And now for some entertainment

Have a short story with your coffee and a side of poetry


Generation Gap
"What I wanted to know was: why is it necessary to redefine values anyway?" The gray haired energetic women looked at each other, as they crossed first st. and 2nd Ave. oblivious to the tattoo parlors and mohawked teenagers that flanked their path.
"So did you find out?" The second one asked the first in earnest anticipation.
"Well that’s what we were getting to when we were interrupted" They were the same height, the same size exactly, small frames, somewhat diminutive, healthy, fit, middle aged. They bent towards each other confidentially like scholars conferring on a deeply puzzling matter, both were totally engrossed in the conversation, bobbing and nodding like two curly tufted hens. When the second heard the answer of the first, she jerked away from her friend with a sudden violence. She was visibly annoyed at the disappointing end to the conversation. She felt as if her Barbara had held the answer to the meaning of life, the holy philosophical grail and simply let it slip away. She turned back to her with exasperation, lecturing as if the woman one year her senior were actually her child,
"You know what I do when someone cuts in on a conversation I’m having? I say: ‘excuse me, we’re in the middle of a conversation here,’ I don’t just let them steamroll me out of what I’m saying, or hearing, especially if it’s important, and yours was certainly important."
"Yes, well you know how Doug is, he always finds a way to steam roll things if you want to stretch the metaphor..." The second rolled her eyes in tacit agreement. Barbara could always find a way to place blame in someone else’s lap, and yet, it was true, her 6’3, overweight, uncouth husband did have a way of knocking everything and everyone in his path both literally and figuratively down. He could flatten a conversation in no time at all simply by his presence. (There’s a point in every story when the words run themselves out of their own volition and it is necessary to devise some sort of plot to provide an artificial edifice for their existence, or in simpler terms to pick up the slack and keep the words a rollin’ on) I have come to that point in the juncture of this story which was begun with a line I overheard while walking through the east Village, feeling melancholy and angsted and too old to be hip and too young to be sure of myself, and decided the best thing to do would be to subvert my own rambling swarm of self doubt in the infinitely fascinating lives of those strangers around me, highlighted best by particularly illustrative fragments of their conversations, phrases that stood out from the rest, hanging in the air before the lips of their utterers, taking on a life of their own due to the sheer out of context power of them and their poetic ability as lines to, as many a freshman poetry workshop teacher has stated "stand on their own." (Were I to be a semi-published MFA teaching a bunch of sweaty antsy, highly self conscious freshman about sestinas and free verse, my one motto would be to learn to love the parenthesis that creep up in your writing, for in embracing those awkward hangers on you are forced to love the worst of yourself, the most humiliating, humbling aspects of your character, and it is within those aspects that you will find your writing voice.))
Cut to a sunny, cramped kitchen in a rent controlled upper east side apartment, with a plastic yellow stool, a diner style counter, a rusty refrigerator covered in family photos and drawings (which the 20 somethings who now occupied it, sitting one on the stool, the other on an old garage sale wooden chair, had drawn when they were in early elementary school and which their mother had decided were such emblems of each of their burgeoning talents that she would never remove them, at least not until they morphed into the artists she had expected them to become), a small curtained window, a vase of sunflowers freshly bought, a tiny Matisse print of the reclining nude, a dislocated page of the New York times and some unopened mail. Of all the spacious rooms in the three bedroom walk up, whenever Brian and .David, better known as "the boys", came to visit they preferred to squeeze themselves into that tiny kitchenette, as if there they would feel the most contained, the most unmistakably home. Brian, the older one, with a bobbed dirty blond haircut, mod-60’s style because he had for a very short period been in a band sat on the chair. David, with dark brown hair that grew to uneven jagged points around his ears sat on the high-stool, facing the tiny window, his long legs sprawled out across the tiles, his concave back leaned up against the bright peeling- in- places wall paper. They sat perpendicular to each-other, angled knees just missing collision, big sneakered feet dangling lazily. This way they could talk through sidelong glances, occasionally turning directly to face one another for dramatic impact, or lazily gaze off into the distance when the other became boring or when one was secretly offended in the way only siblings can unknowingly hurt each other and be hurt. Now they were talking about mom, a subject which usually united them across the banal rivalries of siblinghood.
