh ground
and buy books and cds with your money
and spend time chatting on aim rather than sending emails to elected officials
and leave me with acid in my mouth
so do we have the smarts to do the right thing? will we use the tools to change things or let our planet die beneath our feet, let ourselves die, let people be murdered, covering it all up with bullshit and excuses?
i'm tired
i'm bored
i'm spiritually exhausted
and i have no hope
so give me some...
Thursday, April 05, 2007
long way home
do we ever go home?
i remember once i did, and a few times before that, when i was younger. my dad used to carry me into our house, lay me down in bed, and tuck me in, this from the same guy who regularly cussed out the refridgerator. i remember going home from university and feeling safe and sound and sane. then i got crazy every time i went home. then i got sane again. now i feel neither.
when i was in high school, i used to run around the yard and chase myself through every room in the house until i ended up falling asleep on the couch. i remember being strange and silly and flighty but interestingly, constantly changing. it was like watching a kaleidoscope. home was where that all melted away, eventually, through pain and struggle and love and too much food. at the end of the night, sleepless or no, the sun rose and the birds sang. i could find thomas the cat waiting in the wings, ready for me to finally give up and say uncle. say that here i am, home again, ready to fall into the arms of those i love.
then my dad got lymphoma. i couldn't trust the one thing i had for so long, that my dad, yelling and being stupid and funny all at once, would catch me if i asked. he would tell me that things would work out, take me to a movie if i was sad and lonely. he would drive me around for hours until the screaming voices in my head (not real, metaphorical) finally shut up.
then, in a minute on the phone, he was gone. not really, but the he that could hold me up. suddenly, i had be a flying buttress, not the tapestry. home was a new set of worries, concerns, not a place to fall away from things and the shiny performance of life. a new drama, a new play.
one i could barely follow.
then my mom got cancer too, and my siblings call me all the time to tell me how we have to be there for them, but when i see them...when i see them, for a little while, we're just the same people we ever were, fucked up and gloriously complicated, kind and hurtful, well-intentioned or not. for a minute, then it's gone. i'm the oh-so-sensitive, sexually and religiously ambiguous creature treading carefully around the respect for the dead, for the will-be-dead-soon, for the strangely imperfect ghosts of other people i'm not supposed to love too much.
but they're alive, and i don't know how to deal with that. that's the funny thing, thinking of going home for easter. i can handle being alone, being hurt, and being lost; it's easy enough to give up. but, like the new spring, it's so fucking hard to just begin again, to accept that maybe things will turn out all right.
people fuck you over. people are shitty. people are dumb and make mistakes. so how do i deal with people who, despite my insistence, say welcome home, things'll turn out okay, you'll see, get some rest and it'll all clear up. even if they turn around and screw you over by accident.
so simple, so ridiculously more complex than giving up.
so i'm going home for easter, and i don't really want to. i don't want to face my parents who seem more and more ghost-like, like voices in the back of my mind.
the other day my father answered the phone, and the tone in his voice sounded like it did when my mom is in the hospital but he doesn't want me to know. it wasn't that though, he just didn't know where she was (groceries). but i was so ready to let go. so ready it scares me.
the world is a shitty place. we've transformed everything so that even the environment is killing itself---the ecosystems and plants that can't live with human structures will fall, then the human structures that can't live with those plants will die, and then we'll have to start all over
but the we will change----the frost outside is killing the buds of spring, and in my mind, i've watched the people i lvoe die a million times---so it comes down to this: why am i so willing to let go? is it something in our society? is it my own pessimism (the same voice that tells me my friends will betray and abandon, despite my better instincts)?
or is it something more sinister, something in the system i'm trying to succeed in? seomthing that tells me i'm an adult now, i'm changing, i have to become something stolid and solid and cruel, something sad and lonely, with a wife and 2.5 kids some day, who never does the million things he dreamt he might do, someone who looks at his parents, says goodbye when they wrinkle, and moves on to the next fad---someone who can say goodbye in the time it takes to drive to work, to give a paper
and start the work day all over again
i remember once i did, and a few times before that, when i was younger. my dad used to carry me into our house, lay me down in bed, and tuck me in, this from the same guy who regularly cussed out the refridgerator. i remember going home from university and feeling safe and sound and sane. then i got crazy every time i went home. then i got sane again. now i feel neither.
when i was in high school, i used to run around the yard and chase myself through every room in the house until i ended up falling asleep on the couch. i remember being strange and silly and flighty but interestingly, constantly changing. it was like watching a kaleidoscope. home was where that all melted away, eventually, through pain and struggle and love and too much food. at the end of the night, sleepless or no, the sun rose and the birds sang. i could find thomas the cat waiting in the wings, ready for me to finally give up and say uncle. say that here i am, home again, ready to fall into the arms of those i love.
then my dad got lymphoma. i couldn't trust the one thing i had for so long, that my dad, yelling and being stupid and funny all at once, would catch me if i asked. he would tell me that things would work out, take me to a movie if i was sad and lonely. he would drive me around for hours until the screaming voices in my head (not real, metaphorical) finally shut up.