"So she was like, "Why is it necessary to redefine values anyway?"
"Oh man," David groaned agonizingly into his hand, hiding his face with shame for his own parentage. "I can’t believe she said that"
"Yeah and you know what the worst part was?"
They were now facing each other directly, fully ensconsed in the unfolding drama. "What?"
"it was, like, the way she said it, you know, like she really really wanted to know, like I was going to give her the answer to our whole fucking generation, no more than that, like I was going to suddenly explain all of (modernity)the modern world to her, you know, like I could just clear it all up for her, right then and there."
"So, so what did you say?" Both boys covertly acknowledged the inherent painfulness of disappointing their mother’s expectations and it was this element which turned the story from absurdly embarrassing to potentially tragic.
"Luckily I didn’t have to say anything, dad came in, blustering around, you know how he is, he lost some fuckin’ special pen or something stupid, I was so damn happy to see him."
"That’s a rare occurrence"
"Yeah, I know, but I was totally saved."
They both chuckled a sigh of relief at the averted tragedy.
"Doug?" Barbara takes off her reading glasses and faces her husband in bed. He’s looking through a sports magazine, making notes in the margins with his special pen that never runs out.
He shifts slightly to show that he’s heard her but doesn’t take his eyes off the magazine.
"Doug this is important."
He plops it down with force; a gesture that in a different man would be seen to convey annoyance, frustration, but Barbara knows her husband well enough to know that all his actions are grandiose, he’s simply incapable of making a subtle, graceful movement. It was one of the things she loved about him first, his animalistic mauling of her in bed, so passionate, until she discovered that was the way he handled everything.
"What?" He says monotone as if it’s a statement.
"What do you think about this whole redefining values, this thing they were talking about at the boys college, I mean what does it all mean anyway? I felt like those kids were speaking in a secret code, when did we become so outdated like our parents? What are the new values? What’s wrong with the (progressive ideals) ones we all raised our kids with?" She didn’t expect any legitimate answer from her husband, maybe some unrelated nonsensical comment or a grunt and shrug, something to show that all she considered deeply important and meaningful, was to him, a waste of thought.
At first he didn’t move at all, she wondered if he had even heard her and was about to repeat herself, which she sometimes had to do, when he, carefully, quietly and with more control than she had ever seen him wield over any object placed his magazine on the night table(stand) beside the bed. He then turned to her, fixing his gaze on her eyes, something she had forgotten he used to do when he was making a big decision about their life together.
He began in the measured voice of a seasoned pedant, "you see, it’s not so much that the boys want to replace old values with new ones, it’s that they want to question the ultimate validity of absolutes in general, they want to break down the assumptions that underlie the use of the term "Values," they want to question what those assumptions are based on, possibly undertows of inequity or unexamined social biases, but mainly they want to remove the concept of static "truth" from their vocabulary. It’s not That new of a concept, it’s just slightly newer in the culture and not a part of what we learned in college."
Barbara stared at her husband, the upper management salesman who threw big raucus parties for each of his co-worker’s birthdays, who changed his major 5 times while they were in college, who fell asleep during a sit-in, and once asked where they were going during a protest march, in shock. She had always known deep down he was intelligent, but just not in the way she and her sons were. Not inquisitive or intrinsically thoughtful.
"How did you know all that?" For a second an absurd movie clip where an alien impersonating a woman’s husband gives himself away by knowing things the man would never know flashed into her mind.
He answered matter of factly, "That’s always been My philosophy, that’s why I never got too worked up about all your protests and sit-ins, I just thought, who’s to say our idea of social justice is the right way, why be so fervent about one way, when it may not even be any better than any other way, and what’s more, what’s right will change when everything around it changes. I was just ahead of my time, that’s all, but don’t worry, you’re way’s still good, it’s just not what’s in right now." He patted her comfortingly on her puff of soft gray curls.
She looked up at his wide comfortable face and had a sudden overpowering desire(urge) to make love to him.

Review: Documentary La Sierra

So I recently saw a screening of the documentary LA Sierra about a Colombian community intimately affected by the para-military/guerilla war in that country. it was shot by an AP reporter who works out of Colombia and a photo-journalist who does the same. The narrative focuses on 3 main characters who are involved in what they refer to as "the war". In depth interviews with the 3, a 22 yr. old commander, a 20 yr. old "soldier", and the 16 yr. old girlfriend of a jailed 19 yr. old soldier guide the story. The three pregnant girlfriends of the commander also play "suporting roles" as it were. Footage of violence and night raids/ shoot-outs, combined with domestic and community life comprise the remainder of the context. The film was followed by a panel discussion and Q & A. So...what came across in this film? Afterwards comlaints were made about the lack of contextualization, the way the microcosm of this seemingly petty gang-like violence was inadequately framed by the larger national and international power- heirarchies and influences. There was a ghettoized affect, which the focus on the particular lives of individuals directly affected by and propogating the violence at the most local of levels, seemed to highlight. I found it interesting that this personal/ emotional grounding of the so-called war seemed myopic to some. From my perspective what the film showed was exactly the conditions necessary to maintain generation upopn generation of war, without any clear goals, where fighting simply becomes a way of life, a source of identity for the articiants. And indeed that is exactly what was expressed in the macho rhetoric of the 22 yr. old commander. This war for him was over his neighborhood, it was what gave him a sense of purpose, a meaning to his life. And why this? why violence and a fight for control over a community where people made less a US dollar in a week? It was exactly that, poverty, the kindof poverty that digs into a person and fills them with a deep, unshakeable shame, and then rage. It is the trap of being an intelligent man or woman in a place where there is no way to express that intelligence. As the more reasonable and sensitive and self reflective character says, "there is no opportunity." He was able to define himself as a nurturer, to find meaning in love for his child, but the commander, whose father had provided him with his first taste of humiliation, needed his machismo to secure his identity. And if you are a man in a macho culture, with a father who gave you no sense of pride and you can't work inorder to create one on your own, how do you escape humiliation? How do you secure a sense of dignity for yourself? In the world of men, in the culture of deep intractable poverty, "the war" was the only place to develop some sense of purposeful if momentary identity. And what of the women? When the commander is finally killed by the government, ecah of the women who beared his children, 14,16 and 15 are shown in their grief. The last one who has just given birth, a chubby 15 year old, with a face which is resolute and strong is shown crying softly as she nuzzles her newborn. This scene is the one above all that had the audience in tears. For it is the women who bear children, that is their source of pride, of dignity, of hope. And also they are the martyrs, who weep in the aftermath and still care for their children as they grieve for their children's fathers. And these women are 14,15,16. It is a poverty that renders all but the body useless. For men, they can give their blood, women their wombs. And what teenager does not want to be worthy,does not want to believe their life is of value at least in whatever they can be productive. The proud girl who was interviewed, refused to become a prostitute and so sold candy on the buses, making 1-3 US dollars a day/week. She brought money to her jailed boyfriend whom she urged to marry her, not even skipping a beat when she mentioned that each visit entailed a vaginal search by the guards. Her body had already become her only source of production, her only valuable commodity. After her break-up, she decided the candy selling was too humiliating and in the end, turned to erotic dancing, what she had aworn not to do. It is hard to imagine the psychology of a 16 yr. old girl or a 20 yr. old boy who lives with constant death, violation, and mortal danger, who continuously speaks of a hopeless future, and fully exects to die before 30. But we do not need to go to Colombia to see this. America's urban ghettos bear the same fruit of poverty. The movies that have been made about African American slums in New York and LA are based in these realities, and they continue. The projects with their gangs are rife with the same violence, fear and abuse. The hopelessness of youth in these areas has been dosumented across the country by Jonathan Kozol and other qualitative researchers. The desire of teenage girls to make something of their lives thorugh becoming mothers is expressed in the research done by Michelle Fine and many others. And so, in the end "La Sierra" is really a story about poverty and desperation. As one of the characters said, "I owuldn't do this if I could get a job." The question to ask ourselves is, if we find this so upsetting when it occurs in other nations, why do we allow it to continue on our own soil?