then, in a minute on the phone, he was gone. not really, but the he that could hold me up. suddenly, i had be a flying buttress, not the tapestry. home was a new set of worries, concerns, not a place to fall away from things and the shiny performance of life. a new drama, a new play.
one i could barely follow.
then my mom got cancer too, and my siblings call me all the time to tell me how we have to be there for them, but when i see them...when i see them, for a little while, we're just the same people we ever were, fucked up and gloriously complicated, kind and hurtful, well-intentioned or not. for a minute, then it's gone. i'm the oh-so-sensitive, sexually and religiously ambiguous creature treading carefully around the respect for the dead, for the will-be-dead-soon, for the strangely imperfect ghosts of other people i'm not supposed to love too much.
but they're alive, and i don't know how to deal with that. that's the funny thing, thinking of going home for easter. i can handle being alone, being hurt, and being lost; it's easy enough to give up. but, like the new spring, it's so fucking hard to just begin again, to accept that maybe things will turn out all right.
people fuck you over. people are shitty. people are dumb and make mistakes. so how do i deal with people who, despite my insistence, say welcome home, things'll turn out okay, you'll see, get some rest and it'll all clear up. even if they turn around and screw you over by accident.
so simple, so ridiculously more complex than giving up.
so i'm going home for easter, and i don't really want to. i don't want to face my parents who seem more and more ghost-like, like voices in the back of my mind.
the other day my father answered the phone, and the tone in his voice sounded like it did when my mom is in the hospital but he doesn't want me to know. it wasn't that though, he just didn't know where she was (groceries). but i was so ready to let go. so ready it scares me.
the world is a shitty place. we've transformed everything so that even the environment is killing itself---the ecosystems and plants that can't live with human structures will fall, then the human structures that can't live with those plants will die, and then we'll have to start all over
but the we will change----the frost outside is killing the buds of spring, and in my mind, i've watched the people i lvoe die a million times---so it comes down to this: why am i so willing to let go? is it something in our society? is it my own pessimism (the same voice that tells me my friends will betray and abandon, despite my better instincts)?
or is it something more sinister, something in the system i'm trying to succeed in? seomthing that tells me i'm an adult now, i'm changing, i have to become something stolid and solid and cruel, something sad and lonely, with a wife and 2.5 kids some day, who never does the million things he dreamt he might do, someone who looks at his parents, says goodbye when they wrinkle, and moves on to the next fad---someone who can say goodbye in the time it takes to drive to work, to give a paper
and start the work day all over again
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
in love with illusion
so saw me in half
what's really better? spending 4 hours laboring over a master's thesis that seems like it will never amount to anything once it's done, or watching 4 hours of buffy season 6 that makes me feel emotion again?
I think that's what's bothering me lately, on top of not sleeping enough. i feel like i am enveloped by a lack of emotions. there is nervousness and sadness and boredom and other less interesting forms of feeling. but there is little to no hatred, love, longing, extreme pleasure (the kind that comes from talking for hours with someone for the first time).
it's spring though, and thankfully the thunderstorm that hit today is going to make it feel as such, taking the weather down from 80 to 40 in one fell swoop. so at least the weather will make sense.
even then, i want storms. i want upset. it's as though i know the world is falling to pieces, i know that my life is up in the air right now, and i want the whole world to match.
scratch that, that's the problem.
now i'm off to go feel those emotions more immediately by first sleeping, and then going to a cafe somewhere to be gloomy and brood. then, i'll go find s and go for a hike and be happy.
not becuase life is bad or messy, though it is, but because i need to be gloomy and happy more often, which is exactly what i've been lacking.
like is said in this poem recently
'i'm in love with being lost, with
being hollow like you'
you being some people i know here. i've been so lost in trying to be empty and ghostly, so that i can survive, that i've forgotten that i'm this emotional creature.
yay me.
yay sleep even more.
what's really better? spending 4 hours laboring over a master's thesis that seems like it will never amount to anything once it's done, or watching 4 hours of buffy season 6 that makes me feel emotion again?
I think that's what's bothering me lately, on top of not sleeping enough. i feel like i am enveloped by a lack of emotions. there is nervousness and sadness and boredom and other less interesting forms of feeling. but there is little to no hatred, love, longing, extreme pleasure (the kind that comes from talking for hours with someone for the first time).
it's spring though, and thankfully the thunderstorm that hit today is going to make it feel as such, taking the weather down from 80 to 40 in one fell swoop. so at least the weather will make sense.
even then, i want storms. i want upset. it's as though i know the world is falling to pieces, i know that my life is up in the air right now, and i want the whole world to match.
scratch that, that's the problem.
now i'm off to go feel those emotions more immediately by first sleeping, and then going to a cafe somewhere to be gloomy and brood. then, i'll go find s and go for a hike and be happy.
not becuase life is bad or messy, though it is, but because i need to be gloomy and happy more often, which is exactly what i've been lacking.
like is said in this poem recently
'i'm in love with being lost, with
being hollow like you'
you being some people i know here. i've been so lost in trying to be empty and ghostly, so that i can survive, that i've forgotten that i'm this emotional creature.
yay me.
yay sleep even more.