Drama in the cafe continued

Well, that last post should have been titled tension on the commute, the drama in the cafe is just that. I was in a cafe and I had an idea for a play based in a cafe, such as the one I was in, a downtown NY indie cafe which plays Jazz/classical/indie music and has a waitress who literally looks like she has been plucked from one of calvin Klein's ennui ads, if her expression were any deader she'd be mistaken for wax...Anyway, (Id probably be like that too if I worked in a cafe), Sometimes I'm like that in the midst of a class discussion and i don't even have to carry anything. So i was just noticing all these cute young and semi-young things checking eachother out...all amid the couples and groups engaged in very dramatic conversations in various languages, the cellphones, the walking in and out, the sitting...well this has clearly lost it's ...whatever, but some day when all of you imaginary people see a play/movie entitled "drama in the cafe" you cna say I didn't know that blogger when... Hey you cna say that when all my books get published too, aren't you glad you're "here" has anyone investigated the concept of "space" online? Save your drama for the cafe babe...bye

Drama at the Cafe

Well, I have two topics today which are only loosely related. Why do i take on this pedantic tone whenever i begin writing one of these? It must be you non-existent audience, there must be something dead in your non-existent faces/ ear or perhaps in whatever lies between your ears. Wow, listen to the snideness i direct towards you, imagine how far a projection could go into a nonexistent band of millions, it would be the inifinite projection, the pen-ultimate transference... anyway my wireless has been acting up and I write this in a state of frenzy and paranoia that at any moment I will be dumped from the server and hence lose these precious words of wisdom for all eternity...into the never was... Well, i think I'll begin with my first point. Two things happened today, both were situations in which I oucld have helped someone, a stranger, and thus, by reaching out expanded my own universe, felt connected to others, and been appreciated, and as much as I strained to do just that, something in me, stoppedthe impulse from coming to fruition, like a wall between myself and my own good intentions...The first, a woman, young looking, even younger than me, (and I look @21) but probably in all actuality the same exact age, (29) on the bus from the college where i teach, and she had an attendance sheet which sh elooked at briefly before sticking back in her bag and I recognized it immediately as these awkward, multi-copy, thick sheets must accompany you to every class day for the first two months of the semester, and I thought, wow she teaches there too, I liked her. She looked like media-studies person, maybe even composition and rhetoric, someone along those lines, funky, but serious. She was tall for a woman, and not exactly cute, but more along the lines of pleasant looking, even sweet. We rode the bus all the way to the train, her staring into space with that, it's 8:00, I just finished teaching, I probably fucked up here and there, my students sortof suck and I have an hours commute ahead of me kindof look. (yes, I am projecting here). but I was right about the hours commute. Like me she was a speed demon between the last bus stop and the subway, except her longer legs, my heavier bag and the fact that I had just finihed office hours and paper work rather than actually teaching, so was far less eager to get as far away from the college as she was...meant that she came out a bit ahead. at the metro-card swipe she was positively frantic, her first try didn't go through and she apologized sensing me behind her...I swiped through at the one beside her, no problem, headed to the stairs just as the train to Manhattan pulled in. I looked back, there she was, finally freed of the turnstile torture, and I oculd already see, it would be too late. I had flung myself into a seat when the thought occurred, just get up and hold the door open...for 5 seconds, she will just make it.. And as i had this thought, time seemed to stop, it was as if I was frozen...but actually time didn't stop, it didn't wait for whatever weird dilemma wasplaying itselfout in my sub-conscious, the doors closed and I saw her face, resigned disappointment. It was so unfair, she had been ahead of everyone the whole commute and now when it most counted she was last. I cursed myself. I thought, I oucld have had a cool friend, she would have been so appreciative, it owuld have been so easy after holding the door, to mention that I taught there to, and then of course we were probably also both doctoral students at the same college as well, since it's connected to the one where we teach and she's also so young. I would have had a commuter-mate for those long multi-train/bus commutes to and from, we could bitch about how all our students have cars and we can barely afford an unlimited metro-card... But worstof all about the whole thing, was how much like me she was in that moment of desperation, and then hopelessness, how many times the eact same thing has happened to me and how much a gesture like the one I'd been contemplating would have meant to me at those times, even if it had been madeby someone with perhaps less affinity to myself, than she would have had for me...and yet I balked at the chance, somehow petrified, another case happened the very same night. An older blindwoman on the sidewalk fiddling with her cane, the one made specifically for blind people. It seemedto have come apart and neededto be screwed back together. Watching her struggle, in the middle of the sidewalk I imagined myself going over and saying, "excuse me, can I help you?" I imagined the satisfaction it would give me, whether or not she accepted the offer,just to know that i had reached out, that I had seen the enormity of her hardship, that I had recognized it, and responded. I stopped and watched her for a good 5 minutes from afar. i kept thinking if she doesn't fix it soon, I'll go over. But she did fix it and wason her way and I on mine, alone separate, detached.

On the eve of almost Valentine's day

I am going to do a rant on feminisms and sado-masochistic sex...Saw it coming, did you? Oh, phantom audience, you know me so well.
So here's the problem with feminist epistemology/standpoint theory/ being real about women's lives, being real about men's lives, men's bodies, women's bodies, etc...etc...etc...They never actually talk about sex!!!! What could be a better site for analyzing/locating the social construction of gender/ identity? For looking at the way social norms mediate and construct biology? The way symbol and metaphor interact with and exist within embodiment?
And we don't even have to talk about Freud to get that squishy/ throbbing feeling in our underpants, all we have to talk about is Power and I'm already hot...
So yes, feminists want men to examine the way patriarchy constructs their notions of their own masculinity...but what about bull dykes with whips...or straight girls with perfect makeup with whips, or men that look like boys who tie up their partners and torture them until they come?
What about fantasies that rely on taboos being taboo? What is sex anyway? Yes we want to know: what is language? What is the difference between humans and advanced primates? What is gender? What is race? But what about asking the question what is sex? What is an eloquent argumentative, assertive feminist who gets off on being spanked and called a slut? What is pornography anyway? Have we academics even bothered to define our terms here? Is a story as pornographic as a picture? Why/ why not? I am tempted to read Elaine Scarie's latest on disgust, I heard an excellent interview with her on her book on Beauty...anyway, what's my point? My point is I don't mean we should examine sexuality, as Foulcauld did, not the "notion" of it...how about IT, the thing itself? And not phallic symbols either. I'm talking kinky sex people. The relation of sex and power. What can this tell us about the ubiquity of power relations which feminists say they want to do away with. Isn't that sortof like saying you want to do away with society? And besides, are you sure you don't want blatantly unequal power relations to exist even in the form of discourse? Because I'm telling you right now, if I didn't have archetypes based in reality of overly aggressive buisness men and their submissive short skirted secretaries, or highheeled, cold faced horse training women with deep red lipstick weilding whips, I really don't know what my sex life would be reduced to:0
There, sex are you happy? Now who wants to guess what gender I am?

ps I had to stop talking about power dynamics so I wouldn't get too turned on...but don't tell my students/ colleagues :)

Everything I always wanted to tell you,

Everything I always wanted to tell you,

WELCOME

If you are just joining me from Craig's list...congratulations...you are my very first audience member...welcome to the world of forced recruitment...no the internet, will never be true "neighborhood" where people can just happen upon a store and browse through it's offerings...but then again the "real" world will never be an endless slate of words and consciousness where random strangers fling their indentities at you, with no fear of consequences....and so, Craig's list patrons, if you have obeyed my post...and checked me out,thank you. we will never speak or even correspond in person, but just knowing or at least assuming that some of you actually are reading this is making me feel less schizophrenic already and for that I thank you... :)

Review David Byrne 1994 album

So Im a little late...what can a say about this album? Best to let it speak for itself... "If I don't make no decisions/ well I can't make no mistakes/but through all those tiny holes/ well the lights still getting in" (back in the box, D. Byrne) "I'm primitive & selfish/I'm childlike & I'm helpless/ well I got that way because of/ my love for you" (D.Byrne) "There are those who are happy/there are those who are wise/but it's the truly sad people/who get the most out of life" (D. Byrne) "I can hardly touch myself/how can I touch someone else?/I'm just a walking advertisement/for a version of myself" D. Byrne
Imagine a man singing winsomely about his most personal, deep, and ephemeral feelings...then skipping onto the most insidious sicknesses of the society in which he lives...Then imagine it all backed up by music which creates dreamscapes, like a layered day dream of acid jazz truncated before it goes too far...some funky guitar that hangs unresolved, a carribean sounding drum beat, and repetitions that sound easy at first, even predictable, but become suddenly alive with syncopation, the introduction of a xylophone riff atop an off beat bass... There is also an ironic nod to lounge music, cheesy disco/predictable funk, and of course his classic integration of steel-drum, "tropical" sounds...but the very best juxtaposition running throughout the album is the feel-good big band sound, overlain with disturbing and deeply sardonic lyrics... It is like, feed them consciousness through lite-fm, but somehow it works, and the music, carrying Byrnes' happy go-lucky rhapsodies, of "the mentally unfit" "sometimes your an asshole too", never winds up cliche, or without it's own authentic soul... Byrne mixes existentialist absurdity with self relevatory indulgence, and somehow the country western yodeling atop the Zydeco beats...trail off into the sunset with his lyrics about the inescapable pain and absurdity of existence trailing lightly in the listener's consciousness... Yeah, david Fuckin' Byrne...we need more authentic artists, telling us it's not only fun but strangely freeing to be a tortured soul :)

Disclaimer: In case it wasn't obvious I'm not exactly a music expert, I don't know all the correct names for the genres I mentioned

My religion

I have always called myself a secular humanist. Which I still adhere to as the most accurate description of my spiritual beliefs. However, I realized I also have a deep philosophical commitment to psycho-analysis. As much as i accept and strive to constantly integrate the impact of culture, social constructionism and insights from feminism/Foucouldian power analysis, etc...At the end of the day, when i truly want to get to the heart of the basis for an individuals behavior, I turn back to their internal, sub or at least less than fully conscious self. I ask what are the repetitions/ roles this person/ myself is re-enacting and why? How much is a projection? Are these conflicts really present conflicts or deeper or more internal conflicts from a buried, implicit past? I ask why do I have more in common with a Jamaican, South Asian, and protestant woman with similar family dynamics than I do with those who share my ethnic background if everyhting is culturally constructed? But then of course, what is culture but shared meaning or in psycho-dynamic terms inter-subjectivity? The other day I realized that whenmy students come to class determined to appear as unmotivated as possible, I immediately feel I am doing a bad job and so it goes...(and yes, people these are college students, in a masters program no less, but many work full time, so t hey're tired, boo fucking hoo) see hoe quickly my guilt turns to resentment? And so it goes... Are there cultures that don't have "deviants?" No. Why isn't "deviance more often studied in anthro/socio ology? Maybe, like the protagonist in brave New World it is the deviants who will lead us to universals, the one who knows how to step outside of, or self-define in opposition to, culture as it were. But then one is still involved in the dialectic, per Foucault, cum Marx. Even so, if schizophrenics are Shamans somewhere else, (as Guattari and Deleuze argue), what does it tell us about "those people"? Is this turning into Jungian archetypes, some universal conscious/unconscious. Are there tropes that all societie's share, themes, roles to be taken. If a society has no deviants how can it's members concretely define that societie's boundaries? who gets sacrificied to the need for deviants? I will never invesitgate these questions. They are neither in my field, nor my particular research program...However I will try to watch the outliers in my data, to include them, and hold them up as special rather than standardizing, rather than using Z scores to flatten out the subjects and create a perfectly arched normal curve...like a breast implant, or a skin lightener, or the tactics used in 1984, or the grey clothes of Stalin's comrades. I will investigate the nature of those outliers, their qualities. I will not be content to score and rank them, to assign to them the slightest of probabilities that they will be repeated in the population. I will remove them from the statistical glare of the flourescent bulb atop the examiner's table, straight lipped, terrifyingly neutral, like the doctors who conducted experiments for the SS...I will remember the heart and soul of psychoanalysis when I investigate my subjects, I will be true to my professed religion and remember that we are all creations of eachother, even in the mind's eye of science.